York put up by the thousands several decades
ago, and considered fashionable.

The house, therefore, was like every other house on the block. But to
the observant passerby, one thing identified it. The basements of its
neighbors were given over to various activities--commercial and
otherwise. There were basements that were bakeries, or delicatessen
shops, or dusty second-hand-book stores, or flower stalls. And not a
few were used still for their primary purpose--the housing, more or
less comfortably, of humans. The St. Clair house was distinguished by
the fact that its front room on the basement level (the servants'
living-room of better days) was rented for the accommodation of a
"hand" laundry.

Often Miss St. Clair felt called upon to apologize for that laundry--at
least to explain its presence. "Some of my friends say, 'Oh, my dear,
a _laundry_!' But as I say, 'You can't put high-class people in the
basement; and high-class people is the only people I'll have around.
Furthermore, I can't leave the basement empty. And ain't cleanyness
next to goodness? And what's cleaner'n a laundry? Besides, it's handy
to have one so close.'"

The interior of the building was typical. Its front-parlor, the only
room not "let," was high-ceilinged and of itself marked the house as
one that had been pretentious in its day. It boasted the usual
bay-window, a marble fireplace and a fine old chandelier with
drop-crystal ornaments--all these eloquent of the splendor that was
past. Double doors led to the back-parlor, which was the dining-room
of earlier times.

There was the characteristic hall, with stairs leading down under
stairs that led up, these last to rooms shorn of their former glory,
and now graduated in price, and therefore in importance, first, by
virtue of their outlook--their position as to front or rear; and,
second, in reference to their distance above the street. The front
stairs ended in a newel post that supported a bronze figure holding
aloft a light--a figure grotesquely in contrast to the "hall stand,"
with its mirror and its hat hooks and its Japanese umbrella receptacle.

The pride of Miss St. Clair's heart was that "front-parlor." And upon
it she had "slathered" a goodly sum--with a fond generosity that was
wholly mistaken, since her purchases utterly ruined the artistic value
of whatever the room possessed of good. She had papered its walls in
red (one might have said with the idea of matchi