THE VAN DWELLERS
by
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
[Illustration: "WELL, AND WHEN DID YEZ ORDER IT TURNED ON?"--_Frontispiece_.]
THE VAN DWELLERS
A Strenuous Quest for a Home
by
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
Author of "The Bread Line"
[Illustration]
_"We were strangers and they took us in"_
New York J. F. Taylor & Company 1901
Copyright, 1901 by J. F. Taylor & Company
_TO THOSE_
WHO HAVE LIVED IN FLATS
_TO THOSE_
WHO ARE LIVING IN FLATS
_AND TO THOSE_
WHO ARE THINKING OF
LIVING IN FLATS
Contents.
PAGE
I. The First Home in the Metropolis. 1
II. Metropolitan Beginnings. 13
III. Learning by Experience. 28
IV. Our First Move. 45
V. A Boarding House for a Change. 60
VI. Pursuing the Ideal. 72
VII. Owed to the Moving Man. 86
VIII. Household Retainers. 88
IX. Ann 104
X. A "Flat" Failure. 114
XI. Inheritance and Mania. 133
XII. Gilded Affluence. 153
XIII. A Home at Last. 177
XIV. Closing Remarks. 183
I.
_The First Home in the Metropolis._
We had never lived in New York. This fact will develop anyway, as I proceed, but somehow it seems fairer to everybody to state it in the first sentence and have it over with.
Still, we had heard of flats in a vague way, and as we drew near the Metropolis the Little Woman bought papers of the train boy and began to read advertisements under the head of "Flats and Apartments to Let."
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: The Van Dwellers by Albert Bigelow Paine
- 2: And uniformed hall service perhaps an elevator
- 3: While the colored janitor grinned at our artlessness
- 4: Hence my gratitude to the salesmen
- 5: That we should have immediate delivery
- 6: And when did yez order it turned on
- 7: A delivery wagon had driven up in great haste
- 8: Our acquaintance with the janitor was not
- 9: Was the janitor murdering her husband
- 10: An' yez can just sind him to me
- 11: The Little Woman and the Precious Ones
- 12: And there was no near by restaurant
- 13: Distilled over the peat fires of Scotland
- 14: The prospect of Tuesday's stew
- 15: Besides the air was not good for the Precious Ones
- 16: And so disreputable a janitor this time a man
- 17: While janitors came and went like Punch and Judy figures
- 18: We now called ourselves van dwellers
- 19: Newly uniformed colored janitor
- 20: While Rosa was as winsome and gentle featured
- 21: Larder wrecking Rosa to Wilhelmine
- 22: Was one night wrenched apart and Wilhelmine
- 23: The Hibernian and the minstrel
- 24: And said he would get the lunch by way of relaxation
- 25: When she looked at the kitchen sink she exclaimed
- 26: Alighting wheresoever the perch seemed inviting
- 27: As the janitor meekly pointed out
- 28: Which was unusual even for them
- 29: The Precious Ones also regarded me strangely
- 30: But there was no hitch my Aunt Jane
- 31: We invested presently in a Chippendale sideboard
- 32: But the memory of those unrolled masterpieces haunted me
- 33: And then deliver it to the janitor
- 34: And when I explained to her that it worked automatically
- 35: The Apollo was really a very imposing and towering affair
- 36: With even an occasional fractional decline
- 37: Then I ran all the way back to the Apollo
- 38: The line to my brokers was busy
- 39: All within the commutation limits
- 40: A dark apartment means doctor's bills
- 41: The struggles of the English for supremacy
- 42: Parlous Times is a society novel of to day
- 43: Introductions by Maurice Kingsley