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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Children of the Tenements, by Jacob A. Riis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Children of the Tenements
+
+Author: Jacob A. Riis
+
+Illustrator: C. M.  Relyea
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2007 [EBook #21583]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILDREN OF THE TENEMENTS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Christine P. Travers and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This book was produced from scanned images of public
+domain material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all
+other inconsistencies are as in the original. Author's spelling has
+been maintained.
+Hyphen have been removed from God's-acre.
+The two types of Thought Breaks used in the book have been used in this
+project as well, type 1: 2 blank lines, type 2: line of asterisks.]
+
+
+[Illustration: "The Kid Was Standing Barefooted In The Passageway."]
+
+
+
+
+                    CHILDREN OF THE TENEMENTS
+
+
+                               BY
+
+
+                          JACOB A. RIIS
+
+            _Author of_ "_The Making of an American_,"
+                  "_The Battle with the Slum_,"
+                "_How the Other Half Lives_," _etc._
+
+
+               _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY C. M. RELYEA
+                           AND OTHERS_
+
+
+                            New York
+                      THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+                  LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
+                              1903
+
+                     _All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+                     Copyright, 1897, 1898,
+                       By THE CENTURY CO.
+
+                        Copyright, 1903,
+                   By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+
+        Set up, electrotyped, and published October, 1903.
+
+                         Norwood Press
+            J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
+                     Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+I have been asked a great many times in the last dozen years if I
+would not write an "East-side novel," and I have sometimes had much
+difficulty in convincing the publishers that I meant it when I said I
+would not. Yet the reason is plain: I cannot. I wish I could. There
+are some facts one can bring home much more easily than otherwise by
+wrapping them in fiction. But I never could invent even a small part
+of a plot. The story has to come to me complete before I can tell it.
+The stories printed in this volume came to me in the course of my work
+as police reporter for nearly a quarter of a century, and were printed
+in my paper, the _Evening Sun_. Some of them I published in the
+_Century Magazine_, the _Churchman_, and other periodicals, and they
+were embodied in an earlier collection under the title, "Out of
+Mulberry Street." Occasionally, I have used the freedom of the writer
+by stringing facts together to suit my own fancy. But none of the
+stories are invented. Nine out of ten of them are just as they came to
+me fresh from the life of the people, faithfully to portray which
+should, after all, be the aim of all fiction, as it must be its
+sufficient reward.
+
+                                             J. A. R.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                           PAGE
+
+  The Rent Baby                                              1
+
+  A Story of Bleecker Street                                13
+
+  The Kid hangs up His Stocking                             21
+
+  The Slipper-maker's Fast                                  28
+
+  Death comes to Cat Alley                                  31
+
+  A Proposal on the Elevated                                35
+
+  Little Will's Message                                     41
+
+  Lost Children                                             53
+
+  Paolo's Awakening                                         63
+
+  The Little Dollar's Christmas Journey                     78
+
+  The Kid                                                   93
+
+  When the Letter Came                                      96
+
+  The Cat took the Kosher Meat                             100
+
+  Nibsy's Christmas                                        104
+
+  In the Children's Hospital                               117
+
+  Nigger Martha's Wake                                     126
+
+  What the Christmas Sun saw in the Tenements              133
+
+  Midwinter in New York                                    150
+
+  A Chip from the Maelstrom                                173
+
+  Sarah Joyce's Husbands                                   177
+
+  Merry Christmas in the Tenements                         180
+
+  Abe's Game of Jacks                                      222
+
+  A Little Picture                                         226
+
+  A Dream of the Woods                                     228
+
+  'Twas 'Liza's Doings                                     234
+
+  Heroes who Fight Fire                                    247
+
+  John Gavin, Misfit                                       284
+
+  A Heathen Baby                                           289
+
+  The Christening in Bottle Alley                          294
+
+  In the Mulberry Street Court                             299
+
+  Difficulties of a Deacon                                 302
+
+  Fire in the Barracks                                     310
+
+  War on the Goats                                         313
+
+  He kept His Tryst                                        319
+
+  Rover's Last Fight                                       323
+
+  How Jim went to the War                                  330
+
+  A Backwoods Hero                                         341
+
+  Jack's Sermon                                            347
+
+  Skippy of Scrabble Alley                                 357
+
+  Making a Way out of the Slum                             365
+
+
+
+
+CHILDREN OF THE TENEMENTS
+
+
+
+
+THE RENT BABY
+
+
+Adam Grunschlag sat at his street stand in a deep brown study. He
+heeded not the gathering twilight, or the snow that fell in great
+white flakes, as yet with an appreciable space between, but with the
+promise of a coming storm in them. He took no notice of the bustle and
+stir all about that betokened the approaching holiday. The cries of
+the huckster hawking oranges from his cart, of the man with the
+crawling toy, and of the pedler of colored Christmas candles passed
+him by unheard. Women with big baskets jostled him, stopped and
+fingered his cabbages; he answered their inquiries mechanically.
+Adam's mind was not in the street, at his stand, but in the dark back
+basement where his wife Hansche was lying, there was no telling how
+sick. They could not afford a doctor. Of course, he might send to the
+hospital for one, but he would be sure to take her away, and then what
+would become of little Abe? Besides, if they had nothing else in the
+whole world, they had yet each other. When that was no longer the
+case--Adam would have lacked no answer to the vexed question if life
+were then worth living.
+
+Troubles come not singly, but in squads, once the bag be untied. It
+was not the least sore point with Adam that he had untied it himself.
+They were doing well enough, he and his wife, in their home in
+Leinbach, Austria, keeping a little grocery store, and living humbly
+but comfortably, when word of the country beyond the sea where much
+money was made, and where every man was as good as the next, made them
+uneasy and discontented. In the end they gave up the grocery and their
+little home, Hansche not without some tears; but she dried them
+quickly at the thought of the good times that were waiting. With these
+ever before them they bore the hardships of the steerage, and in good
+season reached Hester Street and the longed-for haven, only to
+find--this. A rear basement, dark and damp and unwholesome, for which
+the landlord, along with the privilege of keeping a stand in the
+street, which was not his to give, made them pay twelve dollars a
+month. Truly, much money was made in America, but not by those who
+paid the rent. It was all they could do, working early and late, he
+with his push-cart and at his stand, she with the needle, slaving for
+the sweater, to get the rent together and keep a roof over the head
+of little Abe.
+
+Five years they had kept that up, and things had gone from bad to
+worse. The police blackmail had taken out of it what little profit
+there was in the push-cart business. Times had grown harder than they
+ever were in Hester Street. To cap it all, two weeks ago gas had begun
+to leak into the basement from somewhere, and made Hansche sick, so
+that she dropped down at her work. Adam had complained to the
+landlord, and he had laughed at him. What did he want for twelve
+dollars, anyway? If the basement wasn't good enough for him, why
+didn't he hire an upstairs flat? The landlord did not tell him that he
+could do that for the same rent he paid for the miserable hole he
+burrowed in. He had a good thing and he knew it. Adam Grunschlag knew
+nothing of the Legal Aid Society, that is there to help such as he. He
+was afraid to appeal to the police. He was just a poor, timid Jew, of
+a race that has been hunted for centuries to make sport and revenue
+for the great and mighty. When he spoke of moving and the landlord
+said that he would forfeit the twenty dollars deposit that he had held
+back all these years, and which was all the capital the pedler had, he
+thought that was the law, and was silent. He could not afford to lose
+it, and yet he must find some way of making a change, for the sake of
+little Abe as well as his wife, and the child.
+
+At the thought of the child, the pedler gave a sudden start and was
+wide awake on the instant. Little Abe was their own, and though he had
+come in the gloom of that dismal basement, he had been the one ray of
+sunshine that had fallen into their dreary lives. But the child was a
+rent baby. In the crowded tenements of New York the lodger serves the
+same purpose as the Irishman's pig; he helps to pay the rent. "The
+child"--it was never called anything else--was a lodger. Flotsam from
+Rivington Street, after the breaking up of a family there, it had come
+to them, to perish "if the Lord so willed it" in that basement.
+"Infant slaughter houses" the Tenement House Commission had called
+their kind. The father paid seventy-five cents a week for its keep,
+pending the disclosure of the divine purpose with the baby. The
+Grunschlags, all unconscious of the partnership that was thus thrust
+upon them, did their best for it, and up to the time the trouble with
+the gas began it was a disgracefully healthy baby. Since then it had
+sickened with the rest. But now, if the worst came to the worst, what
+was to become of the child?
+
+The pedler was not given long to debate this new question. Even as he
+sat staring dumbly at nothing in his perplexity, little Abe crawled
+out of the yard with the news that "mamma was most deaded;" and though
+it was not so bad as that, it was made clear to her husband when he
+found her in one of her bad fainting spells, that things had come to a
+pass where something had to be done. There followed a last ineffectual
+interview with the landlord, a tearful leave-taking, and as the
+ambulance rolled away with Hansche to the hospital, where she would be
+a hundred times better off than in Hester Street, the pedler took
+little Abe by the hand, and, carrying the child, set out to deliver it
+over to its rightful owners. If he were rid of it, he and Abe might
+make a shift to get along. It was a case, emphatically; in which two
+were company and three a crowd.
+
+He spied the father in Stanton Street where he was working, but when
+he saw Adam he tried to run away. Desperation gave the pedler both
+strength and speed, however, and he overhauled him despite his
+handicaps, and thrust the baby upon him. But the father would have
+none of it.
+
+"Aber, mein Gott," pleaded the pedler, "vat I do mit him? He vas your
+baby."
+
+"I don't care what you do with her," said the hard-hearted father.
+"Give her away--anything. I can't keep her."
+
+And this time he really escaped. Left alone with his charge, the
+pedler bethought himself of a friend in Pitt Street who had little
+children. Where so many fed, there would be easily room for another.
+To Pitt Street he betook himself, only to meet with another setback.
+They didn't want any babies there; had enough of their own. So he went
+to a widow in East Broadway who had none, to be driven forth with hard
+words. What did a widow want with a baby? Did he want to disgrace her?
+Adam Grunschlag visited in turn every countryman he knew of on the
+East Side, and proposed to each of them to take the baby off his
+hands, without finding a single customer for it. Either because it was
+hurt by such treatment, or because it thought it time for Hansche's
+attentions, the child at length set up a great cry. Little Abe, who
+had trotted along bravely upon his four-years-old legs, wrapped in a
+big plaid shawl, lost his grip at that and joined in, howling
+dolefully that he was hungry.
+
+Adam Grunschlag gave up at last and sat down on the curb, helpless and
+hopeless. Hungry! Yes, and so was he. Since morning he had not eaten a
+morsel, and been on his feet incessantly. Two hungry mouths to fill
+beside his own and not a cent with which to buy bread. For the first
+time he felt a pang of bitterness as he saw the shoppers hurry by
+with filled baskets to homes where there was cheer and plenty. From
+the window of a tenement across the way shone the lights of a
+Christmas tree, lighted as in old-country fashion on the Holy Eve.
+Christmas! What had it ever meant to him and his but hatred and
+persecution? There was a shout from across the street and voices
+raised in laughter and song. The children could be seen dancing about
+the tree, little room though there was. Ah, yes! Let them make merry
+upon their holiday while two little ones were starving in the street.
+A colder blast than ordinary came up from the river and little Abe
+crept close to him, wailing disconsolate within his shawl.
+
+"Hey, what's this?" said a rough, but not unkindly voice at his elbow.
+"Campin' out, shepherd fashion, Moses? Bad for the kids; these ain't
+the hills of Judea."
+
+It was the policeman on the beat stirring the trio gently with his
+club. The pedler got up without a word, to move away, but little Abe,
+from fright or hunger, set up such a howl that the policeman made him
+stop to explain. While he did so, telling as briefly as he could about
+the basement and Hansche and the baby that was not his, a silver
+quarter found its way mysteriously into little Abe's fist, to the
+utter upsetting of all that "kid's" notions of policemen and their
+functions. When the pedler had done, the officer directed him to
+Police Headquarters where they would take the baby, he need have no
+fear of that.
+
+"Better leave this one there, too," was his parting counsel. Little
+Abe did not understand, but he took a firmer grip on his papa's hand,
+and never let go all the way up the three long flights of stairs to
+the police nursery where the child at last found peace and a bottle.
+But when the matron tried to coax him to stay also, he screamed and
+carried on so that they were glad to let him go lest he wake everybody
+in the building. Though proverbially Police Headquarters never sleeps,
+yet it does not like to be disturbed in its midnight nap, as it were.
+It is human with the rest of us, that is how.
+
+Down in the marble-tiled hall little Abe and his father stopped
+irresolute. Outside it was dark and windy; the snow, that had ceased
+falling in the evening, was swept through the streets on the northern
+blast. They had nowhere to go. The doorman was called downstairs just
+then to the telegraph office. When he came up again he found father
+and son curled up on the big mat by the register, sound asleep. It was
+against the regulations entirely, and he was going to wake them up
+and put them out, when he happened to glance through the glass doors
+at the storm without, and remembered that it was Christmas Eve. With a
+growl he let them sleep, trusting to luck that the inspector wouldn't
+come out. The doorman, too, was human.
+
+So it came about that the newspaper boys who ran with messages to the
+reporters' offices across the street, found them there and held a
+meeting over them. Rudie, the smartest of them, declared that his
+"fingers just itched for that sheeny's whiskers," but the others paid
+little attention to him. Even reporters' messengers are not so bad as
+they like to have others believe them, sometimes. The year before, in
+their rough sport in the alley, the boys had upset old Mary, so that
+she fell and broke her arm. That finished old Mary's scrubbing, for
+the break never healed. Ever since this, bloodthirsty Rudie had been
+stealing down Mulberry Street to the old woman's attic on pay-day and
+sharing his meagre wages with her, paying, beside, the insurance
+premium that assured her of a decent burial; though he denied it hotly
+if charged with it. So when Rudie announced that he would like to pull
+the pedler's whiskers, it was taken as a motion that he be removed to
+the reporters' quarters and made comfortable there, and the motion
+was carried unanimously. Was it not Christmas Eve?
+
+Little Abe was carried across Mulberry Street, sleeping soundly, and
+laid upon Rudie's cot. The dogs, Chief and Trilby, that run things in
+Mulberry Street when the boys are away, snuggled down by him to keep
+him warm, taking him at once under their protection. The father took
+off his shoes, and curling up by the stove, slept, tired out, but not
+until he had briefly told the boys the story he had once that evening
+gone over with the policeman. They heard it in silence, but one or two
+made notes which, could he have seen them, would have spoiled one
+Hester Street landlord's Christmas. When the pedler was asleep, they
+took them across the street and consulted with the inspector about it.
+
+Father and son slept soundly yet when, the morning papers having gone
+to press, the boys came down into the office with the night-gang of
+reporters to spend the dog-watch, according to their wont, in a game
+of ungodly poker. They were flush, for it had been pay-day in the
+afternoon, and under the reckless impulse of the holiday the jack-pot,
+ordinarily modest enough for cause, grew to unheard-of proportions. It
+contained nearly fifteen dollars when Rudie opened it at last. Amid
+breathless silence, he then and there made the only public speech of
+his life.
+
+"The pot," he said, "goes to the sheeny and his kid for their
+Christmas, or my name is mud."
+
+Wild applause followed the speech. It awakened the pedler and little
+Abe. They sat up and rubbed their eyes, while Chief and Trilby barked
+their welcome. The morning was struggling through the windows. The
+snow had ceased falling and the sky was clear.
+
+"Mornin'," said Rudie, with mock deference, "will yer worships have
+yer breakfast now, or will ye wait till ye get it?"
+
+The pedler looked about him in bewilderment. "I hab kein blam' cent,"
+he said, feeling hopelessly in his pockets.
+
+A joyous yell greeted him. "Ikey has more nor you," shouted the boys,
+showing the quarter which little Abe had held fast to in his sleep.
+"And see this."
+
+They swept the jack-pot into his lap, handfuls of shining silver. The
+pedler blinked at the sight.
+
+"Good morning and Merry Christmas," they shouted. "We just had
+Bellevue on the 'phone, and Hansche is all right. She will be out
+to-day. The gas poisoned her, that was all. For that the police will
+settle with the landlord, or we will. You go back there and get your
+money back, and go and hire a flat. This is Christmas, and don't you
+forget it!"
+
+And they pushed the pedler and little Abe, made fast upon a gorgeous
+sled that suddenly appeared from somewhere, out into the street, and
+gave them a rousing cheer as they turned the corner going east, Adam
+dragging the sled and little Abe seated on his throne, perfectly and
+radiantly happy.
+
+
+
+
+A STORY OF BLEECKER STREET
+
+
+Mrs. Kane had put the baby to bed. The regular breathing from two
+little cribs in different corners told her that her day's work was
+nearing its end. She paused at the window in the middle of her
+picking-up to look out at the autumn evening. The house stood on the
+bank of the East River near where the Harlem joins it. Below ran the
+swift stream, with the early twilight stealing over it from the near
+shore; across the water the myriad windows in the Children's Hospital
+glowed red in the sunset. From the shipyard, where men were working
+overtime, came up the sound of hammering and careless laughter.
+
+The peacefulness of the scene rested the tired woman. She stood
+absorbed, without noticing that the door behind her was opened swiftly
+and that some one came in. It was only when the baby, wakening, sat up
+in bed and asked with wide, wondering eyes, "Who is that?" that she
+turned to see.
+
+Just inside the door stood a strange woman. A glance at her dress
+showed her to be an escaped prisoner. A number of such from the Island
+were employed under guard in the adjoining hospital, and Mrs. Kane saw
+them daily. Her first impulse was to call to the men working below,
+but something in the stranger's look and attitude checked her. She
+went over to the child's bed and stood by it.
+
+"How did you get out?" she asked, confronting the woman. The question
+rose to her lips mechanically.
+
+The woman answered with a toss of her head toward the hospital. She
+was young yet, but her face was old. Debauchery had left deep scars
+upon it. Her black hair hung in disorder.
+
+"They'll be after me," she said hurriedly. Her voice was hoarse; it
+kept the promise of the face. "Don't let them. Hide me there--anywhere."
+She glanced uneasily from the open closet to the door of the inner
+room.
+
+Mrs. Kane's face hardened. The stranger was a convict, a thief
+perhaps. Why should she--A door slammed below, and there were excited
+voices in the hall, the tread of heavy steps on the stairs. The
+fugitive listened.
+
+"That's them," she said. "Quick! lemme get in! O God!" she pleaded
+with desperate entreaty, as Mrs. Kane stood coldly unresponsive, "you
+have your baby. I haven't seen mine in seven months, and they never
+wrote. I'll never have the chance again."
+
+The steps had halted in the second-floor hall. They were on the last
+flight of stairs now. The mother's heart relented.
+
+"Here," she said, "go in."
+
+The bedroom door had barely closed upon the fugitive when a man in a
+prison-keeper's garb stuck his head in from the hall. He saw only the
+mother and the baby in its crib.
+
+"Hang the woman!" he growled. "Did yez--"
+
+A voice called from the lower hall: "Hey, Billy! she ain't in there.
+She give us the slip, sure."
+
+The keeper withdrew his head, growling. In the street the hue and cry
+was raised; a prisoner had escaped.
+
+When all was quiet, Mrs. Kane opened the bedroom door. She had a dark
+wrapper and an old gray shawl on her arm.
+
+"Go," she said, not unkindly, and laid them on the bed; "Go to your
+child."
+
+The woman caught at her hand with a sob, but she withdrew it hastily
+and went back to her baby's crib.
+
+The moon shone upon the hushed streets, when a woman, hooded in a gray
+shawl, walked rapidly down Fifth Street, eying the tenements with a
+searching look as she passed. On the stoop of one, a knot of mothers
+were discussing their household affairs, idling a bit after the day's
+work. The woman halted in front of the group, and was about to ask a
+question, when one of the women arose with the exclamation:--
+
+"Mother of God! it's Mame."
+
+"Well," said the woman, testily, "and what if it is? Am I a spook that
+ye need stare at me so? Ye knowed me well enough before. Where is
+Will?"
+
+There was no answer. The women looked at one another irresolutely.
+None of them seemed to know what to say. It was the newcomer who broke
+the silence again.
+
+"Can't ye speak?" she said, in a voice in which anger and rising
+apprehension were struggling. "Where's the boy? Kate, what is it?"
+
+She had caught hold of the rail, as if in fear of falling. The woman
+addressed said hesitatingly:--
+
+"Did ye never hear, Mame? Ain't no one tole ye?"
+
+"Tole me what?" cried the other, shrilly. "They tole me nothing.
+What's wrong? Good God! 'tain't nothin' with the child?" She shook the
+other in sudden anger. "Speak, Kate, can't you?"
+
+"Will is dead," said Kate, slowly, thus urged. "It's nine weeks come
+Sunday that he fell out o' the winder and was kilt. They buried him
+from the Morgue. We thought you knowed."
+
+Stunned by the blow, the woman had sunk upon the lowest step and
+buried her face in her hands. She sat there with her shawl drawn over
+her head, as one by one the neighbors went inside. One lingered; it
+was the one they had called Kate.
+
+"Mame," she said, when the last was gone, touching her on the
+shoulder--"Mame!"
+
+An almost imperceptible movement of the head under its shawl testified
+that she heard.
+
+"Mebbe it was for the best," said Kate, irresolutely; "he might have
+took after--Tim--you know."
+
+The shrouded figure sat immovable, Kate eyed it in silence, and went
+her way.
+
+The night wore on. The streets were deserted and the stores closed.
+Only the saloon windows blazed with light. But the figure sat there
+yet. It had not stirred. Then it rose, shook out the shawl, and
+displayed the face of the convict woman who had sought refuge in Mrs.
+Kane's flat. The face was dry-eyed and hard.
+
+The policeman on the beat rang the bell of the Florence Mission at two
+o'clock on Sunday morning, and waited until Mother Pringle had
+unbolted the door. "One for you," he said briefly, and pointed toward
+the bedraggled shape that crouched in the corner. It was his day off,
+and he had no time to trouble with prisoners. The matron drew a corner
+of the wet shawl aside and took one cold hand. She eyed it
+attentively; there was a wedding ring upon it.
+
+"Why, child," she said, "you'll catch your death of cold. Come right
+in. Girls, give a hand."
+
+Two of the women inmates half led, half carried her in, and the bolts
+shut out Bleecker Street once more. They led her to the dormitory,
+where they took off her dress and shawl, heavy with the cold rain. The
+matron came bustling in; one of the girls spoke to her aside. She
+looked sharply at the newcomer.
+
+"Mamie Anderson!" she said. "Well, of all things! Where have you been
+all this while? Yes, I know," she added soothingly, as the stranger
+made a sign to speak. "Never mind; we'll talk about it to-morrow. Go
+to sleep now and get over it."
+
+But though bathed and fed and dosed with bromide,--bromide is a
+standard prescription at the Florence Mission,--Mamie Anderson did not
+get over it. Bruised and sore from many blows, broken in body and
+spirit, she told the girls who sat by her bed through the night such
+fragments of her story as she could remember. It began, the part of it
+that took account of Bleecker Street, when her husband was sent to
+State's Prison for robbery, and, to live, she took up with a scoundrel
+from whom she kept the secret of her child. With such of her earnings
+as she could steal from her tormentor she had paid little Willie's
+board until she was arrested and sent to the Island.
