The Benton weekly record. [volume] (Benton, Mont.) 1880-1885, 1883-10-20
SELECTED STORY.
THROUGH A BACK WINDOW.

1t fell to young Penn Latham's lot on
day to look for new lodgings, and as h
was respectable and fastidious and hae
half the furnished rooms in New York Il
choose from, he found the task hard one
Some rooms were too small, others tot
large; few were too elegantly furnished
but at No. 135 West 18th street, hi:
search ended with unexpected rapidity
He was shown into a comfortably furnish.
ed back room on the second floor, anC
while he was inspecting the furniture
closets and other cOnveniences the land
lady was suddenly called away by 8
servant. AS the landlady did not return
at once, and Latham was quite weary OF
several hours Of walking from house to
house and climbing stairs, he dropped in
to an easy chair near an open window and
looked carelessly out and about.
There is very little of interest to catch
the eye in the narrow parallelogram
bounded by narrow square of houses up
town in New York. Latham saw the
usual assortment of fences, few grape
arbors, and an ugly stable or two. He also
saw large ailantus tree, which he sus-
pected of an intention to bloom within a
fortnight, and as the odor of such arboral
etfiOrescence was very nauseating to him,
he thought that he must wend his weary
way elsewhere, in the hope of finding a
room near which no ailantus reared it's
threatening front.
But as the chair was very comfortable,
and the landlady had not yet returned, he
looked along the backs of the houses that
fronted on the next street, and wondered
if there was any other place On the face of
the earth where the backs Of houses were
as ugly as in New York, when his eye
was arrested by an attractive face and fig
ure in a window directly opposite that in
which'he was sitting. 1t may be necessary
to say that they were part and parcel of a
young lady. AS the sun, half way down
the horizon, shone in the window toward
which he looked, and the houses were not
more than hundred feet apart, Latham
had no difficulty in seeing that the lady's
profile was very good, her cheek slightly
tinted, and her hair, which was arranged
in most artistic disorder about her brow
and rippled loosely down her neck and
shoulders, was light enough in color to
look gold whenever sunbeam fell upon
it. 1t was easy, too, to see what the lady
was doing, for in front of her and only
foot Or two back from the window-casing
was an easel, with q small card of canvas
on il, and to this the lady was devoting
some attention with her crayon or brush.
Latham suddenly resolved that the room
in which he sat would suit him entirely,
and he said AS much, with great alacrity,
as soon as the landlady returned. He was
afterwards sorry that he spoke hastily, for
the price named was twice as much as he
had intended to pay-twice as much, too,
he believed, as rooms Of the kind usually
command-but as he had no large vice to
reduce his modest income, he determined
that he could afford the difference for at
least week. He would willingly pay
several dollars per week, he thought, for
the privilege of looking occasionally at a
woman as pretty as the one in the opposite
window had become to his eyes within
five minutes, for he had scarcely any lady
acquaintance in the city, and his occupa-
tion as journalist kept him busy at the
lonely hours in which men can find their
way into the society of ladies.
Latham paid a weeks rent in advance,
giving references, and went at once tor
his luggage. When he returned at the
end of an hour, the fair artist was not at
her window, and his heart sank until
he noted that the easel was still in its place.
He dropped again into the easy chair and
waited hours, it seemed to him, although
it was only q quarter of an hour before the
lady was again at her work. Could it be
it seemed too good to be true-that she
would work there every afternoon ?-that
in all the long afternoons of spring and
early summer he would be able to spend
his leisure hours i'm looking at such charm
ing picture ?-Suppose she should de-
tect him in the act, feel offended and I
shade her window SO as to hide herself and
get light from the upper portion only.
Latham was not going to have the lady
offended by any act of his, so he at once
closed the blinds of the window from
which he had been looking; not being
1901, however, he turned the Stats SO that,
while hidden he still could have an uninter-
rupted view Of the pretty artist. The sun