Home, I celebrate. I elevate my fog-whistle, inspir'd by the thought of home.
Come in!—take a front seat; the jostle of the crowd not minding; there is room enough for all of you.
This is my exhibition—it is the greatest show on earth—there is no charge for admission.
All you have to pay me is to take in my romanza.
II
1. The brown-stone house; the father coming home worried from a bad day's business; the wife meets him in the marble pav'd vestibule; she throws her arms about him; she presses him close to her; she looks him full in the face with affectionate eyes; the frown from his brow disappearing.
Darling, she says, Johnny has fallen down and cut his head; the cook is going away, and the boiler leaks.
2. The mechanic's dark little third-story room, seen in a flash from the Elevated Railway train; the sewing-machine in a corner; the small cook-stove; the whole family eating cabbage around a kerosene lamp; of the clatter and roar and groaning wail of the Elevated train unconscious; of the smell of the cabbage unconscious.
Me, passant, in the train, of the cabbage not quite so unconscious.
3. The French Flat; the small rooms, all right-angles, unindividual; the narrow halls; the gaudy, cheap decorations everywhere.
The janitor and the cook exchanging compliments up and down the elevator-shaft; the refusal to send up more coal, the solid splash of the water upon his head, the language he sends up the shaft, the triumphant laughter of the cook, to her kitchen retiring.