as gone there entered the chambermaid, and sad
desecration was wrought. Chambermaids are another modern
inconvenience. The Pilgrim Fathers got along without chambermaids; and
even at a much later period chambermaids worked at least under the
supervision of a mistress of the household. But nowadays they have
their own way, even in abodes where there is one who could be a
mistress if she would, or time from social duties and the improvement
of her mind permitted. Of course, in the abode of a bachelor the
chambermaid is supreme, for bachelors, at least in New York, have of
necessity to live in apartments, not private boarding houses presided
over by a careful mistress. Probably most of them prefer to; but that
does not prove progress, none the less. But the Man Above the Square
was not of this class. He had a sharp elbow bone, in the first place,
which is to signify that he was a "good house-keeper," as they say in
New England. And in the second place, he knew the value to the
aesthetic and moral sense of personality in living rooms, of an
orderly, tasteful arrangement of inanimate objects, carpets, pictures,
furniture, which, through weeks of comparative changelessness, takes
on the human aspect of a friend and silently welcomes you when you
return at night, saying comfortably, "I am here, as you left me; I am
home."

So when he entered his room again that evening and turned up the gas,
his immediate utterance was not strictly the subject for reproduction.
To begin with, the chambermaid had, in disobedience to his strict
orders, taken up the centre rug and sent it up on the roof for the
porter to beat. Being an expensive rug, the Man Above the Square did
not particularly relish having it frequently beaten. But still less
did he relish the way it had been replaced. It was not in the centre
of the room, so that two legs of the library desk in the middle stood
on the border and two on the diamond centre. One end was too near the
piano, the other consequently too far from the hearth. And in trying
to tug it into position the maid had managed to pull every edge out of
plumb with the lines of the floor. Of course, the photographs on the
piano had smooches on the margins, where the maid's thumb had pressed
as she held them up to dust beneath. Pudd'n-Head Wilson would alone
have prized them in their present state. On the mantel each object was
just far enough out of its proper place to throw the whole decorative
scheme into a li