Bangs had
been absorbed in business. For twenty years, night after night, it
had been his custom to entertain his friends at his apartment in not a
very quiet way. He was so happy, and bulbous, and jolly, that he had
never thought of marriage. Yet he might easily have been mistaken by
the casual observer for a family man. He wore a white vest when it
wasn't too cold; his linen was painfully plain. There was not a sign
of jewelry about him. He wore low shoes, which he tied with a ribbon.
This was Mr. Bangs.

Not quite so old in years as the opposite lodger was Mr. Bixby, known
to his few friends as a genial philosopher and poet, to the public as
the literary critic of one of the great daily papers. He might have
been thirty-five years of age, but, as he had lived more for others
than for himself, as he had made a study and not a pleasure of life,
his gray eyes and the other features of his face suggested to whoever
met him a longer past. There was something about him that caused men
to wonder, not what he was, but what he had been.

For ten years Mr. Bangs and Mr. Bixby had been inmates of the house
together. Mr. Bangs had been there longer. The present landlady had
received as a legacy from her predecessor, who did not care to take
him away, Mr. Bangs. As she said, she made a present of Bangs.

Long as they had known each other, the two lodgers were only
acquaintances. Sometimes, on a Sunday afternoon, they would walk out
in company, stroll down to the Battery, and there smoke their cigars
and watch the ships, but beyond this point of sociability, which
neither enjoyed, there was nothing more. Never had Bixby read Bangs
any poem he had made, nor did ever Bangs invite Bixby to meet his
convivial friends of an evening to play whist or to partake of his
mulled ale. In fact, Mr. Bixby had been often and with great
enthusiasm voted an unsocial fellow by the cronies of Mr. Bangs, but
he rose somewhat in their estimation when they were informed that he
had consented to exchange rooms with their host.

"He isn't such a grouty fellow, after all," said Bangs. "I told him
that we were too near the street, and that some one had been
complaining to the landlady of our singing. He didn't even stop to
think, but agreed to do it at once. He thought the light would be
better here. Now, fellows, I call that doing the fair thing."

And the speech of Mr. Bangs was applauded.

It was the morning of the day before Christmas that the c