+
+What had happened in the three days since she escaped from the
+hospital, where she had been detailed with the scrubbing squad, she
+recalled only vaguely and with long lapses. They had been days and
+nights of wild carousing. She had come to herself at last, lying
+beaten and bound in a room in the house where her child was killed, so
+she said. A neighbor had heard her groans, released her, and given her
+car fare to go down town. So she had come and sat in the doorway of
+the Mission to die.
+
+How much of this story was the imagining of a disordered mind, the
+police never found out.
+
+Upon her body were marks as of ropes that had made dark bruises, but
+at the inquest they were said to be of blows. Toward morning, when the
+girls had lain down to snatch a moment's sleep, she called one of
+them, whom she had known before, and asked for a drink of water. As
+she took it with feeble hand, she asked:--
+
+"Lil', can you pray?"
+
+For an answer the girl knelt by her bed and prayed. When she had
+ended, Mamie Anderson fell asleep.
+
+She was still sleeping when the others got up. They noticed after a
+while that she lay very quiet and white, and one of them going to see,
+found her dead.
+
+That is the story of Mamie Anderson, as Bleecker Street told it to me.
+Out on Long Island there is, in a suburban cemetery, a lovely shaded
+spot where I sometimes sit by our child's grave. The green hillside
+slopes gently under the chestnuts, violets and buttercups spring from
+the sod, and the robin sings its jubilant note in the long June
+twilights. Halfway down the slope, six or eight green mounds cluster
+about a granite block in which are hewn the words:--
+
+     These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have
+     washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
+
+It is the burial-plot of the Florence Mission. Under one of the
+mounds lies all that was mortal of Mamie Anderson.
+
+
+
+
+THE KID HANGS UP HIS STOCKING
+
+
+The clock in the West Side Boys' Lodging-house ticked out the seconds
+of Christmas eve as slowly and methodically as if six fat turkeys were
+not sizzling in the basement kitchen against the morrow's spread, and
+as if two-score boys were not racking their brains to guess what kind
+of pies would go with them. Out on the avenue the shopkeepers were
+barring doors and windows, and shouting "Merry Christmas!" to one
+another across the street as they hurried to get home. The drays ran
+over the pavement with muffled sounds; winter had set in with a heavy
+snow-storm. In the big hall the monotonous click of checkers on the
+board kept step with the clock. The smothered exclamations of the boys
+at some unexpected, bold stroke, and the scratching of a little
+fellow's pencil on a slate, trying to figure out how long it was yet
+till the big dinner, were the only sounds that broke the quiet of the
+room. The superintendent dozed behind his desk.
+
+A door at the end of the hall creaked, and a head with a shock of
+weather-beaten hair was stuck cautiously through the opening.
+
+"Tom!" it said in a stage-whisper. "Hi, Tom! Come up an' git on ter de
+lay of de Kid."
+
+A bigger boy in a jumper, who had been lounging on two chairs by the
+group of checker players, sat up and looked toward the door. Something
+in the energetic toss of the head there aroused his instant curiosity,
+and he started across the room. After a brief whispered conference the
+door closed upon the two, and silence fell once more on the hall.
+
+They had been gone but a little while when they came back in haste.
+The big boy shut the door softly behind him and set his back against
+it.
+
+"Fellers," he said, "what d'ye t'ink? I'm blamed if de Kid ain't gone
+an' hung up his sock fer Chris'mas!"
+
+The checkers dropped, and the pencil ceased scratching on the slate,
+in breathless suspense.
+
+"Come up an' see," said Tom, briefly, and led the way.
+
+The whole band followed on tiptoe. At the foot of the stairs their
+leader halted.
+
+"Yer don't make no noise," he said, with a menacing gesture. "You,
+Savoy!"--to one in a patched shirt and with a mischievous
+twinkle,--"you don't come none o' yer monkey-shines. If you scare de
+Kid you'll get it in de neck, see!"
+
+With this admonition they stole upstairs. In the last cot of the
+double tier of bunks a boy much smaller than the rest slept, snugly
+tucked in the blankets. A tangled curl of yellow hair strayed over his
+baby face. Hitched to the bedpost was a poor, worn little stocking,
+arranged with much care so that Santa Claus should have as little
+trouble in filling it as possible. The edge of a hole in the knee had
+been drawn together and tied with a string to prevent anything falling
+out. The boys looked on in amazed silence. Even Savoy was dumb.
+
+Little Willie, or, as he was affectionately dubbed by the boys, "the
+Kid," was a waif who had drifted in among them some months before.
+Except that his mother was in the hospital, nothing was known about
+him, which was regular and according to the rule of the house. Not as
+much was known about most of its patrons; few of them knew more
+themselves, or cared to remember. Santa Claus had never been anything
+to them but a fake to make the colored supplements sell. The
+revelation of the Kid's simple faith struck them with a kind of awe.
+They sneaked quietly downstairs.
+
+"Fellers," said Tom, when they were all together again in the big
+room,--by virtue of his length, which had given him the nickname of
+"Stretch," he was the speaker on all important occasions,--"ye seen
+it yerself. Santy Claus is a-comin' to this here joint to-night. I
+wouldn't 'a' believed it. I ain't never had no dealin's wid de ole
+guy. He kinder forgot I was around, I guess. But de Kid says he is
+a-comin' to-night, an' what de Kid says goes."
+
+Then he looked round expectantly. Two of the boys, "Gimpy" and Lem,
+were conferring aside in an undertone. Presently Gimpy, who limped, as
+his name indicated, spoke up.
+
+"Lem says, says he--"
+
+"Gimpy, you chump! you'll address de chairman," interrupted Tom, with
+severe dignity, "or you'll get yer jaw broke, if yer leg _is_ short,
+see!"
+
+"Cut it out, Stretch," was Gimpy's irreverent answer. "This here ain't
+no regular meetin', an' we ain't goin' to have none o' yer rot. Lem he
+says, says he, let's break de bank an' fill de Kid's sock. He won't
+know but it wuz ole Santy done it."
+
+A yell of approval greeted the suggestion. The chairman, bound to
+exercise the functions of office in season and out of season, while
+they lasted, thumped the table.
+
+"It is regular motioned an' carried," he announced, "that we break de
+bank fer de Kid's Chris'mas. Come on, boys!"
+
+The bank was run by the house, with the superintendent as paying
+teller. He had to be consulted, particularly as it was past banking
+hours; but the affair having been succinctly put before him by a
+committee, of which Lem and Gimpy and Stretch were the talking
+members, he readily consented to a reopening of business for a
+scrutiny of the various accounts which represented the boys' earnings
+at selling papers and blacking boots, minus the cost of their keep and
+of sundry surreptitious flings at "craps" in secret corners. The
+inquiry developed an available surplus of three dollars and fifty
+cents. Savoy alone had no account; the run of craps had recently gone
+heavily against him. But in consideration of the season, the house
+voted a credit of twenty-five cents to him. The announcement was
+received with cheers. There was an immediate rush for the store, which
+was delayed only a few minutes by the necessity of Gimpy and Lem
+stopping on the stairs to "thump" one another as the expression of
+their entire satisfaction.
+
+The procession that returned to the lodging-house later on, after
+wearing out the patience of several belated storekeepers, might have
+been the very Santa's supply-train itself. It signalized its advent by
+a variety of discordant noises, which were smothered on the stairs by
+Stretch, with much personal violence, lest they wake the Kid out of
+season. With boots in hand and bated breath, the midnight band stole
+up to the dormitory and looked in. All was safe. The Kid was dreaming,
+and smiled in his sleep. The report roused a passing suspicion that he
+was faking, and Savarese was for pinching his toe to find out. As this
+would inevitably result in disclosure, Savarese and his proposal were
+scornfully sat upon. Gimpy supplied the popular explanation.
+
+"He's a-dreamin' that Santy Claus has come," he said, carefully
+working a base-ball bat past the tender spot in the stocking.
+
+"Hully Gee!" commented Shorty, balancing a drum with care on the end
+of it, "I'm thinkin' he ain't far out. Looks's ef de hull shop'd come
+along."
+
+It did when it was all in place. A trumpet and a gun that had made
+vain and perilous efforts to join the bat in the stocking leaned
+against the bed in expectant attitudes. A picture-book with a pink
+Bengal tiger and a green bear on the cover peeped over the pillow, and
+the bedposts and rail were festooned with candy and marbles in bags.
+An express-wagon with a high seat was stabled in the gangway. It
+carried a load of fir branches that left no doubt from whose livery it
+hailed. The last touch was supplied by Savoy in the shape of a monkey
+on a yellow stick, that was not in the official bill of lading.
+
+"I swiped it fer de Kid," he said briefly in explanation.
+
+When it was all done the boys turned in, but not to sleep. It was long
+past midnight before the deep and regular breathing from the beds
+proclaimed that the last had succumbed.
+
+The early dawn was tinging the frosty window panes with red when from
+the Kid's cot there came a shriek that roused the house with a start
+of very genuine surprise.
+
+"Hello!" shouted Stretch, sitting up with a jerk and rubbing his eyes.
+"Yes, sir! in a minute. Hello, Kid, what to--"
+
+The Kid was standing barefooted in the passageway, with a base-ball
+bat in one hand and a trumpet and a pair of drumsticks in the other,
+viewing with shining eyes the wagon and its cargo, the gun and all the
+rest. From every cot necks were stretched, and grinning faces watched
+the show. In the excess of his joy the Kid let out a blast on the
+trumpet that fairly shook the building. As if it were a signal, the
+boys jumped out of bed and danced a breakdown about him in their
+shirt-tails, even Gimpy joining in.
+
+"Holy Moses!" said Stretch, looking down, "if Santy Claus ain't been
+here an' forgot his hull kit, I'm blamed!"
+
+
+
+
+THE SLIPPER-MAKER'S FAST
+
+
+Isaac Josephs, slipper-maker, sat up on the fifth floor of his Allen
+Street tenement, in the gray of the morning, to finish the task he had
+set himself before Yom Kippur. Three days and three nights he had
+worked without sleep, almost without taking time to eat, to make ready
+the two dozen slippers that were to enable him to fast the fourth day
+and night for conscience' sake, and now they were nearly done. As he
+saw the end of his task near, he worked faster and faster while the
+tenement slept.
+
+Three years he had slaved for the sweater, stinted and starved
+himself, before he had saved enough to send for his wife and children,
+awaiting his summons in the city by the Black Sea. Since they came
+they had slaved and starved together; for wages had become steadily
+less, work more grinding, and hours longer and later. Still, of that
+he thought little. They had known little else, there or here; they
+were together now. The past was dead; the future was their own, even
+in the Allen Street tenement, toiling night and day at starvation
+wages. To-morrow was the feast, their first Yom Kippur since they had
+come together again,--Esther, his wife, and Ruth and little Ben,--the
+feast when, priest and patriarch of his own house, he might forget his
+bondage and be free. Poor little Ben! The hand that smoothed the soft
+leather on the last took a tenderer, lingering touch as he glanced
+toward the stool where the child had sat watching him work till his
+eyes grew small. Brave little Ben, almost a baby yet, but so patient,
+so wise, and so strong!
+
+The deep breathing of the sleeping children reached him from their
+crib. He smiled and listened, with the half-finished slipper in his
+hand. As he sat thus, a great drowsiness came upon him. He nodded
+once, twice; his hands sank into his lap, his head fell forward upon
+his chest. In the silence of the morning he slept, worn out with utter
+weariness.
+
+He awoke with a guilty start to find the first rays of the dawn
+struggling through his window, and his task yet undone. With desperate
+energy he seized the unfinished slipper to resume his work. His
+unsteady hand upset the little lamp by his side, upon which his
+burnishing-iron was heating. The oil blazed up on the floor and ran
+toward the nearly finished pile of work. The cloth on the table caught
+fire. In a fever of terror and excitement, the slipper-maker caught it
+in his hands, wrung it, and tore at it to smother the flames. His
+hands were burned, but what of that? The slippers, the slippers! If
+they were burned, it was ruin. There would be no Yom Kippur, no feast
+of Atonement, no fast--rather, no end of it; starvation for him and
+his.
+
+He beat the fire with his hands and trampled it with his feet as it
+burned and spread on the floor. His hair and his beard caught fire:
+With a despairing shriek he gave it up and fell before the precious
+slippers, barring, the way of the flames to them with his body.
+
+The shriek woke his wife. She sprang out of bed, snatched up a
+blanket, and threw it upon the fire. It went out, was smothered under
+the blanket. The slipper-maker sat up, panting and grateful. His Yom
+Kippur was saved.
+
+The tenement awoke to hear of the fire in the morning, when all Jew
+town was stirring with preparations for the feast. The slipper-maker's
+wife was setting the house to rights for the holiday then. Two
+half-naked children played about her knees, asking eager questions
+about it. Asked if her husband had often to work so hard, and what he
+made by it, she shrugged her shoulders and said, "The rent and a
+crust."
+
+And yet all this labor and effort to enable him to fast one day
+according to the old dispensation, when all the rest of the days he
+fasted according to the new!
+
+
+
+
+DEATH COMES TO CAT ALLEY
+
+
+The dead-wagon stopped at the mouth of Cat Alley. Its coming made a
+commotion among the children in the block, and the Chief of Police
+looked out of his window across the street, his attention arrested by
+the noise. He saw a little pine coffin carried into the alley under
+the arm of the driver, a shoal of ragged children trailing behind.
+After a while the driver carried it out again, shoved it in the wagon,
+where there were other boxes like it, and, slamming the door, drove
+off.
+
+A red-eyed woman watched it down the street until it disappeared
+around the corner. Then she wiped her eyes with her apron and went in.
+
+It was only Mary Welsh's baby that was dead, but to her the alley,
+never cheerful on the brightest of days, seemed hopelessly desolate
+to-day. It was all she had. Her first baby died in teething.
+
+Cat Alley is a back-yard illustration of the theory of evolution. The
+fittest survive, and the Welsh babies were not among them. It would be
+strange if they were. Mike, the father, works in a Crosby Street
+factory when he does work. It is necessary to put it that way, for,
+though he has not been discharged, he had only one day's work this
+week and none at all last week. He gets one dollar a day, and the one
+dollar he earned these last two weeks his wife had to draw to pay the
+doctor with when the baby was so sick. They have had nothing else
+coming in, and but for the wages of Mrs. Welsh's father, who lives
+with them, there would have been nothing in the house to eat.
+
+The baby came three weeks ago, right in the hardest of the hard times.
+It was never strong enough to nurse, and the milk bought in Mulberry
+Street is not for babies to grow on who are not strong enough to stand
+anything. Little John never grew at all. He lay upon his pillow this
+morning as white and wan and tiny as the day he came into a world that
+didn't want him.
+
+Yesterday, just before he died, he sat upon his grandmother's lap and
+laughed and crowed for the first time in his brief life, "just like he
+was talkin' to me," said the old woman, with a smile that struggled
+hard to keep down a sob. "I suppose it was a sort of inward cramp,"
+she added--a mother's explanation of baby laugh in Cat Alley.
+
+The mother laid out the little body on the only table in their room,
+in its only little white slip, and covered it with a piece of
+discarded lace curtain to keep off the flies. They had no ice, and no
+money to pay an undertaker for opening the little grave in Calvary,
+where their first baby lay. All night she sat by the improvised bier,
+her tears dropping silently.
+
+When morning came and brought the woman with the broken arm from
+across the hall to sit by her, it was sadly evident that the burial of
+the child must be hastened. It was not well to look at the little face
+and the crossed baby hands, and even the mother saw it.
+
+"Let the trench take him, in God's name; He has his soul," said the
+grandmother, crossing herself devoutly.
+
+An undertaker had promised to put the baby in the grave in Calvary for
+twelve dollars and take two dollars a week until it was paid. But how
+can a man raise two dollars a week, with only one coming in in two
+weeks, and that gone to the doctor? With a sigh Mike Welsh went for
+the "lines" that must smooth its way to the trench in the Potter's
+Field, and then to Mr. Blake's for the dead-wagon. It was the hardest
+walk of his life.
+
+And so it happened that the dead-wagon halted at Cat Alley and that
+little John took his first and last ride. A little cross and a number
+on the pine box, cut in the lid with a chisel, and his brief history
+was closed, with only the memory of the little life remaining to the
+Welshes to help them fight the battle alone.
+
+In the middle of the night, when the dead-lamp burned dimly at the
+bottom of the alley, a policeman brought to Police Headquarters a
+wailing child, an outcast found in the area of a Lexington Avenue
+house by a citizen, who handed it over to the police. Until its cries
+were smothered in the police nursery upstairs with the ever ready
+bottle, they reached the bereaved mother in Cat Alley and made her
+tears drop faster. As the dead-wagon drove away with its load in the
+morning, Matron Travers came out with the now sleeping waif in her
+arms. She, too, was bound for Mr. Blake's.
+
+The two took their ride on the same boat--the living child, whom no
+one wanted, to Randall's Island, to be enlisted with its number in the
+army of the city's waifs, strong and able to fight its way; the dead,
+for whom a mother's heart yearns, to its place in the great ditch.
+
+
+
+
+A PROPOSAL ON THE ELEVATED
+
+
+The sleeper on the 3.35 A.M. elevated train from the Harlem bridge was
+awake for once. The sleeper is the last car in the train, and has its
+own set that snores nightly in the same seats, grunts with the fixed
+inhospitality of the commuter at the intrusion of a stranger, and is
+on terms with Conrad, the German conductor, who knows each one of his
+passengers and wakes him up at his station. The sleeper is unique. It
+is run for the benefit of those who ride in it, not for the company's.
+It not only puts them off properly; it waits for them, if they are not
+there. The conductor knows that they will come. They are men, mostly,
+with small homes beyond the bridge, whose work takes them down town to
+the markets, the Post-office, and the busy marts of the city long
+before cockcrow. The day begins in New York at all hours.
+
+Usually the sleeper is all that its name implies, but this morning it
+was as far from it as could be. A party of young people, fresh from a
+neighboring hop, had come on board and filled the rear end of the
+car. Their feet tripped yet to the dance, and snatches of the latest
+waltz floated through the train between peals of laughter and little
+girlish shrieks. The regulars glared, discontented, in strange seats,
+unable to go to sleep. Only the railroad yardmen dropped off promptly
+as they came in. Theirs was the shortest ride, and they could least
+afford to lose time. Two old Irishmen, flanked by their dinner-pails,
+gravely discussed the Henry George campaign.
+
+Across the passage sat a group of three apart--a young man, a girl,
+and a little elderly woman with lines of care and hard work in her
+patient face. She guarded carefully three umbrellas, a very old and
+faded one, and two that were new and of silk, which she held in her
+lap, though it had not rained for a month. He was a likely young
+fellow, tall and straight, with the thoughtful eye of a student. His
+dark hair fell nearly to his shoulders, and his coat had a foreign
+cut. The girl was a typical child of the city, slight and graceful of
+form, dressed in good taste, and with a bright, winning face. The two
+chatted confidentially together, forgetful of all else, while mamma,
+between them, nodded sleepily in her seat.
+
+A sudden burst of white light flooded the car.
+
+"Hey! Ninety-ninth Street!" called the conductor, and rattled the
+door. The railroad men tumbled out pell-mell, all but one. Conrad
+shook him, and he went out mechanically, blinking his eyes.
+
+"Eighty-ninth next!" from the doorway.
+
+The laughter at the rear end of the car had died out. The young
+people, in a quieter mood, were humming a popular love-song. Presently
+above the rest rose a clear tenor:--
+
+  Oh, promise me that some day you and I
+  Will take our love together to some sky
+  Where we can be alone and faith renew--
+
+The clatter of the train as it flew over a switch drowned the rest.
+When the last wheel had banged upon the frog, I heard the young
+student's voice, in the soft accents of southern Europe:--
+
+"Wenn ich in Wien war--" He was telling her of his home and his people
+in the language of his childhood. I glanced across. She sat listening
+with kindling eyes. Mamma slumbered sweetly; her worn old hands
+clutched unconsciously the umbrellas in her lap. The two Irishmen,
+having settled the campaign, had dropped to sleep, too. In the crowded
+car the two were alone. His hand sought hers and met it halfway.
+
+"Forty-seventh!" There was a clatter of tin cans below. The contingent
+of milkmen scrambled out of their seats and off for the depot. In the
+lull that followed their going, the tenor rose from the last seat:--
+
+  Those first sweet violets of early spring,
+  Which come in whispers, thrill us both, and sing
+  Of love unspeakable that is to be,
+  Oh, promise me! Oh, promise me!
+
+The two young people faced each other. He had thrown his hat upon the
+seat beside him and held her hand fast, gesticulating with his free
+hand as he spoke rapidly, eloquently, eagerly of his prospects and his
+hopes. Her own toyed nervously with his coat-lapel, twisting and
+twirling a button as he went on. What he said might have been heard to
+the other end of the car, had there been anybody to listen. He was to
+live here always; his uncle would open a business in New York, of
+which he was to have charge, when he had learned to know the country
+and its people. It would not be long now, and then--and then--
+
+"Twenty-third Street!"
+
+There was a long stop after the levy for the ferries had left. The
+conductor went out on the platform and consulted with the
+ticket-chopper. He was scrutinizing his watch for the second time,
+when the faint jingle of an east-bound car was heard.
+
+"Here she comes!" said the ticket-chopper. A shout, and a man bounded
+up the steps, three at a time. It was an engineer who, to make
+connection with his locomotive at Chatham Square, must catch that
+train.
+
+"Hullo, Conrad! Nearly missed you," he said as he jumped on the car,
+breathless.
+
+"All right, Jack." And the conductor jerked the bell-rope. "You made
+it, though." The train sped on.
+
+Two lives, heretofore running apart, were hastening to a union. The
+lovers had seen nothing, heard nothing but each other. His eyes burned
+as hers met his and fell before them. His head bent lower until his
+face almost touched hers. His dark hair lay against her blond curls.
+The ostrich-feather on her hat swept his shoulder.
+
+"Moegtest Du mich haben?" he entreated.
+
+Above the grinding of the wheels as the train slowed up for the
+station a block ahead, pleaded the tenor:--
+
+  Oh, promise me that you will take my hand,
+  The most unworthy in this lonely land--
+
+Did she speak? Her face was hidden, but the blond curls moved with a
+nod so slight that only a lover's eye could see it. He seized her
+disengaged hand. The conductor stuck his head into the car.
+
+"Fourteenth Street!"
+
+A squad of stout, florid men with butchers' aprons started for the
+door. The girl arose hastily.
+
+"Mamma!" she called, "steh' auf! Es ist Fourteenth Street."
+
+The little woman woke up, gathered the umbrellas in her arms, and
+bustled after the marketmen, her daughter leading the way. He sat as
+one dreaming.
+
+"Ach!" he sighed, and ran his hand through his dark hair, "so rasch!"
+
+And he went out after them.
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE WILL'S MESSAGE
+
+
+"It is that or starve, Captain. I can't get a job. God knows I've
+tried, but without a recommend, it's no use. I ain't no good at
+beggin'. And--and--there's the childer."
