XIII APARTMENT HOUSE LIFE IN NEW YORK

To Editor Home & Lady page whose wisdom is furniture for many apartments.

Dear Mr:

Excuse my handwriting for being cramped this time—I have been living in one N. Y. apartment-house where everything is squeezed. I tell you.

A short time of yore I seen following advertisement-news in N. Y. Paper:

WANTED: Small-size Japanese required to do housework in fashionable apartment. Must be able to squeeze deliciously tight between furniture and to take up no room whatsoever. No fat persons required. Apply to Mrs. Buckingham Jinx, Matterhorn Apts.

I was entirely proud & nervus, Mr Editor, to apply to that jobs. Formerly I had been simple, jayseed Japanese working in ½ size towns where nothing was large. But here I was in great city of N. Y. where everything was giganterous & big. Home-life here, I thought, must be unlimited like Pennsylvania Depots.

This show how thoughtless we are when we think.

I go to address of that Jinx lady, which is at No 333 W 333rd Street, comfortable neighbourhood where 20 miles of sky-scrape homes are clumped together attempting to look quaint. I was proud to see their swollen size. How expansive it was for Japanese Schoolboy to be employed in city where everything was so big that even small cottages look like Flatiron Bldgs! Already I begin to feel pity for Peoria where folks must choke in 2 story houses.

Pretty soonly I arrive to Matterhorn Apts. How stylishly enormalous it was! I never observed a place with more upstairs. 12 complete stories I could count with my sore neck. And so fashionable to go into! Its frontside entrance was filled with marble halls, fountains, brassy electricity, golden elevators, noble niggero boys in uniform of admirals. This was most biggest entrance in America, and I was certainly sure that folks what live in those apartments upstairs must enjoy such grand-size rooms they have to ride motorcycles between parlour and dinning-room.

While thusly I thought Swedish gentleman in proud overalls arrive up.

“What you wish, standing there foolishly?” he require.

“Do you own this palace?” I ask to know.

“Yes,” he report peevly. “I are the Janitor.”

“I am suprised by this Matterhorn house,” I explode. “The mountainous steepness of its apartments apalls me.”

“The mountainous steepness of its rents would apall you more, if you seen them,” he explain with insulting eyebrows.

So he poke me to elevator where I was uplifted to 9 floors. Folks living in apartment house leads very up-and-down life. When they go outside they must be elevated downwards, when they return they must be vice versa. It are impossible to see how folks can be level in such home life, and yet it is.

Hon. Mrs Jinx, entirely Duchess appearing lady, meet me at doorway with Vanderbilt nose.

“This are my apartment,” she express, pointing to a hallway surrounded by expensive looking cells filled with gilty furniture, pianolas, painted portraits, rugs and mahoganish tables resembling J. P. Morgan.

“Yes,” I report. “This are your apartment—but where is your home?”

“In N. Y.,” she report with Waldorf expression, “home is where we pay our rent.”

Mr Editor, when that lady show me her apartment I was jigged by surprise. Each room was less than life-size, yet it contain wealth resembling Buckingham. Mahoganish doors, plush walls, luxury here and there—but where was there room to live in?

“This are drawing-room,” she indicate, making points to Pullman-car compartment containing gas-log and French-speaking furniture. I should like to set down in such a room, but the chairs was in the way.

She show me dinning-room. It contain four-plate-power table, portraits of fish on walls and shelf with several beery steins with German motto, “Drinken, Dranken, Drunken.”

“This cozy room are good for small banquets,” she acknowledge.

“Small banquets is oftenly the most limited,” I encouridge.

She show me library.

“This are called the snuggery,” she condole. I felt very congested to look at it. Folks must snug very snugly to snuggle into such a snuggery. On high top shelf was following books to show it was a library: “Pilgrum’s Progress,” “Life of John Drew,” “Bradstreet on Financial Failures,” “Blue Book of N. Y. Smarty Set.”

Under table was poker chips to entertain scholars while reading.

Nextly she show me kitchen. O shocks! It were size like the interior of a upright piano. Hon. Gas Stove look chilly from setting too close to Hon. Ice Box which was hot from contax with gas stove.

“This Kitchen are small but comfortless,” she explain braskly. “It are slightly compressed, yet there is room for everything to cook with.”

“One thing to cook with there is no room for,” I snuggest.

“What should that be?” she require.

“The cook,” I explain.

“Smallish Japanese is capable of squeezing,” she fire back.

