The street where my friend lives is just north of Greenwich Village, and it still shows a remnant of more aristocratic days. Behind its shabby fronts are long drawing-rooms with tarnished glass chandeliers and frescoed ceilings and gaunt windows with inside blinds. Plaster cornices still gather the dust of years. There are heavy stairways with black walnut rails. Marble Lincolns still liberate the slaves in niches of the hallway. Bronze Ladies of the Lake await their tardy lovers. Diana runs with her hunting dogs upon the newel post. In these houses lived the heroines of sixty years ago, who shopped for crinoline and spent their mornings at Stewart's to match a Godey pattern. They drove of an afternoon with gay silk parasols to the Crystal Palace on Forty-second Street. In short, they were our despised Victorians. With our advancement we have made the world so much better since.
I pressed an electric button. Then, as the door clicked, I sprang against it. These patent catches throw me into a momentary panic. I feel like one of the foolish virgins with untrimmed lamp, just about to be caught outside—but perhaps I confuse the legend. Inside, there was a bare hallway, with a series of stairways rising in the gloom—round and round, like the frightful staircase of the Opium Eater. At the top of the stairs a black disk hung over the rail—probably a head.
"Hello," I said.
"Oh, it's you. Come up!" And the poet came down to meet me, with slippers slapping at the heels.
There was a villainous smell on the stairs. "Something burning?" I asked.
At first the poet didn't smell it. "Oh, that smell!" he said at last. "That's the embalmer."
"The embalmer?"
We were opposite a heavy door on the second floor. He pointed his thumb at it. "There's an embalmer's school inside."
"Dear me!" I said. "Has he any—anything to practice on?"
The poet pushed the door open a crack. It was very dark inside. It smelled like Ptolemy in his later days. Or perhaps I detected Polonius, found at last beneath the stairs.