Here I was now, and it was evening. As we turned into Walnut Street at Twelfth I recognized one of the houses by pictures in the family and by faint memories and we stopped to give Franklin time to sketch it. It was a smoky, somewhat treeless neighborhood, with a number of children playing about, and long rows of one-story workingmen’s cottages receding in every direction. Once it had a large yard with a garden at the back, apple, pear and cherry trees along the fence, a small barn or cow shed, and rows of gooseberry and currant bushes bordering several sides. Now all that was gone, of course. The house had been moved over to the very corner. Small houses, all smoky, had been crowded in on either hand so tightly that there were scarcely sidewalks between them. I asked a little girl who came running over as the car stopped and Franklin began sketching, “Who lives over there?”
“Kifer,” she replied.
“What does he do?”
“He works. They keep boarders. What are you making?”
“A picture.”
“Of that house?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“Well, I used to live there and I’ve come back all the way from New York to see it.”
“Oh!” And with that she climbed up on the running board to look on, but Franklin shooed her off.