CHAPTER V.
CONCERNING BESOMS.
It is one of the miseries of modern life, for which telephones are less than compensation, that ninety out of a hundred city folk have never known the comfort and satisfaction of dwelling in a house.

When the sashes are flying away from the windows and the skirting boards from the floor, and the planks below your feet are a finger breadth apart, and the pipes are death-traps, it does not matter that the walls are covered by art papers and plastered over with china dishes.

This erection, wherein human beings have to live and work and fight their sins and prepare for eternity, is a fraud and a lie.

No man compelled to exist in such an environment of unreality can respect himself or other people; and if it come to pass that he holds cheap views of life, and reads smart papers, and does sharp things in business, and that his talk be only a clever jingle, then a plea in extenuation will be lodged for him at the Great Assize.

Small wonder that he comes to regard the world of men as an empty show and is full of cynicism, who has shifted at brief intervals from one shanty to another and never had a fit dwelling-place all his years.