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E Commerce Usability Tools and Techniques to Perfect
the On Line Experience 1st Edition David Travis Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): David Travis
ISBN(s): 9780415258340, 0415258340
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File Details: PDF, 1.51 MB
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Language: english
E-commerce Usability
Essential readings from Taylor & Francis:

Designing Usable Electronic Text

Andrew Dillon, University of Texas, USA
ISBN 0–7484–0112–1 (hb)
ISBN 0–7484–0113–X (pb)

Inclusive Design Guidelines for Human–Computer Interaction

Edited by Colette Nicolle, HUSAT, UK and Julio Abascal, University of the
Basque Country, Spain
ISBN 0–7484–0948–3 (hb)

User Interface Design for Electronic Appliances

Edited by Konrad Baumann, Philips Consumer Communications, Vienna,
Austria and Bruce Thomas, Philips Design, Vienna, Austria
ISBN 0–415–24335–1 (hb)

Information and ordering details

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E-commerce Usability
Tools and techniques to perfect
the on-line experience

David Travis
First published 2003
by Taylor & Francis
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Taylor & Francis
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Taylor & Francis is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
© 2003 Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the advice and
information in this book is true and accurate at the time of going to
press. However, neither the publisher nor the authors can accept any
legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may
be made. In the case of drug administration, or any medical
procedure or the use of technical equipment mentioned in this book,
you are strongly advised to consult the manufacturers guidelines.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-203-24591-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-22721-2 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0–415–25834–0 (Print Edition)
For Joshua, Bethany, Sam
and Gret
 Contents vii

Contents

List of figures ix
List of tables xi
Preface xii
Acknowledgements xv

1 Introduction 1
2 Is your site customer centred? 8

PART I
Analyse the opportunity 13

3 Identify the stakeholders 15

4 Write the site mandate 21
5 Segment the market 28

PART II
Build the context of use 35

6 Build customer profiles 37

7 Build environment profiles 55
8 Build task profiles 61

PART III
Create the user experience 71

9 Agree key performance indicators 73

10 Develop the information architecture 86
viii Contents
11 Lay out the screens 98
12 Evaluate usability 118

PART IV
Track real-world usage and continuously improve the site 153

13 Track real-world usage and continuously improve the site 155

14 What now? 163
Appendices 165

Index 176
 List of figures ix

List of figures

2.1 Score templates 11

3.1 Example of assigning priority – ‘CEO’ 18
5.1 The technology adoption lifecycle (after Moore) 31
6.1 How a logfile is constructed 40
6.2 Three example personas 52
8.1 Web site tasks – value to customers v. ease of implementation 63
8.2 A method of assigning the priority to a task based on
frequency and importance 64
9.1 Key performance indicator: high-level objective for an
on-line bank 74
9.2 Key performance indicator: context of use for an on-line bank 75
9.3 Question response options 81
9.4 Key performance indicator: measurement technique for an
on-line bank 82
9.5 Overall task completion score 83
9.6 Key performance indicator: performance values for an
on-line bank 83
10.1 Card sorting technique 89
10.2 Global navigation 91
10.3 Local navigation 91
10.4 Browse page based on a file manager type metaphor 95
10.5 Browse page based on a hierarchical ‘Yahoo!’ type metaphor 95
10.6 Browse page combining file manager and hierarchical
metaphors 95
11.1 Screen item selection flow chart 99
11.2 Radio buttons 101
11.3 Check boxes 101
11.4 Drop-down/pop-up list box 103
11.5 Single and multiple selection list boxes 104
11.6 Single line text box 105
11.7 Command buttons 109
11.8 Visual balance 113
11.9 Correct tabbing order 114
x List of figures
12.1 ‘Time to profit’ under two scenarios 119
12.2 Cost of fixing usability problems 122
12.3 Flow chart for choosing a usability evaluation method 124
12.4 Car park control, version 1.0 131
12.5 Car park control, version 1.1 132
12.6 Car park control, version 1.2 132
12.7 Car park control, version 2.0 133
12.8 Usability test results for p = 31% 138
12.9 Traditional usability lab 140
12.10 Recording a test session with just one camera 141
12.11 Flow chart for usability problems of ‘Low’ consequence 146
12.12 Flow chart for usability problems of ‘Medium’ consequence 147
12.13 Flow chart for usability problems of ‘High’ consequence 148
 List of tables xi

List of tables

3.1 Typical stakeholder roles 16

3.2 Likely concerns and motivations for a range of different
stakeholders 17
3.3 Example of stakeholder analysis of one stakeholder 20
4.1 Site mandate for the ‘TicketTeller’ web site 26
5.1 Customer-centred design and the technology adoption
lifecycle 33
6.1 How to deconstruct a logfile 41
6.2 An example customer profile 47
7.1 Screen resolutions (from TheCounter.com) 58
7.2 Colour depth (from TheCounter.com) 58
7.3 Operating systems (from TheCounter.com) 58
7.4 Browser types (from TheCounter.com) 58
7.5 Example of environment summary 59
8.1 An example of assigning priorities to four different tasks 65
9.1 Simulated task completion data from a usability test 77
9.2 ‘Time on task’ data (in seconds) 79
12.1 Adjective/noun template for classifying usability problems 127
13.1 The relationship between conversion rate and sales for a
site averaging 100,000 visitors making an average purchase
of £15 157
xii Preface

Preface

We are all familiar with airport bookstall best sellers that promise fame,
fortune and success in relationships. Many of them – at least the ones I have
skimmed whilst waiting for one of the world’s favourite airlines – are deeply
disappointing. Not because they do not work (to be honest I have not really
been able to try them out fully) but because they tend to miss out on the
tricky bit in the process. For example, a book on how to become really rich
will often contain such helpful nuggets as ‘make lots of money’. If you then
turn to the How to Make Lots of Money book, the advice is to start a successful
business. The How to Start a Successful Business book then suggests that the
key is to come up with a simple idea that everyone wants. The How to Come
up with Clever Ideas book typically talks about brainstorming and all manner
of ‘creative ideas’.
Where they fail is that the ideas themselves are often fairly simple to
generate; it’s turning them into real solutions that involves a lot of hard work.
One of the widely quoted examples of the ‘ah-ha’ principle at work con-
cerns Kekulé von Stradonitz in 1865 who was struggling to interpret his data
on the structure of benzene. Allegedly, after a particularly gruelling day in
the laboratory, he fell asleep and dreamed of a group of six snakes. At some
point, these dancing snakes each caught another’s tail in its mouth, in such a
way that they formed a six-snake ring. When Kekulé awoke, he had stumbled
on the resonating ring structure, which made sense of all his work. Now I
doubt Kekulé was the first to dream of snakes (indeed I believe they are a
rather well-known Freudian symbol) but he was the first one to make the
link. The idea on its own meant little, but combined with serious groundwork,
provided the apparently trivial spark which made sense of it all.
Clever ideas in computing abound, especially on the web. It is converting
them into a sound business model which is more difficult and usually causes
most would-be ‘Bill Gates’ to fall by the wayside. E-commerce is an area
where bright ideas are common but sound business models are not.
One of the areas where I would claim some expertise (on the basis that I
have been working in the area for some big names for many years) is the
ergonomics and psychology of retailing. I am always both amused and
astounded by the way many e-commerce sites seem to understand customer
 Preface xiii
psychology and then either ignore it or do the opposite. Real stores design
their layouts in such a way that customers are enticed and led through product
offerings. High visibility locations (for example, at the ends of aisles) are
used carefully to promote particular products and the store entrance is prize
territory. Many stores have lots of doors – often automatic. These are not to
allow customers out in the event of a fire, but to make it easy for them to
enter. Staff are trained to welcome customers, maintain eye contact and
generally make them feel welcome.
Yet if we are to believe many e-commerce sites, customers should be chal-
lenged at the door to give their address before guessing where merchandise
is hidden. Slow response, unhelpful graphics, hidden functionality and unreli-
able links test the customer’s stamina to the limit – before they have even
purchased anything. Feedback is often incomplete or even missing.
If it were a real store, customers would walk next door or even travel
further afield. On a web site this takes no more than a click or two.
So if usability is so obviously important in e-commerce, why is it not taken
more seriously? I would argue that there are three main reasons:
• many people believe that since the web is new, we need to start again
learning how to make it usable;
• others argue that the web is unique so nothing that we knew about con-
ventional usability applies.
But probably the most significant reason is that:
• it is difficult to know exactly what to do to ensure good usability.
There are lots of ‘gurus’ with helpful advice like ‘do what I say’ who are
great at publicising usability but who are not so good at passing on their
skills to regular web site designers.
Putting usability knowledge and skills in the public domain is one of the
prime motivations of our work in the International Organisation for Standard-
isation (ISO) Ergonomics of Human System Interaction Committee. Since
1983 we have developed a number of standards aimed at improving the
usability of computer hardware and software. The multipart ISO 9241 is
one of the better known standards and contains one part (Part 11) specifically
devoted to ‘Guidance on Usability’. Our experience in developing these
standards made us realise that in the computer industry we would always be
‘playing catch-up’ trying to keep up with the fast pace of hardware and
software development.
In the mid-1990s we therefore decided to develop a process standard
which would be technology-independent and which would represent inter-
national consensus on best practice. In 1999, ISO 13407 ‘Human Centred
Design Processes for Interactive Systems’ was published with the explicit
aim of providing project managers with a means of ensuring that their design
processes have a high likelihood of developing usable systems.
xiv Preface
In a sense, it is like the airport best sellers I was criticising earlier. If the
process is followed completely, then the designer is assured of a usable product.
Of course, there is a catch. Success is only guaranteed if appropriate criteria
are identified initially and if the process iterates until they are achieved. It
may not be possible to complete the process if the original design objective is
unachievable. Designers may not be able to solve some of the problems which
testing with real users provides. But the key point is that the standard provides
an internationally agreed framework for the usability process.
Since its publication in 2000, it has been well received in Japan (where it
is seen as relevant to the design of a wide range of products and systems). In
the USA it was one of the key stimuli (along with ISO 9241-11: Guidance on
Usability) for the development of the ANSI/NCITS Common Industry Format
for reporting usability results. In the UK, it has been promoted as a method
for helping public sector systems achieve the Government’s objective of effec-
tiveness of IT systems.
In System Concepts, we use this framework to inform all our usability
work from mobile telephones to government information systems, from
computer printers to interactive television and, of course, to web sites.
David Travis has drawn together our experiences with this process in an
informative and compelling style. In this book, he has tailored the customer-
centred design process to the difficult, but not impossible problem, of making
e-commerce sites that people can and do use successfully. Standards – parti-
cularly international standards – are written in a peculiar form of English,
which often sounds stilted. One of David’s great strengths is that he has
written a book which is not only a highly effective and an efficient way of
communicating about e-commerce usability, he has also made it satisfying,
sometimes even fun, to read. In other words, it is a very usable book about
usability. The book is rich in informative examples and even the laziest reader
should find inspiration from the practical experiences which fill each page.
I was delighted when David asked me to write this preface and I am pleased
to commend this book wholeheartedly. I am sure that designers too will find
it an invaluable resource and I look forward to the improvement in usable
web sites that should result.
Tom Stewart
Managing Director, System Concepts
Chairman, ISO TC 159 SC4 Ergonomics of Human System Interaction
 Acknowledgements xv

