When Peaches and I were married we were sentenced to live in one of those 8x9 Harlem people-coops, where they have running gas on every floor and hot and cold landlords and self-folding doors, and janitors with folding arms, and all that sort of thing. Immense! When we moved into the half-portion dwelling house last spring I said to the janitor, "Have you any mosquitoes in the summer?" The janitor was so insulted he didn't feel like taking a drink for ten minutes. "Mosquitoes!" he shouted; "such birds of prey were never known in these apartments. We have piano beaters and gas meters, but never such criminals as mosquitoes." With these kind words I was satisfied. For weeks I bragged about my Harlem flat for which no mosquito could carry a latch-key. The janitor said so, and his word was law. I looked forward to a summer without pennyroyal on the mantelpiece or witch hazel on the shin bone, and was content. But one night in the early summer I got all that was coming to me and I got it good. In the middle of the night I thought I heard voices in the room and I sat up in bed. "I wonder if it's second-story men," I whispered to myself, because my wife was away at the seashore. She had gone off to the shimmering sands and left me chained to the post of duty, and I tell you, boys, it's an awful thing when your wife quits you that way and you have to drag the post of duty all over town in order to find a cool place. Wives may rush away to the summer resorts where all is gayety, and where every guess they make at the bill of fare means a set-back in the bank account; but the husbands must labor on through the scorching days and in the evenings climb the weary steps to the roof gardens. "Ping-ding-a-zing-a-boom!" exclaimed the voices on the other side of the bed. "If they are after my diamonds," I moaned, "they will lose money," and then I reached under the pillow for the revolver I never owned. "Ping-ding-a-zing-a-boom!" went the conversation on the
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