Big Poker Site hazard of new fortunes 28

York. They seem to have forgotten death a little more completely than any of their fellow-citizens, Isabel. And I wonder what they think of us, making this gorgeous progress through their midst. I suppose they think were rich, and hate us--if they hate rich people; they dont look as if they hated anybody. Should we be as patient as they are with their discomfort? I dont believe theres steam heat or an elevator in the whole block. Seven rooms and a bath would be more than the largest and genteelest family would know what to do with. They wouldnt know what to do with the bath, anyway." His monologue seemed to interest his wife apart from the satirical point it had for themselves. "You ought to get Mr. Fulkerson to let you work some of these New York sights up for Every Other Week, Basil; you could do them very nicely." "Yes; Ive thought of that. But dont lets leave the personal ground. Doesnt it make you feel rather small and otherwise unworthy when you see the kind of street these fellow-beings of yours live in, and then think how particular you are about locality and the number of bellpulls? I dont see even ratchets and speaking-tubes at these doors." He craned his neck out of the window for a better look, and the children of discomfort cheered him, out of sheer good feeling and high spirits. "I didnt know I was so popular. Perhaps its a recognition of my humane sentiments." "Oh, its very easy to have humane sentiments, and to satirize ourselves for wanting eight rooms and a bath in a good neighborhood, when we see how these wretched creatures live," said his wife. "But if we shared all we have with them, and then settled down among them, what good would it do?" "Not the least in the world. It might help us for the moment, but it wouldnt keep the wolf from their doors for a week; and then they would go on just as before, only they wouldnt be on such good terms with the wolf. The only way for them is to keep up an unbroken intimacy with the wolf; then they can manage him somehow. I dont know how, and Im afraid I dont want to. Wouldnt you like to have this fellow drive us round among the halls of pride somewhere for a little while? Fifth Avenue or Madison, up-town?" "No; weve no time to waste. Ive got a place near Third Avenue, on a nice cross street, and I want him to take us there." It proved that she had several addresses near together, and it seemed best to dismiss their coupe and do the rest of their afternoons work on foot. It came to nothing; she was not humbled in the least by what she had seen in the tenement-house street; she yielded no point in her ideal of a flat, and the flats persistently refused to lend themselves to it. She lost all patience with them. "Oh, I dont say the flats are in the right of it," said her husband, when she denounced their stupid inadequacy to the purposes of a Christian home. "But Im not so sure that we are, either. Ive been thinking about that home business ever since my sensibilities were dragged--in a coupe--through that tenement-house street. Of course, no child born and brought up in such a place as that could have any conception of home. But thats because those poor people cant give character to their habitations. They have to take what they can get. But people like us--that is, of our means--do give character to the average flat. Its made to meet their tastes, or their supposed tastes; and so its made for social show, not for family life at all. Think of a baby in a flat! Its a contradiction in terms; the flat is the negation of motherhood. The flat means society life; that is, the pretence of social life. Its made to give artificial people a society basis on a little money--too much money, of course, for what they get. So the cost of the building is put into marble halls and idiotic decoration of all kinds. I dont object to the conveniences, but none of these flats has a living-room. They have drawing-rooms to foster social pretence, and they have dining-rooms and bedrooms; but they have no room where the family can all come together and feel the sweetness of being a family. The bedrooms are black-holes mostly, with a

Hazard Of New Fortunes page 27        Hazard Of New Fortunes page 29