He sat at his desk faithfully from eight o'clock until half-past four, but the work which he had to do was somewhat amazing to a mind which stopped to reason.

Sometimes even this man, who understood the world in general as a place to be painfully clambered and tramped and even crawled over, to the accomplishment of the ulterior end of remaining upon it at all, and who paid very little attention to other people's affairs, except as they directly concerned the tragic pettiness of his own, wondered a little at the nature of the accounts which he faithfully kept.
This book-keeper, whose name was William Allbright, lived in Harlem, so far up that it seemed fairly in the country, and on the second floor of a small, ancient building which, indeed, belonged to the period when Harlem was country and which remained between two modern apartment houses.

The book-keeper had a half-right in a little green backyard, wherein flourished with considerable energy an aged cherry-tree, from which the tenants always fondly hoped for cherries.
The cherries never materialized, but the hope was something.

The book-keeper's elder sister, who kept house for him, was fond of gazing at the cherry-tree, with its scanty spread of white blossoms, and dreaming of cherries.

She was the fonder because she had almost no dreams left.