Acknowledgements

This book started life as a training course. The course content was knocked
into shape by dozens of clients; and hundreds of delegates have usability
tested the ideas and helped fix those that were confusing, ambiguous or
difficult to apply. Amongst these, I would particularly like to thank Leigh
Davies at Thomas Cook who helped structure the initial course.
But a course means nothing if the theory cannot be put into practice. In
my consulting work, I have been fortunate to work with clients on some
truly challenging projects. Indeed, all of the practical ideas in this book arose
from usability assignments with clients. There are too many to thank
individually but Debbie Mrazek at HP stands out for her ability to challenge
and coach in equal measure.
And none of that would have been possible if Tom Stewart hadn’t invited
me to the Savoy for a Christmas party many years ago and encouraged my
interest in standards and consultancy. Thanks Tom!
A number of people supported and encouraged me in the writing of this
book and provided comments on the content and structure. In particular, I
would like to thank Nigel Bevan, Marty Carroll, Jeff Johnson, Deborah
Mayhew, Debbie Mrazek, Keith Instone, John Rhodes, Ben Shneiderman
and Tom Stewart. Nick Freeman of manha.com did a great job on the figures;
and Sarah Kramer at Taylor & Francis motivated me to deliver the book,
rather than re-write it yet again. I want to thank all of them for their time
and point out that the remaining errors are, of course, mine.
Finally: thanks Gret. Can I come out now?
xvi Acknowledgements
 Introduction 1

1 Introduction

There are hundreds of books aimed at the people who design web sites.
Books that tell you how to write HTML with the very latest editing tools.
Books that show you how to design 3D buttons in Adobe PhotoShop. Books
that explain how to code in Perl and Java. Books that discuss fashionable
mark-up languages, such as XML, DHTML and VRML.
This book takes a different approach: it assumes that the people who use
web sites just want an easy life.
This assumption states that people will always choose a simple way of
achieving their goals over a complex way. So this book on web site
development hardly mentions technology. Instead, it focuses on the customers
of the technology: it explains how to design e-commerce sites that ordinary
people can use.
Such an approach is sorely needed. There is hardly an area of work or
business life that has not been affected by computing technology. But
customers of this technology are almost universally ignored. Operating systems
crash on a daily basis and applications bail out with an indecipherable error
message. Simple and obvious tasks are implemented in ways so convoluted
that customers often need to be taught how to carry them out. New versions
of software are released that look different – they have more intricate icons,
different beeps and swish animated features – but the fundamental problems
remain (and new problems are introduced). Is it a coincidence that the only
other industry that refers to its customers as ‘users’ (and treats customers
with equal contempt) is the drug industry?
E-commerce is the latest development that attempts to persuade customers
that technology will make their lives easier. Simple observation lends the lie
to this assertion. In offices and homes throughout the world, customers of e-
commerce sites are suffering from what I like to call ‘technological Tourette’s
syndrome’. Sufferers of real Tourette’s syndrome have a compulsion to swear,
twitch and shout. And indeed, customers of e-commerce sites often act the
same way.
‘My “cookie expired”? What the **** does that mean?’
2 E-commerce usability
‘****! How do I actually buy this thing!’
‘I don’t believe it! This ******* page crashed my browser!’
We see that people who use e-commerce sites grunt, swear and jerk, just
like people with real Tourette’s syndrome.
Yet the notion of usability is not new. It was just ahead of its time. Only a
few years ago, product manufacturers disregarded usability because the
benefits accrue to the people who buy a product, not the people who make
it. For example, for a manufacturing company to invest funds in improving
the usability of a VCR, the product manager needed to be convinced that
consumers base their purchase decision on usability. But everyone knows
that if we ask a customer to choose between two VCRs, the customer’s
decision is based mainly on features, price and aesthetics. It is only later –
when the customer cannot work out how to stop the clock from flashing
‘12:00’ – that usability (or the lack of it) becomes a motivating factor. And
by then it is too late.
We can conclude that manufacturers are rarely bothered with optimising
usability because they make money from the one-off sale of the product. The
costs of poor usability are borne entirely by the ‘user’.
The contempt is almost palpable.
Convergence has tipped this business model on its head. Many products
nowadays only generate revenue for companies if they are used. Indeed,
some products, such as mobile phones and the set-top box for interactive
television, are sold to consumers at a fraction of their manufacturing price –
sometimes given away. High-tech companies now make money from people
using the product, not buying it: just as razor manufacturers before them
discovered that the real market was in the blades, not the razor. This applies
in spades for e-commerce sites: if a customer cannot use your site, they will
not use your site, no matter how much is spent on advertising and marketing.
Conversely, the easier it is for customers to buy, the more customers will buy.
In this model, improved usability has short- and long-term benefits for both
the company and the individual product manager.
Almost on a monthly basis independent surveys bear this assertion out,
highlighting the amount of business lost by sites that are difficult to use. We
read that people who want to buy products are unable to because of navigation
difficulties: customers are unable to find the correct page to choose the
product, or are unable to find the payment option. We read that sites crash,
are under construction, or are otherwise inaccessible.
So it is now obvious that web sites need to be usable. The good news is
that usability has finally come of age.
The bad news is that usability is perceived as screen design: choosing the
correct fonts, colours and icons. In fact, usability is a process: it is not some-
thing that can be stapled on at the end of development. To say that usability
is about screen design is as erroneous as saying that branding is all about a
good logo. Of course screen design plays a role in usability, but it is a small
 Introduction 3
role. This means that optimising the colours, fonts and icons on your site
will improve usability by, at best, 15 per cent. It’s like the old adage: you can
put make-up on a pig, but it’s still a pig.
Screen design is just one of three important components. Web sites that
score high on usability also show a second key feature: consistency.
Consistency accounts for about 25 per cent of a web site’s usability. We can
all point to annoying inconsistencies in (or between) much of the software
we use. For example, the ‘Cut and paste’ operation in Microsoft Excel works
differently from every other piece of software – even other Microsoft
products. Choose ‘Cut’ in Microsoft Word and the selection disappears.
Choose ‘Cut’ in Microsoft Excel and ‘marching ants’ appear around the
selection, but it remains where it is. In this example, the inconsistency causes
no more than a hesitation (‘Did I choose “Cut” or something else?’), but
move the application domain to a nuclear power station or the control room
of a chemical plant and one man’s hesitation quickly becomes another man’s
environmental catastrophe.
The third component of usability, the remaining 60 per cent, is accounted
for by task focus.
You know a web site has task focus when you get a warm feeling that the
person who designed the site knew exactly what you wanted to do. The site
works the way you expect. There is no need to go searching through menus
or dialogue boxes for obscure commands: the main things you want to do
are there in front of you – easy to find and simple to carry out. The web site
delights you. Another example comes from the world of successful computer
games: very quickly, the ‘interface’ disappears and you are exploring the
world of the game – the task.
Rules for good visual design are plentiful – you can get them from a book.
Using code libraries and then testing against a style guide can achieve
consistency. But achieving task focus is much more complicated – it requires
a process, and it is the substance of this book.
The process described in this book for ensuring usability is based closely
on a recent usability standard, Human-Centred Design Processes for Interactive
Systems (BS-EN ISO 13407: 1999). One of the strengths of this standard is
that it can be tailored to support existing design methodologies. Because the
process is not tied to any one notation or tool set, it can be easily adapted to
create models in whichever notation and tool set the programming team
uses. By following the human-centred design process described in the standard,
project managers, designers and developers can ensure that systems will be
effective, efficient and satisfying for customers.
The standard describes four principles of human-centred design:
1 active involvement of customers (or those who speak for them);
2 appropriate allocation of function (making sure human skill is used
properly);
3 iteration of design solutions (therefore allow time in project planning);
4 multi-disciplinary design (but beware overly large design teams).
4 E-commerce usability
… And four key human-centred design activities:
1 understand and specify the context of use (make it explicit – avoid
assuming it is obvious);
2 specify user and socio-cultural requirements (note there will be a variety
of different viewpoints and individuality);
3 produce design solutions (note plural, multiple designs encourage
creativity);
4 evaluate designs against requirements (involves real customer testing not
just convincing demonstrations).
The standard itself is generic and can be applied to any system or product.
This book tailors the process to e-commerce design based on many years’
practical experience. The aim is to describe a practical method to help software
developers, project managers, business analysts and user interface designers
build better e-commerce sites. The approach is iterative and deliverable-based;
forms or designs are completed at the end of each stage, which then constitutes
the requirements and design specification for a project.
The book does not assume any background in human factors and usability:
its aim is to provide step-by-step guidance to help non-experts carry out
each stage of a proven customer-centred design process. The book is based
on practical consultancy assignments with a number of clients in the financial
and high-technology sectors (including Hewlett-Packard, Telewest, Motorola,
The Financial Times, Thomas Cook and Philips).
The customer-centred design process has four steps (see Figure 1.1).

