our
new place in Mush Street--pardon me, I mean Clarendon Avenue.

Belville Rock has always exhibited a friendly interest in me and my
welfare. He is president of a savings bank and is concerned in
numerous mercantile and speculative enterprises. He belongs to many
clubs and social organizations, and is president of the Sons of
Vermont, the Sons of New York, the Sons of Rhode Island, the Sons of
Michigan, and the other Sons who have effected formal organizations in
this city. He is treasurer of most of the current enterprises and he
is recognized as a leader of distinct influence in the several
political parties which control public affairs locally.

Mr. Rock commands the happy faculty of divorcing himself wholly from
business during those hours which he has dedicated to sociability. He
declines to discuss monetary matters outside his room at the bank. I
recall how, upon several occasions when I have approached him upon the
delicate subject of negotiating a trifling temporary loan, he has
dismissed the matter by reminding me that he had certain days which he
set apart for business of this character, and that at other times he
devoted himself exclusively to the consideration of other things.

I recall, too, that after persistent inquiry (having, possibly, selfish
ends in view), I learned from Cashier Bolton, who is Mr. Rock's
marble-hearted alter ego, that Mr. Rock's hours for the consideration
of all applications for personal accommodations were from 7.55 to 8
a.m., every other Thursday. This may strike the average person as a
unique singularity, but I find it easy to understand how a man so
numerously interested in affairs as Mr. Rock is should find it
imperative to regulate his business and social conduct with the most
methodical and most exacting system.

You can depend upon it that I lost no time in apprising Alice and Adah
and our neighbors of Mr. Rock's munificent proposition, and I hardly
need assure you that by all Mr. Rock's generosity was warmly applauded.
The incident gave rise to a new phase in the sequence of events, for
immediately a discussion arose as to the color which we ought to paint
our new house, and this discussion continued with increasing vigor for
several days. Adah was characteristically earnest in her advocacy of a
soft cream yellow, that being the shade adopted by Maria when she
repainted her St. Joe domicile--a soft cream yellow, with the blinds in
a delicate brown, that was Adah