two
boys leaving an advertisement from house to house; and seeing that there
were pictures upon it, Jurgis had asked for one, and had rolled it up
and tucked it into his shirt. At noontime a man with whom he had been
talking had read it to him and told him a little about it, with the
result that Jurgis had conceived a wild idea.

He brought out the placard, which was quite a work of art. It was nearly
two feet long, printed on calendered paper, with a selection of colors
so bright that they shone even in the moonlight. The center of the
placard was occupied by a house, brilliantly painted, new, and dazzling.
The roof of it was of a purple hue, and trimmed with gold; the house
itself was silvery, and the doors and windows red. It was a two-story
building, with a porch in front, and a very fancy scrollwork around the
edges; it was complete in every tiniest detail, even the doorknob, and
there was a hammock on the porch and white lace curtains in the windows.
Underneath this, in one corner, was a picture of a husband and wife
in loving embrace; in the opposite corner was a cradle, with
fluffy curtains drawn over it, and a smiling cherub hovering upon
silver-colored wings. For fear that the significance of all this should
be lost, there was a label, in Polish, Lithuanian, and German--"Dom.
Namai. Heim." "Why pay rent?" the linguistic circular went on to demand.
"Why not own your own home? Do you know that you can buy one for less
than your rent? We have built thousands of homes which are now occupied
by happy families."--So it became eloquent, picturing the blissfulness
of married life in a house with nothing to pay. It even quoted "Home,
Sweet Home," and made bold to translate it into Polish--though for some
reason it omitted the Lithuanian of this. Perhaps the translator found
it a difficult matter to be sentimental in a language in which a sob is
known as a gukcziojimas and a smile as a nusiszypsojimas.

Over this document the family pored long, while Ona spelled out its
contents. It appeared that this house contained four rooms, besides a
basement, and that it might be bought for fifteen hundred dollars, the
lot and all. Of this, only three hundred dollars had to be paid down,
the balance being paid at the rate of twelve dollars a month. These were
frightful sums, but then they were in America, where people talked about
such without fear. They had learned that they would have to pay a
rent of nine dollars a month for a