The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-07-28
From the Washington Star.

From the Washington Star.
 Said a reflective man of 40 who has had his bumps:
 The houses that you used to live in-- Go you ever fall to thinking about them In quiet moments-in the middle of the night, say, when in turning over strange, whimsy ideas pop into a fellows head do you ever fall to wondering whether those houses you used to occupy are still tell anted' and by what sort of folks, and whether that crack in the dining room mantlepiece of the little plant you lived in-lets see, yes, It was fourteen years ago-whet'her that crack has been re- paired yet or not-and all that? Well, I do. Not often, but occasionally. And there's something indescribably and indefinably melancholy in those vagrom speeulatlons as to what's going on and how things look In the little old dumps in which you used to hang up your hat, When you actually come face to face with these places after a lapse of a whole lot of years, you feel as if you are meeting up with a ghost and to your view the place you thus confront swlms in a vertable nimbus of suggestions reaching back into the faint mist of the drlfted years.
 T had that experience last week in Chi cago. A good many years ago, when the whole game was struggle and life itself a warfare. so 10 speak, l lived and worked in that big wen of a town, without eyer much caring for 1t. Was pretty middlilg poor there, and l wasn't behaving any too well at that particular period of my life. either, so that, save for a person rather intimately concerned with my ex- istance there, I never had much of glow of ir, toll 1V fo fl.a portion of my younger manhood that was passed in Chicago.
 Well, when went to Chicago the other day l had with me a letter from Wash
 ngton woman to her daughters husband She had asked me to call upon the young folks, who used to live in this town, and cheer them up with little of the gossip of Washington.
 50, one hay. mellow afternoon last week l took the Cottage Grove avenue car on Wabash avenue to go over to Thirty-nInth street on the South Side, where the young folks that formerly lived in Washington have their little home. Now, I don't know why 1t didn't occur to me- when I took that car to go to Thirty ninth street on the South Side. that l. too, had lived close to Thirty-ninth street, away back wonder, in the gone time, but 1t didn't. Maybe my mind was on something else, or maybe it was because I've lived in so many. many different places since. that the Thirty-ninth street address didn't, until l left the car. have any especial significance for me.
 But, when I left the car at Thirty ninth street and began to walk west ward for a little piece, I was gradually swept by a curious sense of the famil- iarity of the block l was walking on. l didn't suddenly identify any particu- lar house or landmark; but the col lective scene to put 1t that way. the aspect up and down the street, and the houses on either side all massed to- eether. bore a look of dim naturalness that quickly sent me ploughing around in a more acute consciousness for an explanation. Then I suddenly remem- bered. And, remembering, not without a certain catch at the throat. I crossed over at the corner of St. Lawrence ave