rd, sitting on the grass, in
the sunshine and the breeze. And the garden smells come to you--the
nasturtiums, and the pansies, and the geraniums, you know, and even that
clean grass smell, and the pungent vegetable odor, and there are ants,
and bees, and butterflies----"

"Go on," urged the young man, eagerly.

"And Mrs. Next Door comes out to hang up a few stockings, and a jabot or
so, and a couple of baby dresses that she has just rubbed through, and
she calls out to you:

"'Washed your hair?'

"'Yes,' you say. 'It was something awful, and I wanted it nice for
Tuesday night. But I suppose I won't be able to do a thing with it.'

"And then Mrs. Next Door stands there a minute on the clothes-reel
platform, with the wind whipping her skirts about her, and the fresh
smell of the growing things coming to her. And suddenly she says: 'I
guess I'll wash mine too, while the baby's asleep.'"

The collarless young man rose from his chimney, picked up his
handkerchief, and moved to the chimney just next to Mary Louise's soap
box.

"Live here?" he asked, in his impolite way.

"If I did not, do you think that I would choose this as the one spot in
all New York in which to dry my hair?"

"When I said, 'Live here,' I didn't mean just that. I meant who are you,
and why are you here, and where do you come from, and do you sign your
real name to your stuff, or use a nom de plume?"

"Why--how did you know?" gasped Mary Louise.

"Give me five minutes more," grinned the keen-eyed young man, "and I'll
tell you what make your typewriter is, and where the last rejection slip
came from."

"Oh!" said Mary Louise again. "Then you are the scrub-lady's stalwart
son, and you've been ransacking my waste-basket."

Quite unheeding, the collarless man went on, "And so you thought you
could write, and you came on to New York (you know one doesn't just
travel to New York, or ride to it, or come to it; one 'comes on' to New
York), and now you're not so sure about the writing, h'm? And back home
what did you do?"

"Back home I taught school--and hated it. But I kept on teaching until
I'd saved five hundred dollars. Every other school ma'am in the world
teaches until she has saved five hundred dollars, and then she packs two
suit-cases, and goes to Europe from June until September. But I saved my
five hundred for New York. I've been here six months now, and the five
hundred has shrunk to almost nothing, and if I don't break int