dancing shadows over the olive walls, it made points of light of
the picture-frames and a glowing coal of the polished coffee-urn in
the corner; it pointed pleasantly out the numberless books, but told
nothing of their contents; it made dark the spaces where the alcoves
were, but suffused the little radius of the hearth that was bounded by
an easy chair and a pipe-stand with a glow and warmth and comfort
which were irresistible. The Man Above the Square came quickly into
this charmed radius and sank again into the chair. "And some people
insist on steam heat!" he said.

Then he looked into the rosy pit of wallowing, good-natured flames,
and fancied he was meditating. But in reality he was going to sleep.
When he woke up the fire was out and he was cramped and cold. He
stumbled to a corner, turned on the steam in a radiator, that the room
might be warm in the morning, and returned to his chamber.

"After all, you have to build a fire; but the steam just comes," he
growled, as he crawled sleepily into bed.

Toward morning the steam did come, but some hours before he was ready
to rise. It came at intervals, forcing the water up ahead and thumping
it against the top of the radiator with the force of a trip-hammer and
the noise of a cannon. The Man Above the Square woke up and cursed.
The intervals between thumps he employed in wondering how soon the
next report would come, which effectively prevented his going to sleep
again. Presently the thumping ceased, and he dozed off, to awake later
in ugly temper. He went out into the sitting room and found it cold as
an ice-box.

"Where in blazes is all that steam which woke me up at daylight?" he
shouted down the speaking-tube to the janitor. The answer, as usual,
admitted of no reply, even as it offered no satisfactory explanation.
He dug into the wood-box and on the heap of feathery white ashes
which topped the pile in the fireplace like snow--"the fall of last
night" he called it--he laid a fire of pine and maple. In three
minutes he was toasting his toes in front of the blaze, and good
nature was spreading up his person like the tide up a bay.

"Modern conveniences would be all right," he chuckled, looking from
the merry fire to the ugly radiator, "if they were ever convenient!"

Then he swung Indian clubs for a quarter of an hour, jumped into a
cold plunge, and went rosy to his breakfast and the day's work, with
the cheeriness of the fire in his heart.

But while he w