which, inducted me into a flat of four rooms, of which the rent was twenty-six dollars a month.  She enjoyed the advantages of central heating, gas, and electricity; and among the landlord’s fixtures were a refrigerator, a kitchen range, a bookcase, and a sideboard.  Such amenities for the people—­for the petits gens—­simply do not exist in Europe; they do not even exist for the wealthy in Europe.  But there was also the telephone, the house exchange being in charge of the janitor’s daughter—­a pleasing occupant of the entrance-hall.  I was told that the telephone, with a “nickel” call, increased the occupancy of the Bronx flats by ten per cent.

Thence I visited the flat of a doctor—­a practitioner who would be the equivalent of a “shilling” doctor in a similar quarter of London.  Here were seven rooms, at a rent of forty-five dollars a month, and no end of conveniences—­certainly many more than in any flat that I had ever occupied myself!  I visited another house and saw similar interiors.  And now I began to be struck by the splendor and the cleanliness of the halls, landings, and staircases:  marble halls, tesselated landings, and stairs out of Holland; the whole producing a gorgeous effect—­to match the glory of the embroidered pillow-cases in the bedrooms.  On the roofs were drying-grounds, upon which each tenant had her rightful “day,” so that altercations might not arise.  I saw an empty flat.  The professional vermin exterminator had just gone—­for the landlord-company took no chances in this detail of management.

Then I was lifted a little higher in the social-financial scale, to a building of which the entrance-hall reminded me of the foyers of grand hotels.  A superb negro held dominion therein, but not over the telephone girl, who ran the exchange ten hours a day for twenty-five dollars a month, which, considering that the janitor received sixty-five dollars and his rooms, seemed to me to be somewhat insufficient.  In this house the corridors were broader, and to the conveniences was added a mail-shoot, a device which is still regarded in Europe as the final word of plutocratic luxury rampant.  The rents ran to forty-eight dollars a month for six rooms.  In this house I was asked by hospitable tenants whether I was not myself, and, when I had admitted that I was myself, books of which I had been guilty were produced, and I was called upon to sign them.

The fittings and decorations of all these flats were artistically vulgar, just as they are in flats costing a thousand dollars a month, but they were well executed, and resulted in a general harmonious effect of innocent prosperity.  The people whom I met showed no trace of the influence of those older artistic civilizations whose charm seems subtly to pervade the internationalism of the East Side.  In certain strata and streaks of society on the East Side things artistic and intellectual are comprehended with an intensity of emotion and understanding impossible to Anglo-Saxons.  This I know.