Analyse the opportunity Create the user experience

Develop the
Identify the Write the site Segment the
information
stakeholders mandate market
architecture

Agree key Lay out the

performance screens
Indicators
Build the context of use
Build Build Build
customer environment task Evaluate
profiles profiles profiles usability

Track real-world usage and continuously improve the site

Figure 1.1 The customer-centred design model

 Introduction 5
A good way to start is with an assessment of your current design method,
so I recommend you take the quick test in Chapter 2. This will show the
strengths of your current approach and should identify areas for improvement.
Next, turn to the first part of the book that describes how to analyse the
opportunity. This stage provides the business context for the web site: within
this stage we will identify the stakeholders (Chapter 3), identify why the site is
being developed (Chapter 4), and segment the market for the site (Chapter 5).
The second part of the book describes how to build the context of use.
This results in a rich description of customers (Chapter 6), the environment
in which they access the site (Chapter 7) and a description of realistic activities
or ‘task scenarios’ (Chapter 8).
Part three shows how to use these data to create the user experience. This
is an iterative process. Chapter 9 starts the process by showing how to develop
key performance indicators for the web site: quantitative measures, based on
key customer and business requirements, that the management team use to
determine if the site is ready to ‘go live’. Chapter 10 describes practical
techniques to develop the information architecture (the high-level, conceptual
model), with Chapter 11 devoted to laying out the screens (the detailed
design), starting with paper sketches and then moving to electronic slide
shows or interactive prototypes. Chapter 12 shows how to evaluate the site’s
usability, by using both usability experts and representative customers.
The final step in the process, described in the last part of the book, is to
track real-world usage and continuously improve the site once it has been
deployed.
This book aims to present a concise summary of each of these areas. Readers
who are keen to learn more will hopefully find the concluding sections of
each chapter, ‘Further reading and weblinks’, useful. To help you decide if a
weblink is truly useful before firing up your browser, I have tried to annotate
most of them with direct quotations from the article. The final chapter of
the book provides some practical ideas on ways to apply the techniques
immediately.
There are four key benefits from a customer-centred approach: higher
revenues, loyal customers, improved brand value and process improvement.
• Higher revenues:
• fewer changes downstream means earlier time to market;
• earlier time to market brings competitive advantage;
• customers use all of the site’s functionality, not just a sub-set;
• early and continuous customer involvement reduces lifecycle costs;
• customers cost less to service (they won’t need to phone up to check
their order went through).
• Loyal customers:
• customers remain loyal – loyal customers generate repeat business,
demonstrate immunity to the competition, provide higher margins
and are less price sensitive;
6 E-commerce usability
• value to customers is delivered in the first release of the site as well
as upgrades;
• free word-of-mouth exposure.
• Improved brand value:
• customers learn more quickly how to use the site;
• improved usability provides a competitive edge;
• higher service quality leads to improved customer satisfaction;
• customers can focus on their goals rather than the web site: this leads
to increased productivity and fewer errors.
• Process improvement:
• reduced rework to meet customer requirements: 80 per cent of soft-
ware re-writes are due to important functionality being missed the
first time;
• the process keeps developers focused on important business metrics,
such as conversion rate;
• development, marketing and external contractors improve communi-
cation and can better orchestrate their efforts;
• risks are managed and reduced by helping you prioritise features and
product offerings.
Read on to see how you can realise these benefits on your own project, and
don’t forget to check out usabilitybook.com for links, updates and free
downloads related to the book.

Further reading and weblinks

Books and articles
Mayhew, D.J. (1999) The Usability Engineering Lifecycle. San Francisco, CA: Morgan
Kaufman Publishers.
Nielsen, J. (1999) Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. Indianapolis,
IN: New Riders Publishing.
Shneiderman, B. (1997) Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human–
Computer Interaction, 3rd edition. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Web pages
Travis, D.S. (2002) ‘E-commerce usability’. http://www.usabilitybook.com. This web
site accompanies the book. Check here for updates to the text, free downloads,
and links to useful resources.
‘Usable Web’. http://www.usableweb.com. Usable Web is a well organised collection
of links to articles on usability and the web (such as information architecture,
user interface issues, and design).
‘Useit’. http://www.useit.com. Useit presents Jakob Nielsen’s bi-monthly articles on
web design and usability. The articles are passionate, outspoken and always worth
reading.
 Introduction 7
‘WebWord’. http://www.webword.com. Webword is a well-managed, up-to-the-
minute, collection of links to articles and news items on usability.
8 E-commerce usability

2 Is your site customer centred?

You may be starting out on a new project, or perhaps this is a re-design of an

existing site. In either case, this chapter contains a short test that you can use
to measure the likely success of your site. The questions assess how closely
you followed (or plan to follow) a customer-centred design approach.
You can use the results of this test as a ‘before’ and ‘after’ measure for
your site, or you can use it to identify particular areas for improvement. An
electronic version of this test is available from the book’s web site, www.
usabilitybook.com. You can also use it as a checklist after you complete each
phase of the design to check that the key issues have been addressed.
Answer each question using a scale of 0–2, using the following key:
0: No
1: Kind of
2: Yes

Analyse the opportunity

1 Have all the project stakeholders been identified (not
just the end users)? ______
2 Have the motivations of each stakeholder been made
explicit? ______
3 Has the list of stakeholders been prioritised and is there
an explicit management strategy for the most important
stakeholders? ______
4 Does the project have a site mandate or vision statement
that clearly communicates the aims of the project to the
development team? ______
5 Is it clear how the site will make money? ______
6 Are the objectives of the site clear and unambiguous,
and are they consistent with the organisation’s overall
business goals? ______
7 Is the value that customers will get from using the site
clear and obvious? ______
 Is your site customer centred? 9
8 Have competitor web sites been identified? ______
9 Has customer research been carried out to identify the most
appropriate market or beachhead segment that will be the
prime focus of the first release? ______
10 Are the target customers clearly identifiable (i.e. the site
avoids trying to be ‘something for everybody’)? ______

Build the context of use

1 Have potential customers been consulted and have their
goals been identified? ______
2 Is there a specification of the range of intended customers
for the site? ______
3 Is there a specification of the environments (physical,
socio-cultural and technical) within which customers
will use the site? ______
4 Is there a specification of the different tasks that customers
will want to carry out at the site? ______
5 Has this list of customer tasks been prioritised and have the
critical and frequent tasks been identified? ______
6 Has this prioritised list of tasks been used to deliver the
web site in stages, with the most important functionality
delivered first? ______
7 Was information about customers, their tasks and their
environments collected using a range of techniques
(e.g. surveys, interviews, observation)? ______
8 Has the context of use information been reviewed and
verified? ______
9 Has the context of use information been presented to the
design team in an engaging and accessible way (e.g. as
personas and scenarios)? ______
10 Has the context of use information been used to drive the
design process? ______

Create the user experience

1 Have key performance indicators been set and has the site
been evaluated against these metrics? ______
2 Are these criteria based on clear customer input and do they
cover the areas of customer performance (effectiveness and
efficiency) as well as customer satisfaction? ______
3 Has the conceptual model for the site been identified? ______
4 Has a content inventory been produced, and has this been
sorted, ordered and categorised to match customers’ mental
model of the information? ______
10 E-commerce usability
5 Is the navigational framework of the site and the terminology
used for navigation items based on this customer research? ______
6 Have various prototypes been developed and evaluated and
have the results of these evaluations been used to improve
the designs? ______
7 Has the design been tested for usability with representative
customers? ______
8 Has the design been changed to address the findings of these
evaluations? ______
9 Have usability defects been prioritised based on their impact
on customers and have the defects been tracked to completion? ______
10 Has the design been documented in a style guide? ______

Track real-world usage and continuously improve the site

1 Is feedback from customers (e.g. help desks, post-release
surveys and customer visits) collected regularly and frequently
to ensure that the site continues to meet business and customer
needs? ______
2 Is this information used to identify changes in the customer
base, their environments and their tasks? ______
3 Is the specification of the context of use (customer,
environment and task profiles) updated regularly to reflect
any major changes? ______
4 Is this information used to identify the key areas of the site
to maintain and enhance? ______
5 Are measures of conversion rate, fulfilment and customer
retention tracked regularly and frequently? ______
6 Has there been verification that the business requirements
were met? ______
7 Has there been verification that the stakeholder requirements
were met? ______
8 Has there been verification that the site objectives were met? ______
9 Has there been verification that the key performance
indicators were met? ______
10 Did the design team hold a post-implementation meeting
to discuss the effectiveness of usability processes and identify
areas of improvement? ______

