ap boarding-houses, had responded with a number of names and
addresses, among them that of Miss Elmira Jamison, "a lady of very high
Christian ideals."

Miss Jamison was no disappointment. She fulfilled perfectly all my
preconceived notions of what she would look like when properly attired.
Spying me the moment I got inside the dining-room door, she immediately
pounced upon me and hurried me off to a seat, when a girl in a dirty
white apron began to unload off a tray a clatter of small dishes under
my nose, while another servant tossed a wet, warm napkin upon my plate.
My breakfast consisted of heterogeneous little dabs of things in the
collection of dishes, and which I ate with not the greatest relish in
the world.

There were several score of breakfasters in the two big rooms, which
seemed to occupy the entire basement floor. They ate at little tables
set uncomfortably close together. Gradually my general observations
narrowed down to the people at my own table. I noticed a young man
opposite who wore eye-glasses and a carefully brushed beard; an old
lady, with a cataract in her left eye, who sat at the far end of the
table; a little fidgety, stupid-looking, and very ugly woman who sat
next the bearded young man; and a young girl, with dancing, roguish
black eyes, who sat beside me. The bearded young man talked at a great
rate, and judging from the cackling laughter of the fidgety woman and
the intensely interested expression of the cataracted lady, the subject
was one of absorbing interest.

Gradually I discovered that the topic of discourse was none other than
our common hostess and landlady; and gradually, too, I found myself
listening to the history of Miss Elmira Jamison's career as a purveyor
of bed and board to impecunious and homeless mortals.

Five years ago Miss Jamison had come into this shabby though eminently
respectable neighborhood, and opened a small boarding-house in a
neighboring street. She had come from some up-State country town, and
her bureaus and bedsteads were barely enough to furnish the small,
old-fashioned house which she took for a term of years. Miss Jamison was
a genius--a genius of the type peculiar to the age in which we live. She
wasn't the "slob" that she looked. The epithet is not mine, but that of
the young gentleman to whom I am indebted for this information. No,
indeed; Miss Jamison was anything but a "slob," as one soon found out
who had occasion to deal with her very long.