"
The utilitarian impudence of the city authorities put a thought into
his mind. A week earlier he had happened to stroll into the large
parlour of the apartment house, finding it empty, and on the
center table he noticed a large, red-bound, gilt-edged book, newly
printed, bearing the title: "A Civic History," and beneath the title,
the rubric, "Biographies of the 500 Most Prominent Citizens and
Families in the History of the City." He had glanced at it absently,
merely noticing the title and sub-title, and wandered out of the room,
thinking of other things and feeling no curiosity about the book. But
he had thought of it several times since with a faint, vague
uneasiness; and now when he entered the lobby he walked directly into
the parlour where he had seen the book. The room was empty, as it
always was on Sunday mornings, and the flamboyant volume was still
upon the table--evidently a fixture as a sort of local Almanach de
Gotha, or Burke, for the enlightenment of tenants and boarders.
He opened it, finding a few painful steel engravings of placid, chin-
bearded faces, some of which he remembered dimly; but much more
numerous, and also more unfamiliar to him, were the pictures of neat,
aggressive men, with clipped short hair and clipped short moustaches--
almost all of them strangers to him.
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