Interpreting your results

Add up your scores for each section independently. This provides you with
an index score for each step in the customer centred design process. Plot
your scores on the ‘Before’ template below by shading in the segments on
the relative quadrants of the diagram.
 Is your site customer centred? 11

Figure 2.1 Score templates

Plotting your scores in this way helps identify potential areas for improve-
ment. For example, you may find that you have scored high on ‘Analyse the
opportunity’ but low on ‘Build the context of use’. In that case, you should
make sure you read Part II of the book.
You should also calculate your overall score by adding up the scores for
each section. You can interpret this score in the following way:
65–80: Excellent. You apply usability principles to the design of e-commerce
sites and your company has integrated usability fully into every phase of the
lifecycle. Customers are involved in the design process early and often.
45–64: Good. You focus on usability during some parts of the development
lifecycle and try to match the site to the needs of customers. You want to
involve customers more, but your company feels that customer involvement
isn’t necessary at certain lifecycle phases (probably the pre- or post-design
phases).
25–44: Fair. Your company recognises that usability is important, but there
is no focus for it in the organisation. Usability methods are applied in an ad
hoc manner. On those occasions when customers are involved, it is usually
too late to make many changes.
0–24: Poor. Your company considers usability to be unimportant. Customers
are rarely, if ever, asked to evaluate site designs. Your e-commerce development
is unlikely to ever turn a profit.
Now you have some idea for potential areas of improvement. Read on, apply
the techniques that you learn and then return to this test to check that your
improvement continues.
12 E-commerce usability
 Running head 13

Part I
Step 1
Analyse the opportunity
14 E-commerce Usability
 Identify the Stakeholders 15

3 Identify the stakeholders

When designing an e-commerce site, it is tempting to ignore the customers

of the site (who can sometimes be hard to define) and focus instead on the
functionality (which is usually well specified). One benefit of this is that
coding and prototyping can start very early, often within the first few days of
a project. (Indeed, in some projects the prototype pre-dates the project – it is
used to gain funding.) But there are costs with this approach: most notably,
the project has spent inadequate time on capturing requirements, and once a
prototype is in circulation it becomes very difficult to change. The prototype
becomes the specification.
Even projects that identify key customers early on in the project often
tend to identify just one or two people. Common examples include the person
who is paying you to do the work (the client or the venture capitalist) and
perhaps an ‘end user’ who at this point may be quite vague and elastic.
But many people will have an influence on the success of your web site –
including a number of people who may never actually use it.
Perhaps the most familiar example is the CEO of the organisation who
sees the web site as the company’s ‘face’ to the world. He or she may place
particular demands on the design and expect to see certain features that are
of no interest to your real customers. These ‘boss’ features as we might call
them could compromise the usability of the site. But excluding them may
prevent the design from being accepted by the client. How do you manage
this situation?
An analysis of all the people who will come into contact with your site –
the stakeholders – will help you address this important first step. Stakeholder
analysis is a common procedure in project management and is a vital early
step in the customer centred design process. It will help flush out all of the
important roles and responsibilities and identify people that can make the
project succeed or fail.
Stakeholder analysis has four components:
• identify the stakeholders;
• uncover stakeholder motivations;
16 Analyse the opportunity
• prioritise the list;
• devise a management strategy.
We now address each of these steps in turn.

Identify the stakeholders

Our first step is to identify the full range of people who will interact with the
web site, no matter how superficially. This includes all those people who
have an interest in the success or failure of the site. Typical roles are shown
in Table 3.1.
Go through each of these roles for your own project. Some of the role
titles may be different on your project, and some roles may not exist at all.
But for those that do, write down names of individuals: specific people who
you can contact.
Once you have gone through this list, you need to check that you have
coverage. To do this, identify people or businesses that will make money or
save time by using the site; and identify the job titles of people who will
directly interact with the web site to achieve those benefits.
You should now have a list of stakeholder names. We now need to think
about each stakeholder’s motivations: what is that person’s interest in this
project?

Uncover stakeholder motivations

Once we have a list of names, we can begin to uncover the motivations of
each stakeholder. Human motivation is a complex topic and the aim here is
simply to uncover motivations as they apply to our particular e-commerce
development. The purpose of assigning names to roles in the previous step
was to make sure that we start to think of individuals as real people (and not
as stereotypes) in this step. People have beliefs, doubts, interests, values,
feelings, desires and worries and all of these can have an impact on their
attitudes to a new development.
As an example, Table 3.2 shows a list of possible concerns for each of the
stakeholder roles identified below. This list should be taken merely as a starting

Table 3.1 Typical stakeholder roles

• Clients or sponsors • Documentation experts

• Customers or users (57 varieties) • Marketing experts
• Shareholders or investors • Competitors
• Testers • Technology experts
• Business analysts • Domain experts
• Technical support • Regulatory bodies in the industry
• Legal experts • Representatives of trade associations
• System designers
 Identify the Stakeholders 17

Table 3.2 Likely concerns and motivations for a range of different stakeholders

Stakeholder Possible motivations

Clients or sponsors How will I make money from this project? What
risks could prevent me getting a return on my
investment?
Customers or users How will this help me do my job better? How will
(57 varieties) it help me save time or make money? How will it
help me have fun?
Shareholders or investors Will this initiative increase or decrease the value
of my shareholding in the company?
Testers How do I go about testing this site?
Business analysts How can I make sure the developers include the
results of my business modelling in their design?
Technical support What are the main problems that users are likely
to have with this site? When a user phones me
with a problem, how can I tell which page of the
site the user is on?
Legal experts Does the site contain any graphics or information
that is copyrighted by someone else? How can I
protect the information on the site from being
used by other sites?
System designers How do I go about coding the design? Can I re-
use code from other projects? Can I develop new
skills on this project?
Documentation experts How will I teach people to use this?
Marketing experts How will this initiative increase the company’s
brand value? How can I use it to collect data
about customers?
Competitors How will this initiative affect my market share?
What ideas from this site can I use on my own
site?
Technology experts Does the site use the very latest technology and
does it do so appropriately? Are there any security
concerns?
Domain experts If I help design the site, am I doing myself out of a
job? Will this de-skill me?
Regulatory bodies in the How does this change the competitive
industry environment?
Representatives of trade How does the site compare with others in the
associations industry? Which is the ‘best buy’? Does the site do
things in a novel or exciting way?
18 Analyse the opportunity
point since the specific names you have identified will have different and
additional concerns.

Prioritise the list

During the design process, you will interact with a number of the stakeholders.
Many will give you their opinion of what needs to be in the site, what is
wrong with the site and what needs to be changed. All of the feedback that
you receive is useful but you may not have time to incorporate all of the
suggestions, and anyway some of the suggestions may contradict each other.
How do you weight these concerns?
By prioritising the stakeholders, you can decide which stakeholders to pay
attention to and which ones are less important to the success of the project.
A simple method for prioritising the list of stakeholders is to use the
following technique. First, note the size of the stakeholder group as a propor-
tion of all the stakeholders and define this as Low (L), Medium (M) or High
(H). For example, a single person such as the CEO will form a low proportion
of the stakeholder group, whereas the end-users will probably form a high
proportion. Next, note the importance of this stakeholder group to the success
of the project. Once again, define this as Low (L), Medium (M) or High (H).
So for example, the importance of the CEO will probably be high, since he
or she can cancel the project.
Next, use the table in Figure 3.1 to assign a priority to the stakeholder
group. In our example, the CEO will have a priority of 3 as highlighted in
the table.
Continue this exercise for all of the stakeholders. This will provide you
with a prioritised list to help you decide whom to focus on and why.

Devise a management strategy

The final step in this stakeholder analysis is to consider how you will manage
each of the stakeholders’ concerns. For example, any investors in your e-
commerce development will be concerned about getting a return on their
investment.

H 3 2 1
Size

M 4 3 2

L 5 4 3

L M H
Importance

Figure 3.1 Example of assigning priority – ‘CEO’

 Identify the Stakeholders 19
Consider as an example a fictitious project termed ‘TicketTeller’.
TicketTeller is a web-based theatre ticketing system. Assume that the
inspiration for a web site emerged from the observation that foreign tourists
are reluctant to buy tickets from theatre box offices because of language
difficulties. So the aim of the initiative is to provide a web site where customers
can read full London theatre listings and buy tickets for theatre performances.
The main access point will be through a web browser and kiosk access may
be a later development (kiosks could be placed in London theatres and tourist
attractions).
Imagine that one of your investors looks at some early design ideas and
asks for changes to the user interface that you feel are likely to hinder usability.
As a specific example, consider a request to make a theatre logo twice as
large. Simply pointing out the possible usability problems this may cause
may have little impact (unless this investor especially values usability). To
manage the investor properly our concerns need to appeal to the investor’s
motivations.
For example, we might point out that the cost of increasing the size of the
logo is that this will move the ‘theatre listings’ functionality lower on the
screen. To see this functionality, customers will then have to scroll. Many
customers will scroll, but a percentage of them may not. If 10 per cent of
customers do not scroll, what might the costs of this be?
If it fits the investor’s motivational style, we can be very specific at this
point. Assume the site plans to have, on average, 10,000 unique visitors per
week. Assume further that, of the ten per cent of these (that is, 1,000 visitors)
who fail to see the listings, a small number – say 20 per cent or 200 visitors
– quit the site assuming that the site does not provide this functionality.
(Presumably the other 80 per cent do not need theatre listings or they will
stumble around the site and find them.) Assume further that five per cent of
the 200 visitors who quit (ten visitors) would have made a purchase at an
average cost of £100. The cost of this problem is therefore 10 × £100 or
£1,000 per week, which scales to £52,000 per year.
We have now addressed this stakeholder’s concerns with a management
strategy focused on describing the return on investment.

