The Topeka state journal., 1897-10-06

mountains want their goods again.
They are heartily sick of the barrenness
of hotel rooms or the cheap gimcrackery
Of the average country boarding place.
They long to see again their own famil-
lar lnickknacks; the silk scarf which
Cousin Nellie embroidered the year be-
fore she married and moved to Canada;
the pair of vases Aunt Lydia sent for
wedding present; the oil painting jim IS
Office comrades sent at the same time.
They want to get into their own partic-
uIar easy chairs again and feel at home
and comfortable once more.
So the moment the sunburned people
reach town they hasten to the storage
warehouses and urge the clerk to ''hur-
~ the vans right around. " And what
satisfaction it is to unpack the dust COW
cred Lares and Penates-provided they
are all intact; to feel yourself among the
things which are so familiar that they
seem like old friends, and to realize that
your household gods are no longer con
signed to the uHfeeling care of needless
strangers, but are enshrined under your
own rooftree or what passes for the
same
1t is this annual exodus from the city
which fills up the storage warehouses
every spring, and it is the regular re-
turn of the wanderers in the fall which
causes the warehouses to disgorge
streams of loaded vans and trucks.
But aside from this feature Of the
storage business, about which every city
dWeller knows, there are other and more
unfamiliar elements. If he depended
alone upon the trade of the summer va
cationists, the storage man might shut
up shop in the winter or use his big
and expensive building as a dance hall
or bicycle academy, but in big estab-
Lshment there is hardly day in the
year that goods are not received and
sent out.
The great bulk of the business, of
course, is the safe keeping Of household
goods Any one of a dozen things
death, marriage, illness, the divorce
court, business reverses or change may
serve to break up the family circle, and
when this occurs the city man remains
a rent payer no longer than necessary.
Storage costs something, but it is no.
where near so expensive as rent. So
when the family becomes scattered the
family belongings-the concrete equip
1nent Of the home-are sent to the stor-
age warehouse. It costs nothing to send
goods to storAge-the smiling clerk re-
ceives them and gladly gives you re-
ceipt-but it does cost to get them out.
The warehouses themselves are among
the best built buildings in the city.
Some of them have foundations Of con-
crete 90 feet deep, division walls from
20 to 40 inches thick, steel girded floors
of arched cement and concrete and 9TH
er elements Of sta ability. From the out
side thev look as if they might contain
great, open halls and an immense
amount of unobstructed floor space,
but in most of them there are very few
large rooms. The structure which ap-
pears to be one big building covering
an entire city block is really a collection
of a dozen or more smaller buildings
under one roof.
The various parts of the structure are
all connected by long alleys dimly light
ed by windows at the end. The inside
doors are double and are of iron. Two
OF three floors are sometimes devoted to
general storage, but the other floors are