At Home with the Jardines

ver realize that I am really married, and in view of our manifold travelling experiences

e to congratulate you, old man," he said, wringing the A

eir first c

ough-shod over us without a protest? He requires consideration and tact and a degree of courtesy-none of which you possess. And you can't drag him away from his writing to go to the

rgument closed, for Jimmie went off into such a fit of laughter that he choked, and

hen Aubrey's chief requirement is absence of noise! Furthermore, why do you live in

t, we avoided a street paved with cobblestones. Second, we took t

d the Angel, speaking

n the lease that no ch

e the most noise-produc

tment can be

cut in Ji

, "this one should prove so. Faith and I cert

who begin their sentences in that way, he proceeded to discourage us in every sort of ing

hich in secret we were far from feeling, for the fact remained that the Jimmies were experienced and we were not. "Living in an apartment," Jimmie

after the theatre kept us out until two in the morning. We never allowed the piano to be played after ten in the evening nor before

the corridors kept us awake half the night, and worst of all, what we patiently submitted to as visitors with children, we, to our horror, discovered were residents with children, and children of the most deteste

close a door. They slammed it, and every cup and saucer on our floor danced in reply. When their mother wanted them, she never thought of going to the room they were in to speak to them. She sat still and called. They yelled back defiant n

to practise on their piano, so that from seven in the morning until nine at night we were treated to five-finger exercises and scales. Their favourite diversion was a ga

st have quiet in

ther people move,-the impertinent people who had dared to produce children off the premises, and then to introduce them ready-made in a non-children apartment-house. Of course a landlord could not protect

e times a day emptying some dozen or more metal garbage-cans in the stone-paved court, and as these with their lids and handles merrily jingled back into place, a

ford it. Then, without a word to the Angel, I appealed to the Health Department. I made a stirring plea. I set forth that not only our healt

slow death by torture. He was amenable to blarney. He got it. The result was that never again did

g. But before we could arrange this, Considine, the novelist who had come to New York for th

," he said at once. "I'm o

ried, unwilling to

. I'm finished. New Yor

u mean?" we ask

tto town! The remainder of these remarks will be sent in a plain, se

ked at each other.

I faltere

ded-perhaps more than he

to my work. Here I hoped to work more steadily and with less effort. Ye gods!" He got up and strode around the apartment. "Ye gods! What fallacies we provincials believe! I was in heaven on my farm and didn't know it! And from that celestial

n order to get a fellow out whose son was learning the violin. I've bribed, threatened, enjoined, and at the last a subway explosion of dynamite broke all the double windows and mirrors, knocked down my Italian chandeliers, and-people tell me I h

nd Mrs. Jimmie walked in, so then Considine ca

l glasses with ice and decanters and things that fizz were produced, and, as Jimmie said, "we had

ome to think of it,

equal. A hen crossing a country lane in front of a carriage, squawking and wild-eyed, is a picture of my state of mind whenever I have a street to cross. Yesterday there were two street-car accidents and one runaway, which I saw with my own eyes in an hour's outing, and I had no sooner locked myself in my sixth-floor apartment with a sigh of relief at being saved from sudden death when a crash came in t

pend money, but as a city of terrific and unnecessary nois

it used in a battle? So this bugling begins about seven in the morning, and penetrates the most hermetically sealed apartments. Then the street-cleaners, the "White Wings," garbage and ash-ca

n or after midnight with the frightened conviction that a foreign fleet is upon us to force us to reduce the tariff. The blasting occasionally goes a little too far, and breaks windows or brings down pieces of

, while street-cries of all descriptions abound in such numbers and of such a quality that I often wonde

eeling of unholy joy seeing Mrs. Jimmie trying to join her husband in his low pleasures. She regarded it as a religious duty to take beer when he did while we we

e valiantly sits the whole evening through with her long glass in her hand. The ice melts and the whole mess grows warm and nauseous, but she hangs on, sipping at it with an air of d

hurt, so the kindest thing we can do is to pretend we notice nothing, and to let he

cloud of smoke into the air, and

ecessary. The papers are full of accounts of nervous collapses, the sanatoria are crowded, while I never heard as much about insanity in the whole of my life elsewhere as I have heard in New York in one year. There

dine

Yorkers are the most nervous people I ever saw. The children are nervous; little street urchins, who should not know what nerves are, tremble with nervous tension, while the exodus to the country on Friday nights fairly empties the town. Everybody wants to 'get away from the noise,' and it is an undisputed fact that men who have no right to allow themselves the luxury take every Saturday as a holiday, so th

ople, but how writing chaps like you and Aubrey stand it, I can't s

on the other side. The Hudson beautifies the West Side. Central Park is in my eyes the most beautiful park I ever saw. With its rocks and rolling greens, its trees and wild flowers, it forms a spot of loveliness that makes in the midst of the hot, rushing, busy city a dream of soothing repose. Washington Heights is a c

el the charm of the established, and it gives you a sense of satisfaction to realize that you can't detect

