The Hopkins flat was like a thousand others. There was a rubber plant
in one window; a flea-bitten terrier sat in the other, wondering when
he was to have his day.
John Hopkins was like a thousand others. He worked at $20 per week
in a nine-story, red-brick building at either Insurance, Buckle's
Hoisting Engines, Chiropody, Loans, Pulleys, Boas Renovated, Waltz
Guaranteed in Five Lessons, or Artificial Limbs. It is not for us to
wring Mr. Hopkins's avocation from these outward signs that be.
Mrs. Hopkins was like a thousand others. The auriferous tooth, the
sedentary disposition, the Sunday afternoon wanderlust, the draught
upon the delicatessen store for home-made comforts, the furor for
department store marked-down sales, the feeling of superiority to
the lady in the third-floor front who wore genuine ostrich tips and
had two names over her bell, the mucilaginous hours during which
she remained glued to the window sill, the vigilant avoidance of
the instalment man, the tireless patronage of the acoustics of the
dumb-waiter shaft--all the attributes of the Gotham flat-dweller were
hers.
One moment yet of sententiousness and the story moves.
In the Big City large and sudden things happen. You round a corner
and thrust the rib of your umbrella into the eye of your old friend
from Kootenai Falls. You stroll out to pluck a Sweet William in
the park--and lo! bandits attack you--you are ambulanced to the
hospital--you marry your nurse; are divorced--get squeezed while
short on U.
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