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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:--

1. Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.

2. Printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation,
   and ligature usage have been retained except the following:
     Pg. 117, Ch. VII: Changed comma to period in (relation to life,)
     Pg. 255, Ch. XVI: Removed ending quote in (the highest sense.")




                      THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE

                         WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS




                             THE DAUGHTER
                            OF THE STORAGE

                           AND OTHER THINGS
                          IN PROSE AND VERSE

                            W. D. HOWELLS


                     HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
                         NEW YORK AND LONDON


             Copyright, 1915, 1916, by Harper & Brothers
               Printed in the United States of America
                        Published April, 1916




                               CONTENTS

                                                        PAGE
              I. THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE               3
             II. A PRESENTIMENT                           45
            III. CAPTAIN DUNLEVY'S LAST TRIP              67
             IV. THE RETURN TO FAVOR                      81
              V. SOMEBODY'S MOTHER                        93
             VI. THE FACE AT THE WINDOW                  107
            VII. AN EXPERIENCE                           117
           VIII. THE BOARDERS                            127
             IX. BREAKFAST IS MY BEST MEAL               141
              X. THE MOTHER-BIRD                         151
             XI. THE AMIGO                               161
            XII. BLACK CROSS FARM                        173
           XIII. THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE                  185
            XIV. A FEAST OF REASON                       227
             XV. CITY AND COUNTRY IN THE FALL            243
            XVI. TABLE TALK                              253
           XVII. THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER           269
          XVIII. SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY         285
            XIX. THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS              319




                     THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE


                                  I

They were getting some of their things out to send into the country,
and Forsyth had left his work to help his wife look them over and
decide which to take and which to leave. The things were mostly trunks
that they had stored the fall before; there were some tables and
Colonial bureaus inherited from his mother, and some mirrors and
decorative odds and ends, which they would not want in the furnished
house they had taken for the summer. There were some canvases which
Forsyth said he would paint out and use for other subjects, but which,
when he came to look at again, he found really not so bad. The rest,
literally, was nothing but trunks; there were, of course, two or three
boxes of books. When they had been packed closely into the five-dollar
room, with the tables and bureaus and mirrors and canvases and
decorative odds and ends put carefully on top, the Forsyths thought
the effect very neat, and laughed at themselves for being proud of it.

They spent the winter in Paris planning for the summer in America, and
now it had come May, a month which in New York is at its best, and in
the Constitutional Storage Safe-Deposit Warehouse is by no means at
its worst. The Constitutional Storage is no longer new, but when the
Forsyths were among the first to store there it was up to the latest
moment in the modern perfections of a safe-deposit warehouse. It was
strictly fire-proof; and its long, white, brick-walled, iron-doored
corridors, with their clean concrete floors, branching from a central
avenue to the tall windows north and south, offered perspectives
sculpturesquely bare, or picturesquely heaped with arriving or
departing household stuff.

When the Forsyths went to look at it a nice young fellow from the
office had gone with them; running ahead and switching on rows of
electrics down the corridors, and then, with a wire-basketed electric
lamp, which he twirled about and held aloft and alow, showing the
dustless, sweet-smelling spaciousness of a perfect five-dollar room.
He said it would more than hold their things; and it really held them.

Now, when the same young fellow unlocked the iron door and set it
wide, he said he would get them a man, and he got Mrs. Forsyth a gilt
armchair from some furniture going into an adjoining twenty-dollar
room. She sat down in it, and "Of course," she said, "the pieces I
want will be at the very back and the very bottom. Why don't you get
yourself a chair, too, Ambrose? What are you looking at?"