Nextly she ope door by Kitchen and show me one dark-complexioned cubby hole to look at.

“What a nice vegetable closet!” I report. “But too small, perhaps, for large cabbages.”

“That are not a vegetable closet—it are a servant’s bedroom,” she develop.

I would be astonished, but there was no room.

Sardines gets used to living in cans, Mr Editor; so I soonly became acquainted with how to live in N. Y. flat without knock-off of elbow. It were umpossible to turn around in all rooms, but I could get out of doors by backing up.

This Mrs Jinx got a husband who are a broker, but not yet broke. He come home nights long enough to change clothes and take his wife to some other Roof Garden. For conversation he complain of his debts.

“Why should we live in flat we can’t afford?” he jowl, reaching across dinning-room to get a match.

“Mr Husband!” report Hon. Mrs with spasma, “how could you forget to remember our position? In this house live 2 families intimately acquainted with a Trust. Also, look at our main entrance downstairs—it are a bigger waiting room than the Grand Central Station and twice as lonesome. This house got the brightest buttons, swiftest elevator and crosset janitor in New York.”

Sometime Mrs Jinx have company for dinner. Her dinning-room was sifficient for 4. Therefore she ask 10. N. Y. folks is conveniently compressible, especially when fat. Folks wearing diamonds in front of them would arrive to these dinners and explain why they wasn’t at Newport.

“How nicely you are situated here,” they snuggest, looking sidewise.

“O surely yes!” obligate Hon. Mrs. “We have splandid view of the airshaft from library window and our dinning-room overlook some of the finest advertising signs in the city.”

“So fortunate you are with so much room!” say lady wearing diamond bib on chest. “In our apartment we are pusitively crowded.”

No one could believe it.

“Why do you keep a canary?” ask one gentleman of one lady.

“Because I have no room for a parrot,” say one lady to one gentleman.

And so onward.

My cookery is deliciously abominable, thank you, in that 1-8 size kitchen. Yet those N. Y. persons is so refined they can disguise any taste by politeness.

“You have a chef, I suspect?” require one brokerish gentleman gnawing my chicken crokets.

“Two of them,” deceive Mrs Jinx with 5th Ave expression. I arrive to room looking proud with dishes. “This Togo are my faithful butler inherited from my grandfather who was a lawyer and kept many retainers.”

I am alarmed to hear such large conversation in such small space. And yet I acted very intelligent, considering my stupidity.

My life in that compartment become more and more homeless as time relapsed. Hon. Mrs Jinx were the most stay-away lady I ever seen. She say she go out to get the air; and I could not blame her. For 2 entire weeks she was somewheres else all time. In early a. m. after 10 o’clock she go down town for get hats, manicure & other jewelry. By noon she telephone, “I shall not be home lunch, because I am too busy wasting time with Mrs Swatts-Byng.” By night she telephone, “I shall not be home dinner, because I am taking my Husband to eat at Astoria hotel, afterwards we shall go see musical-comical theater.”

Lonesomeness arrived to me as much as that apartment would hold. It were true I could breathe more with less persons taking up room; yet my thoughts became all by themselves. I feel like Hon. Robinson Caruso on a vacant island.

One early a. m. Hon. Mrs uprose for breakfast early at 11 o’clock. She approach to me with tear-drop eye.

“Togo,” she say, “you have been with me 5 entire weeks. Therefore you can be considered the oldest family servant in N. Y. I shall reward you with bad news. My Husband has did so much brokerage in Wall Street that he has broke. Therefore, we shall be more tight compressed than usual.”

“How could it?” I ask feelishly.

“We must move to a smaller flat,” she glub. “Will you faithfully follow us thereto?”

“Mrs Madam,” I entrench, “I might do faithfully what you say. I might follow you to smaller flat, but how could I squeeze in when I got there? Excuse me while I go to Arizona where I can stand with 1000 miles on each side of me and can turn over in bed without wounding my elbows on a washstand. Indians does not live so high as New Yorkers, but they lives much broader.”

Hon. Mrs explode her voice from my words and attemp’ to imprison my escape by locking front door. But she could not. With Samurai war-cry I open umbruella and, attaching myself to handle, I make jump-out from bedroom window and flew 9 stories like Hon. Glen Curtiss.

When I arrived to pave-walk Hon. Janitor see me and report,

“You are broken out with lunacy.”

Hoping you are the same,
Yours truly,
Hashimura Togo.