The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-07-28
HOMES OF OTHER DAYS

nue to look at the little house I had lived in.
 T lived in that house with my first wife-she passed hence not long after ward-ln the years 1891 and 1892. You can scarcely imagine the acuteness of the shock when I strolled over and stood before that little yellow painted frame house, with the tiny porch in front. Tn ere were TO Let signs hang 1 ing in all of the windows. The house had decrepit, tumble down look about 1 1t. Rank grass and jimson weeds strove for the mastery on our once tidy little lawn. The street was very quiet and I stood tn here and looked at the little 1 old place for long, long time. My l second marriage was and Is a happy one, and yet, dye know 1 just couldn't help but experience a certain down ness at the heart as 1 stood there and 1 thought of the first girl. That's all 1 she was, just a little girl, and l was pretty young then myself-too young to know anything.
 'Then, not long ago, I passed by a ramshaekle flat house on Twenty-second street in New York that brought back a whole string of recollections of .he imbecile days before l was married at l a.. It's a tenement house now, but back In the late eighties 1t was a pretty nlfty sort of an apartment house Four or Us had a fiat there-two struggling pen and-ink artists, a telegrapher and my self 1t was one rlotous, rough-house dump, sure enough that flat. We had an old Virginia nanny who used to fry us ham and eggs and make Us fapjacks when we'd come careering in at in the morning We were supposed to be living on the cooperative plan, but only one man in the crowd of us would work at a time. Just as long as one fellow work the other three'd loaf around the flat
 When the one working man 'ud strike and the bottled beer ud run out and the mammy's wages became due some other fellow of the mess would go to work for a spell. and thus we got by. turn and turn about. Great scheme. Allowed for plenty of vacationizing for all hands- The two struggling pen-and-nk artists are now rich and renowned artists tnelr names known from one end of the world to the other, and the telegrapher is the Western Union superintendent in one Of the great western cities. fe seemed odd to look up at the cracked windows or our fiat. where one or other or us useu to sit plunk- -plunking the foolish ana trivial mandolin, and seeing low-proW in a red flannel undershirt, with NlVld green suspenders, framed In the wlhaP" and guzzlIng mixed ale out of pale.
 "Right here In little old Washington, too. there are houses that l can't pass by without a bit of a gup at the throat the S22. 50 a month wickieup, for example where two of my children were porn, and the other little plant up on the lill where our first young one died, and then a dllapidated fiat house Up at the heao ol one of the car lines where we used to have a hand out ingenious excuses to the freuuent-visitng collector for the ln- stallment house-oh. whole lot of houses here and there.
 "They all have their appealing little story when I pass them by. l never cap eye or any of 'em anywhere-in thls town or in other towns-that don spend half an hour or so away back in the yesteryears But somehow, or other the "reminiscences they unfold are always a bit on the mournful side l wonder why that Is, and if it's so with other people? ?'