"If a fellow had money enough, and took a notion to set up some new business on a big scale, this would be a pretty good place--to make glue, for instance, if that wasn't out of the question, of course.
It would take a lot of money, though; a great deal too much for me to expect to handle--even if I'd ever dream of doing such a thing." Opposite the dismantled factory was a muddy, open lot of two acres or so, and near the middle of the lot, a long brick shed stood in a desolate abandonment, not happily decorated by old coatings of theatrical and medicinal advertisements.

But the brick shed had two wooden ells, and, though both shed and ells were of a single story, here was empty space enough for a modest enterprise--"space enough for almost anything, to start with," Adams thought, as he walked through the low buildings, one day, when he was prospecting in that section.

"Yes, I suppose I COULD swing this," he thought.

"If the process belonged to me, say, instead of being out of the question because it isn't my property--or if I was the kind of man to do such a thing anyhow, here would be something I could probably get hold of pretty cheap.

They'd want a lot of money for a lease on that big building over the way--but this, why, I should think it'd be practically nothing at all." Then, by chance, meeting an agent he knew, he made inquiries--merely to satisfy a casual curiosity, he thought--and he found matters much as he had supposed, except that the owners of the big building did not wish to let, but to sell it, and this at a price so exorbitant that Adams laughed.