How to present the information

The approach advocated in this book is to use a form-based approach. This
will ensure that you address all of the main issues. Of course, the form itself
is not the critical part of the process; so long as you make an explicit note of
your answers, any format will do. However, a form-based example is shown
below (and a template is provided in Appendix 1). The example in Table 3.3
shows one entry in the table for the ‘TicketTeller’ system.
20 Analyse the opportunity
Table 3.3 Example of stakeholder analysis of one stakeholder

Stakeholder Roles and Main Concerns Management Strategy

Shareholders/Investors Use cost-benefit analysis to illustrate the

The main investor in the project is a financial impact of design decisions.
consortium of London theatres. The lead For example, assuming 10,000 visitors
investor is J. Williams whose main per week and an average transaction of
concern is getting a return on investment. £100, an increase in conversion rate
from 5% to 6% will increase turnover
by £10,000 per week or £520,000 per
year.

Summary
• All web projects have a number of stakeholders who can help the project
succeed – or fail.
• You should create a list of stakeholders, prioritise the list and devise a
strategy to manage each stakeholder group.

Further reading and weblinks

Books and articles
Neely, A., Adams, C. and Kennerly, M. (2002) Performance Prism: The Scorecard for
Measuring and Managing Stakeholder Relationships. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Financial Times/Prentice Hall.

Web pages
Overseas Development Administration (1995) ‘Guidance note on how to do stake-
holder analysis of aid projects and programmes’. http://www.euforic.org/gb/
stake1.htm. Not a web project, but an excellent case study containing checklists
and worked examples of a stakeholder analysis.
 Write the site mandate 21

4 Write the site mandate

In every e-commerce development, there comes a time when a designer wants

to add a ‘unique’ feature. The precise feature differs from project to project
but these features share some common characteristics: it takes an experienced
programmer or designer to implement; the feature does not appear on many
other web sites; and the feature takes time for customers to learn how to use
it. The programmer or designer has usually tried out the feature on a colleague
at the next desk who has been suitably enthusiastic. There is a murmur going
around the office: ‘Have you seen Jeff ’s new menu? It’s cool!’
Perhaps you have had these moments on your own project. I always find
myself cast in the role of bad guy when this situation comes up. While everyone
else is saying ‘Wow!’, I am wondering if the typical customer for this site can
be bothered to download the plug-in, configure the browser properly and
then spend time learning how to use this flashing 3-D animated menu. I say
something like, ‘Hey it’s very impressive, but you need to remember that our
customers aren’t high-energy physicists you know’.
Which is ironic, because back in the very first days of the web, web users
were high-energy physicists. Researchers at CERN, the European High-Energy
Particle Physics lab in Geneva, needed a collaboration tool. Tim Berners-Lee
gave them the World Wide Web. The people that designed the sites were
high-energy physicists and the people who used the sites were high-energy
physicists. Both the designers and the users were hewn from the same social
and intellectual block: designers and users sat at similar computers, shared
the same goals, and wanted to solve similar tasks. If a physicist was working
on a page and wanted to check that a fellow physicist would understand it,
he just needed to turn to the next desk and ask whoever sat there. This made
good web design very easy.
In the early days of the web, ‘next desk design’ worked very well. But in
today’s web environment, ‘next desk design’ is lethal. Your customers may
very well have different goals to your colleague at the next desk and they are
probably a different kind of person.
This makes good web design very difficult. You may have a feature, or
even an idea for a site, that you think is great. You try it out on people at the
next desk, and they think it’s great too. But the idea flops because the
22 Analyse the opportunity
customers of the site (14-year-old skateboarders, general practitioners, parents
with young kids or whoever) cannot or will not use it. These people are not
at the next desk – they may never even sit at a desk. But it is these people
who will decide if your site will win or lose on the web.
In the early days of web development, not having a clear idea about your
customers or the goals of the site were acceptable – because just having a
web site was an achievement. ‘Brochureware’ sites (ones that simply repro-
duced the company brochure) were endemic. But in today’s web, customers
are more savvy and have much higher expectations from sites. So it is
important to identify why the site is being developed and state precisely
what the site aims to achieve.
You may be the project manager. If so, you already have a good idea of
why the site is being developed. So you can skip this step, right?
Wrong. The purpose of this step is to make sure that everyone on the
project team shares your vision for this project. It is not unusual to find web
development projects where the CEO wants a site that allows people to order
on-line, but the marketing team thinks that the aim of the site is to collect
customer relationship management (CRM) data on customers. Moreover,
developers think the aim is to get people to register.
So the site mandate needs to be stated explicitly – in writing. On the other
hand, we want to avoid bureaucracy and rigid processes. One effective way
to achieve both goals is to use a form-based template that allows the main
points to be quickly captured and circulated without drowning anyone in
project documentation. This process has a number of benefits:
• nobody misses important steps;
• communication amongst the project team is strengthened;
• quality is improved;
• an audit trail is in place (critical to achieve compliance with ISO 13407).
None of the processes described in this book will limit designers’ or
developers’ creativity and they have been tailored to help teams work quickly.
Let us now look at the kind of information we need to specify in the site
mandate.

Project or site name

Every project or new development needs a name. This does not need to be
the final name for the site, just something that provides a rallying point for
the project team.

Characteristics of the site

We now need to describe the main characteristics of the site. What kind of
site is it? Does a similar site already exist? If so, what is currently good and
bad about it?
 Write the site mandate 23
This may be a new development. If so, what evidence do you have that
customers will be interested in it? Are there any particular technological
constraints that need to be acknowledged? For example, your system may be
aimed at WAP phones in particular, or handheld PDAs in general, or perhaps
you anticipate customers using your site through a regular web browser.
Make your assumptions explicit now before you find the development team
wasting effort researching a technology platform that was never envisaged.
This is also the point to make a first guess about the number of unique
visitors and the conversion rate you will aim for. The conversion rate – or
‘lookers to bookers’ ratio – is the number of visitors to your site who do
what you want them to: for example, buy a product, register for special
offers or sign up for your mailing list. Conversion rates in the web industry
as a whole tend to be in the low single percentages (around two to five per
cent), although some Internet-only retailers such as Amazon.com are reported
to have conversion rates in excess of ten per cent. Conversion rate is discussed
in more detail in Chapter 13.

Business model
This is the time to make explicit how the site will make money. For example,
the site may try to support itself through subscriptions (if so, how much?),
by accepting advertisements (if so, from whom?), by selling a product or by
charging commission. Alternatively, the site may not be designed to make a
profit, but perhaps to generate qualified leads for the business. In this latter
case, the business model is that funding for the site will come from within
the company (perhaps earmarked as a sales and marketing expense).

