A Few Repairs.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 62, 10 September 1904, Page 10

A Few Repairs.

Of course, it's jusb ns well to tnak* all possible points in the game and to exercise the intelligence nature has vouchsafed to us for self-protection, but it's possible to bo a little too smart," said the River Forest man. " I admit that tho average landlord is a pariah and an outlaw," he continued, " and tbo suggestion of the gentleman from Maywood that it is possible to insure one's furniture and burn a house down when tho tenant's situation grows intolerable in an excellent one, but with all the points in its favour I would really be afraid to try it. In the first place, the landlord would 'be sure to discover some clauso in the lease forbidding that proceeding. In any event he would come out on top. " I hnd trouble with a landlord once. The house I~had rented from him was a very good house. Of course, I found imperfections in it after I had lived in it a fow months, but its foundation, was good and the walls only needed rebuilding in a fow places. Before renting; it, however, I did notice that it needed ropapering badly. I told the landlord nbqut that, and he admitted tho foot cheerfully. ' I'll fix that up all right for you,' he said. 'Don't you ever worry about that paper.' ".His manner was so reassuring that I signed the lease without any misgiving. I did say that perhaps it would be well tn have the paper attended to before we moved in, but he pointed out that it was a pretty busy time of year, and that it could be done cheaper and more easily in another month and by papering one room at a time it would not inconvenience, my wife. Well, we moved in We were young then. " I found in a day or two that th» basement steps were rotten, that the roof leaked and the kitchen plumbing wns out of order, but I had those thing* seen to at my own expense. Then I discovered that the stationary wash tubs in the laundry had fallen apart, that the locks on four of the bedroom doors wer«; broken and the gas fixtures allowed the gas to escape everywhere^ except at the burners. When I got out on the roof 1 notioed that the chimney stacks were tottering so uearly to their fall that I was afraid to breathe hard in their vicinity. I kept on discovering things. I called at the landlord's office in town and told him about them. He said, " Doar me I' " I felt a little injured. I said : 'Ib that all you've got to »ay about it?' "'lt's too bad!' he replied. Then he added, 'If I -were you I'd have those tilings fixed. It would be very unpleasant if those chimneys should blow down.' i "I told him I expected him to Ox them and to fix them right away, upon which he called my attention to the fact that the lease explicitly stated that all repairs should be undertaken by the tenant. He said ho would liko to do thorn himself, but ho did not feel justified^ in incurring the expense, especially as the chimneys had seemed to be all right when he inspected them the previous spring, and that the last tenant* had not complained of tho locks or the g*s fixtures. He seemed to imnly that 1 had been tampering with his chimneys, and I confess it soemed to me rather' unjust. " I didn't want to have any trouble, however, so I took his advice and hud the repairs made. By the time I hnd got one thing done I found something else that wanted doing nnd all the time-, mind you, he hnd done nothing about tho papering. Ib was an inartistic paper and we were tired of looking at it. It was dirty, beside*. Well, 1 wont to my landlord agnin, and toll him 1 thought it was about time he kept his piomise. He looked mildly surprised. " Did I agree to any papering V ho asked. " I said, ' You most certainly djd.' * " 'In which room ?' he asked^ " ' In all the rooms,' I answered. "All over thfe hotifo, by Georgti! \bu ought to study n memory system.' I was &omewhab annoyed, you see. "*Wcll,' lie said, 'it ought to bo down m the le«*r.' " 'TUen why in Bom Hill didn't you put it down/ I iwud. 'Anyway, you ft greed to p«per -md I expect you to ilo it. If you don't there's going to bo trouble ' "Well. $»y fcjkpm.t*tioji& weren't reii}-,, ised. He didn't ux'i>cr. Ho said s he

would some time, but he wouldn't be hurried in the matter, I told him what I thought of him and that made him mad. I wan sore, I tell you. I went around and sow a friend of mmc, a lawyer. He advised me to grin and bear ifc, bub ons evening he and his wife were at the house and I called his attention to one place on the wall where about a yard of the paper was hanging down. We picked at it and found that there were a few less than sixteen layers of paper on that wall, one over another. " ' Yon can cinch your landlord on that proposition,' said my lawyer friend. 'There's a law against pasting one paper over another. It isn't among those that are enforced, but you can mnke him take down every shred of that right away if you notify the Health Department. 1 " I wrote to the Health Department at ouce, and an inspector was sent around irith* reasonable promptness. Inside of a week my landlord sent around men and they soaked the old paper all off. I chuckled., 'I guess I did" hurry you a little, my friend,' says I to myself. " I rather anticipated that my land' lord would try to shove a cheap paper on to me if I didn't watch him, so I took time by the forelock and went to sco him again. I told him that I expected to be allowed to choose the paper that went on to the walls. He said certainly I might, as long as it wasn't so ugly ns to bo a disfigurement. He didn't refer "to my complaint to the Department, which I thought was quite decent in him. " Still he didn't paper. "After I had waited for three weeks with those bare, stained plaster walls staring me in the face I wrote to him and told him that the paperhahgers hud not arrived. He wrote back and thanked me for the information. ; " I waited another day and called him up over tho 'phone. "Those paperha'ngers of yours aren't here yet,' I said. ' I don't want to bo living in this condition. Why don't they come ?' " ' I don't know anything about anypaperhangers,' he replied. 'You wanted the paper off the walls, and now it/s off. If you want to paper again I'll give you permission to tlo it, but you've got to send mo a sample of the paper for my approval.' " "Well, you deserved it all," said the Maywood man. "A more idiotic proceeding from first to last I never hoard. You ought to have " "I know it," said the man from River Forest. "What happened next?" "I went to law with him, but don't nsk me to speak of that. It's a very painful subject."— New York Tribune