“So I attend to my household duties, marketing, take my exercise, and keep up my French and German; but when evening comes, no one rings the bell except some intoxicated person looking for one of the lodging houses opposite, and the silence is positively asphyxiating—­if they would only play an accordion in the kitchen I should be grateful.  I’m really thinking of offering the maids a piano and refreshments if they will give an ‘at home’ once a week, as the only men in the neighbourhood seem to be the butchers and grocery clerks and the police.  There is an inordinate banging going on in the rear of the house, and I must break off to see what it is.”

* * * * *

“January 3th.

“MY DEAR CHILD:—­

“Your second question, regarding visiting you the coming season, was answering itself the other day when I was writing.  Life here, except in winter, is becoming impossible to me.  I have lost not only Josephus, but my back yard!  The stable where they keep the pigeons has changed hands.  Yes, you were right,—­he did haunt the place, the postman says; and I suppose they did not understand that he was merely playful, and not hungry, or who he was, else maybe he was too careless about sitting on the side fence by the street.  I could replace Josephus, but not the yard,—­there are no more back yards to be had; their decadence is complete.  I’ve closed my eyes for years to the ash heap my neighbour on the right kept in hers; also to the cast-off teeth that came over from the ‘painless’ dentist’s on the left.

“When the great tenement flat ran up on the north, where I could, not so long ago, see the masts of the shipping in the Hudson, I sighed, and prayed that the tins and bottles that I gathered up each morning might not single me out when I was tying up my vines in the moonlight of early summer nights.

“Josephus resented these missiles, however, and his foolish habit of sitting on the low side fence under the ailantus tree then began.  Next, I was obliged to give up growing roses, because, as you know, they are fresh-air lovers; and so much air and light was cut off by the high building that they yielded only leaves and worms.  Still I struggled, and adapted myself to new conditions, and grew more of the stronger summer bedding plants.

“Five days ago I heard a banging and pounding.  Only that morning Lucy had been told that the low, rambling carpenter’s shop, that occupied a double lot along the ’street to the southwest, had been sold, and we anxiously waited developments.  We were spared long suspense; for, on hearing the noise, and going to the little tea-room extension where I keep my winter plants, I saw a horde of men rapidly demolishing the shop, under directions of a superintendent, who was absolutely sitting on top of my honeysuckle trellis.  After swallowing six times,—­a trick father once taught me to cure explosive speech,—­I went down and asked him if he could tell me to what use the lot was to be put.  He replied:  ’My job is only to clean it up; but the plans call for a twelve-story structure,—­warehouse, I guess.  But you needn’t fret; it’s to be fireproof.’