The final echoes of the continental breakfast lingered, heralding not merely an end, but the onset of an inevitable decline, a shadow creeping over the hearts of the Biedermeier girls. For thirty-five years, each inhabitant, her modest rent safely nestled in Mrs. Mossler’s intricately crocheted lantern-bag, had surrendered to slumber with a steadfast assurance: a breakfast tray would greet her at dawn, sliding silently into the recess of her door—“silently and gratuitously, no waiting—no waiter!”
But as the war’s dark hand grasped tighter, the once-humble fourteen-dollar rent surged to eighteen, then to twenty-five, after Carmine DeSapio ascended to lead Tammany’s somber forces. Mrs. Mossler, her heart heavy with foreboding, believed a non-Irish Tammany chief to be a dire omen of escalating prices, tumult, and chaos—an unfolding tragedy reminiscent of the brooding moors, where storms gathered ominously upon the horizon.
Yet, amidst the shadows, the daily communion of tray and door endured, unyielding even on the sacred Sunday. Aside from the wretched wartime substitution of Postum for the cherished coffee, the menu remained a steadfast relic of familiarity, as if time itself recoiled from altering its simple offerings. Each lady could select from the bitter-sweetness of sliced grapefruit or tomato, a Vienna roll or brown buttered toast, a shirred egg, and a cluster of grapes—sustenance that held one until the uncertain hour of dinner, for the unspoken rule lingered: never mention supper within these confined walls.
Indeed, the absence of lunch from the weekly rate cast a shadow upon the spirits of the inmates, fewer than half possessing the steady hand of employment to secure a week’s provisions. Thus, the Biedermeier abode stood, a fragile bastion against the encroaching gloom, where the specter of economic despair entwined with the fragile hopes of its weary inhabitants.
