3313 BATEMAN AVENUE, MONT ALTO—30 minutes from City Hall; four rooms and private hallway; bath with shower and spray, private; fine southern exposure two rooms; airy, ample windows; use of parlor, porch, piano and laundry; water-heated; Garrison avenue cars; beautiful neighborhood; splendid view of city and bay; no children; will give breakfast if desired; church within a block; nearest saloon three miles away, but very fast street cars to that point. Burglars shun neighborhood and nobody ever gets drunk.
There were other things I overlooked, but we decided to let it go at that. Certainly virtues had been mentioned which should overcome any prejudice against suburban life and the crickets. Blithely I passed the copy over the counter and inquired the cost. The man smiled.
"Why don't you make this a display ad. and get a seven-cent flat rate on a six months' contract?" he inquired.
I hate a sarcastic man with a pencil.
"If you don't like that," I said, "do it yourself!"
To make a long recital short, he put it satisfactorily into four lines and we waited for replies. We'll skip the first forty or fifty that didn't suit us. One day there came a gentleman who looked at our four rooms, raved over them and made a proposition, to wit: If we would put a gas range and sink in the red room, open up the wall in the front room and build a sleeping porch for his baby, furnish refrigerating plant for all the baby's milk and allow him the free use of the telephone, he would take our four rooms for three months at $18 a month.
"My good friend," I said, with suppressed emotion, "you overwhelm us. Can't we remove the roof and build a little nursery for the baby, and rig you up a rainy-weather playroom in the basement? We expected to get $50 a month, unfurnished, without changes; but you have made us to see the error of our conceit. Can't we let you have the piano at the end of your three months, to move away to your future home, as an expression of good will?"
He made a gesture of protest.