Dreams and Disillusion 3 



of a jail. The children were omnipotent 

 and omnipresent. By the record in the 

 family Bible we had only three. But they 

 managed to get into every room in that flat 

 at the same minute, and their name was 

 legion. 



We tried boarding with a nice old lady 

 who had an eye that could chill the most 

 turbulent child into silence. Our little girl 

 took pneumonia, and we had two doctors 

 and two trained nurses in that boarding 

 house for six weeks. 



Then the suburban home. We bought a 

 vacant lot, with a waterfront of sixty feet, 

 at Bensonhurst, and built on it. When fin- 

 ished it cost sixteen thousand dollars, and it 

 took most of the time of one man to keep 

 the tin cans, driftwood, dead cats and dogs 

 off that sixty feet of waterfront. 



The first time I tried to go home on Sun- 

 day, I got jammed in a cheerful crowd that 

 started to Coney Island by way of Benson- 



