(a) One from the Midland Railroad Company for brass as per statement rendered.
(b) One from the Harvey Transfer Co. for one box of cutlery marked Wright & Perry, and
(c) One–the hardest receipt of all to get–from Martha Morton for six chickens as per account rendered. These receipts hang on a spindle in the little room. Under the spindle is
Item Eight.A bottle of whisky–full but uncorked. He is in his room but little. Sometimes he comes in late at night, and does not light the lamp to avoid seeing the bottle, but plunges into bed, and covers up his head in fear and trembling. On the day when the Peach Blow Philosopher printed his view on Heaven, Mr. Fenn, by way of personal adornment, had purchased of Wright & Perry
Item Nine.One new coat. He hoped and so indicated to the firm, to be able to afford a vest in the spring and perhaps trousers by summer, and because of the cutlery transaction above mentioned, the firm indicated
Item Ten.That Mr. Fenn’s credit was good for the whole suit. But Mr. Fenn waved a proud hand and said he had
Item Eleven.No desire to become involved in the devious ways of high finance, and took only the coat.
But, nevertheless, no small part of his Heaven lies in the serene knowledge that the whole suit is waiting for him, carefully put aside by the head of the house until Mr. Fenn cares to call for it. That is perhaps a material Heaven but it is a part of Mr. Fenn’s Heaven, and as he goes about from door to door soliciting for sewing, the knowledge that if he should cease or falter four women might be on the 387street the next night, keeps him happy, and not even when he was county attorney or in the real estate business nor writing insurance, nor disporting himself as an auctioneer was Mr. Fenn ever in his own mind a person of so much use and consequence. So his Heaven needs no east wind to belly it out. Mr. Fenn’s Heaven is full and fat and prosperous–even on two meals a day and in a three-dollar-a-month room.
And now that we may balance up the Heaven account in these books, we should come to some conclusion as to what Heaven is. Let us call it, for the sake of our hypothesis, the most work one can do for the least self-interest, and let it go at that and get on with the story. For this story has to do with large and real affairs. It must not dally here with the sordid affairs of a lady who certainly was no better than she should be and of a gentleman who was as the hereinbefore mentioned receipts will show, much worse than he might have been.