Business and brand objectives

Before considering the objectives of the site, we need to first acknowledge
the objectives of the organisation. What market is this organisation in? What
are the organisation’s medium- and long-term aims? Why does the organisa-
tion feel that the web offers a route to achieving these aims?
One way of answering these questions is by exploring the company’s brand
values. Brand value is quite different from brand awareness: brand awareness
merely shows that customers know you exist. That is no guarantee that they
will do business with you. Measurement of brand value is an inexact science,
but it is generally accepted that strong brands increase sales and earnings.
Brand, as we have said before, means more than a good logo. Customers’
perceptions of a brand are constructed from their entire experience with an
organisation. This means the shop (if the organisation has one), the employees,
the customer service representatives, the charisma and character of the CEO,
and of course the web site: how easy the site is to navigate, how simple it is
to contact someone, how straightforward it is to return a faulty product.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 But RoBards forced his will upon theirs and after a day or two of
bullying carried the two old babes to New York and across the ferry
and put them on a New Jersey Railroad train. They would reach
Washington in less than sixteen hours—and by turning down the
backs of two seats, could stretch out and sleep while the train ran
on. From Washington they could go alternately by stage and rail all
the way. This was indeed the Age of Steam. There were thirteen
thousand miles of railroad in operation!
And now RoBards had exiled the two most dangerous witnesses—
at appalling financial cost. But if it saved Immy from bankruptcy, it
was an investment in destiny. RoBards had nothing more to do but
wait, tell lies to those who asked where he had hidden his wife and
daughter, and wonder what might be the outcome of all this
conspiracy.
In the meanwhile he was installed as Judge, and Patty was not
there to see. Keith was in Columbia and much puzzled by the
absence of his mother and sister, and his father’s restlessness.
On one of RoBards’ visits to Tuliptree, Patty said with a dark look
and a hesitant manner:
“David, I’ve been thinking.”
That word “David” made him lift his head with eagerness. She
went on:
“You remember how good Doctor Matson was when poor Papa
died? How he helped us conceal the terrible truth? I was wondering
—don’t you suppose if you asked him now—he always liked Immy,
you know—and—if you appealed to him——”
RoBards groaned aloud with horror.
“Hush! in God’s name! Would you ask a judge to compound a
felony? to connive at murder?”
“Oh,” Patty sighed, “I forgot. You used to be a father, and now you
are a judge.”
The little laugh that rattled in her throat was the most bloodcurdling
sound he had ever heard.
 Its mockery of his ignoble majesty pursued him everywhere he
went. He heard it when he sat on the bench and glowered down at
the wretches who came before him with their pleading counselors. It
made a vanity of all dignity, of justice. And what was “justice” indeed,
but a crime against the helpless? First, their passions swept them
into deeds they did not want to commit; then other men seized them
and added disgrace to remorse.
Which was the higher duty—the father’s to fight the world for his
young? Or the judge’s to defend an imaginary ideal against the laws
of mercy?
His soul was in utter disarray and he found only shame whichever
way he turned. He went back to the country perplexed to a frenzy.
Patty greeted him with such a look as a sick she-wolf would give
the mate that slunk about the den where her young were
whimpering. She would not let him see his daughter.
He retreated to his library and was too dispirited to build a fire. He
stood in the bitter cold and stared through a frost-film at the forlorn
moon freezing in a steel-blue sky above an ice-encrusted world.
He was shaken from his torpor by a cry, a lancinating shriek, by
cry upon cry. He ran like a man shot full of arrows, but the door was
locked and Patty called to him to go away.
He leaned against the wall, useless, inane, while his child babbled
and screamed, then only moaned and was silent a while, then
screamed anew, and was silent again.
Agony rose and ebbed in her like a quick storm-tide, and he knew
that the old hag Nature, the ruthless midwife, was rending and
twisting her and rejoicing, laughing triumphantly at every throe. He
wondered why he had made no arrangements for Immy to be
anæsthetized. It was too late now.
This was that holy mystery, that divine crisis for which she was
born. He had endured the same torture when Immy was born. But
then there was pride and boasting as the recompense; now, the
publication of shame, the branding, the scarlet A, and the pillory.
 Then the nurse had beamed upon him as she placed in his arms
for a moment the blessing of heaven.
Now, after a maddening delay, Patty would doubtless come to the
door and thrust upon him a squirming blanketful of noisy misery and
of lifelong disgrace.
He began to drift like a prisoner in a cell. Patty would not let him in
and he would have been afraid to enter. He went back to his library
as an old horse returns to its stall from habit. He paced the floor and
stood at the window, guiltily observing the road to see if anyone had
heard the clamor and were coming in to ask if murder were being
done.
But no one moved. Even the shadows were still, frozen to the
snow. Not an owl hunted; not a field mouse scuttered. The moon
seemed not to budge. She was but a spot of glare ice on a sky
tingling with stars.
The room was dead with old air. Yet his brow burned. He flung up
the window and gulped the fresh wind that flowed in. The jar of the
casement shook down snow and it sifted across the sill to the carpet.
On his sleeve a few flakes rested and did not melt. Their patterns
caught his attention. The wonder of snow engaged his idle mind.
The air had been clear. And then suddenly there was snow. Out of
nothing these little masterworks of crystal jewelry had been created,
infinitesimal architecture beyond the skill of the Venetian glass-
spinners or the Turkish weavers of silver.
And now the flakes were blinking out, back into nothingness.
The snow had come from nowhere in armies. Each flake was an
entity, unlike any other flake. And then the air had recalled it!
This baby that was arriving was but another snowflake. It would
come from nowhere—or from where? Whither would it go if it died?
For die it must, sooner or later. Invisible, visible, invisible!
What was the soul? what was the body? Who decreed these
existences? How could any imaginable god find the time, the
patience, the interest to build every snowflake, sketch every leaf,
decide the race, the hue, the figure of every animal, bird in egg, child
in woman?
Was it to be a girl or a boy that Immy would produce? No one
could know in advance. Yet it meant everything to the soul crowded
into the body.
If this human snowflake had been taken from a waiting multitude
of unborn angels, why had God sentenced this particular soul to life
imprisonment in this particular child of dishonor? What mischief had
it done in heaven to be sentenced to earth? Could it be true, as Dr.
Chirnside preached, that this soul had been elected from the
beginning of the world to unending damnation or unending rapture
for the “glory” of God? What a fearful idea of glory! The worst Hun in
history, the most merciless inquisitor, had never equaled that
scheme of “glory.”
Who was the human father of this child-to-be? And what share
had he himself in it? The helpless grandfather of a helpless
grandchild! Why would Immy not tell the father’s name? Perhaps she
did not know! This thought was too loathsome to endure. Yet how
could one unthink a thought that has drifted into his mind like a
snowflake from nowhere?
Why should the father of the child not even be aware of its birth,
when the howling mother must be squeezed as if she were run
through a clothes-wringer?
Two thousand children were born dead every year in New York—
such a strange long procession to the cemeteries! They were
washed up on the shores of life, like the poor little victims of the
Children’s Crusade who set out for Christ’s tomb and drowned in
armies.
If Immy’s baby could only be born dead what a solution of all
problems! But it would splutter and kick, mewl and puke, and make
itself a nuisance to every sense.
And if the child died, where would it go? To hell if it were not
baptized first. That was sure, if anything were sure. Yet if it were not
of the elect it would go there anyway, in spite of any baptism, any
saintliness of its life.
If it lived, it would join the throng of illegitimate children. Of these
there were a thousand a year born in New York alone. What a
plague of vermin!
And what would its future be? It might become a thief, a murderer.
It might be sentenced to death for crime.
If RoBards continued his career as a judge, he would have many
death sentences to pass. His own grandchild might come before him
some day.
What if he should sentence it to death now? In the good old times
of the patria potestas a father could destroy an unworthy child
without punishment. Judge RoBards’ jurisdiction as a grandfather
was doubly authentic. By one curt act he could protect his daughter
from endless misery and frustration, and protect the world from this
anonymous intruder and protect this poor little waif from the
monstrous cruelty of the world.
This snowflake ought to go back to the invisible. Its existence was
God’s crime against his child. Yet he could be a god himself and by
the mere tightening of his fingers about that little wax-doll throat, fling
it back at God, rejected, broken—a toy that he refused to play with.
He owed this act to Immy. He had brought her into the world. He
loved her. He must save her from being enveloped in the curse of
this world’s hell. Let the next hell wait.
If God wanted to punish him for it forever—why, what of that? He
had committed one murder already and was already damned, no
doubt. And even God could not increase infinite torment or multiply
eternity.
He laughed at the infernal mathematics of that conceit. He felt as
haughty as Lucifer challenging Jehovah. Yes, he would force his way
into that birth chamber and do his terrible duty.
The onset of this madness set him in motion. He had not realized
how long he had stood still before that open window and that bleak
white desert, where it was too cold to snow, too cold for a wind—a
grim cold like a lockjaw.
When he turned to pace the floor, his legs were mere crutches; his
feet stump-ends. It hurt to walk. He stood still and thought again.
Yes, yes! All he had to do was to close his hand upon that tiny
windpipe. It would be no more than laying hold of a pen and signing
a warrant of arrest, a warrant of death. The same muscles, the same
gesture. It would not be murder, simply an eviction—dispossess
proceedings against an undesirable tenant, a neighbor that would
not keep the peace.
He would cheat the newspapers of what they called their rights;
but God knew they had enough scandal to print without advertising
his family name. The gossips would lose one sweetmeat; but they
never stopped yapping. He would not let the men in the clubs call his
grandchild a bastard and his daughter a—the word was vomit to his
throat.
With one delicate act of his good right hand he could rescue Immy
from a lifetime of skulking; save at the same time this poor little,
innocent, doomed petitioner from slinking crying down the years. He
could save Patty from a lifetime of obloquy and humiliation. He could
save his own name, his ancestors, his posterity, and the integrity of
this old house—all by one brief contraction of his fingers.
With a groan of joy in the magnificence of this supernal opportunity
to be a man, a father, a god, he rehearsed the gesture, put his hand
to the imaginary baby’s throat.
He drove his will into his fingers. But they could not bend. His
hand was frozen.
 CHAPTER XXXVIII

