I came to a place where the street, following this generation’s level of the city, stands above the ground of original days; the walks and roadway are graded up, leaving the disconsolate, paint-specked homes of the first customers of Fanneal and Company down on the dirt where were thrown fifty years ago, as now, our empty cans and papers. The land is so low that the street rises almost even with the second floors; one has to descend rickety steps to reach the doors of gray, ill-lit emporiums of every sort which witness, by their very being, to the amazing force of the proclivity to patronize a neighbor. Half a league from Marshall Field’s, preposterous, mediæval peddlers whined under windows shut to the chill smokiness of December city haze; women raised the sash and, after bargaining, bought. Half a block from a motor factory, a blacksmith hand-pumped his bellows to blow coals into heat for shoeing a huckster’s horse; fortune tellers beckoned and won business. I came upon Klangenberg’s and descended into an environment of delicatessen where a madonna of the gray shawl--did Raphael or Leonardo ever paint one; if they didn’t, it was because they didn’t see one--was watching a patented pointer waver before the divisions of a cent on the automatic calculator above the scale which weighed her purchase of pig’s feet. A boy picked them up with unclean hands, wrapped them untidily and made change, almost in one motion, on a register which printed a receipt and said with flashing light, “come again; thank you.” The place was heated by a stove before which sat a male model for Rembrandt, if he wanted to paint the “Dyke-keeper” or somebody else strong and dour looking who might wind himself in a muffler. This was not Klangenberg; at least it was not the complainer about pineapples who had spoken to me of “Kidnapped” and “Westward Ho.” Accordingly, after the Madonna had climbed to the street, I asked the boy for the proprietor. The “dyke-keeper” turned about, as though his interest in me began with my voice. “Who wants to see him?” said the boy. For the emergency--if you don’t feel there was one, it’s my failure to give you the dyke-keeper--I improvised and benefited by borrowing from Klangenberg himself. “I’ve come to see him about his complaint on those pineapples,” I said. “What pineapples?” the youth asked. “I want to see him personally,” I replied. “Is he here?” “Maybe,” said the boy and locked the cash register before vanishing rearward. Once he reappeared, evidently to view me for the purpose of checking up on my description; he said nothing but after another minute he came back and told me, “He’ll see you day after to-morrow.” “What time?” I said. “This time will do.” I thanked him, while he unlocked the cash register for the resumption of business.