+
+There was a desperate note in the man's voice that made the Captain
+turn and look sharply at him. A swarthy, strongly built man in a rough
+coat, and with that in his dark face which told that he had lived
+longer than his years, stood at the door of the Detective Office. His
+hand that gripped the door handle shook so that the knob rattled in
+his grasp, but not with fear. He was no stranger to that place. Black
+Bill's face had looked out from the Rogues' Gallery longer than most
+of those now there could remember. The Captain looked him over in
+silence.
+
+"You had better not, Bill," he said. "You know what will come of it.
+When you go up again it will be the last time. And up you go, sure."
+
+The man started to say something, but choked it down and went out
+without a word. The Captain got up and rang his bell.
+
+"Bill, who was here just now, is off again," he said to the officer
+who came to the door. "He says it is steal or starve, and he can't get
+a job. I guess he is right. Who wants a thief in his pay? And how can
+I recommend him? And still I think he would keep straight if he had
+the chance. Tell Murphy to look after him and see what he is up to."
+
+The Captain went out, tugging viciously at his gloves. He was in very
+bad humor. The policeman at the Mulberry Street door got hardly a nod
+for his cheery "Merry Christmas" as he passed.
+
+"Wonder what's crossed him," he said, looking down the street after
+him.
+
+The green lamps were lighted and shone upon the hurrying six o'clock
+crowds from the Broadway shops. In the great business buildings the
+iron shutters were pulled down and the lights put out, and in a little
+while the reporters' boys that carried slips from Headquarters to the
+newspaper offices across the street were the only tenants of the
+block. A stray policeman stopped now and then on the corner and tapped
+the lamp-post reflectively with his club as he looked down the
+deserted street and wondered, as his glance rested upon the Chief's
+darkened windows, how it felt to have six thousand dollars a year and
+every night off. In the Detective Office the Sergeant who had come in
+at roll-call stretched himself behind the desk and thought of home.
+The lights of a Christmas tree in the abutting Mott Street tenement
+shone through his window, and the laughter of children mingled with
+the tap of the toy drum. He pulled down the sash in order to hear
+better. As he did so, a strong draught swept his desk. The outer door
+slammed. Two detectives came in bringing a prisoner between them. A
+woman accompanied them.
+
+The Sergeant pulled the blotter toward him mechanically and dipped his
+pen.
+
+"What's the charge?" he asked.
+
+"Picking pockets in Fourteenth Street. This lady is the complainant,
+Mrs. ----"
+
+The name was that of a well-known police magistrate. The Sergeant
+looked up and bowed. His glance took in the prisoner, and a look of
+recognition came into his face.
+
+"What, Bill! So soon?" he said.
+
+The prisoner was sullenly silent. He answered the questions put to him
+briefly, and was searched. The stolen pocket-book, a small paper
+package, and a crumpled letter were laid upon the desk. The Sergeant
+saw only the pocket-book.
+
+"Looks bad," he said with wrinkled brow.
+
+"We caught him at it," explained the officer. "Guess Bill has lost
+heart. He didn't seem to care. Didn't even try to get away."
+
+The prisoner was taken to a cell. Silence fell once more upon the
+office. The Sergeant made a few red lines in the blotter and resumed
+his reveries. He was not in a mood for work. He hitched his chair
+nearer the window and looked across the yard. But the lights there
+were put out, the children's laughter had died away. Out of sorts at
+he hardly knew what, he leaned back in his chair, with his hands under
+the back of his head. Here it was Christmas Eve, and he at the desk
+instead of being out with the old woman buying things for the
+children. He thought with a sudden pang of conscience of the sled he
+had promised to get for Johnnie and had forgotten. That was hard luck.
+And what would Katie say when--
+
+He had got that far when his eye, roaming idly over the desk, rested
+upon the little package taken from the thief's pocket. Something about
+it seemed to move him with sudden interest. He sat up and reached for
+it. He felt it carefully all over. Then he undid the package slowly
+and drew forth a woolly sheep. It had a blue ribbon about its neck,
+with a tiny bell hung on it.
+
+The Sergeant set the sheep upon the desk and looked at it fixedly for
+better than a minute. Having apparently studied out its mechanism, he
+pulled its head and it baa-ed. He pulled it once more, and nodded.
+Then he took up the crumpled letter and opened it.
+
+This was what he read, scrawled in a child's uncertain hand:--
+
+"Deer Sante Claas--Pease wont yer bring me a sjeep wat bas. Aggie had
+won wonst. An Kate wants a dollie offul. In the reere 718 19th Street
+by the gas house. Your friend Will."
+
+The Sergeant read it over twice very carefully and glanced over the
+page at the sheep, as if taking stock and wondering why Kate's dollie
+was not there. Then he took the sheep and the letter and went over to
+the Captain's door. A gruff "Come in!" answered his knock. The Captain
+was pulling off his overcoat. He had just come in from his dinner.
+
+"Captain," said the Sergeant, "we found this in the pocket of Black
+Bill who is locked up for picking Mrs. ----'s pocket an hour ago. It
+is a clear case. He didn't even try to give them the slip," and he set
+the sheep upon the table and laid the letter beside it.
+
+"Black Bill?" said the Captain, with something of a start; "the
+dickens, you say!" And he took up the letter and read it. He was not a
+very good penman, was little Will. The Captain had even a harder time
+of it than the Sergeant had had making out his message.
+
+Three times he went over it, spelling out the words, and each time
+comparing it with the woolly exhibit that was part of the evidence,
+before he seemed to understand. Then it was in a voice that would have
+frightened little Will very much could he have heard it, and with a
+black look under his bushy eyebrows, that he bade the Sergeant "Fetch
+Bill up here!" One might almost have expected the little white lamb to
+have taken to its heels with fright at having raised such a storm,
+could it have run at all. But it showed no signs of fear. On the
+contrary it baa-ed quite lustily when the Sergeant should have been
+safely out of earshot. The hand of the Captain had accidentally rested
+upon the woolly head in putting down the letter. But the Sergeant was
+not out of earshot. He heard it and grinned.
+
+An iron door in the basement clanged and there were steps in the
+passageway. The doorman brought in Bill. He stood by the door,
+sullenly submissive. The Captain raised his head. It was in the shade.
+
+"So you are back, are you?" he said.
+
+The thief nodded.
+
+The Captain bent his brows upon him and said with sudden fierceness,
+"You couldn't keep honest a month, could you?"
+
+"They wouldn't let me. Who wants a thief in his pay? And the children
+were starving."
+
+It was said patiently enough, but it made the Captain wince all the
+same. They were his own words. But he did not give in so easily.
+
+"Starving?" he repeated harshly. "And that's why you got this, I
+suppose," and he pushed the sheep from under the newspaper that had
+fallen upon it by accident and covered it up.
+
+The thief looked at it and flushed to the temples. He tried to speak
+but could not. His face worked, and he seemed to be strangling. In the
+middle of his fight to master himself he saw the child's crumpled
+message on the desk. Taking a quick step across the room he snatched
+it up, wildly, fiercely.
+
+"Captain," he gasped, and broke down utterly. The hardened thief wept
+like a woman.
+
+The Captain rang his bell. He stood with his back to the prisoner when
+the doorman came in. "Take him down," he commanded. And the iron door
+clanged once more behind the prisoner.
+
+Ten minutes later the reporters were discussing across the way the
+nature of "the case" which the night promised to develop. They had
+piped off the Captain and one of his trusted men leaving the building
+together, bound east. Could they have followed them all the way, they
+would have seen them get off the car at Nineteenth Street, and go
+toward the gas house, carefully scanning the numbers of the houses as
+they went. They found one at last before which they halted. The
+Captain searched in his pocket and drew forth the baby's letter to
+Santa Claus, and they examined the number under the gas lamp. Yes,
+that was right. The door was open, and they went right through to the
+rear.
+
+Up in the third story three little noses were flattened against the
+window pane, and three childish mouths were breathing peep-holes
+through which to keep a lookout for the expected Santa Claus. It was
+cold, for there was no fire in the room, but in their fever of
+excitement the children didn't mind that. They were bestowing all
+their attention upon keeping the peep-holes open.
+
+"Do you think he will come?" asked the oldest boy--there were two boys
+and a girl--of Kate.
+
+"Yes, he will. I know he will come. Papa said so," said the child in a
+tone of conviction.
+
+"I'se so hungry, and I want my sheep," said Baby Will.
+
+"Wait and I'll tell you of the wolf," said his sister, and she took
+him on her lap. She had barely started when there were steps on the
+stairs and a tap on the door. Before the half-frightened children
+could answer it was pushed open. Two men stood on the threshold. One
+wore a big fur overcoat. The baby looked at him in wide-eyed wonder.
+
+"Is you Santa Claus?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, my little man, and are you Baby Will?" said a voice that was
+singularly different from the harsh one Baby Will's father had heard
+so recently in the Captain's office, and yet very like it.
+
+"See. This is for you, I guess," and out of the big roomy pocket came
+the woolly sheep and baa-ed right off as if it were his own pasture in
+which he was at home. And well might any sheep be content nestling at
+a baby heart so brimful of happiness as little Will's was then, child
+of a thief though he was.
+
+"Papa spoke for it, and he spoke for Kate, too, and I guess for
+everybody," said the bogus Santa Claus, "and it is all right. My sled
+will be here in a minute. Now we will just get to work and make ready
+for him. All help!"
+
+The Sergeant behind the desk in the Detective Office might have had a
+fit had he been able to witness the goings-on in that rear tenement in
+the next hour; and then again he might not. There is no telling about
+those Sergeants. The way that poor flat laid itself out of a sudden
+was fairly staggering. It was not only that a fire was made and that
+the pantry filled up in the most extraordinary manner; but a real
+Christmas tree sprang up, out of the floor, as it were, and was found
+to be all besprinkled with gold and stars and cornucopias with
+sugarplums. From the top of it, which was not higher than Santa Claus
+could easily reach, because the ceiling was low, a marvellous doll,
+with real hair and with eyes that could open and shut, looked down
+with arms wide open to take Kate to its soft wax heart. Under the
+branches of the tree browsed every animal that went into and came out
+of Noah's Ark, and there were glorious games of Messenger Boy and
+Three Bad Bears, and honey-cakes and candy apples, and a little
+yellow-bird in a cage, and what not? It was glorious. And when the
+tea-kettle began to sing, skilfully manipulated by Santa Claus's
+assistant, who nominally was known in Mulberry Street as Detective
+Sergeant Murphy, it was just too lovely for anything. The baby's eyes
+grew wider and wider, and Kate's were shining with happiness, when in
+the midst of it all she suddenly stopped and said:--
+
+"But where is papa? Why don't he come?"
+
+Santa Claus gave a little start at the sudden question, but pulled
+himself together right away.
+
+"Why, yes," he said, "he must have got lost. Now you are all right we
+will just go and see if we can find him. Mrs. McCarthy here next door
+will help you keep the kettle boiling and the lights burning till we
+come back. Just let me hear that sheep baa once more. That's right! I
+bet we'll find papa." And out they went.
+
+An hour later, while Mr. ----, the Magistrate, and his good wife were
+viewing with mock dismay the array of little stockings at their hearth
+in their fine up-town house, and talking of the adventure of Mrs.
+----with the pickpocket, there came a ring at the door-bell and the
+Captain of the detectives was ushered in. What he told them I do not
+know, but this I do know, that when he went away the honorable
+Magistrate went with him, and his wife waved good-by to them from the
+stoop with wet eyes as they drove away in a carriage hastily ordered
+up from a livery stable. While they drove down town, the Magistrate's
+wife went up to the nursery and hugged her sleeping little ones, one
+after the other, and tear-drops fell upon their warm cheeks that had
+wiped out the guilt of more than one sinner before, and the children
+smiled in their sleep. They say among the simple-minded folk of
+far-away Denmark that then they see angels in their dreams.
+
+The carriage stopped in Mulberry Street, in front of Police
+Headquarters, and there was great scurrying among the reporters, for
+now they were sure of their "case." But no "prominent citizen" came
+out, made free by the Magistrate, who opened court in the Captain's
+office. Only a rough-looking man with a flushed face, whom no one
+knew, and who stopped on the corner and looked back as one in a dream
+and then went east, the way the Captain and his man had gone on their
+expedition personating no less exalted a personage than Santa Claus
+himself.
+
+That night there was Christmas, indeed, in the rear tenement "near
+the gas house," for papa had come home just in time to share in its
+cheer. And there was no one who did it with a better will, for the
+Christmas evening that began so badly was the luckiest night in his
+life. He had the promise of a job on the morrow in his pocket, along
+with something to keep the wolf from the door in the holidays. His
+hard days were over, and he was at last to have his chance to live an
+honest life. And it was the baby's letter to Santa Claus and the baa
+sheep that did it all, with the able assistance of the Captain and the
+Sergeant. Don't let us forget the Sergeant.
+
+
+
+
+LOST CHILDREN
+
+
+I am not thinking now of theological dogmas or moral distinctions. I
+am considering the matter from the plain every-day standpoint of the
+police office. It is not my fault that the one thing that is lost more
+persistently than any other in a large city is the very thing you
+would imagine to be safest of all in the keeping of its owner. Nor do
+I pretend to explain it. It is simply one of the contradictions of
+metropolitan life. In twenty years' acquaintance with the police
+office, I have seen money, diamonds, coffins, horses, and tubs of
+butter brought there and pass into the keeping of the property clerk
+as lost or strayed. I remember a whole front stoop, brownstone, with
+steps and iron railing all complete, being put up at auction,
+unclaimed. But these were mere representatives of a class which as a
+whole kept its place and the peace. The children did neither. One
+might have been tempted to apply the old inquiry about the pins to
+them but for another contradictory circumstance: rather more of them
+are found than lost.
+
+The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children keeps the
+account of the surplus. It has now on its books half a score Jane Does
+and twice as many Richard Roes, of whom nothing more will ever be
+known than that they were found, which is on the whole, perhaps,
+best--for them certainly. The others, the lost, drift from the
+tenements and back, a host of thousands year by year. The two I am
+thinking of were of these, typical of the maelstrom.
+
+Yette Lubinsky was three years old when she was lost from her Essex
+Street home, in that neighborhood where once the police commissioners
+thought seriously of having the children tagged with name and street
+number, to save trotting them back and forth between police station
+and Headquarters. She had gone from the tenement to the corner where
+her father kept a stand, to beg a penny, and nothing more was known of
+her. Weeks after, a neighbor identified one of her little frocks as
+the match of one worn by a child she had seen dragged off by a
+rough-looking man. But though Max Lubinsky, the pedler, and Yette's
+mother camped on the steps of Police Headquarters early and late,
+anxiously questioning every one who went in and out about their lost
+child, no other word was heard of her. By and by it came to be an old
+story, and the two were looked upon as among the fixtures of the
+place. Mulberry Street has other such.
+
+They were poor and friendless in a strange land, the very language of
+which was jargon to them, as theirs was to us, timid in the crush, and
+they were shouldered out. It was not inhumanity; at least, it was not
+meant to be. It was the way of the city, with every one for himself;
+and they accepted it, uncomplaining. So they kept their vigil on the
+stone steps, in storm and fair weather, every night taking turns to
+watch all who passed. When it was a policeman with a little child, as
+it was many times between sunset and sunrise, the one on the watch
+would start up the minute they turned the corner, and run to meet
+them, eagerly scanning the little face, only to return, disappointed
+but not cast down, to the step upon which the other slept, head upon
+knees, waiting the summons to wake and watch.
+
+Their mute sorrow appealed to me, then doing night duty in the
+newspaper office across the way, and I tried to help them in their
+search for the lost Yette. They accepted my help gratefully,
+trustfully, but without loud demonstration. Together we searched the
+police records, the hospitals, the morgue, and the long register of
+the river's dead. She was not there. Having made sure of this, we
+turned to the children's asylums. We had a description of Yette sent
+to each and every one, with the minutest particulars concerning her
+and her disappearance, but no word came back in response. A year
+passed, and we were compelled at last to give over the search. It
+seemed as if every means of finding out what had become of the child
+had been exhausted, and all alike had failed.
+
+During the long search, I had occasion to go more than once to the
+Lubinskys' home. They lived up three flights, in one of the big
+barracks that give to the lower end of Essex Street the appearance of
+a deep black canon with cliff-dwellers living in tiers all the way up,
+their watch-fires showing like so many dull red eyes through the
+night. The hall was pitch-dark, and the whole building redolent of the
+slum; but in the stuffy little room where the pedler lived there was,
+in spite of it all, an atmosphere of home that set it sharply apart
+from the rest. One of these visits I will always remember. I had
+stumbled in, unthinking, upon their Sabbath-eve meal. The candles were
+lighted, and the children gathered about the table; at its head, the
+father, every trace of the timid, shrinking pedler of Mulberry Street
+laid aside with the week's toil, was invoking the Sabbath blessing
+upon his house and all it harbored. I saw him turn, with a quiver of
+the lip, to a vacant seat between him and the mother, and it was then
+that I noticed the baby's high chair, empty, but kept ever waiting
+for the little wanderer. I understood; and in the strength of domestic
+affection that burned with unquenched faith in the dark tenement after
+the many months of weary failure I read the history of this strange
+people that in every land and in every day has conquered even the slum
+with the hope of home.
+
+It was not to be put to shame here, either. Yette returned, after all,
+and the way of it came near being stranger than all the rest. Two long
+years had passed, and the memory of her and hers had long since faded
+out of Mulberry Street, when, in the overhauling of one of the
+children's homes we thought we had canvassed thoroughly, the child
+turned up, as unaccountably as she had been lost. All that I ever
+learned about it was that she had been brought there, picked up by
+some one in the street, probably, and, after more or less inquiry that
+had failed to connect with the search at our end of the line, had been
+included in their flock on some formal commitment, and had stayed
+there. Not knowing her name,--she could not tell it herself, to be
+understood,--they had given her one of their own choosing; and thus
+disguised, she might have stayed there forever but for the fortunate
+chance that cast her up to the surface once more, and gave the clew to
+her identity at last. Even then her father had nearly as much trouble
+in proving his title to his child as he had had in looking for her,
+but in the end he made it good. The frock she had worn when she was
+lost proved the missing link. The mate of it was still carefully laid
+away in the tenement. So Yette returned to fill the empty chair at the
+Sabbath board, and the pedler's faith was justified.
+
+My other chip from the maelstrom was a lad half grown. He dropped into
+my office as if out of the clouds, one long and busy day, when, tired
+and out of sorts, I sat wishing my papers and the world in general in
+Halifax. I had not heard the knock, and when I looked up, there stood
+my boy, a stout, square-shouldered lad, with heavy cowhide boots and
+dull, honest eyes--eyes that looked into mine as if with a question
+they were about to put, and then gave it up, gazing straight ahead,
+stolid, impassive. It struck me that I had seen that face before, and
+I found out immediately where. The officer of the Children's Aid
+Society who had brought him explained that Frands--that was his
+name--had been in the society's care five months and over. They had
+found him drifting in the streets, and, knowing whither that drift
+set, had taken him in charge and sent him to one of their
+lodging-houses, where he had been since, doing chores and plodding
+about in his dull way. That was where I had met him. Now they had
+decided that he should go to Florida, if he would, but first they
+would like to find out something about him. They had never been able
+to, beyond the fact that he was from Denmark. He had put his finger on
+the map in the reading-room, one day, and shown them where he came
+from: that was the extent of their information on that point. So they
+had sent him to me to talk to him in his own tongue and see what I
+could make of him.
+
+I addressed him in the politest Danish I was master of, and for an
+instant I saw the listening, questioning look return; but it vanished
+almost at once, and he answered in monosyllables, if at all. Much of
+what I said passed him entirely by. He did not seem to understand. By
+slow stages I got out of him that his father was a farm-laborer; that
+he had come over to look for his cousin, who worked in Passaic, New
+Jersey, and had found him,--Heaven knows how!--but had lost him again.
+Then he had drifted to New York, where the society's officers had come
+upon him. He nodded when told that he was to be sent far away to the
+country, much as if I had spoken of some one he had never heard of. We
+had arrived at this point when I asked him the name of his native
+town.
+
+The word he spoke came upon me with all the force of a sudden blow. I
+had played in the old village as a boy; all my childhood was bound up
+in its memories. For many years now I had not heard its name--not
+since boyhood days--spoken as he spoke it. Perhaps it was because I
+was tired: the office faded away, desk, Headquarters across the
+street, boy, officer, business, and all. In their place were the brown
+heath I loved, the distant hills, the winding wagon track, the peat
+stacks, and the solitary sheep browsing on the barrows. Forgotten the
+thirty years, the seas that rolled between, the teeming city! I was at
+home again, a child. And there he stood, the boy, with it all in his
+dull, absent look. I read it now as plain as the day.
+
+"Hua er et no? Ka do ett fosto hua a sejer?"
+
+It plumped out of me in the broad Jutland dialect I had neither heard
+nor spoken in half a lifetime, and so astonished me that I nearly fell
+off my chair. Sheep, peat-stacks, cairn, and hills all vanished
+together, and in place of the sweet heather there was the table with
+the tiresome papers. I reached out yearningly after the heath; I had
+not seen it for such a long time,--how long it did seem!--and--but in
+the same breath it was all there again in the smile that lighted up
+Frands's broad face like a glint of sunlight from a leaden sky.
+
+"Joesses, jou," he laughed, "no ka a da saa grou godt."[1]
+
+                   [Footnote 1: My exclamation on finding myself so
+                   suddenly translated back to Denmark was an
+                   impatient "Why, don't you understand me?" His
+                   answer was, "Lord, yes, now I do, indeed."]
+
+It was the first honest Danish word he had heard since he came to this
+bewildering land. I read it in his face, no longer heavy or dull; saw
+it in the way he followed my speech--spelling the words, as it were,
+with his own lips, to lose no syllable; caught it in his glad smile as
+he went on telling me about his journey, his home, and his
+homesickness for the heath, with a breathless kind of haste, as if now
+that at last he had a chance, he were afraid it was all a dream, and
+that he would presently wake up and find it gone. Then the officer
+pulled my sleeve.
+
+He had coughed once or twice, but neither of us had heard him. Now he
+held out a paper he had brought, with an apologetic gesture. It was an
+agreement Frands was to sign, if he was going to Florida. I glanced at
+it. Florida? Yes, to be sure; oh, yes, Florida. I spoke to the
+officer, and it was in the Jutland dialect. I tried again, with no
+better luck. I saw him looking at me queerly, as if he thought it was
+not quite right with me, either, and then I recovered myself, and got
+back to the office and to America; but it was an effort. One does not
+skip across thirty years and two oceans, at my age, so easily as that.
+
+And then the dull look came back into Frands's eyes, and he nodded
+stolidly. Yes, he would go to Florida. The papers were made out, and
+off he went, after giving me a hearty hand-shake that warranted he
+would come out right when he became accustomed to the new country; but
+he took something with him which it hurt me to part with.
+
+Frands is long since in Florida, growing up with the country, and
+little Yette is a young woman. So long ago was it that the current
+which sucked her under cast her up again, that there lives not in the
+whole street any one who can recall her loss. I tried to find one only
+the other day, but all the old people were dead or had moved away, and
+of the young, who were very anxious to help me, scarcely one was born
+at that time. But still the maelstrom drags down its victims; and far
+away lies my Danish heath under the gray October sky, hidden behind
+the seas.