ONLY now that he tried to use his hands and found them without
hinges or feeling did he realize how cold he had been.
Pain began in him, and fear. He had endured a stealthily creeping
paralysis and when he heard Patty’s step, he was almost afraid to
speak lest his words come forth brittle and fall breaking on the floor.
He turned in slow, thudding steps. Patty shivered in the frigid air
and hitched her shawl about her, tucking in her hands as she
scolded:
“What on earth! The window open! Are you mad?”
No answer came from RoBards. His brain might as well have been
snow. He stood holding out his hands as if they were something
dead. Patty ran to him and seizing his fingers cried out in pain at
them. He was alive, he could be hurt. She began to chafe his fingers
in hers, to blow on them with her warm breath. She ran to the
window and raising it scooped up a double handful of snow and
wrapped it about his hands. Snow was warm to him, but bitter cold to
her little palms. She was warm and soft where she touched him. She
bustled about for cold water to pour on his hands, for anything that
could save them. She sought for warm thoughts to keep her world
from icy inanition.
“I hate people who say that terrible things are for the best. But
maybe this is, for once. The baby—the poor little baby—I was alone
and I was so busy taking care of Immy, that I—I forgot till it was too
late to—to——”
RoBards groaned: “You don’t mean that the baby is dead?”
If Patty had looked away with shame he would have felt that she
felt guilty of a cruel negligence, but she stared straight into his eyes.
She seemed almost to lean on his eyes. And so he felt that she was
defying him to accuse her of what she had done.
 He dared not take the dare. Then she began with suspicious
garrulity:
“Maybe it was God that took the baby back. He has solved our
problem. If the poor little thing had lived—think! But now! It’s too bad,
but—well, Immy’s a girl again. And nobody knows, nobody knows!
Nobody need ever know.”
But they were not rid of the baby yet. It waited on the sill of their
decision. Its body, built in secret with so much mystic care and borne
with such agony, was empty, but as inescapable as an abandoned
house.
The little house must be removed from the landscape it
dominated, before the neighbors grew aware of its presence.
While RoBards dully tried to set his thought-machinery going,
Patty murmured:
“I’ll have to tell Immy. She is too weak to wonder yet. She’ll carry
on terribly, but it can’t be helped. And she’ll be glad all the rest of her
days. But where shall we—what can we do with the baby now?”
“Huh?” gasped RoBards. “Oh, yes, what can we do with the—yes,
that is the question, what can we do? We’ve got to do something.”
But that could wait. Immy was faintly moaning, “Mamma! Mamma!”
Patty ran to her. RoBards followed and bent to kiss the wrung-out
wisp that had survived the long travail. She whispered feebly:
“Where’s my baby? I haven’t even seen it yet. Is it a boy or——”
Patty knelt and caressed her and asked her to be brave. Then, in
order to have done with the horror, told it to her in the fewest words.
Immy gave back the ghost of a shriek in protest against this
miserable reward of all her shame and all the rending of her soul and
body. She wanted to hold her achievement in her arms. She wanted
to feel its little mouth nuzzling her flesh, drawing away that first
clotted ache. Nature demanded that the child take up its offices in
her behalf no less than its own. Thousands of years of habit
clamored in her flesh.
 No one could say how much was love and how much was
strangled instinct. But she was frantic. She whispered Murder! and
kept maundering as she rocked her head sidewise, trying vainly to lift
her weak hands in battle:
“Oh, this is too much, this is just a little too much! How much am I
supposed to endure? Will somebody please tell me how much I am
expected to stand? That’s all I ask. Just tell me where my rights
begin, if ever. If ever! My baby! My little, little baby that has never
seen me and never can see me! Why, they won’t even let me hold
my own baby in my arms!”
RoBards stared at her in such pity that his heart seemed to beat
up into his throat. Patty knelt and put out her hands to Immy in
prayer for mercy, but Immy pushed them away, and threshed about
like a broken jumping jack yanked by an invisible giant child.
She turned her head to him and pleaded: “Papa! you bring me my
baby. You always get me what I want, papa. Get me my baby!”
Since life seemed determined to deny him his every plea, RoBards
resolved that he at least would not deny anyone else anything—
especially not Immy. He went to the big chair where the blanketed
bundle was and gathering the child into his aching arms carried it to
Immy and laid it in hers.
The way her hands and her gaze and her moans and her tears
rushed out to welcome it persuaded him that he had done the right
thing. If ever property had been restored to its owner, now was the
time.
He could not bear to see the grief that bled about the child from
Immy’s eyes. She held it close under her down-showering curls and
her tears streamed over it like rain from the eaves on snow. They
could not waken roses or violets, but they eased the sky.
She wept no longer the harsh brine of hate. Her grief was pure
regret, the meek, the baffled yearning for things that cannot be in this
helpless world.
This was that doll that as a little girl she had held to her merely
hinted breasts and had rocked to sleep and made fairy plans for.
Now and then as she wagged her head over it, and boasted of its
beauty, she would laugh a little and look up with a smile all awry and
tear-streaked.
And that was what broke RoBards: to see her battling so bravely
to find something beautiful, some pretext for laughter in the poor
rubbish of her life. He wondered that it did not break God’s heart to
see such a face uplifted. Perhaps he could not see so far. Perhaps
he turned away and rushed across the stars to hide from her, as
RoBards fled from her.
He hobbled into his library, that wolf-den of his, and he glared at it
with hatred of everything in it. He lighted the kindling laid crosswise
in the fireplace, to hear flames crackle, and to fight the dank chill.
There were lawbooks piled and outspread about his desk. He
flung them off the table to the floor. Laws! Human laws!
On the shelves there were philosophies, histories, a Bible, a
Koran, Confucius, the Talmud, Voltaire, a volume of Dr. Chirnside’s
sermons. He tore them from their places and tossed them into the air
to sprawl and scatter their leaves like snowflakes—and as full of
wisdom. He flung a few of them into the fire, but they began to
smother it. And somehow that made him laugh.
The abysmal vanity of his temper! He was more foolish and futile
than the books he insulted. Poor Job, whose God gave him to the
devil to torture on a bet, without explaining to his servant why. Poor
Kung-fu-tse trying to be wise. Poor Voltaire, with a mighty
cachinnation and a heart full of pity for the victims of persecution.
Poor Dr. Chirnside, anxiously floundering through the bogs of terror
on the stilts of dogma. Poor Jud Lasher, lying there in the walls!—or
where?
This wrestling, Jacob-wise, with invisible angels or fiends, took his
mind for a saving while from the unbearable spectacle of his own
child’s immediate hell.
There was silence again about the lonely house. By and by Patty
came into the room to say:
 “She’s asleep. I gave her some drops. Too many, I’m afraid. And
now—now what?”
They leaned against the mantelpiece, tall shadows against the
swirling flames. Her head and his were lost in the dark as if they
were giants reaching to the clouds. And they were, indeed, in the
clouds; lost there.
They both thought of the same thing, of course: As usual with
human kind, they were concerned about keeping something secret
from somebody else. They wanted to make a decent concealment of
their family shame.
RoBards’ eyes wandered and fell upon the hearthstone at his feet
with the firelight shuttling about it in ripples. Jud Lasher was under
there.
He must not hide the child in these same walls. There would be
something burlesque about that. Strange, hideous, loathsome truth
that the most sorrowful things have only to be repeated to become
comic!
He walked away from the hearthstone. It was too much like a
headstone. He went to the window. The night had not changed. The
earth was stowed away under a great tight tarpaulin of snow. The
sky was a vast steel-blue windowpane frosted with stars and the
long ice-trail of the Milky Way.
Through the snow a few trees stood upthrust. Among them the
little tulip trees huddled together slim and still. There beneath were
the bodies of his children and Patty’s. He had seen Patty cry over
them as Immy had done, and sway with their still frames, according
to that inveterate habit women have of rocking their children, awake
or asleep, alive, or——
Immy’s baby belonged out there with the family—with its tiny uncle
and its tiny aunt. They would not flinch from it or snub it because of
the absence of a marriage ceremony. It had not been to blame.
There was nothing it could have done to insist upon such a
provision; nothing to prevent its own arrival. It brought with it a
certain sanctifying grace. It brought with it a certain penitential
suffering.
RoBards nodded to himself, went to Patty and told her his plan,
and then hastened to find in the cellar an axe and a shovel, and a
discarded empty box of the nearest size for its purpose.
He put on his heaviest coat, his boots and his gloves, and a heavy
scarf. In the meantime Patty had fetched the child. She whispered:
“When I took it from her, her hands resisted. Her lips made a
kissing sound and she mumbled something that sounded like, ‘Baby
go by-by!’”
Patty had wrapped the little form in a silken shawl she had always
prized since it came out of China in one of her father’s ships—in the
wonderful days when she had had a father and he had had ships. A
girlish jealousy had persisted in her heart and she would never let
Immy wear that shawl. Now she gave it up because it was the only
thing she could find in the house precious enough to honor the going
guest and be a sacrifice.
RoBards pushed out into the snow with his weapons and his
casket, and made his way to the young tulip trees, which were no
longer so young as he imagined them.
The snow was ice and turned the shovel aside. He must crack its
surface with the ax, and it was hard for his frozen fingers to grip the
handle. Only the sheer necessity of finishing the work made it
possible for him to stand the pain. By the time he reached the soil
deep below, he was so tired and so hot that he flung off his overcoat
and his muffler and gloves.
The ground was like a boulder and the ax rang and glanced and
sprinkled sparks of fire. Before he had made the trench deep
enough, he had thrown aside his fur cap and his coat, and yet he
glowed.
At last he achieved the petty grave, and set the box in it, and
heard the clods clatter on it; filled in and trampled down the shards of
soil, and shoveled the snow upon that and made all as seemly as he
could.
 It was not a job that a gravedigger would boast of, but it was his
best. He gazed at the unmarked tomb of the anonymous wayfarer.
There should have been some rite, but he could not find a prayer to
fit the occasion or his own rebellious mood.
He was so tired, so dog-tired in body and soul that he would have
been glad to lie down in his own grave if somebody would have dug
him one.
He hobbled and slid back to the house, flung the ax and the shovel
into the cellar from the top of the stairs, and went to bed.
The next morning he would have sworn that the whole thing was
delirium. At any rate, it was finished.
But it was not finished. Immy woke at last and before her mind
was out of the spell of the drug, her arms were groping for her baby,
her breast was aching; and when she understood, her scream was
like a lightning stroke in a snowstorm.
RoBards could stand no more. He told Patty that she would have
to face the ordeal. It was cowardly to leave her, but he must save his
sanity or the whole family was ruined.
As he left the house for the barn and the horse he kept there, he
was glad to see that snow was fluttering again. That little mound
needed more snow for its concealment.
 CHAPTER XXXIX