s in the rush of city life. They cool and steady, and their history an

which English women as a race can never acquire. In Hyde Park on Sunday morning, during the season, one will see half a dozen beauties whose clothes are Parisian and the loveliness of whose whole effect almost takes the breath away, but the general ru

ess and inward insincerity of the Gallic nations. Russians and Poles are the only ones I have observed to be alike both in public and in private. In

t you are aiming for, and if they can sit sidewise and occupy one and a half seats, and if you beg two of them to move closer together and let you have the remaining space, the two men may rise, one nearly always does and takes off his hat and begs you to have his place. Then all the eyes in the car are fixed on you-not reprovingly, or smilingly, or in derision or reproach, but e

t closter.' If I knew where that man was I would try to get him a position with the Metropolitan, for most of them

eself, while the conductor is generally obliged to reach down and seize the ambitious woman by the arm to assist her. The bell rings while you are still on the lower step; the conductor says, 'Step lively, please;' the car attains its maximum of speed at one jump; the conductor puts his dirty hand on your w

rom her seat until the car has come to a full stop. In fact, Bee and I were identified as strangers in town by the husband of our friend who met us at the terminus of

eached the corner and standing on the platform when

ted roads, and ferry-boats, and oughtn't you to make an exception of that dignified relic of antiquity, the Fifth Avenue stage? The most uncomfortable vehicle going, yet let me give the angel his due-in a stage people do move

ile the procession passes, has resolved itself into a funeral procession going on the run; the driver of the hearse watching his chance and fairly ducking between trucks and surface-cars, jolting the casket over the tracks until I myself have seen the wreaths slip from their places, and sometimes for five or ten minutes the hearse separated from its following carriages by a procession of vehicles which the policeman at the crossing had permitted to inte

I would get run over by a hearse. Not being an acrobat, that fate m

f what I shall get in the next world. I wouldn't own one or even ride in one to s

uickly they can be st

mm

ut are you going to pad your brougham

he trolley-tracks, his bicycle naturally slackened a little, and my careful chauffeur brought the machine to

eggs are fresh, I may be pardoned for this one), and he answered: 'Well, did you want me to kill that man?' I replied that of the two alternatives I would infinitely have

cabman's hat off with my parasol to make him stop his cab. My

s in the sky the streets are full of pleasure-seekers; cabs and private carriages flit to and fro; the clubs, restaurants, and supper-rooms are full to overflowing, the lights flare, and the ceaseless whirl

-night," said Jimmie, as they prepared to

ck to my cabbages. New York won't let you work. She won't help you. She won't protec

owing colder and colder. We could see ourselves just where Considine had

onsidine, "is that most of this noi

some one screamed shrilly. Considine gazed with starting eyes at

it?" he w

, who have versatile tastes in athletics, and are bubbling over with animal spirits. We think privately that they are the meanest little devils that ever cursed

ly, but Considine took h

d cornets, and strings of bells. Why not allow them to send up poisoned balloons to explode in your open windows, and thus call att

herself in order to let me finish a chapter. But Mrs. Gottlieb was justly incensed at any one daring to object to the healthful sports of

xcitedly, "she bought the three g

ground h

he said, slowly, "instead of giving up an arm or a leg or an eye, I would give up both ears and say, 'Lord, make me deaf!' For, much as I love music and the sound of my friends' voices, I

t us and real tear

it,-the power of the man who brings words to life in literature or who brings tones to life in music. It is part of the artistic temperament, and if I ever saw a child start and shake and go white at a sudden noise, I should lay my hand on t

l after that speech and the way he moved toward hi

York if they'd give me the town. I'm going back to my five hundred acres and ge

ll gone something l

" I wailed, "and if he can't do anything

his hands behind his back,-an attitude conduci

important letter from the agents to-day, saying that they could do nothing about the noise of the childre

admiration at th

d. He called often. Then we began to get letters, and finally

ffable at first, but as the noise from the Gottlieb apartment grew more boisterous, their suavity depar

ted. Then they delivered themselves

and those rules can never be enforced in th

which we took the apartment do not hold, then neither do

e in together with

s hold. You must

law backs up, is it? We have no redress agains

ted itself. What? To be thus browbeaten by a woman? They looked

go. I looked expe

and you have admitted that they were extraordinary. I declare them not to be borne. If then, you

ngly. The lawyer even

He should have kno

ou are liable for the whole year's rent-unt

his hand of

you gentlemen have the goodness to find my signature o

hand it back to him. Between them it fell to the floor,-the lease wh

February," repeated

sign the lease, for we cannot rent such an apartment as this in midwinter. We would lose eight months' rent if you ga

d Aubrey. "From the first of Fe

ut it," said the owner.

istened for an hour to the justice you administer to a tena

poke and moved

t us both as

gured for a few m

n New York. We will go into the country where the right to live, and to live this side of

" I cried, with enthusias

y, pausing to let the fire-en