+
+
+
+
+PAOLO'S AWAKENING
+
+
+Paolo sat cross-legged on his bench, stitching away for dear life. He
+pursed his lips and screwed up his mouth into all sorts of odd shapes
+with the effort, for it was an effort. He was only eight, and you
+would scarcely have imagined him over six, as he sat there sewing like
+a real little tailor; only Paolo knew but one seam, and that a hard
+one. Yet he held the needle and felt the edge with it in quite a
+grown-up way, and pulled the thread just as far as his short arm would
+reach. His mother sat on a stool by the window, where she could help
+him when he got into a snarl,--as he did once in a while, in spite of
+all he could do,--or when the needle had to be threaded. Then she
+dropped her own sewing, and, patting him on the head, said he was a
+good boy.
+
+Paolo felt very proud and big then, that he was able to help his
+mother, and he worked even more carefully and faithfully than before,
+so that the boss should find no fault. The shouts of the boys in the
+block, playing duck-on-a-rock down in the street, came in through the
+open window, and he laughed as he heard them. He did not envy them,
+though he liked well enough to romp with the others. His was a sunny
+temper, content with what came; besides, his supper was at stake, and
+Paolo had a good appetite. They were in sober earnest, working for
+dear life--Paolo and his mother.
+
+"Pants" for the sweater in Stanton Street was what they were making;
+little knickerbockers for boys of Paolo's own age. "Twelve pants for
+ten cents," he said, counting on his fingers. The mother brought them
+once a week--a big bundle which she carried home on her head--to have
+the buttons put on, fourteen on each pair, the bottoms turned up, and
+a ribbon sewed fast to the back seam inside. That was called
+finishing. When work was brisk--and it was not always so since there
+had been such frequent strikes in Stanton Street--they could together
+make the rent money, and even more, as Paolo was learning and getting
+a stronger grip on the needle week by week. The rent was six dollars a
+month for a dingy basement room, in which it was twilight even on the
+brightest days, and a dark little cubbyhole where it was always
+midnight, and where there was just room for a bed of old boards, no
+more. In there slept Paolo with his uncle; his mother made her bed on
+the floor of the "kitchen," as they called it.
+
+The three made the family. There used to be four; but one stormy night
+in winter Paolo's father had not come home. The uncle came alone, and
+the story he told made the poor home in the basement darker and
+drearier for many a day than it had yet been. The two men worked
+together for a padrone on the scows. They were in the crew that went
+out that day to the dumping-ground, far outside the harbor. It was a
+dangerous journey in a rough sea. The half-frozen Italians clung to
+the great heaps like so many frightened flies, when the waves rose and
+tossed the unwieldy scows about, bumping one against the other, though
+they were strung out in a long row behind the tug, quite a distance
+apart. One sea washed entirely over the last scow and nearly upset it.
+When it floated even again, two of the crew were missing, one of them
+Paolo's father. They had been washed away and lost, miles from shore.
+No one ever saw them again.
+
+The widow's tears flowed for her dead husband, whom she could not even
+see laid in a grave which the priest had blessed. The good father
+spoke to her of the sea as a vast God's acre, over which the storms
+are forever chanting anthems in His praise to whom the secrets of its
+depths are revealed; but she thought of it only as the cruel
+destroyer that had robbed her of her husband, and her tears fell
+faster. Paolo cried, too: partly because his mother cried; partly, if
+the truth must be told, because he was not to have a ride to the
+cemetery in the splendid coach. Giuseppe Salvatore, in the corner
+house, had never ceased talking of the ride he had when his father
+died, the year before. Pietro and Jim went along, too, and rode all
+the way behind the hearse with black plumes. It was a sore subject
+with Paolo, for he was in school that day.
+
+And then he and his mother dried their tears and went to work.
+Henceforth there was to be little else for them. The luxury of grief
+is not among the few luxuries which Mott Street tenements afford.
+Paolo's life, after that, was lived mainly with the pants on his hard
+bench in the rear tenement. His routine of work was varied by the
+household duties, which he shared with his mother. There were the
+meals to get, few and plain as they were. Paolo was the cook, and not
+infrequently, when a building was being torn down in the neighborhood,
+he furnished the fuel as well. Those were his off days, when he put
+the needle away and foraged with the other children, dragging old
+beams and carrying burdens far beyond his years.
+
+The truant officer never found his way to Paolo's tenement to
+discover that he could neither read nor write, and, what was more,
+would probably never learn. It would have been of little use, for the
+public schools thereabouts were crowded, and Paolo could not have got
+into one of them if he had tried. The teacher from the Industrial
+School, which he had attended for one brief season while his father
+was alive, called at long intervals, and brought him once a plant,
+which he set out in his mother's window-garden and nursed carefully
+ever after. The "garden" was contained within an old starch box, which
+had its place on the window-sill since the policeman had ordered the
+fire-escape to be cleared. It was a kitchen-garden with vegetables,
+and was almost all the green there was in the landscape. From one or
+two other windows in the yard there peeped tufts of green; but of
+trees there was none in sight--nothing but the bare clothes-poles with
+their pulley-lines stretching from every window.
+
+Beside the cemetery plot in the next block there was not an open spot
+or breathing-place, certainly not a playground, within reach of that
+great teeming slum that harbored more than a hundred thousand persons,
+young and old. Even the graveyard was shut in by a high brick wall, so
+that a glimpse of the greensward over the old mounds was to be caught
+only through the spiked iron gates, the key to which was lost, or by
+standing on tiptoe and craning one's neck. The dead there were of more
+account, though they had been forgotten these many years, than the
+living children who gazed so wistfully upon the little paradise
+through the barred gates, and were chased by the policeman when he
+came that way. Something like this thought was in Paolo's mind when he
+stood at sunset and peered in at the golden rays falling athwart the
+green, but he did not know it. Paolo was not a philosopher, but he
+loved beauty and beautiful things, and was conscious of a great hunger
+which there was nothing in his narrow world to satisfy.
+
+Certainly not in the tenement. It was old and rickety and wretched, in
+keeping with the slum of which it formed a part. The whitewash was
+peeling from the walls, the stairs were patched, and the door-step
+long since worn entirely away. It was hard to be decent in such a
+place, but the widow did the best she could. Her rooms were as neat as
+the general dilapidation would permit. On the shelf where the old
+clock stood, flanked by the best crockery, most of it cracked and
+yellow with age, there was red and green paper cut in scallops very
+nicely. Garlic and onions hung in strings over the stove, and the red
+peppers that grew in the starch-box at the window gave quite a
+cheerful appearance to the room. In the corner, under a cheap print
+of the Virgin Mary with the Child, a small night-light in a blue glass
+was always kept burning. It was a kind of illumination in honor of the
+Mother of God, through which the widow's devout nature found
+expression. Paolo always looked upon it as a very solemn show. When he
+said his prayers, the sweet, patient eyes in the picture seemed to
+watch him with a mild look that made him turn over and go to sleep
+with a sigh of contentment. He felt then that he had not been
+altogether bad, and that he was quite safe in their keeping.
+
+Yet Paolo's life was not wholly without its bright spots. Far from it.
+There were the occasional trips to the dump with Uncle Pasquale's
+dinner, where there was always sport to be had in chasing the rats
+that overran the place, fighting for the scraps and bones the trimmers
+had rescued from the scows. There were so many of them, and so bold
+were they, that an old Italian who could no longer dig, was employed
+to sit on a bale of rags and throw things at them, lest they carry off
+the whole establishment. When he hit one, the rest squealed and
+scampered away; but they were back again in a minute, and the old man
+had his hands full pretty nearly all the time. Paolo thought that his
+was a glorious job, as any boy might, and hoped that he would soon be
+old, too, and as important. And then the men at the cage--a great wire
+crate into which the rags from the ash barrels were stuffed, to be
+plunged into the river, where the tide ran through them and carried
+some of the loose dirt away. That was called washing the rags. To
+Paolo it was the most exciting thing in the world. What if some day
+the crate should bring up a fish, a real fish, from the river? When he
+thought of it he wished that he might be sitting forever on that
+string-piece, fishing with the rag-cage, particularly when he was
+tired of stitching and turning over, a whole long day.
+
+Besides, there were the real holidays, when there was a marriage, a
+christening, or a funeral in the tenement, particularly when a baby
+died whose father belonged to one of the many benefit societies. A
+brass band was the proper thing then, and the whole block took a
+vacation to follow the music and the white hearse out of their ward
+into the next. But the chief of all the holidays came once a year,
+when the feast of St. Rocco--the patron saint of the village where
+Paolo's parents had lived--was celebrated. Then a really beautiful
+altar was erected at one end of the yard, with lights and pictures on
+it. The rear fire-escapes in the whole row were decked with sheets,
+and made into handsome balconies,--reserved seats, as it were,--on
+which the tenants sat and enjoyed it.
+
+A band in gorgeous uniforms played three whole days in the yard, and
+the men in their holiday clothes stepped up, bowed, and crossed
+themselves, and laid their gifts on the plate which St. Rocco's
+namesake, the saloon-keeper in the block, who had got up the
+celebration, had put there for them. In the evening they set off great
+strings of fire-crackers in the street in the saint's honor, until the
+police interfered once and forbade that. Those were great days for
+Paolo always.
+
+But the fun Paolo loved best of all was when he could get in a corner
+by himself, with no one to disturb him, and build castles and things
+out of some abandoned clay or mortar, or wet sand if there was nothing
+better. The plastic material took strange shapes of beauty under his
+hands. It was as if life had been somehow breathed into it by his
+touch, and it ordered itself as none of the other boys could make it.
+His fingers were tipped with genius, but he did not know it, for his
+work was only for the hour. He destroyed it as soon as it was made, to
+try for something better. What he had made never satisfied him--one of
+the surest proofs that he was capable of great things, had he only
+known it. But, as I said, he did not.
+
+The teacher from the Industrial School came upon him one day, sitting
+in the corner by himself, and breathing life into the mud. She stood
+and watched him awhile, unseen, getting interested, almost excited, as
+he worked on. As for Paolo, he was solving the problem that had eluded
+him so long, and had eyes or thought for nothing else. As his fingers
+ran over the soft clay, the needle, the hard bench, the pants, even
+the sweater himself, vanished out of his sight, out of his life, and
+he thought only of the beautiful things he was fashioning to express
+the longing in his soul, which nothing mortal could shape. Then,
+suddenly, seeing and despairing, he dashed it to pieces, and came back
+to earth and to the tenement.
+
+But not to the pants and the sweater. What the teacher had seen that
+day had set her to thinking, and her visit resulted in a great change
+for Paolo. She called at night and had a long talk with his mother and
+uncle through the medium of the priest, who interpreted when they got
+to a hard place. Uncle Pasquale took but little part in the
+conversation. He sat by and nodded most of the time, assured by the
+presence of the priest that it was all right. The widow cried a good
+deal, and went more than once to take a look at the boy, lying snugly
+tucked in his bed in the inner room, quite unconscious of the weighty
+matters that were being decided concerning him. She came back the last
+time drying her eyes, and laid both her hands in the hand of the
+teacher. She nodded twice and smiled through her tears, and the
+bargain was made. Paolo's slavery was at an end.
+
+His friend came the next day and took him away, dressed up in his best
+clothes, to a large school where there were many children, not of his
+own people, and where he was received kindly. There dawned that day a
+new life for Paolo, for in the afternoon trays of modelling-clay were
+brought in, and the children were told to mould in it objects that
+were set before them. Paolo's teacher stood by, and nodded approvingly
+as his little fingers played so deftly with the clay, his face all
+lighted up with joy at this strange kind of a school-lesson.
+
+After that he had a new and faithful friend, and, as he worked away,
+putting his whole young soul into the tasks that filled it with
+radiant hope, other friends, rich and powerful, found him out in his
+slum. They brought better-paying work for his mother than sewing pants
+for the sweater, and Uncle Pasquale abandoned the scows to become a
+porter in a big shipping-house on the West Side. The little family
+moved out of the old home into a better tenement, though not far
+away. Paolo's loyal heart clung to the neighborhood where he had
+played and dreamed as a child, and he wanted it to share in his good
+fortune, now that it had come. As the days passed, the neighbors who
+had known him as little Paolo came to speak of him as one who some day
+would be a great artist and make them all proud. He laughed at that,
+and said that the first bust he would hew in marble should be that of
+his patient, faithful mother; and with that he gave her a little hug,
+and danced out of the room, leaving her to look after him with
+glistening eyes, brimming over with happiness.
+
+But Paolo's dream was to have another awakening. The years passed and
+brought their changes. In the manly youth who came forward as his name
+was called in the academy, and stood modestly at the desk to receive
+his diploma, few would have recognized the little ragamuffin who had
+dragged bundles of fire-wood to the rookery in the alley, and carried
+Uncle Pasquale's dinner-pail to the dump. But the audience gathered to
+witness the commencement exercises knew it all, and greeted him with a
+hearty welcome that recalled his early struggles and his hard-won
+success. It was Paolo's day of triumph. The class honors and the medal
+were his. The bust that had won both stood in the hall crowned with
+laurel--an Italian peasant woman, with sweet, gentle face, in which
+there lingered the memories of the patient eyes that had lulled the
+child to sleep in the old days in the alley. His teacher spoke to him,
+spoke of him, with pride in voice and glance; spoke tenderly of his
+old mother of the tenement, of his faithful work, of the loyal manhood
+that ever is the soul and badge of true genius. As he bade him welcome
+to the fellowship of artists who in him honored the best and noblest
+in their own aspirations, the emotion of the audience found voice once
+more. Paolo, flushed, his eyes filled with happy tears, stumbled out,
+he knew not how, with the coveted parchment in his hand.
+
+Home to his mother! It was the one thought in his mind as he walked
+toward the big bridge to cross to the city of his home--to tell her of
+his joy, of his success. Soon she would no longer be poor. The day of
+hardship was over. He could work now and earn money, much money, and
+the world would know and honor Paolo's mother as it had honored him.
+As he walked through the foggy winter day toward the river, where
+delayed throngs jostled one another at the bridge entrance, he thought
+with grateful heart of the friends who had smoothed the way for him.
+Ah, not for long the fog and slush! The medal carried with it a
+travelling stipend, and soon the sunlight of his native land for him
+and her. He should hear the surf wash on the shingly beach and in the
+deep grottos of which she had sung to him when a child. Had he not
+promised her this? And had they not many a time laughed for very joy
+at the prospect, the two together?
+
+He picked his way up the crowded stairs, carefully guarding the
+precious roll. The crush was even greater than usual. There had been
+delay--something wrong with the cable; but a train was just waiting,
+and he hurried on board with the rest, little heeding what became of
+him so long as the diploma was safe. The train rolled out on the
+bridge, with Paolo wedged in the crowd on the platform of the last
+car, holding the paper high over his head, where it was sheltered safe
+from the fog and the rain and the crush.
+
+Another train backed up, received its load of cross humanity, and
+vanished in the mist. The damp, gray curtain had barely closed behind
+it, and the impatient throng was fretting at a further delay, when
+consternation spread in the bridge-house. Word had come up from the
+track that something had happened. Trains were stalled all along the
+route. While the dread and uncertainty grew, a messenger ran up, out
+of breath. There had been a collision. The last train had run into the
+one preceding it, in the fog. One was killed, others were injured.
+Doctors and ambulances were wanted.
+
+They came with the police, and by and by the partly wrecked train was
+hauled up to the platform. When the wounded had been taken to the
+hospital, they bore from the train the body of a youth, clutching yet
+in his hand a torn, blood-stained paper, tied about with a purple
+ribbon. It was Paolo. The awakening had come. Brighter skies than
+those of sunny Italy had dawned upon him in the gloom and terror of
+the great crash. Paolo was at home, waiting for his mother.
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE DOLLAR'S CHRISTMAS JOURNEY
+
+
+"It is too bad," said Mrs. Lee, and she put down the magazine in which
+she had been reading of the poor children in the tenements of the
+great city that know little of Christmas joys; "no Christmas tree! One
+of them shall have one, at any rate. I think this will buy it, and it
+is so handy to send. Nobody would know that there was money in the
+letter." And she enclosed a coupon in a letter to a professor, a
+friend in the city, who, she knew, would have no trouble in finding
+the child, and had it mailed at once. Mrs. Lee was a widow whose not
+too great income was derived from the interest on some four per cent
+government bonds which represented the savings of her husband's life
+of toil, that was none the less hard because it was spent in a
+counting-room and not with shovel and spade. The coupon looked for all
+the world like a dollar bill, except that it was so small that a
+baby's hand could easily cover it. The United States, the printing on
+it said, would pay on demand to the bearer one dollar; and there was
+a number on it, just as on a full-grown dollar, that was the number of
+the bond from which it had been cut.
+
+The letter travelled all night, and was tossed and sorted and bunched
+at the end of its journey in the great gray beehive that never sleeps,
+day or night, and where half the tears and joys of the land, including
+this account of the little dollar, are checked off unceasingly as
+first-class matter or second or third, as the case may be. In the
+morning it was laid, none the worse for its journey, at the
+professor's breakfast plate. The professor was a kindly man, and he
+smiled as he read it. "To procure one small Christmas tree for a poor
+tenement," was its errand.
+
+"Little dollar," he said, "I think I know where you are needed." And
+he made a note in his book. There were other notes there that made him
+smile again as he saw them. They had names set opposite them. One
+about a Noah's ark was marked "Vivi." That was the baby; and there was
+one about a doll's carriage that had the words "Katie, sure," set over
+against it. The professor eyed the list in mock dismay.
+
+"How ever will I do it?" he sighed, as he put on his hat.
+
+"Well, you will have to get Santa Claus to help you, John," said his
+wife, buttoning his greatcoat about him. "And, mercy! the duckses'
+babies! don't forget them, whatever you do. The baby has been talking
+about nothing else since he saw them at the store, the old duck and
+the two ducklings on wheels. You know them, John?"
+
+But the professor was gone, repeating to himself as he went down the
+garden walk, "The duckses' babies, indeed!" He chuckled as he said it,
+why I cannot tell. He was very particular about his grammar, was the
+professor, ordinarily. Perhaps it was because it was Christmas eve.
+
+Down town went the professor; but instead of going with the crowd that
+was setting toward Santa Claus's headquarters, in the big Broadway
+store, he turned off into a quieter street, leading west. It took him
+to a narrow thoroughfare, with five-story tenements frowning on either
+side, where the people he met were not so well dressed as those he had
+left behind, and did not seem to be in such a hurry of joyful
+anticipation of the holiday. Into one of the tenements he went, and,
+groping his way through a pitch-dark hall, came to a door way back,
+the last one to the left, at which he knocked. An expectant voice
+said, "Come in," and the professor pushed open the door.
+
+The room was very small, very stuffy, and very dark, so dark that a
+smoking kerosene lamp that burned on a table next the stove hardly
+lighted it at all, though it was broad day. A big, unshaven man, who
+sat on the bed, rose when he saw the visitor, and stood uncomfortably
+shifting his feet and avoiding the professor's eye. The latter's
+glance was serious, though not unkind, as he asked the woman with the
+baby if he had found no work yet.
+
+"No," she said, anxiously coming to the rescue, "not yet; he was
+waitin' for a recommend." But Johnnie had earned two dollars running
+errands, and, now there was a big fall of snow, his father might get a
+job of shovelling. The woman's face was worried, yet there was a
+cheerful note in her voice that somehow made the place seem less
+discouraging than it was. The baby she nursed was not much larger than
+a middle-sized doll. Its little face looked thin and wan. It had been
+very sick, she explained, but the doctor said it was mending now. That
+was good, said the professor, and patted one of the bigger children on
+the head.
+
+There were six of them, of all sizes, from Johnnie, who could run
+errands, down. They were busy fixing up a Christmas tree that half
+filled the room, though it was of the very smallest. Yet, it was a
+real Christmas tree, left over from the Sunday-school stock, and it
+was dressed up at that. Pictures from the colored supplement of a
+Sunday newspaper hung and stood on every branch, and three pieces of
+colored glass, suspended on threads that shone in the smoky lamplight,
+lent color and real beauty to the show. The children were greatly
+tickled.
+
+"John put it up," said the mother, by way of explanation, as the
+professor eyed it approvingly. "There ain't nothing to eat on it. If
+there was, it wouldn't be there a minute. The childer be always
+a-searchin' in it."
+
+"But there must be, or else it isn't a real Christmas tree," said the
+professor, and brought out the little dollar. "This is a dollar which
+a friend gave me for the children's Christmas, and she sends her love
+with it. Now, you buy them some things and a few candles, Mrs.
+Ferguson, and then a good supper for the rest of the family. Good
+night, and a Merry Christmas to you. I think myself the baby is
+getting better." It had just opened its eyes and laughed at the tree.
+
+The professor was not very far on his way toward keeping his appointment
+with Santa Claus before Mrs. Ferguson was at the grocery laying in her
+dinner. A dollar goes a long way when it is the only one in the house;
+and when she had everything, including two cents' worth of flitter-gold,
+four apples, and five candles for the tree, the grocer footed up her
+bill on the bag that held her potatoes--ninety-eight cents. Mrs.
+Ferguson gave him the little dollar.
+
+"What's this?" said the grocer, his fat smile turning cold as he laid
+a restraining hand on the full basket. "That ain't no good."
+
+"It's a dollar, ain't it?" said the woman, in alarm. "It's all right.
+I know the man that give it to me."
+
+"It ain't all right in this store," said the grocer, sternly. "Put
+them things back. I want none o' that."
+
+The woman's eyes filled with tears as she slowly took the lid off the
+basket and lifted out the precious bag of potatoes. They were waiting
+for that dinner at home. The children were even then camping on the
+door-step to take her in to the tree in triumph. And now--
+
+For the second time a restraining hand was laid upon her basket; but
+this time it was not the grocer's. A gentleman who had come in to
+order a Christmas turkey had overheard the conversation, and had seen
+the strange bill.
+
+"It is all right," he said to the grocer. "Give it to me. Here is a
+dollar bill for it of the kind you know. If all your groceries were as
+honest as this bill, Mr. Schmidt, it would be a pleasure to trade with
+you. Don't be afraid to trust Uncle Sam where you see his promise to
+pay."
+
+The gentleman held the door open for Mrs. Ferguson, and heard the
+shout of the delegation awaiting her on the stoop as he went down the
+street.
+
+"I wonder where that came from, now," he mused. "Coupons in Bedford
+Street! I suppose somebody sent it to the woman for a Christmas gift.
+Hello! Here are old Thomas and Snowflake. Now, wouldn't it surprise
+her old stomach if I gave her a Christmas gift of oats? If only the
+shock doesn't kill her! Thomas! Oh, Thomas!"
+
+The old man thus hailed stopped and awaited the gentleman's coming. He
+was a cartman who did odd jobs through the ward, so picking up a
+living for himself and the white horse, which the boys had dubbed
+Snowflake in a spirit of fun. They were a well-matched old pair,
+Thomas and his horse. One was not more decrepit than the other.
+
+There was a tradition along the docks, where Thomas found a job now
+and then, and Snowflake an occasional straw to lunch on, that they
+were of an age, but this was denied by Thomas.
+
+"See here," said the gentleman, as he caught up with them; "I want
+Snowflake to keep Christmas, Thomas. Take this and buy him a bag of
+oats. And give it to him carefully, do you hear?--not all at once,
+Thomas. He isn't used to it."
