roof
construction. It is an eight-story and basement apartment building with
a tile roof and a short mansard of tile in front only. There are two
sections, cut off from one another except for a metal-clad door in the
basement. The elevator is at the right as you enter; the stairway runs
around it. There are two light courts, one front and one rear, both with
stairway fire escapes. Which is your apartment?"

"West front, on the fourth floor."

"You have probably seven rooms, with four windows along the street side
and four on the court. Well," he finished, laughing, "is that
sufficiently visualized?"

"You have told me nearly everything except where we have our piano,"
Helen returned. "I don't suppose your diagram would show that?"

"Well, no. That wouldn't interest us as a rule, and besides, people move
pianos so often. We don't try to keep them all located."

Smiling together, and better friends than they had yet been, the two
turned from the map of Boston.

"Here," said Smith, "are the other maps of the Eastern Department, from
Maine to Maryland, Rhode Island to Ohio. Also Canada--Halifax, Quebec,
Montreal. Over at the other end of the room are the Southern cities,
Atlanta, New Orleans, St. Augustine--with some of the old Spanish houses
still standing. Do you know it strikes me there is something Homeric,
something epic, about a map desk. You can turn to any building in any
city on the continent, at a moment's notice. I can show you the Old
South Church, or Fraunce's Tavern in New York where Washington bade his
generals good-by, or Montcalm's headquarters at Quebec before Wolfe
scaled the heights. Or you can see the Peace Conference Hotel outside
Portsmouth, or the Congressional Library in Washington, or the new
Chinatown in San Francisco, or the great shops of the Pennsylvania
Railroad at Altoona, or even the site of the arena at Reno, Nevada, where
Mr. Johnson separated Mr. Jeffries from the heavy-weight title of the
world."

So engrossed was Smith that he did not notice the almost imperceptible
withdrawal of his auditor. Among her Boston friends there was no one who
spoke of prize fights; even Charles Wilkinson, whose conversational
reservations were certainly few, ignored the prize ring. Smith went
unconsciously on, but for his hearer, for the time at least, the spell
was snapped. Still, she listened. He told her more of what the maps
showed--how they indicated the location and size of t