We got used to it in time. We had always had the same likes and hobbies, and we found ways to spend our time with profit to ourselves.
Down here, where we live, there are few trees and flowers, and even air is at a premium. Air is necessary, and Bill and I have devised a scheme to get it as pure as possible under the circumstances.
The roaring bustle of lower Broadway turns into deadly silence with the fall of evening. For miles, excepting a watchman or policeman, you will scarcely see a living being. That is where Bill and I enjoy our pleasant pastime. After the day's work is ended we travel through the quiet streets until we reach our stoop in the yawning dark cañon of the skyscrapers. We do not talk much; there is better intercourse.
From where we sit we gaze up at the skies and greet the merry twinkle of our glistening friends. Then through the dancing myriads of celestial bodies our vision winds its way on through the mazes, and does not stop until it sees the most beloved spirit in all the glory of the heavenly home. Every star reflects her face in brilliants, and from behind the hazy veilings of the cloud-smile her eyes shine radiantly. Bill and I go home, not lonely, not sad or soured, for we have spent the hours in the anteroom of heaven and have learned another lesson in the quiet night.
The firmament and the stars are for all of us; their glories shine for all mankind. You, gentle reader, may learn to know them—to own them—but, alas! you cannot own my Bill. Perhaps you would not care for him. He never was handsome, and now he is getting old and might not be to you a pleasant companion. But he has traveled with me along life's highway; he has never told a lie; he has been loyal and true, and there's not in all this world another dog like my good old pal.
For some time after the going-home of my Mamie Rose I was ill, but found my position still open for me after regaining my health. I was not so strong as I had been, but did not wish to neglect my work, and, overtasking myself, an accident permanently incapacitated me for that kind of employment. I had to submit to an operation—to be repeated later—and the expense of it, with the long and enforced idleness, soon exhausted the remainder of my savings.
It was then that the old past crooned the tempter's lay. But for only a very short time was I near the brink, from which it would have been easy to drop back into the black abyss from whence I had come.
I overcame my temptation, and, since then, have had no fear that I would revert to my former ways of wickedness. I have learned to understand life, feel mind and soul within me, and I want to go on, not back.
And, besides, there is the legacy of her who has taught and inspired me.
Some who will approve of my determination to go on might disapprove of the immediate methods employed by me.