Frank Lucius Packard

The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale Frank Lucius Packard

A diminutive gas-jet's sickly, yellow flame illuminated the room with poverty-strickeninadequacy; high up on the wall, bordering the ceiling, the moonlight, as thoughcontemptuous of its artificial competitor, streamed in through a small, square window, andlaid a white, flickering path to the door across a filthy and disreputable rag of carpet; also, through a rent in the roller shade, which was drawn over a sort of antiquated Frenchwindow that opened on a level with the floor and in line with the top-light, the moonlightdisclosed a narrow and squalid courtyard without. In one corner of the room stood a battered easel, while against the wall near it, and uponthe floor, were a number of canvases of different sizes. A cot bed, unmade, its covers dirtyand in disorder, occupied the wall space opposite the door. In the centre of the mean anduninviting apartment stood a table, its top littered with odds and ends, amongst which theremains of a meal, dishes and food, fraternised gregariously with a painter's palette, brushes and paint tubes. A chair or two, long since disabled, and a rickety washstandcompleted the appointment