Publisher's Synopsis
There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavour of life until he has knownpoverty, love and war. The justness of this reflection commends it to the lover of condensedphilosophy. The three conditions embrace about all there is in life worth knowing. Asurface thinker might deem that wealth should be added to the list. Not so. When a poorman finds a long-hidden quarter-dollar that has slipped through a rip into his vest lining, hesounds the pleasure of life with a deeper plummet than any millionaire can hope to cast.It seems that the wise executive power that rules life has thought best to drill man inthese three conditions; and none may escape all three. In rural places the terms do notmean so much. Poverty is less pinching; love is temperate; war shrinks to contests aboutboundary lines and the neighbors' hens. It is in the cities that our epigram gains in truthand vigor; and it has remained for one John Hopkins to crowd the experience into a rathersmall space of time.The Hopkins flat was like a thousand others. There was a rubber plant in one window; aflea-bitten terrier sat in the other, wondering when he was to have his day.John Hopkins was like a thousand others. He worked at $20 per week in a nine-story, red-brick building at either Insurance, Buckle's Hoisting Engines, Chiropody, Loans, Pulleys, Boas Renovated, Waltz Guaranteed in Five Lessons, or Artificial Limbs. It is not forus to wring Mr. Hopkins's avocation from these outward signs that be.Mrs. Hopkins was like a thousand others. The auriferous tooth, the sedentarydisposition, the Sunday afternoon wanderlust, the draught upon the delicatessen store forhome-made comforts, the furor for department store marked-down sales, the feeling ofsuperiority to the lady in the third-floor front who wore genuine ostrich tips and had twonames over her bell, the mucilaginous hours during which she remained glued to thewindow sill, the vigilant avoidance of the instalment man, the tireless patronage of theacoustics of the dumb-waiter shaft-all the attributes of the Gotham flat-dweller were hers.One moment yet of sententiousness and the story move
