st Turkey, Cranberry Sauce
Roast Beef, Dish Gravy
Fricasseed Spring Lamb with Mushrooms

COLD MEAT

Boiled Fresh Beef Tongue

FISH

Fried Smelts, Tartare Sauce
Boiled Cod, Egg Sauce

VEGETABLES

Boiled Sweet Potatoes Mashed Potatoes
Cauliflower, Hollandaise Sauce Fried Egg Plant
Celery Salad

DESSERT

Plum Pudding, Hard or Lemon Sauce
Pumpkin Pie Baked Apples
Tea Coffee Milk

I will own the turkey seemed to me to taste of codfish and the codfish
of turkey, as if it were all cooked in one huge dish; but there was
enough of it, and it was otherwise good. And the fault may have been
with my palate, probably was. It is getting to be quite the thing for
clubs with a social inquiry turn to meet and take their dinners at Mills
House No. 1 in Bleecker Street, so it must be all right. Perhaps I
struck the cook's off day.[26]

[Footnote 26: Since reading this proof I have been over and verified
my diagnosis. The trouble must have been with me. The soup and the
mutton and the pie had each its proper savor, and the cook is all
right. So is the lunch. There is no fifty-cent lunch in the city
that I know of which is better.]

[Illustration: Evening in One of the Courts in the Mills House, No. 1.]

No. 1 is the largest, with rooms for 1554 guests, and usually there are
1554 there. No. 2 in Rivington Street has 600 rooms. Together they are
capable of housing about twelve per cent of all who nightly seek the
cheap lodging houses, not counting the Raines law hotels, which are
chiefly used for purposes of assignation. The Bowery houses have felt
the competition, and have been compelled to make concessions that profit
the lodger. The greatest gain to him is the chance of getting away from
there. At the Mills Houses he is reasonably safe from the hold-up man
and the recruiting thief. Though the latter often gives the police the
Bleecker Street house as his permanent address on the principle that
makes the impecunious seeker of a job conduct his correspondence from
the Fifth Avenue Hotel or the Savoy, he is rarely found there, and if
found, is not kept long. If he does get in, he is quiet and harmless
because he has to be.