Chapter XXIII - Page 2

recreation except when he went to see Ruth, and living like a
Spartan. He paid two dollars and a half a month rent for the small
room he got from his Portuguese landlady, Maria Silva, a virago and
a widow, hard working and harsher tempered, rearing her large brood
of children somehow, and drowning her sorrow and fatigue at
irregular intervals in a gallon of the thin, sour wine that she
bought from the corner grocery and saloon for fifteen cents. From
detesting her and her foul tongue at first, Martin grew to admire
her as he observed the brave fight she made. There were but four
rooms in the little house - three, when Martin's was subtracted.
One of these, the parlor, gay with an ingrain carpet and dolorous
with a funeral card and a death-picture of one of her numerous
departed babes, was kept strictly for company. The blinds were
always down, and her barefooted tribe was never permitted to enter
the sacred precinct save on state occasions. She cooked, and all
ate, in the kitchen, where she likewise washed, starched, and
ironed clothes on all days of the week except Sunday; for her
income came largely from taking in washing from her more prosperous
neighbors. Remained the bedroom, small as the one occupied by
Martin, into which she and her seven little ones crowded and slept.
It was an everlasting miracle to Martin how it was accomplished,
and from her side of the thin partition he heard nightly every
detail of the going to bed, the squalls and squabbles, the soft
chattering, and the sleepy, twittering noises as of birds. Another
source of income to Maria were her cows, two of them, which she
milked night and morning and which gained a surreptitious
livelihood from vacant lots and the grass that grew on either side
the public side walks, attended always by one or more of her ragged
boys, whose watchful guardianship consisted chiefly in keeping
their eyes out for the poundmen.

In his own small room Martin lived, slept, studied, wrote, and kept
house. Before the one window, looking out on the tiny front porch,
was the kitchen table that served as desk, library, and type-
writing stand. The bed, against the rear wall, occupied two-thirds
of the total space of the room. The table was flanked on one side
by a gaudy bureau, manufactured for profit and not for service, the
thin veneer of which was shed day by day. This bureau stood in the
corner, and in the opposite corner, on the table's other flank, was
the kitchen - the oil-stove on a dry-goods box, inside of which
were dishes and cooking utensils, a shelf on the wall for
provisions, and a bucket of water on the floor. Martin had to
carry his water from the kitchen sink, there being no tap in his
room. On days when there was much steam to