tered a second-hand furniture store, and at one time the Little Sisters
of the Poor had used it for a home for the aged. It had a half-skeptical
reputation for a haunted attic, so far respected by the tenants living on
the second floor that they always kept a large pitcher full of water on
the attic stairs. Their explanation of this custom was so incoherent
that I was sure it was a survival of the belief that a ghost could not cross
running water, but perhaps that interpretation was only my eagerness
for finding folklore.
The fine old house responded kindly to repairs, its wide hall and
open fireplaces always insuring it a gracious aspect. Its generous owner,
Miss Helen Culver, in the following spring gave us a free leasehold of *the entire house. Her kindness has continued through the years until
the group of thirteen buildings, which at present comprises our equipment, is buik largely upon land which Miss Culver has put at the service of the Settlement which bears Mr. Hull's name. In those days the
house stood between an undertaking establishment and a saloon.
"Knight, Death, and the Devil,'' the three were called by a Chicago
wit, and yet any mock heroics which might be implied by comparing
the Settlement to a knight quickly dropped away under the genuine
kindness and hearty welcome extended to us by the families living up
and down the street.
We furnished the house as we would have furnished it were it in another part of the city, with the photographs and other impedimenta we
had collected in Europe, and with a few hits of family mahogany.
While all the new furniture which was bought was enduring in quality,
we were careful to keep it in character with the fine old residence.
Probably no young matron ever placed her own things in her own
house with more pleasure than that with which we first furnished HullHouse. We believed that the Settlement may logically bring to its aid
all those adjuncts which the cultivated man regards as good and suggestive of the best life of the past.
On the 18th of September, 1889, Miss Starr and I moved into it,
with Miss Mary Keyser, who began by performing the housework, hut
who quickly developed into a very important factor in the life of the
vicinity as well as in that of the household, and whose death five years
later was most sincerely mourned by hundreds of our neighbors. In our
enthusiasm over "settling," the first night we forgot not only to lock