A coal fire crackled cheerily in the little open grate that supplied warmth to the steam-heated living-room in the modest apartment of Mr. Thomas S. Bingle, lower New York, somewhere to the west of Fifth Avenue and not far removed from Washington Square-in the wrong direction, however, if one must be precise in the matter of emphasizing the social independence of the Bingle family-and be it here recorded that without the genial aid of that grate of coals the living-room would have been a cheerless place indeed.