+
+"Gee whizz!" said the old man, rubbing his eyes with his cap, as his
+friend passed out of sight, "oats fer Christmas! G'lang, Snowflake;
+yer in luck."
+
+The feed-man put on his spectacles and looked Thomas over at the
+strange order. Then he scanned the little dollar, first on one side,
+then on the other.
+
+"Never seed one like him," he said. "'Pears to me he is mighty short.
+Wait till I send round to the hockshop. He'll know, if anybody."
+
+The man at the pawnshop did not need a second look. "Why, of course,"
+he said, and handed a dollar bill over the counter. "Old Thomas, did
+you say? Well, I am blamed if the old man ain't got a stocking after
+all. They're a sly pair, he and Snowflake."
+
+Business was brisk that day at the pawnshop. The door-bell tinkled
+early and late, and the stock on the shelves grew. Bundle was added to
+bundle. It had been a hard winter so far. Among the callers in the
+early afternoon was a young girl in a gingham dress and without other
+covering, who stood timidly at the counter and asked for three dollars
+on a watch, a keepsake evidently, which she was loath to part with.
+Perhaps it was the last glimpse of brighter days. The pawnbroker was
+doubtful; it was not worth so much. She pleaded hard, while he
+compared the number of the movement with a list sent in from Police
+Headquarters.
+
+"Two," he said decisively at last, snapping the case shut--"two or
+nothing." The girl handed over the watch with a troubled sigh. He made
+out a ticket and gave it to her with a handful of silver change.
+
+Was it the sigh and her evident distress, or was it the little dollar?
+As she turned to go, he called her back.
+
+"Here, it is Christmas!" he said. "I'll run the risk." And he added
+the coupon to the little heap.
+
+The girl looked at it and at him questioningly.
+
+"It is all right," he said; "you can take it; I'm running short of
+change. Bring it back if they won't take it. I'm good for it." Uncle
+Sam had achieved a backer.
+
+In Grand Street the holiday crowds jammed every store in their eager
+hunt for bargains. In one of them, at the knit-goods counter, stood
+the girl from the pawnshop, picking out a thick, warm shawl. She
+hesitated between a gray and a maroon-colored one, and held them up to
+the light.
+
+"For you?" asked the salesgirl, thinking to aid her. She glanced at
+her thin dress and shivering form as she said it.
+
+"No," said the girl; "for mother; she is poorly and needs it." She
+chose the gray, and gave the salesgirl her handful of money.
+
+The girl gave back the coupon.
+
+"They don't go," she said; "give me another, please."
+
+"But I haven't got another," said the girl, looking apprehensively at
+the shawl. "The--Mr. Feeney said it was all right. Take it to the
+desk, please, and ask."
+
+The salesgirl took the bill and the shawl, and went to the desk. She
+came back, almost immediately, with the storekeeper, who looked
+sharply at the customer and noted the number of the coupon.
+
+"It is all right," he said, satisfied apparently by the inspection; "a
+little unusual, only. We don't see many of them. Can I help you,
+miss?" And he attended her to the door.
+
+In the street there was even more of a Christmas show going on than in
+the stores. Pedlers of toys, of mottoes, of candles, and of
+knickknacks of every description stood in rows along the curb, and
+were driving a lively trade. Their push-carts were decorated with fir
+branches--even whole Christmas trees. One held a whole cargo of Santa
+Clauses in a bower of green, each one with a cedar-bush in his folded
+arms, as a soldier carries his gun. The lights were blazing out in the
+stores, and the hucksters' torches were flaring at the corners. There
+was Christmas in the very air and Christmas in the storekeeper's till.
+It had been a very busy day. He thought of it with a satisfied nod as
+he stood a moment breathing the brisk air of the winter day, absently
+fingering the coupon the girl had paid for the shawl. A thin voice at
+his elbow said: "Merry Christmas, Mr. Stein! Here's yer paper."
+
+It was the newsboy who left the evening papers at the door every
+night. The storekeeper knew him, and something about the struggle they
+had at home to keep the roof over their heads. Mike was a kind of
+protege of his. He had helped to get him his route.
+
+"Wait a bit, Mike," he said. "You'll be wanting your Christmas from
+me. Here's a dollar. It's just like yourself: it is small, but it is
+all right. You take it home and have a good time."
+
+Was it the message with which it had been sent forth from far away in
+the country, or what was it? Whatever it was, it was just impossible
+for the little dollar to lie still in the pocket while there was want
+to be relieved, mouths to be filled, or Christmas lights to be lit. It
+just couldn't, and it didn't.
+
+Mike stopped around the corner of Allen Street, and gave three whoops
+expressive of his approval of Mr. Stein; having done which, he sidled
+up to the first lighted window out of range to examine his gift. His
+enthusiasm changed to open-mouthed astonishment as he saw the little
+dollar. His jaw fell. Mike was not much of a scholar, and could not
+make out the inscription on the coupon; but he had heard of
+shinplasters as something they "had in the war," and he took this to
+be some sort of a ten-cent piece. The policeman on the block might
+tell. Just now he and Mike were hunk. They had made up a little
+difference they'd had, and if any one would know, the cop surely
+would. And off he went in search of him.
+
+Mr. McCarthy pulled off his gloves, put his club under his arm, and
+studied the little dollar with contracted brow. He shook his head as
+he handed it back, and rendered the opinion that it was "some dom
+swindle that's ag'in' the law." He advised Mike to take it back to Mr.
+Stein, and added, as he prodded him in an entirely friendly manner in
+the ribs with his locust, that if it had been the week before he might
+have "run him in" for having the thing in his possession. As it
+happened, Mr. Stein was busy and not to be seen, and Mike went home
+between hope and fear, with his doubtful prize.
+
+There was a crowd at the door of the tenement, and Mike saw, before he
+had reached it, running, that it clustered about an ambulance that
+was backed up to the sidewalk. Just as he pushed his way through the
+throng it drove off, its clanging gong scattering the people right and
+left. A little girl sat weeping on the top step of the stoop. To her
+Mike turned for information.
+
+"Susie, what's up?" he asked, confronting her with his armful of
+papers. "Who's got hurted?"
+
+"It's papa," sobbed the girl. "He ain't hurted. He's sick, and he was
+took that bad he had to go, an' to-morrer is Christmas, an'--oh,
+Mike!"
+
+It is not the fashion of Essex Street to slop over. Mike didn't. He
+just set his mouth to a whistle and took a turn down the hall to
+think. Susie was his chum. There were seven in her flat; in his only
+four, including two that made wages. He came back from his trip with
+his mind made up.
+
+"Suse," he said, "come on in. You take this, Suse, see! an' let the
+kids have their Christmas. Mr. Stein give it to me. It's a little one,
+but if it ain't all right I'll take it back and get one that is good.
+Go on, now, Suse, you hear?" And he was gone.
+
+There was a Christmas tree that night in Susie's flat, with candles
+and apples and shining gold, but the little dollar did not pay for it.
+That rested securely in the purse of the charity visitor who had come
+that afternoon, just at the right time, as it proved. She had heard
+the story of Mike and his sacrifice, and had herself given the
+children a one-dollar bill for the coupon. They had their Christmas,
+and a joyful one, too, for the lady went up to the hospital and
+brought back word that Susie's father would be all right with rest and
+care, which he was now getting. Mike came in and helped them "sack"
+the tree when the lady was gone. He gave three more whoops for Mr.
+Stein, three for the lady, and three for the hospital doctor to even
+things up. Essex Street was all right that night.
+
+"Do you know, professor," said that learned man's wife, when, after
+supper, he had settled down in his easy-chair to admire the Noah's ark
+and the duckses' babies and the rest, all of which had arrived safely
+by express ahead of him and were waiting to be detailed to their
+appropriate stockings while the children slept--"do you know, I heard
+such a story of a little newsboy to-day. It was at the meeting of our
+district charity committee this evening. Miss Linder, our visitor,
+came right from the house." And she told the story of Mike and Susie.
+
+"And I just got the little dollar bill to keep. Here it is." She took
+the coupon out of her purse and passed it to her husband.
+
+"Eh! what?" said the professor, adjusting his spectacles and reading
+the number. "If here isn't my little dollar come back to me! Why,
+where have you been, little one? I left you in Bedford Street this
+morning, and here you come by way of Essex. Well, I declare!" And he
+told his wife how he had received it in a letter in the morning.
+
+"John," she said, with a sudden impulse,--she didn't know, and neither
+did he, that it was the charm of the little dollar that was working
+again,--"John, I guess it is a sin to stop it. Jones's children won't
+have any Christmas tree, because they can't afford it. He told me so
+this morning when he fixed the furnace. And the baby is sick. Let us
+give them the little dollar. He is here in the kitchen now."
+
+And they did; and the Joneses, and I don't know how many others, had
+a Merry Christmas because of the blessed little dollar that carried
+Christmas cheer and good luck wherever it went. For all I know, it may
+be going yet. Certainly it is a sin to stop it, and if any one has
+locked it up without knowing that he locked up the Christmas dollar,
+let him start it right out again. He can tell it easily enough. If he
+just looks at the number, that's the one.
+
+
+
+
+THE KID
+
+
+He was an every-day tough, bull-necked, square-jawed, red of face, and
+with his hair cropped short in the fashion that rules at Sing Sing and
+is admired of Battle Row. Any one could have told it at a glance. The
+bruised and wrathful face of the policeman who brought him to Mulberry
+Street, to be "stood up" before the detectives in the hope that there
+might be something against him to aggravate the offence of beating an
+officer with his own club, bore witness to it. It told a familiar
+story. The prisoner's gang had started a fight in the street, probably
+with a scheme of ultimate robbery in view, and the police had come
+upon it unexpectedly. The rest had got away with an assortment of
+promiscuous bruises. The "Kid" stood his ground, and went down with
+two "cops" on top of him after a valiant battle, in which he had
+performed the feat that entitled him to honorable mention henceforth
+in the felonious annals of the gang. There was no surrender in his
+sullen look as he stood before the desk, his hard face disfigured
+further by a streak of half-dried blood, reminiscent of the night's
+encounter. The fight had gone against him--that was all right. There
+was a time for getting square. Till then he was man enough to take his
+medicine, let them do their worst.
+
+It was there, plain as could be, in his set jaws and dogged bearing as
+he came out, numbered now and indexed in the rogues' gallery, and
+started for the police court between two officers. It chanced that I
+was going the same way, and joined company. Besides, I have certain
+theories concerning toughs which my friend the sergeant says are rot,
+and I was not averse to testing them on the Kid.
+
+But the Kid was a bad subject. He replied to my friendly advances with
+a muttered curse, or not at all, and upset all my notions in the most
+reckless way. Conversation had ceased before we were halfway across to
+Broadway. He "wanted no guff," and I left him to his meditations
+respecting his defenceless state. At Broadway there was a jam of
+trucks, and we stopped at the corner to wait for an opening.
+
+It all happened so quickly that only a confused picture of it is in my
+mind till this day. A sudden start, a leap, and a warning cry, and the
+Kid had wrenched himself loose. He was free. I was dimly conscious of
+a rush of blue and brass; and then I saw--the whole street saw--a
+child, a toddling baby, in the middle of the railroad track, right in
+front of the coming car. It reached out its tiny hand toward the madly
+clanging bell and crowed. A scream rose wild and piercing above the
+tumult; men struggled with a frantic woman on the curb, and turned
+their heads away--
+
+And then there stood the Kid, with the child in his arms, unhurt. I
+see him now, as he set it down, gently as any woman, trying with
+lingering touch to unclasp the grip of the baby hand upon his rough
+finger. I see the hard look coming back into his face as the
+policeman, red and out of breath, twisted the nipper on his wrist,
+with a half-uncertain aside to me, "Them toughs there ain't no
+depending on, nohow." Sullen, defiant, planning vengeance, I see him
+led away to jail. Ruffian and thief! The police blotter said so.
+
+But, even so, the Kid had proved that my theories about toughs were
+not rot. Who knows but that, like sergeants, the blotter may be
+sometimes mistaken?
+
+
+
+
+WHEN THE LETTER CAME
+
+
+"To-morrow it will come," Godfrey Krueger had said that night to his
+landlord. "To-morrow it will surely come, and then I shall have money.
+Soon I shall be rich, richer than you can think."
+
+And the landlord of the Forsyth Street tenement, who in his heart
+liked the gray-haired inventor, but who had rooms to let, grumbled
+something about a to-morrow that never came.
+
+"Oh, but it will come," said Krueger, turning on the stairs and
+shading the lamp with his hand, the better to see his landlord's
+good-natured face; "you know the application has been advanced. It is
+bound to be granted, and to-night I shall finish my ship."
+
+Now, as he sat alone in his room at his work, fitting, shaping, and
+whittling with restless hands, he had to admit to himself that it was
+time it came. Two whole days he had lived on a crust, and he was
+starving. He had worked and waited thirteen hard years for the success
+that had more than once been almost within his grasp, only to elude it
+again. It had never seemed nearer and surer than now, and there was
+need of it. He had come to the jumping-off place. All his money was
+gone, to the last cent, and his application for a pension hung fire in
+Washington unaccountably. It had been advanced to the last stage, and
+word that it had been granted might be received any day. But the days
+slipped by and no word came. For two days he had lived on faith and a
+crust, but they were giving out together. If only--
+
+Well, when it did come, what with his back pay for all those years, he
+would have the means to build his ship, and hunger and want would be
+forgotten. He should have enough. And the world would know that
+Godfrey Krueger was not an idle crank.
+
+"In six months I shall cross the ocean to Europe in twenty hours in my
+air-ship," he had said in showing the landlord his models, "with as
+many as want to go. Then I shall become a millionnaire and shall make
+you one, too." And the landlord had heaved a sigh at the thought of
+his twenty-seven dollars, and doubtingly wished it might be so.
+
+Weak and famished, Krueger bent to his all but finished task. Before
+morning he should know that it would work as he had planned. There
+remained only to fit the last parts together. The idea of building an
+air-ship had come to him while he lay dying with scurvy, as they
+thought, in a Confederate prison, and he had never abandoned it. He
+had been a teacher and a student, and was a trained mathematician.
+There could be no flaw in his calculations. He had worked them out
+again and again. The energy developed by his plan was great enough to
+float a ship capable of carrying almost any burden, and of directing
+it against the strongest head winds. Now, upon the threshold of
+success, he was awaiting merely the long-delayed pension to carry his
+dream into life. To-morrow would bring it, and with it an end to all
+his waiting and suffering.
+
+One after another the lights went out in the tenement. Only the one in
+the inventor's room burned steadily through the night. The policeman
+on the beat noticed the lighted window, and made a mental note of the
+fact that some one was sick. Once during the early hours he stopped
+short to listen. Upon the morning breeze was borne a muffled sound, as
+of a distant explosion. But all was quiet again, and he went on,
+thinking that his senses had deceived him. The dawn came in the
+eastern sky, and with it the stir that attends the awakening of
+another day. The lamp burned steadily yet behind the dim window pane.
+
+The milkmen came, and the push-cart criers. The policeman was
+relieved, and another took his place. Lastly came the mail-carrier
+with a large official envelope marked, "Pension Bureau, Washington."
+He shouted up the stairway:--
+
+"Krueger! Letter!"
+
+The landlord came to the door and was glad. So it had come, had it?
+
+"Run, Emma," he said to his little daughter, "run and tell Mr. Godfrey
+his letter has come."
+
+The child skipped up the steps gleefully. She knocked at the
+inventor's door, but no answer came. It was not locked, and she pushed
+it open. The little lamp smoked yet on the table. The room was strewn
+with broken models and torn papers that littered the floor. Something
+there frightened the child. She held to the banisters and called
+faintly:--
+
+"Papa! Oh, papa!"
+
+They went in together on tiptoe without knowing why, the postman with
+the big official letter in his hand. The morrow had kept its promise.
+Of hunger and want there was an end. On the bed, stretched at full
+length, with his Grand Army hat flung beside him, lay the inventor,
+dead. A little round hole in the temple, from which a few drops of
+blood had flowed, told what remained of his story. In the night
+disillusion had come, with failure.
+
+
+
+
+THE CAT TOOK THE KOSHER MEAT
+
+
+The tenement No. 76 Madison Street had been for some time scandalized
+by the hoidenish ways of Rose Baruch, the little cloak maker on the
+top floor. Rose was seventeen, and boarded with her mother in the
+Pincus family. But for her harum-scarum ways she might, in the opinion
+of the tenement, be a nice girl and some day a good wife; but these
+were unbearable.
+
+For the tenement is a great working hive in which nothing has value
+unless exchangeable for gold. Rose's animal spirits, which long hours
+and low wages had no power to curb, were exchangeable only for wrath
+in the tenement. Her noisy feet on the stairs when she came home woke
+up all the tenants, and made them swear at the loss of the precious
+moments of sleep which were their reserve capital. Rose was so
+Americanized, they said impatiently among themselves, that nothing
+could be done with her.
+
+Perhaps they were mistaken. Perhaps Rose's stout refusal to be subdued
+even by the tenement was their hope, as it was her capital. Perhaps
+her spiteful tread upon the stairs heralded the coming protest of the
+free-born American against slavery, industrial or otherwise, in which
+their day of deliverance was dawning. It may be so. They didn't see
+it. How should they? They were not Americanized; not yet.
+
+However that might be, Rose came to the end that was to be expected.
+The judgment of the tenement was, for the time, borne out by
+experience. This was the way of it:--
+
+Rose's mother had bought several pounds of kosher meat and put it into
+the ice-box--that is to say, on the window-sill of their fifth-floor
+flat. Other ice-box these East Side sweaters' tenements have none. And
+it does well enough in cold weather, unless the cat gets around, or,
+as it happened in this case, it slides off and falls down. Rose's
+breakfast and dinner disappeared down the air-shaft, seventy feet or
+more, at 10.30 P.M.
+
+There was a family consultation as to what should be done. It was
+late, and everybody was in bed, but Rose declared herself equal to the
+rousing of the tenants in the first floor rear, through whose window
+she could climb into the shaft for the meat. She had done it before
+for a nickel. Enough said. An expedition set out at once from the top
+floor to recover the meat. Mrs. Baruch, Rose, and Jake, the boarder,
+went in a body.
+
+Arrived before the Knauff family's flat on the ground floor, they
+opened proceedings by a vigorous attack on the door. The Knauffs woke
+up in a fright, believing that the house was full of burglars. They
+were stirring to barricade the door, when they recognized Rose's voice
+and were calmed. Let in, the expedition explained matters, and was
+grudgingly allowed to take a look out of the window in the air-shaft.
+Yes! there was the meat, as yet safe from rats. The thing was to get
+it.
+
+The boarder tried first, but crawled back frightened. He couldn't
+reach it. Rose jerked him impatiently away.
+
+"Leg go!" she said. "I can do it. I was there wunst. You're no good."
+
+And she bent over the window-sill, reaching down until her toes barely
+touched the floor, when all of a sudden, before they could grab her
+skirts, over she went, heels over head, down the shaft, and
+disappeared.
+
+The shrieks of the Knauffs, of Mrs. Baruch, and of Jake, the boarder,
+were echoed from below. Rose's voice rose in pain and in bitter
+lamentation from the bottom of the shaft. She had fallen fully fifteen
+feet, and in the fall had hurt her back badly, if, indeed, she had not
+injured herself beyond repair. Her cries suggested nothing less. They
+filled the tenement, rising to every floor and appealing at every
+bedroom window.
+
+In a minute the whole building was astir from cellar to roof. A dozen
+heads were thrust out of every window, and answering wails carried
+messages of helpless sympathy to the once so unpopular Rose. Upon this
+concert of sorrow the police broke in with anxious inquiry as to what
+was the matter.
+
+When they found out, a second relief expedition was organized. It
+reached Rose through the basement coal-bin, and she was carried out
+and sent to the Gouverneur Hospital. There she lies, unable to move,
+and the tenement wonders what is amiss that it has lost its old
+spirits. It has not even anything left to swear at.
+
+The cat took the kosher meat.
+
+
+
+
+NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS
+
+
+It was Christmas Eve over on the East Side. Darkness was closing in on
+a cold, hard day. The light that struggled through the frozen windows
+of the delicatessen store and the saloon on the corner, fell upon men
+with empty dinner-pails who were hurrying homeward, their coats
+buttoned tightly, and heads bent against the steady blast from the
+river, as if they were butting their way down the street.
+
+The wind had forced the door of the saloon ajar, and was whistling
+through the crack; but in there it seemed to make no one afraid.
+Between roars of laughter, the clink of glasses and the rattle of dice
+on the hardwood counter were heard out in the street. More than one of
+the passers-by who came within range was taken with an extra shiver in
+which the vision of wife and little ones waiting at home for his
+coming was snuffed out, as he dropped in to brace up. The lights were
+long out when the silent streets reechoed his unsteady steps toward
+home, where the Christmas welcome had turned to dread.
+
+But in this twilight hour they burned brightly yet, trying hard to
+pierce the bitter cold outside with a ray of warmth and cheer. Where
+the lamps in the delicatessen store made a mottled streak of
+brightness across the flags, two little boys stood with their noses
+flattened against the window. The warmth inside, and the lights, had
+made little islands of clear space on the frosty pane, affording
+glimpses of the wealth within, of the piles of smoked herring, of
+golden cheese, of sliced bacon and generous, fat-bellied hams; of the
+rows of odd-shaped bottles and jars on the shelves that held there was
+no telling what good things, only it was certain that they must be
+good from the looks of them.
+
+And the heavenly smell of spices and things that reached the boys
+through the open door each time the tinkling bell announced the coming
+or going of a customer! Better than all, back there on the top shelf
+the stacks of square honey-cakes, with their frosty coats of sugar,
+tied in bundles with strips of blue paper.
+
+The wind blew straight through the patched and threadbare jackets of
+the lads as they crept closer to the window, struggling hard by
+breathing on the pane to make their peep-holes bigger, to take in the
+whole of the big cake with the almonds set in; but they did not heed
+it.
+
+"Jim!" piped the smaller of the two, after a longer stare than usual;
+"hey, Jim! them's Sante Claus's. See 'em?"
+
+"Sante Claus!" snorted the other, scornfully, applying his eye to the
+clear spot on the pane. "There ain't no ole duffer like dat. Them's
+honey-cakes. Me 'n' Tom had a bite o' one wunst."
+
+"There ain't no Sante Claus?" retorted the smaller shaver, hotly, at
+his peep-hole. "There is, too. I seen him myself when he cum to our
+alley last--"
+
+"What's youse kids a-scrappin' fur?" broke in a strange voice.
+
+Another boy, bigger, but dirtier and tougher looking than either of
+the two, had come up behind them unobserved. He carried an armful of
+unsold "extras" under one arm. The other was buried to the elbow in
+the pocket of his ragged trousers.
+
+The "kids" knew him, evidently, and the smallest eagerly accepted him
+as umpire.
+
+"It's Jim w'at says there ain't no Sante Claus, and I seen him--"
+
+"Jim!" demanded the elder ragamuffin, sternly, looking hard at the
+culprit; "Jim! yere a chump! No Sante Claus? What're ye givin' us?
+Now, watch me!"
