This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... KATIE Macmahon. When 1 first moved into the neighborhood, the large, broad-chested charwoman who helped me to transform the chaos of moving into the cosmos of home informed me that my next-door neighbor's name was Miss Dorothy Duncan; that she was "a real nice lady," but that she "enjoyed ill-health most of the time," and so did not go out much. The next morning I chanced to see Miss Duncan as she stood on her porch, fastening into the proper place some stray branches of the wistaria vine which the wind had dislodged the night before. She was tall and sparely built. Her hair was iron gray, and, although her head was turned from me, I judged from her thin neck and colorless ear that her face was thin and pale. Over her shoulders she wore a small white shawl. There is perhaps no better evidence of physical vigor or lack of vigor than the pose of chest and shoulders; and her profile showed relaxed shoulders, that meant depressed chest, i. e., ill-health. I sighed involuntarily as I thought, "Poor thing, another one of the left-overs." Alone in the world, with old age fast approaching and ill-health already fastened upon her. Instinctively I began to wonder to how great an extent I would have to be taxed by listening to accounts of her "bad nights"--I was sure she had plenty of bad nights--and was rapidly making an estimate of how much of my precious time would have to be consumed in giving courteous attention to her detailed accounts of aches and ailments. I had moved to the suburbs to get more time for study and writing, but of course I knew one could not utterly ignore one's neighbors in a suburb as in the social isolation of a great city. In fact, if the truth be told, I had felt the barrenness of my city life and had realized that I was...