How
could I have imagined the kind of "democracy" which had been taught
to Sylvia by her Uncle Mandeville, the politician of the family, who
believed that America was soon to have a king, to keep the "foreign
riff-raff" in its place!
14. At this time I was living in a three-roomed apartment in one of
the new "model tenements" on the East Side. I had a saying about the
place, that it was "built for the proletariat and occupied by
cranks." What an example for Sylvia of the futility of charity--the
effort on the part of benevolent capitalists to civilise the poor by
putting bath-tubs in their homes, and the discovery that the
graceless creatures were using them for the storage of coals!
Having heard these strange stories, Sylvia was anxious to visit me,
and I was, of course, glad to invite her. I purchased a fancy brand
of tea, and some implements for the serving of it, and she came, and
went into raptures over my three rooms and bath, no one of which
would have made more than a closet in her own apartments. I
suspected that this was her Southern _noblesse oblige_, but I knew
also that in my living room there were some rows of books, which
would have meant more to Sylvia van Tuiver just then than the
contents of several clothes-closets.
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