An Interesting Conversation

" Say, you newspaper man," yelled a well-known citizen at us the other dar, " you are stipposed to be familiar with all subjects, can you teil why it is tliat men who rent houses as a general thing take so little pains to keep things nice and piensan t about the premlses? Now I have a neat little place in town, and when I moved out of it two years ago, everything was as slick as pie all nbout it. The grass was kept triinmed, not a weed in the yard, flower8 in haudsome beds that my wife had litted up, and all that sort of tblng. Now look at it! Why, you wouldn't know the place ! Burdocks are thicker than fly specks on a hotel cream pitcher. Old hats are stuck in twö broken window lights and anothcr is plastered up with mucilage and one of the Citizens' League circulara dlslributed so liberally to us free American citizens last spring. Everything about the place is in keeping therewith. It would take only a few minutes' work each day for the tenauts to keep things in tlp-top shape ; and how much happier every one in the house would be to see things kept up, and in good condition to look upon. Let me teil you, I believe a person's children grow up in keeping with thelr surroundings, and if a place Is slovenly and ill kept, the children will be saucy, ill-natured and boorish, 1 ! lieve it pays a man for his children's sake, If nothing else, to be neat and tidy, and energetic enougli to at least keep the weeds out of the yard, miü cultívate a few flowers, and " - "Butyou said your wife had planted and cared for the flowers, dld you not?" interrupted the newspaper man who begun to despair of ever getting in a word, even edge-wise. " It isn't every man who has a wife who will give attention to sueh things, you know." "Yes, she does attend to the flowers, and they are very much admired by iassers-by, too. But we were speaking oj tenants. Now you can ride along the street, and teil every house, nearly, that is occupied by a tenant. ïhere is not one tenant in a hundred who hasenough pride to even keep his front walk free from smart weed and knot-grass, and there is an air of don'tcare-a-continental-durn around the entire premises. If a light is broken it is patched up until the family move out, and then the landlord isobliged to put in a new one before another tenant will move in. I teil you, it is a perplexing and discouraging business, this renting bonfec, and the man who gets all h pay is a lucky fellow. Ho is the exception, not the rule." And, as he paused to catch his breath for a new volume of wordt a by-stander chlpped in: "Tuetruth Is, Bob, you rich fellows who own houses and lands and plav the landlord for us poor fellows, are not always guided by the right feelings. New I know a young man with a small family who is a mighty nice fellow. He rented a certain house in this city, pay ing a good round rent. He went to work and fixed things things up. He made a nice garden and got a lawn ruower and kept the yard looking nice. He dug up all the docks and weeds, and he made everything look home-like. Well, at the end of the year the property looked better than it did when he took it. When his time was up somebody offered tliis landlord $25 a year more than he was then receiving. This extra rent tbe young man refused to pay, and so he had to move out. The new tenant was an old reuter, the premises soon run down again, and what seemed a just retribution, the landlord lost two month's rent in the end. The good tenant's expe rience caused him to lose his ainbitlon to flx up rented places, so the landlord's greed worked ill both ways." " There's another thing, Bob," continued the talker, " rents are too high here in Ann Arbor for common people to live here. Desirable places for men with moderate incomes are not to be obtained for less than $16, $18, or $25 per montli. It takes a quarter of all us eommon people cnn earn to pay for a house to cover our heads. It isti't everybody that wants to take boarders, you know, or roomers even, but the price asked and received for houses compels us to do so. Then you landlords never discriminate between those who du.tiru to make a hotel out of your houses and those who want to make homes of them. You don't seeni to care as long as you can get so much out of it each monthor quarter. You all know very well that student's tear a house to pieces pretty quick, white a famüy usually are careful. It strikes me that it is all-flred discouraging for a man who has to live here in Ann Arbor, unless he is rich enough to own hls own huw-r. If we keep a house up decent you'll raise on our rent, and we have to compete with boardirif; house keepers and amateur hotels iu rentáis." And the speaker walked off witb his hands i n his pockets, jinirling a bunch of keys evidently, while his gaze was down his nose, and his kir that of one not alto gether pleased with the way the world used him. But he answered Bob better than we could have done it, and saved us a heap of ifs and ands and reasons why. One thlng is certain, if there were a hundred more desirable houses at reasonable rents in Ann Arbor, they would all be taekn in short order.