Within a poor man’s squalid home I stood; The one bare chamber, where his work-worn wife Above the stove and wash-tub passed her life, Next the sty where they slept with all their brood. . . . . . . . . . . I saw a great house with the portals wide Upon a banquet room, and from without The guests descending in a brilliant line By the stairs’ statued niches, and beside The loveliest of the gemmed and silken rout, The poor man’s landlord leading down to dine.

— W. D. HOWELLS, Vision, in Stops of Various Quills.