Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

/ JUNGLE LOVE. fairly clear in her mind, but why she felt the urge to leave the Mog she could not, had she been able, have told. According to arrangements, Artie stopped the taxi at the corner of the down-town street, and for a short while we leave him, silently chuckling and quite unaware that in his short acquaintanceship with Julie he has set in motion a ball of circumstances that are henceforward to control his move- ments to a defined yet future-veiled climax. Along the street fiitted the girl. Hurry- ing home! Such a home. A slab of old brickwork perforated with rectangular, glass-filled gaps it stood. The night shelter of the tired. The light from the street lamp directly facing the door illumined the foot- worn hollows in the stone stoop steps and the dingy “ Rooms to Let” ticket leaning ‘against the parior window fastener. Julie’s rooming-house was no different in its atmosphere of shabby, dowdy respecta- bility from its neighboring monuments to decayed gentility. Exterially it put up a fairly massive if not bold appearance. The hospitably broad frent door was shabby and dull with smeary streaks. It was toe- marked along the lower edge, and fingér discolored wood showed around the night latch. The wide windows of the much ad- vertised front parlor were draped with lax- hanging, dust-laden and _light-obscuring lace curtains. The blank space between the twin windows seemed conclusive evi- dence that the room within was of neble breadth. Not so. Between the windows was a dividing lath and plaster wall, and— there were two front parlors. The brick work of the upper stories was red gray and stained with long streamer-like discolora- tions. When it rained, the old house spilled the. burden of its years of neglect in copious rivulets of tears from the rust-bored gutter- ing. Still, there is good wine in old bottles, and viewed by one a stranger to the usual state of conditions as applied to fallen but venerable one-time habitations of the well- to-do, the house suggested an interior of old-fashioned but large, lofty rooms. At a guess one would have said it was a ten or, at the most, a twelve-room house. But not counting the basement—that semi-subter- all of them. Ten of them double. 399 raneous domain inhabited by the lady who only seemed to emerge from her dungeon at rent-due hours — there. were seventeen rooms! The four walls only enclosed space for nine rooms above the level of the side- walk, yet there were seventeen. Beds in Accom- medation for twenty-seven human beings. The riddle is answered in one word: parti- tions. Thin, flimsy artifices supposed to give sound privacy to the unhappy renters of these cubicles erected in comfort-grudg- ing observance of the bare requirements of Morpheus. Where the daytime population is greater than the sleeping accommodation, those who stay in the hive are compelled to help the rentee landlady pay the house owner. Just now it is a bumper summer of harvest time for: the property owner, and the pocket-pinching winter of the roomers’ not unreasonable discontent. Julie let herself in quietly, kept to the narrow strip of carpet in the hallway, and on nearing the top of the first flight of stairs, stepped over a board that she knew was loose and squeaky. This care and gen- eral noiselessness of movement was not caused by any refinement of thoughtfulness for the nerves of others, or by fear of being called to account for coming in late. So long as she punctually paid her room rent, did not leave the gas on, or use the hot- water faucet over often, the girl was free to come and go without let or hindrance at any hour she pleased. In that house of crowded roomers there was no one to praise or censure her; no one to bother about; no one to care for. It is the way of roomers, and the don’t-make-a-noise custom is the peculiar difference of the lodging-house to the one-family homes. Most old-timers in rooming ethics creep up and down stairs, pass, not walk, across the landings, cough discreetly and softly close doors. The ruling effect of environ- ment is an active, though often unsuspected influence. The malignant germs of cancer live in some walls, wraiths of despondency prowl in some houses. In others live joy- inspiring spirits. Sensitive men and women have been driven to crazy deeds by the shut-in-ness of their one and only room. CONMUC OOOLK (COL