cream-coloured pressed brick."

4. That the entrance between them is "protected by a handsome
wrought-iron door."

5. That to either side of this door is "an electric lamp support of
handsome design."

6. That in each of these lamp supports there are "lovely
cream-coloured globes, shedding a soft lustre."

7. That inside is "the usual lobby."

8. That in the lobby is "the usual elevator."

9. That in the elevator is the usual "uniformed negro elevator
man."

10. That this negro elevator man (name not given) is "indifferent
and impertinent."

11. That a telephone switchboard is also in the lobby.

12. That the building is seven stories in height.

In "The Financier" there is the same exasperating rolling up of
irrelevant facts. The court proceedings in the trial of Cowperwood are
given with all the exactness of a parliamentary report in the London
_Times_. The speeches of the opposing counsel are set down nearly in
full, and with them the remarks of the judge, and after that the opinion
of the Appellate Court on appeal, with the dissenting opinions as a sort
of appendix. In "Sister Carrie" the thing is less savagely carried out,
but that is not Dreiser's fault, for the manuscript was revised by some
anonymous hand, and the printed version is but little more than half the
length of the original. In "The Titan" and "Jennie Gerhardt" no such
brake upon exuberance is visible; both books are crammed with details
that serve no purpose, and are as flat as ditch-water. Even in the two
volumes of personal record, "A Traveler at Forty" and "A Hoosier
Holiday," there is the same furious accumulation of trivialities.
Consider the former. It is without structure, without selection, without
reticence. One arises from it as from a great babbling, half drunken. On
the one hand the author fills a long and gloomy chapter with the story
of the Borgias, apparently under the impression that it is news, and on
the other hand he enters into intimate and inconsequential confidences
about all the persons he meets en route, sparing neither the innocent
nor the obscure. The children of his English host at Bridgely Level
strike him as fantastic little creatures, even as a bit uncanny--and he
duly sets it down. He meets an Englishman on a French train who pleases
him much, and the two become good friends and see Rome together, but the
fellow's wife is "obstreperous"