WHEN he reached New York, RoBards had to take his frozen hands
to a physician, who managed to save them for him, though there
were times when the anguishes that clawed them made him almost
regret their possession.
He was tempted to resign his judgeship, feeling that he was
unworthy of the high bench, since he had committed crimes, and had
been ready to commit others, and had on his soul crimes that he
regretted not committing.
But he lacked the courage or the folly to publish his true reasons
for resigning and he could think of no pretexts. He solaced himself
with the partially submerged scandals of other jurists, and wondered
where a perfect soul could be found to act as judge if perfection were
to be demanded. Even Christ had put to flight all of the accusers of
the taken woman and had let her go free with a word of good advice.
At times the memory of his own black revolt against the laws
softened RoBards’ heart when he had before him men or women
accused of sins, and he punished them with nothing more than a
warning. At other times his own guilt made him merciless to the
prisoners of discovery, and he struck out with the frenzy of a man in
torment, or with the spirit of the college boys who hazed their juniors
cruelly because they had themselves been hazed by their seniors.
Deep perplexities wrung his heart when poor souls stood beneath
his eyes charged with the smuggling of unlicensed children into the
world, children without a passport, outlaw children stamped with the
strange label “illegitimate.”
They and their importers wore a new cloak in RoBards’ eyes. They
had been hitherto ridiculous, or contemptible, or odious. Now he
understood what malice there was in the joke that passion had
played on them. They were the scorched victims of a fire against
which they had taken out no insurance. Like Immy they must have
suffered bitter ecstasies of terrified rapture, long vigils of
bewilderment, heartbreaks of racking pain, with ludicrous disgrace
for their recompense.
The Albesons returned from Georgia with such a report as a
Northern farmer might have made on Southern soil without the
trouble of the journey. RoBards pretended to be satisfied. They
found that Immy was not so much improved as they expected—“Kind
of peaked and poorly,” Abby complained.
Immy came back to town and though she never quite lost that
prayer in the eyes known as the “hunted look,” she began to find
escape and finally delight in her old gayeties.
Then Captain Harry Chalender returned from California on one of
the Yankee clippers that were astounding the world by their
greyhound speed. It took him barely seventy-six days to sail from
San Francisco around the Horn to Sandy Hook, the whole trip
needing only seven months. It was indeed the age of restless
velocity. Chalender came in as usual with the prestige of broken
records.
He was rich and full of traveler’s tales of wild justice, Vigilante
executions, deluges of gold, fantastic splendors amid grueling
hardships.
His anecdotes bored RoBards, who listened to them with the poor
appetite of a stay-at-home for a wanderer’s brag. But Patty listened
hungrily, and Immy was as entranced as Desdemona hearkening to
the Moor. Chalender brought Patty a handsome gift and dared to
bring a handsomer to Immy.
Even his cynical intuitions failed to suspect the education she had
undergone, but he noted how much older she was, how wise yet
reckless. And she found him perilously interesting beyond any of the
young bucks whose farthest voyages were bus rides down
Broadway from their boarding houses to their high desks in the
counting houses.
There was nothing in Chalender’s manner toward Immy that Patty
or David could resent when they had their eyes upon him, but he
took Immy far from their eyes often. And RoBards was sure that
Patty was harrowed not only with a mother’s anxiety for a daughter,
but with an elder beauty’s resentment at a younger’s triumph.
On the next New Year’s Day Chalender came to the RoBards
home late of a snow-clouded afternoon. He explained that he had
begun up north and worked his way downtown; and St. John’s Park
was the last word to the south. This led Patty to remind RoBards with
a sharp look that she had been begging him to move up where the
people were.
The year had begun with an exhausting day. The first guest had
come before nine and it was getting toward six when Chalender rang
at the closed door. The RoBards family was jaded with the
procession of more or less befuddled visitors, for everybody still
called on everybody and drank too much too often.
Harry Chalender had tried to see if he could not establish a record
in calls. He reached the RoBards house in a pitiable condition. He
was dressed like the fop he always was, his hair curled, oiled, and
perfumed; his handkerchief scented; his waistcoat of a flowery
pattern, his feet in patent leathers glossy as of yore. His breath was
even more confusedly aromatic with cloves than usual. He
apologized thickly:
“Patty, I think I’ve done something to give me immortalily at lash.
I’ve called at shixy-sheven house between nine ’s morn’ and five ’s
even’n. And I’ve had ’s much cherry bounce I’m full of elasticicy. I
har’ly touch ground. And wines—oh, Patty! I’m a human cellar. And
food—stewed oyssers, turkey, min’ spies! But I always come back to
you, Patty, and to Immy. Seem’ you and your livin’ image, Immy, I
can’t tell whish is whish; I half suspect I’m seem’ double. Am I or—
am I?”
Giggling fatuously over his wit, he fell asleep. Patty regarded him
with anger, and RoBards with disgust; but both were dazed to see
that Immy smiled and placed a cushion under his rolling head.
Drunkenness was beginning to lose its charm. In 1846 New York
had voted against the licensing of liquor dealers by a large majority.
Maine had followed with a law prohibiting the sale or manufacture of
all strong drinks under penalty of fine or imprisonment.
Three years later New York passed a copy of the Maine law and
the Temperance party’s candidate won the governorship. But nobody
was punished; clubs were formed with no other bond than thirst. The
edict was found to be a source of infinite political corruption, general
contempt for law, and tolerance for lawbreakers. It collapsed at last
and was repealed as a failure. All the old people agreed that the
good old times were gone.
Much as RoBards had despised the immemorial tendency of old
people to forget the truth of their own youth and prate of it as a time
of romantic beauty, he found himself despairing of these new times.
The new dances were appalling. The new drinks were poison. The
new modes in love were unheard of.
Once more he was wondering if it were not his duty to horsewhip
Chalender or to kill him. The horror of involving his wife in scandal
restrained him before; now his daughter was concerned.
He pleaded with Immy, wasted commands upon her, and was
frozen by her cynical smile. She laughed most at his solemnest
moods just as her mother had done. She would mock him, hug and
kiss him, and make him hold her cloak for her glistening bare
shoulders, then skip downstairs to take Harry Chalender’s arm and
go with him in his carriage to wherever he cared to go. One night it
was to see the new play Uncle Tom’s Cabin, based on a novel
written by a clergyman’s wife, with pirated editions selling about the
world by the hundred thousand—six different theatres were playing
the play at the same time in London. Another night Chalender set
Immy forth in a box at the Castle Garden where Mario and Grisi were
singing against the gossip of the whisperers and starers at
Chalender’s new beauty. On other nights Chalender danced with
Immy at fashionable homes where she could not have gone without
him. On other nights they did not explain where they went, and
RoBards was held at bay by Immy’s derisive, “Don’t you wish you
knew?” or worse yet her riant insolence, “You’re too young to know.”
 Patty was frantic with defeat. She and Immy wrangled more like
sisters or uncongenial neighbors than like mother and daughter.
RoBards was constantly forced to intervene to keep the peace. By
paternal instinct he defended Immy against her mother and
expressed amazement at Patty’s suspicions, though they were
swarming in his own heart. He tried to win Immy by his own trust in
her:
“My darling,” he said once, “you are too young to realize how it
looks to go about with a man of an earlier generation. Chalender is
old enough to be your father. And think of his past!”
“Think of mine!” she said with a tone less of bravado than of
abjection.
This stabbed RoBards deep. But he went on as if to a stubborn
jury:
“If Chalender were honest, he would want to marry you.”
“He does!”
“Oh, God help us all!” Patty whispered with a look as if ashes had
been flung into her face and as if she tasted them.
RoBards snarled:
“I’ll kill him if he ever crosses my doorstep again!”
To which Immy responded demurely:
“Then I’ll have to meet him outside.”
This defiance was smothering. She went on:
“Why shouldn’t I marry him? I don’t have to tell him anything. He
doesn’t ask me any questions. Doesn’t dare start the question game,
perhaps. He’s lots of fun. He keeps me laughing and interested, and
—guessing.”
This was such a pasquinade on the usual romantic reasons, that
her father could contrive no better rejoinder than:
“But my little sweetheart, such a marriage would be bound to fail.”
 This soft answer drove Immy to a grosser procacity:
“Then I can divorce him easily enough. I can join the crowd and go
to Michigan. After two years of residence, I could get a divorce on
any one of seven grounds!”
“Immy!”
“Or Indiana is still better. I was reading that you can establish a
residence there after a night’s lodging. Men and women leave home
saying they’re going away for a little visit or on business and they
never come back, or come back single. If Harry Chalender didn’t
behave, I could surprise him. Besides, Harry would give me anything
I want, even a divorce, if I asked him. But don’t you worry, I’ll get
along somehow.”
And she was gone, leaving her parents marooned on a barren
arctic island.
 CHAPTER XL

WHEN his term as judge ended, RoBards declined to try for re-
election, and returned to the practice of law.
Once more the Croton River brought him clients—but also a civil
war with his son Keith. This was a sore hurt to RoBards’ heart, for he
and the boy had been mysteriously drawn together years before, and
he had found such sympathy and such loyalty in Keith’s devotion,
that he had counted upon him as a future partner in his legal career.
The water lust of New York was insatiable. As fast as new supplies
were found they were outgrown. And the more or less anonymous
and gloryless lovers of the city had always to keep a generation
ahead of its growth.
The vice of water had led to the use of an average of seventy-
eight gallons a day by each inhabitant. Every Saturday the reservoir
at Forty-second Street was half drained. A new invention called the
bathtub was coming into such favor especially of Saturdays that
some legislatures made bathing without a doctor’s advice as illegal
as drinking alcohol. The ever-reliable pulpit denounced such
cleanliness as next to ungodliness: attention to the wicked body was
indecent.
But already the need was urgent for a new reservoir. Another lake
must be established within the city. The Croton Department had
been authorized to acquire land. After much debate a thousand lots
held by a hundred owners were doomed to be submerged. They lay
in a sunken tract in the heart of a region set apart for the new park—
to be called Central because it was miles to the north of all access.
Nearly eight million dollars were voted for the purchase and
improvement of this wilderness. The project came in handy during
the panic of 1857, when the poor grew so peevish and riotous that
the city was forced to distribute bread and provide jobs. Twelve
hundred hungry citizens and a hundred horses were set to work
leveling the Park.
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