Sometimes a man steps out of the nose, turns, passes the place where the right ear should be and making his way through the throng of children and goats obstructing the narrow walk between his neighbors’ doors and the edge of the terrace gains the street by descending a flight of rickety stairs.  Here he pauses to consult his watch and the stranger who happens to pass wonders why such a man as that can care what is the hour.  Longer observations would show that the time of day is an important element in the man’s movements, for it is at precisely two o’clock in the afternoon that he comes forth 365 times in every year.

Having satisfied himself that he has made no mistake in the hour he replaces the watch and walks rapidly southward up the street two squares, turns to the right and as he approaches the next corner fixes his eyes on an upper window in a three-story building across the way.  This is a somewhat dingy structure, originally of red brick and now gray.  It shows the touch of age and dust.  Built for a dwelling, it is now a factory.  I do not know what is made there; the things that are commonly made in a factory, I suppose.  I only know that at two o’clock in the afternoon of every day but Sunday it is full of activity and clatter; pulsations of some great engine shake it and there are recurrent screams of wood tormented by the saw.  At the window on which the man fixes an intensely expectant gaze nothing ever appears; the glass, in truth, has such a coating of dust that it has long ceased to be transparent.  The man looks at it without stopping; he merely keeps turning his head more and more backward as he leaves the building behind.  Passing along to the next corner, he turns to the left, goes round the block, and comes back till he reaches the point diagonally across the street from the factory—­point on his former course, which he then retraces, looking frequently backward over his right shoulder at the window while it is in sight.  For many years he has not been known to vary his route nor to introduce a single innovation into his action.  In a quarter of an hour he is again at the mouth of his dwelling, and a woman, who has for some time been standing in the nose, assists him to enter.  He is seen no more until two o’clock the next day.  The woman is his wife.  She supports herself and him by washing for the poor people among whom they live, at rates which destroy Chinese and domestic competition.

This man is about fifty-seven years of age, though he looks greatly older.  His hair is dead white.  He wears no beard, and is always newly shaven.  His hands are clean, his nails well kept.  In the matter of dress he is distinctly superior to his position, as indicated by his surroundings and the business of his wife.  He is, indeed, very neatly, if not quite fashionably, clad.  His silk hat has a date no earlier than the year before the last, and his boots, scrupulously polished, are innocent of patches.  I am told that the suit which he wears during his daily excursions of fifteen minutes is not the one that he wears at home.  Like everything else that he has, this is provided and kept in repair by the wife, and is renewed as frequently as her scanty means permit.