We must restore health to our cities, and, to accomplish this end, we must provide fit homes for the poor. The way in which this may be done has been shown.
The campaigner marched out of a lawyer's office in Nassau Street, New York.
"Shyster," said our old man, as he called me into his own den, or rather lair,--(for den, I take it, is the private residence of a beast of prey, and lair his place of business. I do not think that this definition is mine, but I forget to whom it belongs,)--"I suppose you would not dislike a trip into the country? Very well. These papers must be explained to General Van Bummel, and signed by him. He lives at Thunderkill, on the Hudson. Take the ten-o'clock train, and get back as soon as you can. Charge your expenses to the office."
"What luck!" thought I, as I dashed down-stairs into the street,--determined to obey his last injunction to the letter, whatever course I might think fit to adopt about the one preceding it. No one who has not been an attorney's clerk at three dollars a week, copying declarations and answers from nine A.M. to six P.M., in a dusty, inky, uncarpeted room, with windows unwashed since the last lease expired, can form a correct notion of the exhilaration of my mind when I took my seat in the railroad-car. The great Van Bnmmel himself never felt bigger nor better.
It was in that loveliest season of the year, the Indian summer,--a week or ten days of atmospheric perfection which the clerk of the weather allows us as a compensation for our biting winter and rheumatic spring. The veiled rays of the sun and the soft shadows produce the effect of a golden moonlight, and make even Nature's shabbiest corners attractive. To be out-of-doors with nothing to do, and nothing to think of but the mere pleasure of existence, is happiness enough at such times. But I was looking at a river panorama which is one of Nature's best efforts, I have heard; and on that morning it seemed to me impossible that the world could show anything grander.
It was very calm. The broad glittering surface of the river showed here and there a slight ripple, when some breath of air touched it for a moment; but wind there was none,--only a few idle breezes lounging about, waiting for orders to join old Boreas in his next autumnal effort to crack his cheeks. The bright-colored trees glowed on the mountain-sides like beds of living coals.