with the inevitable seasoning of garlic, lacking which no Galician dish is palatable.  Fortunate indeed is the owner of a shack, who, devoid of hygienic scruples and disdainful of city sanitary laws, reaps a rich harvest from his fellow-countrymen, who herd together under his pent roof.  Here and there a house surrendered by its former Anglo-Saxon owner to the “Polak” invasion, falls into the hands of an enterprising foreigner, and becomes to the happy possessor a veritable gold mine.

Such a house had come into the possession of Paulina Koval.  Three years ago, with two children she had come to the city, and to the surprise of her neighbours who had travelled with her from Hungary, had purchased this house, which the owner was only too glad to sell.  How the slow-witted Paulina had managed so clever a transaction no one quite understood, but every one knew that in the deal Rosenblatt, financial agent to the foreign colony, had lent his shrewd assistance.  Rosenblatt had known Paulina in the home land, and on her arrival in the new country had hastened to proffer his good offices, arranging the purchase of her house and guiding her, not only in financial matters, but in things domestic as well.  It was due to Rosenblatt that the little cottage became the most populous dwelling in the colony.  It was his genius that had turned the cellar, with its mud floor, into a dormitory capable of giving bed space to twenty or twenty-five Galicians, and still left room for the tin stove on which to cook their stews.  Upon his advice, too, the partitions by which the cottage had been divided into kitchen, parlour, and bed rooms, were with one exception removed as unnecessary and interfering unduly with the most economic use of valuable floor space.  Upon the floor of the main room, some sixteen feet by twelve, under Rosenblatt’s manipulation, twenty boarders regularly spread their blankets, and were it not for the space demanded by the stove and the door, whose presence he deeply regretted, this ingenious manipulator could have provided for some fifteen additional beds.  Beyond the partition, which as a concession to Rosenblatt’s finer sensibilities was allowed to remain, was Paulina’s boudoir, eight feet by twelve, where she and her two children occupied a roomy bed in one corner.  In the original plan of the cottage four feet had been taken from this boudoir for closet purposes, which closet now served as a store room for Paulina’s superfluous and altogether wonderful wardrobe.

After a few weeks’ experiment, Rosenblatt, under pressure of an exuberant hospitality, sought to persuade Paulina that, at the sacrifice of some comfort and at the expense of a certain degree of privacy, the unoccupied floor space of her boudoir might be placed at the disposal of a selected number of her countrymen, who for the additional comfort thus secured, this room being less exposed to the biting wind from the door, would not object to pay a higher price.  Against this arrangement poor Paulina made feeble protest, not so much on her own account as for the sake of the children.