+
+With utter amazement the boys saw him disappear through the door under
+the tinkling bell into the charmed precincts of smoked herring, jam,
+and honey-cakes. Petrified at their peep-holes, they watched him, in
+the veritable presence of Santa Claus himself with the fir-branch,
+fish out five battered pennies from the depths of his pocket and pass
+them over to the woman behind the jars, in exchange for one of the
+bundles of honey-cakes tied with blue. As if in a dream they saw him
+issue forth with the coveted prize.
+
+"There, kid!" he said, holding out the two fattest and whitest cakes
+to Santa Claus's champion; "there's yer Christmas. Run along, now, to
+yer barracks; and you, Jim, here's one for you, though yer don't
+desarve it. Mind ye let the kid alone."
+
+"This one'll have to do for me grub, I guess. I ain't sold me
+'Newses,' and the ole man'll kick if I bring 'em home."
+
+Before the shuffling feet of the ragamuffins hurrying homeward had
+turned the corner, the last mouthful of the newsboy's supper was
+smothered in a yell of "Extree!" as he shot across the street to
+intercept a passing stranger.
+
+As the evening wore on, it grew rawer and more blustering still.
+Flakes of dry snow that stayed where they fell, slowly tracing the
+curb-lines, the shutters, and the door-steps of the tenements with
+gathering white, were borne up on the storm from the water. To the
+right and left stretched endless streets between the towering
+barracks, as beneath frowning cliffs pierced with a thousand glowing
+eyes that revealed the watch-fires within--a mighty city of
+cave-dwellers held in the thraldom of poverty and want.
+
+Outside there was yet hurrying to and fro. Saloon doors were slamming,
+and bare-legged urchins, carrying beer-jugs, hugged the walls close
+for shelter. From the depths of a blind alley floated out the
+discordant strains of a vagabond brass band "blowing in" the yule of
+the poor. Banished by police ordinance from the street, it reaped a
+scant harvest of pennies for Christmas cheer from the windows opening
+on the back yard. Against more than one pane showed the bald outline
+of a forlorn little Christmas tree, some stray branch of a hemlock
+picked up at the grocer's and set in a pail for "the childer" to dance
+around, a dime's worth of candy and tinsel on the boughs.
+
+From the attic over the way came, in spells between, the gentle tones
+of a German song about the Christ-child. Christmas in the East Side
+tenements begins with the sunset on the "Holy Eve," except where the
+name is as a threat or a taunt. In a hundred such homes the whir of
+many sewing-machines, worked by the sweater's slaves with weary feet
+and aching backs, drowned every feeble note of joy that struggled to
+make itself heard above the noise of the great treadmill.
+
+To these what was Christmas but the name for suffering, reminder of
+lost kindred and liberty, of the slavery of eighteen hundred years,
+freedom from which was purchased only with gold. Ay, gold! The gold
+that had power to buy freedom yet, to buy the good-will, ay, and the
+good name, of the oppressor, with his houses and land. At the thought
+the tired eye glistened, the aching back straightened, and to the
+weary foot there came new strength to finish the long task while the
+city slept.
+
+Where a narrow passageway put in between two big tenements to a
+ramshackle rear barrack, Nibsy, the newsboy, halted in the shadow of
+the doorway and stole a long look down the dark alley.
+
+He toyed uncertainly with his still unsold papers--worn dirty and
+ragged as his clothes by this time--before he ventured in, picking his
+way between barrels and heaps of garbage; past the Italian cobbler's
+hovel, where a tallow dip, stuck in a cracked beer-glass, before a
+picture of the "Mother of God," showed that even he knew it was
+Christmas and liked to show it; past the Sullivan flat, where blows
+and drunken curses mingled with the shriek of women, as Nibsy had
+heard many nights before this one.
+
+He shuddered as he felt his way past the door, partly with a
+premonition of what was in store for himself, if the "old man" was at
+home, partly with a vague, uncomfortable feeling that somehow
+Christmas Eve should be different from other nights, even in the
+alley; down to its farthest end, to the last rickety flight of steps
+that led into the filth and darkness of the tenement. Up this he
+crept, three flights, to a door at which he stopped and listened,
+hesitating, as he had stopped at the entrance to the alley; then, with
+a sudden, defiant gesture, he pushed it open and went in.
+
+A bare and cheerless room; a pile of rags for a bed in the corner,
+another in the dark alcove, miscalled bedroom; under the window a
+broken candle and an iron-bound chest, upon which sat a sad-eyed woman
+with hard lines in her face, peeling potatoes in a pan; in the middle
+of the room a rusty stove, with a pile of wood, chopped on the floor
+alongside. A man on his knees in front fanning the fire with an old
+slouch hat. With each breath of draught he stirred, the crazy old pipe
+belched forth torrents of smoke at every joint. As Nibsy entered, the
+man desisted from his efforts and sat up, glaring at him--a villanous
+ruffian's face, scowling with anger.
+
+"Late ag'in!" he growled; "an' yer papers not sold. What did I tell
+yer, brat, if ye dared--"
+
+"Tom! Tom!" broke in the wife, in a desperate attempt to soothe the
+ruffian's temper. "The boy can't help it, an' it's Christmas Eve. For
+the love o'--"
+
+"The devil take yer rot and yer brat!" shouted the man, mad with the
+fury of passion. "Let me at him!" and, reaching over, he seized a
+heavy knot of wood and flung it at the head of the boy.
+
+Nibsy had remained just inside the door, edging slowly toward his
+mother, but with a watchful eye on the man at the stove. At the first
+movement of his hand toward the woodpile he sprang for the stairway
+with the agility of a cat, and just dodged the missile. It struck the
+door, as he slammed it behind him, with force enough to smash the
+panel.
+
+Down the three flights in as many jumps he went, and through the
+alley, over barrels and barriers, never stopping once till he reached
+the street, and curses and shouts were left behind.
+
+In his flight he had lost his unsold papers, and he felt ruefully in
+his pocket as he went down the street, pulling his rags about him as
+much from shame as to keep out the cold.
+
+Four pennies were all he had left after his Christmas treat to the two
+little lads from the barracks; not enough for supper or for a bed; and
+it was getting colder all the time.
+
+On the sidewalk in front of the notion store a belated Christmas party
+was in progress. The children from the tenements in the alley and
+across the way were having a game of blind-man's-buff, groping blindly
+about in the crowd to catch each other. They hailed Nibsy with shouts
+of laughter, calling to him to join in.
+
+"We're having Christmas!" they yelled.
+
+Nibsy did not hear them. He was thinking, thinking, the while turning
+over his four pennies at the bottom of his pocket. Thinking if
+Christmas was ever to come to him, and the children's Santa Claus to
+find his alley where the baby slept within reach of her father's cruel
+hand. As for him, he had never known anything but blows and curses. He
+could take care of himself. But his mother and the baby--And then it
+came to him with shuddering cold that it was getting late, and that he
+must find a place to sleep.
+
+He weighed in his mind the merits of two or three places where he was
+in the habit of hiding from the "cops" when the alley got to be too
+hot for him.
+
+There was the hay barge down by the dock, with the watchman who got
+drunk sometimes, and so gave the boys a chance. The chances were at
+least even of its being available on Christmas Eve, and of Santa Claus
+having thus done him a good turn after all.
+
+Then there was the snug berth in the sand-box you could curl all up
+in. Nibsy thought with regret of its being, like the hay barge, so far
+away and to windward, too.
+
+Down by the printing-offices there were the steam gratings, and a
+chance corner in the cellars, stories and stories underground, where
+the big presses keep up such a clatter from midnight till far into the
+day.
+
+As he passed them in review, Nibsy made up his mind with sudden
+determination, and, setting his face toward the south, made off down
+town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rumble of the last departing news-wagon over the pavement, now
+buried deep in snow, had died away in the distance, when, from out of
+the bowels of the earth there issued a cry, a cry of mortal terror and
+pain that was echoed by a hundred throats.
+
+From one of the deep cellar-ways a man ran out, his clothes and hair
+and beard afire; on his heels a breathless throng of men and boys;
+following them, close behind, a rush of smoke and fire.
+
+The clatter of the presses ceased suddenly, to be followed quickly by
+the clangor of hurrying fire-bells. With hooks and axes the firemen
+rushed in; hose was let down through the manholes, and down there in
+the depths the battle was fought and won.
+
+The building was saved; but in the midst of the rejoicing over the
+victory there fell a sudden silence. From the cellar-way a grimy,
+helmeted figure arose, with something black and scorched in his arms.
+A tarpaulin was spread upon the snow and upon it he laid his burden,
+while the silent crowd made room and word went over to the hospital
+for the doctor to come quickly.
+
+Very gently they lifted poor little Nibsy--for it was he, caught in
+his berth by a worse enemy than the "cop" or the watchman of the hay
+barge--into the ambulance that bore him off to the hospital cot, too
+late.
+
+Conscious only of a vague discomfort that had succeeded terror and
+pain, Nibsy wondered uneasily why they were all so kind. Nobody had
+taken the trouble to as much as notice him before. When he had thrust
+his papers into their very faces they had pushed him roughly aside.
+
+Nibsy, unhurt and able to fight his way, never had a show. Sick and
+maimed and sore, he was being made much of, though he had been caught
+where the boys were forbidden to go. Things were queer, anyhow, and--
+
+The room was getting so dark that he could hardly see the doctor's
+kindly face, and had to grip his hand tightly to make sure that he was
+there; almost as dark as the stairs in the alley he had come down in
+such a hurry.
+
+There was the baby now--poor baby--and mother--and then a great blank,
+and it was all a mystery to poor Nibsy no longer. For, just as a
+wild-eyed woman pushed her way through the crowd of nurses and doctors
+to his bedside, crying for her boy, Nibsy gave up his soul to God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was very quiet in the alley. Christmas had come and gone. Upon the
+last door a bow of soiled crape was nailed up with two tacks. It had
+done duty there a dozen times before, that year.
+
+Upstairs, Nibsy was at home, and for once the neighbors, one and all,
+old and young, came to see him.
+
+Even the father, ruffian that he was, offered no objection. Cowed and
+silent, he sat in the corner by the window farthest from where the
+plain little coffin stood, with the lid closed down.
+
+A couple of the neighbor-women were talking in low tones by the stove,
+when there came a timid knock at the door. Nobody answering, it was
+pushed open, first a little, then far enough to admit the shrinking
+form of a little ragamuffin, the smaller of the two who had stood
+breathing peep-holes on the window pane of the delicatessen store the
+night before when Nibsy came along.
+
+He dragged with him a hemlock branch, the leavings from some Christmas
+tree at the grocery.
+
+"It's from Sante Claus," he said, laying it on the coffin. "Nibsy
+knows." And he went out.
+
+Santa Claus had come to Nibsy, after all, in his alley. And Nibsy
+knew.
+
+
+
+
+IN THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL
+
+
+The fact was printed the other day that the half-hundred children or
+more who are in the hospitals on North Brother Island had no
+playthings, not even a rattle, to make the long days skip by, which,
+set in smallpox, scarlet fever, and measles, must be longer there than
+anywhere else in the world. The toys that were brought over there with
+a consignment of nursery tots who had the typhus fever had been worn
+clean out, except some fish horns which the doctor frowned on, and
+which were therefore not allowed at large. Not as much as a red monkey
+on a yellow stick was there left on the island to make the youngsters
+happy.
+
+That afternoon a big, hearty-looking man came into the office with the
+paper in his hand, and demanded to see the editor. He had come, he
+said, to see to it that those sick youngsters got the playthings they
+were entitled to; and a regular Santa Claus he proved to the
+friendless little colony on the lonely island; for he left a crisp
+fifty-dollar note behind when he went away without giving his name.
+The single condition was attached to the gift that it should be spent
+buying toys for the children on North Brother Island.
+
+Accordingly, a strange invading army took the island by storm three or
+four nights ago. Under cover of the darkness it had itself ferried
+over from One Hundred and Thirty-eighth Street in the department yawl,
+and before morning it was in undisputed possession. It has come to
+stay. Not a doll or a sheep will ever leave the island again. They may
+riot upon it as they please, within certain well-defined limits, but
+none of them can ever cross the channel to the mainland again, unless
+it be the rubber dolls who can swim, so it is said. Here is the
+muster-roll:--
+
+Six sheep (four with lambs), six fairies (big dolls in street dress),
+twelve rubber dolls (in woollen jackets), four railroad trains,
+twenty-eight base-balls, twenty rubber balls, six big painted (Scotch
+plaid) rubber balls, six still bigger ditto, seven boxes of blocks,
+half a dozen music-boxes, twenty-four rattles, six bubble (soap) toys,
+twelve small engines, six games of dominos, twelve rubber toys (old
+woman who lived in a shoe, etc.), five wooden toys (bad bear, etc.),
+thirty-six horse reins.
+
+As there is only one horse on the island, and that one a very
+steady-going steed in no urgent need of restraint, this last item
+might seem superfluous, but only to the uninstructed mind. Within a
+brief week half the boys and girls on the island that are out of bed
+long enough to stand on their feet will be transformed into ponies and
+the other half into drivers, and flying teams will go cavorting around
+to the tune of "Johnny, Get your Gun," and the "Jolly Brothers
+Gallop," as they are ground out of the music-boxes by little fingers
+that but just now toyed feebly with the balusters on the golden stair.
+
+That music! When I went over to the island it fell upon my ears in
+little drops of sweet melody, as soon as I came in sight of the
+nurses' quarters. I listened, but couldn't make out the tune. The
+drops seemed mixed. When I opened the door upon one of the nurses, Dr.
+Dixon, and the hospital matron, each grinding his or her music for all
+there was in it, and looking perfectly happy withal, I understood why.
+
+They were all playing different tunes at the same time, the nurse
+"When the Robins Nest Again," Dr. Dixon "Nancy Lee," and the matron
+"Sweet Violets." A little child stood by in open-mouthed admiration,
+that became ecstasy when I joined in with "The Babies on our Block."
+It was all for the little one's benefit, and she thought it beautiful
+without a doubt.
+
+The storekeeper, knowing that music hath charms to soothe the breast
+of even a typhus-fever patient, had thrown in a dozen boxes as his own
+gift. Thus one good deed brings on another, and a good deal more than
+fifty dollars' worth of happiness will be ground out on the island
+before there is an end of the music.
+
+There is one little girl in the measles ward already who will eat only
+when her nurse sits by grinding out "Nancy Lee." She cannot be made to
+swallow one mouthful on any other condition. No other nurse and no
+other tune but "Nancy Lee" will do--neither the "Star-Spangled Banner"
+nor "The Babies on our Block." Whether it is Nancy all by her
+melodious self, or the beautiful picture of her in a sailor's suit on
+the lid of the box, or the two and the nurse and the dinner together,
+that serve to soothe her, is a question of some concern to the island,
+since Nancy and the nurse have shown signs of giving out together.
+
+Three of the six sheep that were bought for the ridiculously low price
+of eighty-nine cents apiece, the lambs being thrown in as makeweight,
+were grazing on the mixed-measles lawn over on the east shore of the
+island, with a fairy in evening dress eying them rather disdainfully
+in the grasp of tearful Annie Cullum. Annie is a foundling from the
+asylum temporarily sojourning here. The measles and the scarlet fever
+were the only things that ever took kindly to her in her little life.
+They tackled her both at once, and poor Annie, after a six or eight
+weeks' tussle with them, has just about enough spunk left to cry when
+anybody looks at her.
+
+Three woolly sheep and a fairy all at once have robbed her of all
+hope, and in the midst of it all she weeps as if her heart would
+break. Even when the nurse pulls one of the unresisting muttonheads,
+and it emits a loud "Baa-a," she stops only just for a second or two
+and then wails again. The sheep look rather surprised, as they have a
+right to. They have come to be little Annie's steady company, hers and
+her fellow-sufferers' in the mixed-measles ward. The triangular lawn
+upon which they are browsing is theirs to gambol on when the sun
+shines, but cross the walk that borders it they never can, any more
+than the babies with whom they play. Sumptuary law rules the island
+they are on. Habeas corpus and the constitution stop short of the
+ferry. Even Comstock's authority does not cross it: the one exception
+to the rule that dolls and sheep and babies shall not visit from ward
+to ward is in favor of the rubber dolls, and the etiquette of the
+island requires that they shall lay off their woollen jackets and go
+calling just as the factory turned them out, without a stitch or
+shred of any kind on.
+
+As for the rest, they are assigned, babies, nurses, sheep, rattles,
+and railroad trains, to their separate measles, scarlet fever, and
+diphtheria lawns or wards, and there must be content to stay. A sheep
+may be transferred from the scarlet-fever ward with its patron to the
+mixed-measles or diphtheria, when symptoms of either of these diseases
+appear, as they often do; but it cannot then go back again, lest it
+carry the seeds of the new contagion to its old friends.
+
+Even the fairies are put under the ban of suspicion by such evil
+associations, and, once they have crossed the line, are not allowed to
+go back to corrupt the good manners of the babies with only one
+complaint.
+
+Pauline Meyer, the bigger of the two girls on the mixed-measles
+stoop,--the other is friendless Annie,--has just enough strength to
+laugh when her sheep's head is pulled. She has been on the limits of
+one ward after another these four months, and has had everything,
+short of typhus fever and smallpox, that the island affords.
+
+It is a marvel that there is one laugh left in her whole little
+shrunken body after it all; but there is, and the grin on her face
+reaches almost from ear to ear, as she clasps the biggest fairy in an
+arm very little stouter than a boy's bean blower, and hears the lamb
+bleat. Why, that one smile on that ghastly face would be thought worth
+his fifty dollars by the children's friend, could he see it. Pauline
+is the child of Swedish emigrants. She and Annie will not fight over
+their lambs and their dolls, not for many weeks. They can't. They
+can't even stand up.
+
+One of the railroad trains, drawn by a glorious tin engine, with the
+name "Union" painted on the cab, is making across the stoop for the
+little boy with the whooping-cough in the next building. But it won't
+get there; it is quarantined. But it will have plenty of exercise.
+Little hands are itching to get hold of it in one of the cribs inside.
+There are thirty-six sick children on the island just now, about half
+of them boys, who will find plenty of use for the balls and things as
+soon as they get about. How those base-balls are to be kept within
+bounds is a hopeless mystery the doctors are puzzling over.
+
+Even if nines are organized in every ward, as has been suggested, it
+is hard to see how they can be allowed to play each other, as they
+would want to, of course, as soon as they could toddle about. It would
+be something, though, a smallpox nine pitted against the scarlets or
+the measles, with an umpire from the mixed ward!
+
+The old woman that lived in a shoe, being of rubber, is a privileged
+character, and is away on a call in the female scarlet, says the
+nurse. It is a good thing that she was made that way, for she is very
+popular. So are Mother Goose and her ten companion rubber toys. The
+bear and the man that strike alternately a wooden anvil with a ditto
+hammer are scarcely less exciting to the infantile mind; but, being of
+wood, they are steady boarders permanently attached each to his ward.
+The dominos fell to the lot of the male scarlets. That ward has half a
+dozen grown men in it at present, and they have never once lost sight
+of the little black blocks since they first saw them.
+
+The doctor reports that they are getting better just as fast as they
+can since they took to playing dominos. If there is any hint in this
+to the profession at large, they are welcome to it, along with
+humanity.
+
+A little girl with a rubber doll in a red woollen jacket--a
+combination to make the perspiration run right off one with the
+humidity at 98--looks wistfully down from the second-story balcony of
+the smallpox pavilion, as the doctor goes past with the last sheep
+tucked under his arm.
+
+But though it baa-a ever so loudly, it is not for her. It is bound for
+the white tent on the shore, shunned even here, where sits a solitary
+watcher gazing wistfully all day toward the city that has passed out
+of his life. Perchance it may bring to him a message from the far-away
+home where the birds sang for him, and the waves and the flowers spoke
+to him, and "Unclean" had not been written against his name. Of all on
+the Pest Island he alone is hopeless. He is a leper, and his sentence
+is that of a living death in a strange land.
+
+
+
+
+NIGGER MARTHA'S WAKE
+
+
+A woman with face all seared and blotched by something that had burned
+through the skin sat propped up in the doorway of a Bowery restaurant
+at four o'clock in the morning, senseless, apparently dying. A
+policeman stood by, looking anxiously up the street and consulting his
+watch. At intervals he shook her to make sure she was not dead. The
+drift of the Bowery that was borne that way eddied about, intent upon
+what was going on. A dumpy little man edged through the crowd and
+peered into the woman's face.
+
+"Phew!" he said, "it's Nigger Martha! What is gettin' into the girls
+on the Bowery I don't know. Remember my Maggie? She was her chum."
+
+This to the watchman on the block. The watchman remembered. He knows
+everything that goes on in the Bowery. Maggie was the wayward daughter
+of a decent laundress, and killed herself by drinking carbolic acid
+less than a month before. She had wearied of the Bowery. Nigger Martha
+was her one friend. And now she had followed her example.
+
+She was drunk when she did it. It is in their cups that a glimpse of
+the life they traded away for the street comes sometimes to these
+wretches, with remorse not to be borne.
+
+It came so to Nigger Martha. Ten minutes before, she had been sitting
+with two boon companions in the oyster saloon next door, discussing
+their night's catch. Elsie "Specs" was one of the two; the other was
+known to the street simply as Mame. Elsie wore glasses, a thing
+unusual enough in the Bowery to deserve recognition. From their
+presence Martha rose suddenly, to pull a vial from her pocket. Mame
+saw it, and, knowing what it meant in the heavy humor that was upon
+Nigger Martha, she struck it from her hand with a pepper-box. It fell,
+but was not broken. The woman picked it up, and staggering out,
+swallowed its contents upon the sidewalk--that is, as much as went
+into her mouth. Much went over her face, burning it. She fell
+shrieking.
+
+Then came the crowd. The Bowery never sleeps. The policeman on the
+beat set her in the doorway and sent a hurry call for an ambulance. It
+came at last, and Nigger Martha was taken to the hospital.
+
+As Mame told it, so it was recorded on the police blotter, with the
+addition that she was anywhere from forty to fifty years old. That
+was the strange part of it. It is not often that any one lasts out a
+generation in the Bowery. Nigger Martha did. Her beginning was way
+back in the palmy days of Billy McGlory and Owney Geoghegan. Her first
+remembered appearance was on the occasion of the mock wake they got up
+at Geoghegan's for Police Captain Foley when he was broken. That was
+in the days when dive-keepers made and broke police captains, and made
+no secret of it. Billy McGlory did not. Ever since, Martha was on the
+street.
+
+In time she picked up Maggie Mooney, and they got to be chummy. The
+friendships of the Bowery by night may not be of a very exalted type,
+but when death breaks them it leaves nothing to the survivor. That is
+the reason suicides there happen in pairs. The story of Tilly Lorrison
+and Tricksy came from the Tenderloin not long ago. This one of Maggie
+Mooney and Nigger Martha was theirs over again.
+
+In each case it was the younger, the one nearest the life that was
+forever past, who took the step first, in despair. The other followed.
+To her it was the last link with something that had long ceased to be
+anything but a dream, which was broken. But without the dream life was
+unbearable, in the Tenderloin and on the Bowery.
+
+The newsboys were crying their night extras when Undertaker Reardon's
+wagon jogged across the Bowery with Nigger Martha's body in it. She
+had given the doctors the slip, as she had the policeman many a time.
+A friend of hers, an Italian in The Bend, had hired the undertaker to
+"do it proper," and Nigger Martha was to have a funeral.
