A woman who sat under my elbow—the table was so tiny that the four of us literally sat under each other’s elbows—this neighbor of mine who had an unpronounceable German name and looked like an American of African descent, warned me darkly that I would be glad to get such nourishing food before “this country” got out of the war. Nourishing! The very adjective that had been drummed into my ears while at college! Even three years’ drumming did not make me form the habit. Its worse result was a play. I do not now recall just what it was about that composition that so aroused the ire of Professor Baker. It may have been that it proved my point—that New Englanders partake of their Wednesday and Saturday dinners and their Sunday breakfasts as a sort of memorial feast in honor of the hardships enjoyed by their ancestors when they first landed on their rock-bound coast. Mr. Baker would not agree that his ancestors enjoyed hardships. All one has to do is to read history. Early New Englanders enjoyed hardships just as the Irish do being persecuted—and almost as much. The result was pretty much the same—both peoples multiplied on the face of the earth and left their descendants a subject for conversation, a veritable snowball of a subject, which, by the simple method of rolling it over the tongue a hard fact becomes slushy fiction. The next morning, Sunday, we had eggs for breakfast. Unfortunately I was the first at table, so did not have the advantage of advice from my table-mates. I ordered it medium-boiled. When peeled, it closely resembled a golf ball that had been lying in the wet grass for a couple of months. That proved to be an intensely hot day, but sitting on the roof-garden or the piazzas was impossible because of a virulent stench. “It’s from the dumping-plant, where the city garbage is loaded on scows to take out to sea,” a woman who saw me hurry down from the roof-garden explained. “The wind always blows from that direction hot days.” Being too dark to read or write in my room, I spent the morning straightening out my few belongings. On hanging the suit in which I had set out on my adventure and my coat in the closet, it seemed so full that I decided to fold my nightie and place it under my pillow. A few minutes later a gaily frescoed individual, who informed me that she was the assistant housekeeper, entered to exchange my Peter Pan towel for a fresh one. Evidently she realized that my little pancake of a pillow had risen too high and too suddenly, for she jerked it up. “There!” she exclaimed, pointing a stubby red finger at my nightie. “Night-clothes are to be hung in the closet. Don’t you see the rules?”—pointing at a long, printed page tacked against the inside of my door. “Can’t you read? You can’t keep nothin’ under your piller nor under your bed neither.”