28 East Twentieth Street, New York City, in the house in which we lived during the time that my two sisters and my brother and I were small children.

It was furnished in the canonical taste of the New York which George William Curtis described in the _Potiphar Papers_.

The black haircloth furniture in the dining-room scratched the bare legs of the children when they sat on it.

The middle room was a library, with tables, chairs, and bookcases of gloomy respectability.

It was without windows, and so was available only at night.