my ophicleide!
Home!
Home, I celebrate. I elevate my fog-whistle, inspir'd by the thought of
home.
Come in!--take a front seat; the jostle of the crowd not minding; there
is room enough for all of you.
This is my exhibition--it is the greatest show on earth--there is no
charge for admission.
All you have to pay me is to take in my romanza.

II

1. The brown-stone house; the father coming home worried from a
bad day's business; the wife meets him in the marble pav'd
vestibule; she throws her arms about him; she presses him
close to her; she looks him full in the face with
affectionate eyes; the frown from his brow disappearing.

Darling, she says, Johnny has fallen down and cut his head; the
cook is going away, and the boiler leaks.

2. The mechanic's dark little third-story room, seen in a flash
from the Elevated Railway train; the sewing-machine in a
corner; the small cook-stove; the whole family eating
cabbage around a kerosene lamp; of the clatter and roar and
groaning wail of the Elevated train unconscious; of the
smell of the cabbage unconscious.

Me, passant, in the train, of the cabbage not quite so
unconscious.

3. The French Flat; the small rooms, all right-angles,
un-individual; the narrow halls; the gaudy, cheap
decorations everywhere.

The janitor and the cook exchanging compliments up and down the
elevator-shaft; the refusal to send up more coal, the solid
splash of the water upon his head, the language he sends up
the shaft, the triumphant laughter of the cook, to her
kitchen retiring.

4. The widow's small house in the suburbs of the city; the
widow's boy coming home from his first day down town; he is
flushed with happiness and pride; he is no longer a
school-boy, he is earning money; he takes on the airs of a
man and talks learnedly of business.

5. The room in the third-class boarding-house; the mean little
hard-coal fire, the slovenly Irish servant-girl making it,
the ashes on the hearth, the faded furniture, the private
provender hid away in the closet, the dreary backyard out
the window; the young girl at the glass, with her mouth full
of hairpins, doing up her hair to go downstairs and flirt
with the young fellows in the parlor.

6. The kitchen of the old farm-house; the young convict just
returned from prison--it was