ong since he had given up his
downtown studio. He was content to be idle, listless, apathetic, letting
the days bring whatever they chose, making no effort toward any fixed
routine, allowing his habits to be formed by the exigencies of the hour.

He rose late and took his breakfast in his room; after breakfast he sat
in his window-seat, reading his paper, smoking his pipe, drinking his
coffee, and watching the women on their way downtown to their morning's
shopping or marketing. Then, as the fancy moved him, he read a novel,
wrote a few letters, or passed an hour in the studio dabbling with some
sketches for the "Last Enemy." Very often he put in the whole morning
doing pen and inks of pretty, smartly dressed girls, after Gibson's
manner, which he gave away afterward to his friends. In the afternoon he
read or picked the banjo or, sitting down to the little piano he had
rented, played over his three pieces, the two polkas and the air of the
topical song. At three o'clock, especially of Wednesday and Saturday
afternoons, he bestirred himself, dressed very carefully, and went
downtown to promenade Kearney and Market streets, stopping occasionally
at the Imperial, where he sometimes found Ellis and Geary and where he
took cocktails in their company.

He rarely went out in the evenings; his father's death had changed all
that, at least for a while. He had not seen Turner Ravis nor Henrietta
Vance for nearly two months.

Vandover took his greatest pleasure while in his new quarters, delighted
to be pottering about his sitting-room by the hour, setting it to
rights, rearranging the smaller ornaments, adjusting the calendar,
winding the clock and, above all, tending the famous tiled stove.

In his idleness he grew to have small and petty ways. The entire day
went in doing little things. He passed one whole afternoon delightfully,
whittling out a new banjo bridge from the cover of a cigar-box, scraping
it smooth afterward with a bit of glass. The winding of his clock was
quite an occurrence in the course of the day, something to be looked
forward to. The mixing of his tobacco was a positive event and
undertaken with all gravity, while the task of keeping it moist and ripe
in the blue china jar, with the sponge attachment, that always stood on
the bamboo tea-table by the Japanese screen, was a wearing anxiety that
was yet a pleasure.

It became a fad with him to do without matches, using as a substitute
"lights," tapers of