Wedged between a paper-box factory and a blacksmith's shop I found Mrs. McGinniss's number. It was a five-story red-brick tenement, like all the others that rise above the stoop-line of this poverty-stricken street. A soiled scrap of paper pasted beneath the button informed possible visitors that Mrs. McGinniss lived on the fifth floor, that her bell was out of order, and that one should "Push Guggenheim's." The Guggenheims responded with a click from above. I ascended a flight of dark stairs, at the top of which there was ranged an ambuscade of numerous small Guggenheims who had gushed out in their underdrawers and petticoats. Their mother, in curl-papers, gave explicit directions for my guidance upward. "Is this where Mrs. McGinniss lives?" I inquired of the dropsical slattern who responded to my rap. "I'm her." Mrs. McGinniss's manner was aggressive. Conscious of her bare, sodden arms and dripping gingham apron, she evidently supposed I had mistaken her for a laundress instead of the lady of her own house, and she showed her resentment by chilly reticence. "I don't run no boarding-house, and I don't take just any trash that come along, either." I agreed that these were excellent qualities in a landlady, and then, somewhat mollified, she led the way through a steamy passage into a stuffy bedroom. It had one window, looking out into an air-shaft filled with lines of fluttering garments and a network of fire-escapes. A slat-bed, a bureau, a washstand with a noseless pitcher, and a much-spotted Brussels carpet completed the furnishings, and out of all exuded ancient odors of boiled cabbage and soap-suds. "There's one thing, though, I won't stand for, and that's cigarettes. I've had the last girl in my house that smokes cigarettes I'm going to have. Look at that nice carpet! Look at it! All burned full of holes where that trollop throwed her matches." I hurried away, with a polite promise to consider the McGinniss accommodations.