A most respectable old dowager of a building, no doubt, in its time, with the best of Madeira and the choicest of cuts going down two steps into its welcoming basement.

That was before the iron railings were covered with rust and before the three brownstone steps leading to the front door were worn into scoops by heavy shoes; before the polished mahogany doors were replaced by pine and painted a dull, dirty green; before the banisters with their mahogany rail were as full of cavities as a garden fence with half its palings gone; and before--long before--some vulgar Paul Pry had cut a skylight in the hipped roof, through which he could peer, taking note of whatever went on inside the gloomy interior: each of these several calamities but so much additional testimony to its once grand estate, and every one of them but so many steps in its downward career.
For it had become anything but a happy house--this old dowager dwelling of the long ago.

Indeed, it was a very mournful and most depressing house, and so were its tenants.

In the basement was a barber who spent half his time lounging about inside the small door, without his white jacket, waiting for customers.

On the first-floor-back there was a music-teacher whose pupils were so few and far between that only the shortest of lessons at the longest of intervals were recited on her piano; on the second-floor-front was a wood-engraver who took to photography to pay his rent.