+
+All the Bowery came to the wake. The all-nighters from Chatham Square
+to Bleecker Street trooped up to the top-floor flat in the Forsyth
+Street tenement where Nigger Martha was laid out. There they sat
+around, saying little and drinking much. It was not a cheery crowd.
+
+The Bowery by night is not cheerful in the presence of The Mystery.
+Its one effort is to get away from it, to forget--the thing it can
+never do. When out of its sight it carouses boisterously, as children
+sing and shout in the dark to persuade themselves that they are not
+afraid. And some who hear think it happy.
+
+Sheeny Rose was the master of ceremonies and kept the door. This for a
+purpose. In life Nigger Martha had one enemy whom she hated--cock-eyed
+Grace. Like all of her kind, Nigger Martha was superstitious. Grace's
+evil eye ever brought her bad luck when she crossed her path, and she
+shunned her as the pestilence. When inadvertently she came upon her,
+she turned as she passed and spat twice over her left shoulder. And
+Grace, with white malice in her wicked face, spurned her.
+
+"I don't want," Nigger Martha had said one night in the hearing of
+Sheeny Rose--"I don't want that cock-eyed thing to look at my body
+when I am dead. She'll give me hard luck in the grave yet."
+
+And Sheeny Rose was there to see that cock-eyed Grace didn't come to
+the wake.
+
+She did come. She labored up the long stairs, and knocked, with no one
+will ever know what purpose in her heart. If it was a last glimmer of
+good, of forgiveness, it was promptly squelched. It was Sheeny Rose
+who opened the door.
+
+"You can't come in here," she said curtly. "You know she hated you.
+She didn't want you to look at her stiff."
+
+Cock-eyed Grace's face grew set with anger. Her curses were heard
+within. She threatened fight, but dropped it.
+
+"All right," she said as she went down. "I'll fix you, Sheeny Rose!"
+
+
+It was in the exact spot where Nigger Martha had sat and died that
+Grace met her enemy the night after the funeral. Lizzie La Blanche,
+the Marine's girl, was there; Elsie Specs, Little Mame, and Jack the
+Dog, toughest of all the girls, who for that reason had earned the
+name of "Mayor of the Bowery." She brooked no rivals. They were all
+within reach when the two enemies met under the arc light.
+
+Cock-eyed Grace sounded the challenge.
+
+"Now, you little Sheeny Rose," she said, "I'm goin' to do ye fer
+shuttin' of me out o' Nigger Martha's wake."
+
+With that out came her hatpin, and she made a lunge at Sheeny Rose.
+The other was on her guard. Hatpin in hand, she parried the thrust and
+lunged back. In a moment the girls had made a ring about the two,
+shutting them out of sight. Within it the desperate women thrust and
+parried, backed and squared off, leaping like tigers when they saw an
+opening. Their hats had fallen off, their hair was down, and eager
+hate glittered in their eyes. It was a battle for life; for there is
+no dagger more deadly than the hatpin these women carry, chiefly as a
+weapon of defence in the hour of need.
+
+They were evenly matched. Sheeny Rose made up in superior suppleness
+of limb for the pent-up malice of the other. Grace aimed her thrusts
+at her opponent's face. She tried to reach her eye. Once the sharp
+steel just pricked Sheeny Rose's cheek and drew blood. In the next
+turn Rose's hatpin passed within a quarter-inch of Grace's jugular.
+
+But the blow nearly threw her off her feet, and she was at her
+enemy's mercy. With an evil oath the fiend thrust full at her face
+just as the policeman, who had come through the crowd unobserved, so
+intent was it upon the fight, knocked the steel from her hand.
+
+At midnight two dishevelled hags with faces flattened against the bars
+of adjoining cells in the police station were hurling sidelong curses
+at each other and at the maddened doorman. Nigger Martha's wake had
+received its appropriate and foreordained ending.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW IN THE TENEMENTS
+
+
+The December sun shone clear and cold upon the city. It shone upon
+rich and poor alike. It shone into the homes of the wealthy on the
+avenues and in the up-town streets, and into courts and alleys hedged
+in by towering tenements down town. It shone upon throngs of busy
+holiday shoppers that went out and in at the big stores, carrying
+bundles big and small, all alike filled with Christmas cheer and
+kindly messages from Santa Claus.
+
+It shone down so gayly and altogether cheerily there, that wraps and
+overcoats were unbuttoned for the north wind to toy with. "My, isn't
+it a nice day?" said one young lady in a fur shoulder cape to a
+friend, pausing to kiss and compare lists of Christmas gifts.
+
+"Most too hot," was the reply, and the friends passed on. There was
+warmth within and without. Life was very pleasant under the Christmas
+sun up on the avenue.
+
+Down in Cherry Street the rays of the sun climbed over a row of tall
+tenements with an effort that seemed to exhaust all the life that was
+in them, and fell into a dirty block, half choked with trucks, with
+ash barrels and rubbish of all sorts, among which the dust was whirled
+in clouds upon fitful, shivering blasts that searched every nook and
+cranny of the big barracks. They fell upon a little girl, barefooted
+and in rags, who struggled out of an alley with a broken pitcher in
+her grimy fist, against the wind that set down the narrow slit like
+the draught through a big factory chimney. Just at the mouth of the
+alley it took her with a sudden whirl, a cyclone of dust and drifting
+ashes, tossed her fairly off her feet, tore from her grip the
+threadbare shawl she clutched at her throat, and set her down at the
+saloon door breathless and half smothered. She had just time to dodge
+through the storm-doors before another whirlwind swept whistling down
+the street.
+
+"My, but isn't it cold?" she said, as she shook the dust out of her
+shawl and set the pitcher down on the bar. "Gimme a pint," laying down
+a few pennies that had been wrapped in a corner of the shawl, "and
+mamma says make it good and full."
+
+"All'us the way with youse kids--want a barrel when yees pays fer a
+pint," growled the bartender. "There, run along, and don't ye hang
+around that stove no more. We ain't a steam-heatin' the block fer
+nothin'."
+
+The little girl clutched her shawl and the pitcher, and slipped out
+into the street where the wind lay in ambush and promptly bore down on
+her in pillars of whirling dust as soon as she appeared. But the sun
+that pitied her bare feet and little frozen hands played a trick on
+old Boreas--it showed her a way between the pillars, and only just her
+skirt was caught by one and whirled over her head as she dodged into
+her alley. It peeped after her halfway down its dark depths, where it
+seemed colder even than in the bleak street, but there it had to leave
+her.
+
+It did not see her dive through the doorless opening into a hall where
+no sun-ray had ever entered. It could not have found its way in there
+had it tried. But up the narrow, squeaking stairs the girl with the
+pitcher was climbing. Up one flight of stairs, over a knot of
+children, half babies, pitching pennies on the landing, over wash-tubs
+and bedsteads that encumbered the next--house-cleaning going on in
+that "flat"; that is to say, the surplus of bugs was being turned out
+with petroleum and a feather--up still another, past a half-open door
+through which came the noise of brawling and curses. She dodged and
+quickened her step a little until she stood panting before a door on
+the fourth landing that opened readily as she pushed it with her bare
+foot.
+
+A room almost devoid of stick or rag one might dignify with the name
+of furniture. Two chairs, one with a broken back, the other on three
+legs, beside a rickety table that stood upright only by leaning
+against the wall. On the unwashed floor a heap of straw covered with
+dirty bedtick for a bed; a foul-smelling slop-pail in the middle of
+the room; a crazy stove, and back of it a door or gap opening upon
+darkness. There was something in there, but what it was could only be
+surmised from a heavy snore that rose and fell regularly. It was the
+bedroom of the apartment, windowless, airless, and sunless, but rented
+at a price a millionnaire would denounce as robbery.
+
+"That you, Liza?" said a voice that discovered a woman bending over
+the stove. "Run 'n' get the childer. Dinner's ready."
+
+The winter sun glancing down the wall of the opposite tenement, with a
+hopeless effort to cheer the back yard, might have peeped through the
+one window of the room in Mrs. McGroarty's "flat," had that window not
+been coated with the dust of ages, and discovered that dinner party in
+action. It might have found a score like it in the alley. Four unkempt
+children, copies each in his or her way of Liza and their mother,
+Mrs. McGroarty, who "did washing" for a living. A meat bone, a "cut"
+from the butcher's at four cents a pound, green pickles, stale bread
+and beer. Beer for the four, a sup all round, the baby included. Why
+not? It was the one relish the searching ray would have found there.
+Potatoes were there, too--potatoes and meat! Say not the poor in the
+tenements are starving. In New York only those starve who cannot get
+work and have not the courage to beg. Fifty thousand always out of a
+job, say those who pretend to know. A round half-million asking and
+getting charity in eight years, say the statisticians of the Charity
+Organization. Any one can go round and see for himself that no one
+need starve in New York.
+
+From across the yard the sunbeam, as it crept up the wall, fell
+slantingly through the attic window whence issued the sound of
+hammer-blows. A man with a hard face stood in its light, driving nails
+into the lid of a soap box that was partly filled with straw.
+Something else was there; as he shifted the lid that didn't fit, the
+glimpse of sunshine fell across it; it was a dead child, a little baby
+in a white slip, bedded in straw in a soap box for a coffin. The man
+was hammering down the lid to take it to the Potter's Field. At the
+bed knelt the mother, dry-eyed, delirious from starvation that had
+killed her child. Five hungry, frightened children cowered in the
+corner, hardly daring to whisper as they looked from the father to the
+mother in terror.
+
+There was a knock on the door that was drowned once, twice, in the
+noise of the hammer on the little coffin. Then it was opened gently,
+and a young woman came in with a basket. A little silver cross shone
+upon her breast. She went to the poor mother, and, putting her hand
+soothingly on her head, knelt by her with gentle and loving words. The
+half-crazed woman listened with averted face, then suddenly burst into
+tears and hid her throbbing head in the other's lap.
+
+The man stopped hammering and stared fixedly upon the two; the
+children gathered around with devouring looks as the visitor took from
+her basket bread, meat, and tea. Just then, with a parting wistful
+look into the bare attic room, the sun-ray slipped away, lingered for
+a moment about the coping outside, and fled over the housetops.
+
+As it sped on its winter-day journey, did it shine into any cabin in
+an Irish bog more desolate than these Cherry Street "homes"? An army
+of thousands, whose one bright and wholesome memory, only tradition of
+home, is that poverty-stricken cabin in the desolate bog, are herded
+in such barracks to-day in New York. Potatoes they have; yes, and meat
+at four cents--even seven. Beer for a relish--never without beer. But
+home? The home that was home, even in a bog, with the love of it that
+has made Ireland immortal and a tower of strength in the midst of her
+suffering--what of that? There are no homes in New York's poor
+tenements.
+
+Down the crooked path of the Mulberry Street Bend the sunlight slanted
+into the heart of New York's Italy. It shone upon bandannas and yellow
+neckerchiefs; upon swarthy faces and corduroy breeches; upon
+black-haired girls--mothers at thirteen; upon hosts of bow-legged
+children rolling in the dirt; upon pedlers' carts and rag-pickers
+staggering under burdens that threatened to crush them at every step.
+Shone upon unnumbered Pasquales dwelling, working, idling, and
+gambling there. Shone upon the filthiest and foulest of New York's
+tenements, upon Bandit's Roost, upon Bottle Alley, upon the hidden
+byways that lead to the tramps' burrows. Shone upon the scene of
+annual infant slaughter. Shone into the foul core of New York's slums
+that was at last to go to the realm of bad memories because civilized
+man might not look upon it and live without blushing.
+
+It glanced past the rag-shop in the cellar, whence welled up stenches
+to poison the town, into an apartment three flights up that held two
+women, one young, the other old and bent. The young one had a baby at
+her breast. She was rocking it tenderly in her arms, singing in the
+soft Italian tongue a lullaby, while the old granny listened eagerly,
+her elbows on her knees, and a stumpy clay pipe, blackened with age,
+between her teeth. Her eyes were set on the wall, on which the musty
+paper hung in tatters, fit frame for the wretched, poverty-stricken
+room, but they saw neither poverty nor want; her aged limbs felt not
+the cold draught from without, in which they shivered; she looked far
+over the seas to sunny Italy, whose music was in her ears.
+
+"O dolce Napoli," she mumbled between her toothless jaws, "O suol
+beato--"
+
+The song ended in a burst of passionate grief. The old granny and the
+baby woke up at once. They were not in sunny Italy; not under
+southern, cloudless skies. They were in "The Bend," in Mulberry
+Street, and the wintry wind rattled the door as if it would say, in
+the language of their new home, the land of the free: "Less music!
+More work! Root, hog, or die!"
+
+Around the corner the sunbeam danced with the wind into Mott Street,
+lifted the blouse of a Chinaman and made it play tag with his pigtail.
+It used him so roughly that he was glad to skip from it down a
+cellar-way that gave out fumes of opium strong enough to scare even
+the north wind from its purpose. The soles of his felt shoes showed as
+he disappeared down the ladder that passed for cellar steps. Down
+there, where daylight never came, a group of yellow, almond-eyed men
+were bending over a table playing fan-tan. Their very souls were in
+the game, every faculty of the mind bent on the issue and the stake.
+The one blouse that was indifferent to what went on was stretched on a
+mat in a corner. One end of a clumsy pipe was in his mouth, the other
+held over a little spirit-lamp on the divan on which he lay. Something
+fluttered in the flame with a pungent, unpleasant smell. The smoker
+took a long draught, inhaling the white smoke, then sank back on his
+couch in senseless content.
+
+Upstairs tiptoed the noiseless felt shoes, bent on some house errand,
+to the "household" floors above, where young white girls from the
+tenements of The Bend and the East Side live in slavery worse, if not
+more galling, than any of the galley with ball and chain--the slavery
+of the pipe. Four, eight, sixteen, twenty odd such "homes" in this
+tenement, disgracing the very name of home and family, for marriage
+and troth are not in the bargain.
+
+In one room, between the half-drawn curtains of which the sunbeam
+works its way in, three girls are lying on as many bunks, smoking all.
+They are very young, "under age," though each and every one would
+glibly swear in court to the satisfaction of the police that she is
+sixteen, and therefore free to make her own bad choice. Of these, one
+was brought up among the rugged hills of Maine; the other two are from
+the tenement crowds, hardly missed there. But their companion? She is
+twirling the sticky brown pill over the lamp, preparing to fill the
+bowl of her pipe with it. As she does so, the sunbeam dances across
+the bed, kisses the red spot on her cheek that betrays the secret her
+tyrant long has known,--though to her it is hidden yet,--that the pipe
+has claimed its victim and soon will pass it on to the Potter's Field.
+
+"Nell," says one of her chums in the other bunk, something stirred
+within her by the flash, "Nell, did you hear from the old farm to home
+since you come here?"
+
+Nell turns half around, with the toasting-stick in her hand, an ugly
+look on her wasted features, a vile oath on her lips.
+
+"To hell with the old farm," she says, and putting the pipe to her
+mouth inhales it all, every bit, in one long breath, then falls back
+on her pillow in drunken stupor.
+
+That is what the sun of a winter day saw and heard in Mott Street.
+
+It had travelled far toward the west, searching many dark corners and
+vainly seeking entry to others; had gilded with equal impartiality the
+spires of five hundred churches and the tin cornices of thirty
+thousand tenements, with their million tenants and more; had smiled
+courage and cheer to patient mothers trying to make the most of life
+in the teeming crowds, that had too little sunshine by far; hope to
+toiling fathers striving early and late for bread to fill the many
+mouths clamoring to be fed.
+
+The brief December day was far spent. Now its rays fell across the
+North River and lighted up the windows of the tenements in Hell's
+Kitchen and Poverty Gap. In the Gap especially they made a brave show;
+the windows of the crazy old frame-house under the big tree that sat
+back from the street looked as if they were made of beaten gold. But
+the glory did not cross the threshold. Within it was dark and dreary
+and cold. The room at the foot of the rickety, patched stairs was
+empty. The last tenant was beaten to death by her husband in his
+drunken fury. The sun's rays shunned the spot ever after, though it
+was long since it could have made out the red daub from the mould on
+the rotten floor.
+
+Upstairs, in the cold attic, where the wind wailed mournfully through
+every open crack, a little girl sat sobbing as if her heart would
+break. She hugged an old doll to her breast. The paint was gone from
+its face; the yellow hair was in a tangle; its clothes hung in rags.
+But she only hugged it closer. It was her doll. They had been friends
+so long, shared hunger and hardship together, and now--
+
+Her tears fell faster. One drop trembled upon the wan cheek of the
+doll. The last sunbeam shot athwart it and made it glisten like a
+priceless jewel. Its glory grew and filled the room. Gone were the
+black walls, the darkness, and the cold. There was warmth and light
+and joy. Merry voices and glad faces were all about. A flock of
+children danced with gleeful shouts about a great Christmas tree in
+the middle of the floor. Upon its branches hung drums and trumpets and
+toys, and countless candles gleamed like beautiful stars. Farthest up,
+at the very top, her doll, her very own, with arms outstretched, as if
+appealing to be taken down and hugged. She knew it, knew the
+mission-school that had seen her first and only real Christmas, knew
+the gentle face of her teacher, and the writing on the wall she had
+taught her to spell out: "In His name." His name, who, she had said,
+was all little children's friend. Was He also her dolly's friend, and
+would He know it among the strange people?
+
+The light went out; the glory faded. The bare room, only colder and
+more cheerless than before, was left. The child shivered. Only that
+morning the doctor had told her mother that she must have medicine and
+food and warmth, or she must go to the great hospital where papa had
+gone before, when their money was all spent. Sorrow and want had laid
+the mother upon the bed he had barely left. Every stick of furniture,
+every stitch of clothing on which money could be borrowed, had gone to
+the pawnbroker. Last of all, she had carried mamma's wedding-ring to
+pay the druggist. Now there was no more left, and they had nothing to
+eat. In a little while mamma would wake up, hungry.
+
+The little girl smothered a last sob and rose quickly. She wrapped the
+doll in a threadbare shawl as well as she could, tiptoed to the door,
+and listened a moment to the feeble breathing of the sick mother
+within. Then she went out, shutting the door softly behind her, lest
+she wake her.
+
+Up the street she went, the way she knew so well, one block and a
+turn round the saloon corner, the sunset glow kissing the track of her
+bare feet in the snow as she went, to a door that rang a noisy bell as
+she opened it and went in. A musty smell filled the close room.
+Packages, great and small, lay piled high on shelves behind the worn
+counter. A slovenly woman was haggling with the pawnbroker about the
+money for a skirt she had brought to pledge.
+
+"Not a cent more than a quarter," he said, contemptuously, tossing the
+garment aside. "It's half worn out it is, dragging it back and forth
+over the counter these six months. Take it or leave it. Hallo! What
+have we here? Little Finnegan, eh? Your mother not dead yet? It's in
+the poorhouse ye will be if she lasts much longer. What the--"
+
+He had taken the package from the trembling child's hand--the precious
+doll--and unrolled the shawl. A moment he stood staring in dumb
+amazement at its contents. Then he caught it up and flung it with an
+angry oath upon the floor, where it was shivered against the coal-box.
+
+"Get out o' here, ye Finnegan brat," he shouted; "I'll tache ye to
+come a-guyin' o' me. I'll--"
+
+The door closed with a bang upon the frightened child, alone in the
+cold night. The sun saw not its home-coming. It had hidden behind the
+night clouds, weary of the sight of man and his cruelty.
+
+Evening had worn into night. The busy city slept. Down by the wharves,
+now deserted, a poor boy sat on the bulwark, hungry, foot-sore, and
+shivering with cold. He sat thinking of friends and home, thousands of
+miles away over the sea, whom he had left six months before to go
+among strangers. He had been alone ever since, but never more so than
+that night. His money gone, no work to be found, he had slept in the
+streets for nights. That day he had eaten nothing; he would rather die
+than beg, and one of the two he must do soon.
+
+There was the dark river rushing at his feet; the swirl of the unseen
+waters whispered to him of rest and peace he had not known since--it
+was so cold--and who was there to care, he thought bitterly. No one
+would ever know. He moved a little nearer the edge, and listened more
+intently.
+
+A low whine fell on his ear, and a cold, wet face was pressed against
+his. A little crippled dog that had been crouching silently beside him
+nestled in his lap. He had picked it up in the street, as forlorn and
+friendless as himself, and it had stayed by him. Its touch recalled
+him to himself. He got up hastily, and, taking the dog in his arms,
+went to the police station near by, and asked for shelter. It was the
+first time he had accepted even such charity, and as he lay down on
+his rough plank he hugged a little gold locket he wore around his
+neck, the last link with better days, and thought with a hard sob of
+home. In the middle of the night he awoke with a start. The locket was
+gone. One of the tramps who slept with him had stolen it. With bitter
+tears he went up and complained to the Sergeant at the desk, and the
+Sergeant ordered him to be kicked out into the street as a liar, if
+not a thief. How should a tramp boy have come honestly by a gold
+locket? The doorman put him out as he was bidden, and when the little
+dog showed its teeth, a policeman seized it and clubbed it to death on
+the step.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Far from the slumbering city the rising moon shines over a wide
+expanse of glistening water. It silvers the snow upon a barren heath
+between two shores, and shortens with each passing minute the shadows
+of countless headstones that bear no names, only numbers. The breakers
+that beat against the bluff wake not those who sleep there. In the
+deep trenches they lie, shoulder to shoulder, an army of brothers,
+homeless in life, but here at rest and at peace. A great cross stands
+upon the lonely shore. The moon sheds its rays upon it in silent
+benediction and floods the garden of the unknown, unmourned dead with
+its soft light. Out on the Sound the fishermen see it flashing white
+against the starlit sky, and bare their heads reverently as their
+boats speed by, borne upon the wings of the west wind.
+
+
+
+
+MIDWINTER IN NEW YORK
+
+
+The very earliest impression I received of America's metropolis was
+through a print in my child's picture-book that was entitled "Winter
+in New York." It showed a sleighing party, or half a dozen such,
+muffled to the ears in furs, and racing with grim determination for
+some place or another that lay beyond the page, wrapped in the mystery
+which so tickles the childish fancy. For it was clear to me that it
+was not accident that they were all going the same way. There was
+evidently some prize away off there in the waste of snow that beckoned
+them on. The text gave me no clew to what it was. It only confirmed
+the impression, which was strengthened by the introduction of a
+half-naked savage who shivered most wofully in the foreground, that
+New York was somewhere within the arctic circle and a perfect paradise
+for a healthy boy, who takes to snow as naturally as a duck takes to
+water. I do not know how the discovery that they were probably making
+for Gabe Case's and his bottle of champagne, which always awaited the
+first sleigh on the road, would have struck me in those days. Most
+likely as a grievous disappointment; for my fancy, busy ever with
+Uncas and Chingachgook and Natty Bumppo, had certainly a buffalo hunt,
+or an ambush, or, at the very least, a big fire, ready at the end of
+the road. But such is life. Its most cherished hopes have to be
+surrendered one by one to the prosy facts of every-day existence. I
+recall distinctly how it cut me to the heart when I first walked up
+Broadway, with an immense navy pistol strapped around my waist, to
+find it a paved street, actually paved, with no buffaloes in sight and
+not a red man or a beaver hut.
+
+However, life has its compensations also. At fifty I am as willing to
+surrender the arctic circle as I was hopeful of it at ten, with the
+price of coal in the chronic plight of my little boy when he has a
+troublesome hitch in his trousers: "O dear me! my pants hang up and
+don't hang down." And Gabe Case's is a most welcome exchange to me for
+the ambush, since I have left out the pistol and the rest of the
+armament. I listen to the stories of the oldest inhabitant, of the
+winters when "the snow lay to the second-story windows in the Bowery,"
+with the fervent wish that they may never come back, and secretly
+gloat over his wail that the seasons have changed and are not what
+they were. The man who exuberantly proclaims that New York is getting
+to have the finest winter-resort climate in the world is my friend,
+and I do not care if I never see another snowball. Alas, yes! though
+Deerslayer and I are still on the old terms, I fear the evidence is
+that I am growing old.
+
+In the midst of the rejoicing comes old Boreas, as last winter, for
+instance, and blows down my house of cards. Just when we thought
+ourselves safe in referring to the great blizzard as a monstrous,
+unheard-of thing, and were dwelling securely in the memory of how we
+gathered violets in the woods out in Queens and killed mosquitoes in
+the house in Christmas week, comes grim winter and locks the rivers
+and buries us up to the neck in snow, before the Thanksgiving dinner
+is cold. Then the seasons when Gabe's much-coveted bottle stood
+unclaimed on the shelf in its bravery of fine ribbons till far into
+the New Year, and was won then literally "by a scratch" on a road
+hardly downy with white, seem like a tale that is told, and we realize
+that latitude does not unaided make temperature. It is only in
+exceptional winters, after all, that we class for a brief spell with
+Naples. Greenland and the polar stream are never long in asserting
+their claim and Santa Claus's to unchecked progress to our hearths.
+
+And now, when one comes to think of it, who would say them nay for
+the sake of a ton of coal, or twenty? If one grows old, he is still
+young in his children. There is the smallest tot at this very moment
+sliding under my window with shrieks of delight, in the first fall of
+the season, though the November election is barely a week gone, and
+snowballing the hired girl in quite the fashion of the good old days,
+with the grocer's clerk stamping his feet at the back gate and roaring
+out his enjoyment at her plight in a key only Jack Frost has in
+keeping. A hundred thousand pairs of boys' eyes are stealing anxious
+glances toward school windows to-day, lest the storm cease before they
+are let out, and scant attention is paid to the morning's lessons, I
+will warrant. Who would exchange the bob-sled and the slide and the
+hurricane delights of coasting for eternal summer and magnolias in
+January? Not I, for one--not yet. Human nature is, after all, more
+robust than it seems at the study fire. I never declared in the board
+of deacons why I stood up so stoutly for the minister we called that
+winter to our little church,--with deacons discretion is sometimes
+quite the best part of valor,--but I am not ashamed of it. It was the
+night when we were going home, and neighbor Connery gave us a ride on
+his new bob down that splendid hill,--the whole board, men and
+women,--that I judged him for what he really was--that resolute leg
+out behind that kept us on our course as straight as a die, rounding
+every log and reef with the skill of a river pilot, never flinching
+once. It was the leg that did it; but it was, as I thought, an index
+to the whole man.
+
+Discomfort and suffering are usually the ideas associated with deep
+winter in a great city like New York, and there is a deal of
+it--discomfort to us all and suffering among the poor. The mere
+statement that the Street-Cleaning Department last winter carted away
+and dumped into the river 1,679,087 cubic yards of snow at thirty
+cents a yard, and was then hotly blamed for leaving us in the slush,
+fairly measures the one and is enough to set the taxpayer to thinking.
+The suffering in the tenements of the poor is as real, but even their
+black cloud is not without its silver lining. It calls out among those
+who have much as tender a charity as is ever alive among those who
+have little or nothing and who know one another for brothers without
+needing the reminder of a severe cold snap or a big storm to tell them
+of it. More money was poured into the coffers of the charitable
+societies in the last big cold snap than they could use for emergency
+relief; and the reckless advertising in sensational newspapers of the
+starvation that was said to be abroad called forth an emphatic protest
+from representatives of the social settlements and of the Charity
+Organization Society, who were in immediate touch with the poor. The
+old question whether a heavy fall of snow does not more than make up
+to the poor man the suffering it causes received a wide discussion at
+the time, but in the end was left open as always. The simple truth is
+that it brings its own relief to those who are always just on the
+verge. It sets them to work, and the charity visitor sees the effect
+in wages coming in, even if only for a brief season. The far greater
+loss which it causes, and which the visitor does not see, is to those
+who are regularly employed, and with whom she has therefore no
+concern, in suspending all other kinds of outdoor work than
+snow-shovelling.
+
+Take it all together, and I do not believe even an unusual spell of
+winter carries in its trail in New York such hopeless martyrdom to the
+poor as in Old World cities, London for instance. There is something
+in the clear skies and bracing air of our city that keeps the spirits
+up to the successful defiance of anything short of actual hunger.
+There abides with me from days and nights of poking about in dark
+London alleys an impression of black and sooty rooms, and discouraged,
+red-eyed women blowing ever upon smouldering fires, that is
+disheartening beyond anything I ever encountered in the dreariest
+tenements here. Outside, the streets lay buried in fog and slush that
+brought no relief to the feelings.
+
+Misery enough I have seen in New York's tenements; but deep as the
+shadows are in the winter picture of it, it has no such darkness as
+that. The newsboys and the sandwich-men warming themselves upon the
+cellar gratings in Twenty-third Street and elsewhere have oftener than
+not a ready joke to crack with the passer-by, or a little jig step to
+relieve their feelings and restore the circulation. The very tramp who
+hangs by his arms on the window-bars of the power-house at Houston
+Street and Broadway indulges in safe repartee with the engineer down
+in the depths, and chuckles at being more than a match for him. Down
+there it is always July, rage the storm king ever so boisterously up
+on the level. The windows on the Mercer Street corner of the building
+are always open--or else there are no windows. The spaces between the
+bars admit a man's arm very handily, and as a result there are always
+on cold nights as many hands pointing downward at the engineer and his
+boilers as there are openings in the iron fence. The tramps sleep, so
+suspended the night long, toasting themselves alternately on front and
+back.
+
+The good humor under untoward circumstances that is one of the traits
+of our people never comes out so strongly as when winter blocks river
+and harbor with ice and causes no end of trouble and inconvenience to
+the vast army of workers which daily invades New York in the morning
+and departs again with the gathering twilight. The five-minute trip
+across sometimes takes hours then, and there is never any telling
+where one is likely to land, once the boat is in the stream. I have,
+on one occasion, spent nearly six hours on an East River ferry-boat,
+trying to cross to Fulton Street in Brooklyn, during which time we
+circumnavigated Governor's Island and made an involuntary excursion
+down the bay. It was during the Beecher trial, and we had a number of
+the lawyers on both sides on board, so that the court had to adjourn
+that day while we tried the case among the ice-floes. But though the
+loss of time was very great, yet I saw no sign of annoyance among the
+passengers through all that trip. Everybody made the best of a bad
+bargain.
+
+Many a time since, have I stood jammed in a hungry and tired crowd on
+the Thirty-fourth Street ferry for an hour at a time, watching the
+vain efforts of the pilot to make a landing, while train after train
+went out with no passengers, and have listened to the laughter and
+groans that heralded each failure. Then, when at last the boat
+touched the end of the slip and one man after another climbed upon the
+swaying piles and groped his perilous way toward the shore, the cheers
+that arose and followed them on their way, with everybody offering
+advice and encouragement, and accepting it in the same good-humored
+way!
+
+In the two big snow-storms of a recent winter, when traffic was for a
+season interrupted, and in the great blizzard of 1888, when it was
+completely suspended, even on the elevated road, and news reached us
+from Boston only by cable via London, it was laughing and snowballing
+crowds one encountered plodding through the drifts. It was as if real
+relief had come with the lifting of the strain of our modern life and
+the momentary relapse into the slow-going way of our fathers. Out in
+Queens, where we were snow-bound for days, we went about digging one
+another out and behaving like a lot of boys, once we had made sure
+that the office would have to mind itself for a season.
+
+It is, however, not to the outlying boroughs one has to go if he
+wishes to catch the real human spirit that is abroad in the city in a
+snow-storm, or to the avenues where the rich live, though the snow to
+them might well be a real luxury; or even to the rivers, attractive
+as they are in the wild grandeur of arctic festooning from mastheads
+and rigging; with incoming steamers, armored in shining white, picking
+their way as circumspectly among the floes as if they were navigating
+Baffin's Bay instead of the Hudson River; and with their swarms of
+swift sea-gulls, some of them spotless white, others as rusty and
+dusty as the scavengers whom for the time being they replace
+ineffectually, all of them greedily intent upon wresting from the
+stream the food which they no longer find outside the Hook. I should
+like you well enough to linger with me on the river till the storm is
+over, and watch the marvellous sunsets that flood the western sky with
+colors of green and gold which no painter's brush ever matched; and
+when night has dropped the curtain, to see the lights flashing forth
+from the tall buildings in story after story until it is as if the
+fairyland of our childhood's dreams lay there upon the brooding waters
+within grasp of mortal hands.
+
+Beautiful as these are, it is to none of them I should take you,
+nevertheless, to show you the spirit of winter in New York. Not to
+"the road," where the traditional strife for the magnum of champagne
+is waged still; or to that other road farther east upon which the
+young--and the old, too, for that matter--take straw-rides to City
+Island, there to eat clam chowder, the like of which is not to be
+found, it is said, in or out of Manhattan. I should lead you, instead,
+down among the tenements, where, mayhap, you thought to find only
+misery and gloom, and bid you observe what goes on there.
+
+All night the snow fell steadily and silently, sifting into each nook
+and corner and searching out every dark spot, until when the day came
+it dawned upon a city mantled in spotless white, all the dirt and the
+squalor and the ugliness gone out of it, and all the harsh sounds of
+mean streets hushed. The storekeeper opened his door and shivered as
+he thought of the job of shovelling, with the policeman and his
+"notice" to hurry it up; shivered more as he heard the small boy on
+the stairs with the premonitory note of trouble in his exultant yell,
+and took a firmer grip on his broom. But his alarm was needless. The
+boy had other feuds on hand. His gang had been feeding fat an ancient
+grudge against the boys in the next block or the block beyond, waiting
+for the first storm to wipe it out in snow, and the day opened with a
+brisk skirmish between the opposing hosts. In the school the plans for
+the campaign were perfected, and when it was out they met in the White
+Garden, known to the directory as Tompkins Square, the traditional
+duelling-ground of the lower East Side; and there ensued such a
+battle as Homer would have loved to sing.
+
+Full many a lad fell on the battlements that were thrown up in haste,
+only to rise again and fight until a "soaker," wrung out in the gutter
+and laid away to harden in the frost, caught him in the eye and sent
+him to the rear, a reeling, bawling invalid, but prouder of his hurt
+than any veteran of his scars, just as his gang carried the band stand
+by storm and drove the Seventh-streeters from the Garden in
+ignominious flight. That night the gang celebrated the victory with a
+mighty bonfire, while the beaten one, viewing the celebration from
+afar, nursed its bruises and its wrath, and recruited its hosts for
+the morrow. And on the next night, behold! the bonfire burned in
+Seventh Street and not in Eleventh. The fortunes of war are
+proverbially fickle. The band stand in the Garden has been taken many
+a time since the police took it by storm in battle with the mob in the
+seventies, but no mob has succeeded that one to clamor for "bread or
+blood." It may be that the snow-fights have been a kind of
+safety-valve for the young blood to keep it from worse mischief later
+on. There are worse things in the world than to let the boys have a
+fling where no greater harm can befall than a bruised eye or a
+strained thumb.
+
+In the corner where the fight did not rage, and in a hundred back
+yards, smaller bands of boys and girls were busy rolling huge balls
+into a mighty snow man with a broom for a gun and bits of purloined
+coal for eyes and nose, and making mock assaults upon it and upon one
+another, just as the dainty little darlings in curls and leggings were
+doing in the up-town streets, but with ever so much more zest in their
+play. Their screams of delight rose to the many windows in the
+tenements, from which the mothers were exchanging views with next-door
+neighbors as to the probable duration of the "spell o' weather," and
+John's or Pat's chance of getting or losing a job in consequence. The
+snow man stood there till long after all doubts were settled on these
+mooted points, falling slowly into helpless decrepitude in spite of
+occasional patching. But long before that time the frost succeeding
+the snow had paved the way for coasting in the hilly streets, and
+discovered countless "slides" in those that were flat, to the huge
+delight of the small boy and the discomfiture of his unsuspecting
+elders. With all the sedateness of my fifty years, I confess that I
+cannot to this day resist a "slide" in a tenement street, with its
+unending string of boys and girls going down it with mighty whoops. I
+am bound to join in, spectacles, umbrella, and all, at the risk of
+literally going down in a heap with the lot.
+
+There is one over on First Avenue, on the way I usually take when I go
+home. It begins at a hydrant, which I suspect has had something to do
+in more than one way with its beginning, and runs down fully half a
+block. If some of my dignified associates on various committees of
+sobriety beyond reproach could see me "take it" not once, but two or
+three times, with a ragged urchin clinging to each of the skirts of my
+coat, I am afraid--I am afraid I might lose caste, to put it mildly.
+But the children enjoy it, and so do I, nearly as much as the little
+fellows in the next block enjoy their "skating on one" in the gutter,
+with little skids of wood twisted in the straps to hold the skate on
+tight.
+
+In sight of my slide I pass after a big storm between towering walls
+of snow in front of a public school which for years was the only one
+in the city that had an outdoor playground. It was wrested from the
+dead for the benefit of the living, by the condemnation of an old
+burying-ground, after years of effort. The school has ever since been
+one of the brightest, most successful in town. The snowbanks exhibit
+the handiwork of the boys, all of them from the surrounding tenements.
+They are shaped into regular walls with parapets cunningly wrought and
+sometimes with no little artistic effect. One winter the walls were
+much higher than a man's head, and the passageways between them so
+narrow that a curious accident happened, which came near being fatal.
+A closed wagon with a cargo of ginger-beer was caught between them and
+upset. The beer popped, and the driver's boy, who was inside and
+unable to get out, was rescued only with much trouble from the double
+peril of being smothered and drowned in the sudden flood.
+
+But the coasting! Let any one who wishes to see real democratic New
+York at play take a trip on such a night through the up-town streets
+that dip east and west into the great arteries of traffic, and watch
+the sights there when young America is in its glory. Only where there
+is danger from railroad crossings do the police interfere to stop the
+fun. In all other blocks they discreetly close an eye, or look the
+other way. New York is full of the most magnificent coasting-slides,
+and there is not one of them that is not worked overtime when the snow
+is on the ground. There are possibilities in the slopes of the
+"Acropolis" and the Cathedral Parkway as yet undeveloped to their full
+extent; but wherever the population crowds, it turns out without stint
+to enjoy the fun whenever and as soon as occasion offers.
+
+There is a hill over on Avenue A, near by the East River Park, that
+is typical in more ways than one. To it come the children of the
+tenements with their bob-sleds and "belly-whoppers" made up of bits of
+board, sometimes without runners, and the girls from the fine houses
+facing the park and up along Eighty-sixth Street, in their toboggan
+togs with caps and tassels, and chaperoned by their young fellows,
+just a little disposed to turn up their noses at the motley show. But
+they soon forget about that in the fun of the game. Down they go, rich
+and poor, boys and girls, men and women, with yells of delight as the
+snow seems to fly from under them, and the twinkling lights far up the
+avenue come nearer and nearer with lightning speed. The slide is lined
+on both sides with a joyous throng of their elders, who laugh and
+applaud equally the poor sled and the flexible flyer of prouder
+pedigree, urging on the returning horde that toils panting up the
+steep to take its place in the line once more. Till far into the young
+day does the avenue resound with the merriment of the people's winter
+carnival.
+
+On the railroad streets the storekeeper is still battling "between
+calls" with the last of the day's fall, fervently wishing it may be
+the last of the season's, when whir! comes the big sweeper along the
+track, raising a whirlwind of snow and dirt that bespatters him and
+his newly cleaned flags with stray clods from its brooms, until, out
+of patience, and seized at last, in spite of himself, by the spirit of
+the thing, he drops broom and shovel and joins the children in pelting
+the sweeper in turn. The motorman ducks his head, humps his shoulders,
+and grins. The whirlwind sweeps on, followed by a shower of snowballs,
+and vanishes in the dim distance.
+
+One of the most impressive sights of winter in New York has gone with
+so much else that was picturesque, in this age of results, and will
+never be seen in our streets again. The old horse-plough that used to
+come with rattle and bang and clangor of bells, drawn by five spans of
+big horses, the pick of the stables, wrapped in a cloud of steam, and
+that never failed to draw a crowd where it went, is no more. The rush
+and the swing of the long line, the crack of the driver's mighty whip
+and his warning shouts to "Jack" or "Pete" to pull and keep step, the
+steady chop-chop thud of the sand-shaker, will be seen and heard no
+more. In the place of the horse-plough has come the electric sweeper,
+a less showy but a good deal more effective device.
+
+The plough itself is gone. It has been retired by the railroads as
+useless in practice except to remove great masses of snow, which are
+not allowed to accumulate nowadays, if it can be helped. The share
+could be lowered only to within four or five inches of the ground,
+while the wheel-brooms of the sweeper "sweep between every stone,"
+making a clean job of it. Lacking the life of the horse-plough, it is
+suggestive of concentrated force far beyond anything in the elaborate
+show of its predecessor.
+
+The change suggests, not inaptly, the evolution of the old ship of the
+line under full canvas into the modern man-of-war, sailless and grim,
+and the conceit is strengthened by the warlike build of the electric
+sweeper. It is easy to imagine the iron flanges that sweep the snow
+from the track to be rammers for a combat at close quarters, and the
+canvas hangers that shield the brushes, torpedo-nets for defence
+against a hidden enemy. The motorman on the working end of the sweeper
+looks like nothing so much as the captain on the bridge of a
+man-of-war, and he conducts himself with the same imperturbable calm
+under the petty assaults of the guerillas of the street.
+
+From the moment a storm breaks till the last flake has fallen, the
+sweepers are run unceasingly over the tracks of the railroads, each in
+its own division, which it is its business to keep clear. The track is
+all the companies have to mind. There was a law, or a rule, or an
+understanding, nobody seems to know exactly which, that they were to
+sweep also between the tracks, and two feet on each side, in return
+for their franchises; but in effect this proved impracticable. It was
+never done. Under the late Colonel Waring the Street-Cleaning
+Department came to an understanding with the railroad companies under
+which they clear certain streets, not on their routes, that are
+computed to have a surface space equal to that which they would have
+had to clean had they lived up to the old rule. The department in its
+turn removes the accumulations piled up by their sweepers, unless a
+providential thaw gets ahead of it.
+
+Removing the snow after a big storm from the streets of New York, or
+even from an appreciable number of them, is a task beside which the
+cleaning of the Augean stables was a mean and petty affair. In dealing
+with the dirt, Hercules's expedient has sometimes been attempted, with
+more or less success; but not even turning the East River into our
+streets would rid them of the snow. Though in the last severe winter
+the department employed at times as many as four thousand extra men
+and all the carts that were to be drummed up in the city, carting
+away, as I have said, the enormous total of more than a million and a
+half cubic yards of snow, every citizen knows, and testified loudly at
+the time, that it all hardly scratched the ground. The problem is one
+of the many great ones of modern city life which our age of invention
+must bequeath unsolved to the dawning century.
+
+In the Street-Cleaning Department's service the snow-plough holds yet
+its ancient place of usefulness. Eleven of them are kept for use in
+Manhattan and the Bronx alone. The service to which they are put is to
+clear at the shortest notice, not the travelled avenues where the
+railroad sweepers run, but the side streets that lead from these to
+the fire-engine and truck-houses, to break a way for the apparatus for
+the emergency that is sure to come. Upon the paths so made the engines
+make straight for the railroad tracks when called out, and follow
+these to the fire.
+
+A cold snap inevitably brings a "run" of fires in its train. Stoves
+are urged to do their utmost all day, and heaped full of coal to keep
+overnight. The fire finds at last the weak point in the flue, and
+mischief is abroad. Then it is that the firemen are put upon their
+mettle, and then it is, too, that they show of what stuff they are
+made. In none of the three big blizzards within the memory of us all
+did any fire "get away" from them. During the storm of 1888, when the
+streets were nearly impassable for three whole days, they were called
+out to fight forty-five fires, any one of which might have threatened
+the city had it been allowed to get beyond control; but they smothered
+them all within the walls where they started. It was the same in the
+bad winter I spoke of. In one blizzard the men of Truck 7 got only
+four hours' sleep in four days. When they were not putting out fires
+they were compelled to turn in and shovel snow to help the paralyzed
+Street-Cleaning Department clear the way for their trucks. Their
+plight was virtually that of all the rest.
+
+What Colonel Roosevelt said of his Rough Riders after the fight in the
+trenches before Santiago, that it is the test of men's nerve to have
+them roused up at three o'clock in the morning, hungry and cold, to
+fight an enemy attacking in the dark, and then have them all run the
+same way,--forward,--is true of the firemen as well, and, like the
+Rough Riders, they never failed when the test came. The firemen going
+to the front at the tap of the bell, no less surely to grapple with
+lurking death than the men who faced Mauser bullets, but with none of
+the incidents of glorious war, the flag, the hurrah, and all the
+things that fire a soldier's heart, to urge them on,--clinging, half
+naked, with numb fingers to the ladders as best they can while trying
+to put on their stiff and frozen garments,--is one of the sights that
+make one proud of being a man. To see them in action, dripping icicles
+from helmet and coat, high upon the ladder, perhaps incased in solid
+ice and frozen to the rungs, yet holding the stream as steady to its
+work as if the spray from the nozzle did not fall upon them in showers
+of stinging hail, is very apt to make a man devoutly thankful that it
+is not his lot to fight fires in winter. It is only a few winters
+since, at the burning of a South Street warehouse, two pipemen had to
+be chopped from their ladder with axes, so thick was the armor of ice
+that had formed about and upon them while they worked.
+
+The terrible beauty of such a sight is very vivid in my memory. It was
+on the morning when Chief Bresnan and Foreman Rooney went down with
+half a dozen of their men in the collapse of the roof in a burning
+factory. The men of the rank and file hewed their way through to the
+open with their axes. The chief and the foreman were caught under the
+big water-tank, the wooden supports of which had been burned away, and
+were killed. They were still lying under the wreck when I came. The
+fire was out. The water running over the edge of the tank had frozen
+into huge icicles that hung like a great white shroud over the bier of
+the two dead heroes. It was a gas-fixture factory, and the hundreds of
+pipes, twisted into all manner of fantastic shapes of glittering ice,
+lent a most weird effect to the sorrowful scene. I can still see Chief
+Gicquel, all smoke-begrimed, and with the tears streaming down his
+big, manly face,--poor Gicquel! he went to join his brothers in so
+many a hard fight only a little while after,--pointing back toward the
+wreck with the choking words, "They are in there!" They had fought
+their last fight and won, as they ever did, even if they did give
+their lives for the victory. Greater end no fireman could crave.
+
+Winter in New York has its hardships and toil, and it has its joys as
+well, among rich and poor. Grim and relentless, it is beautiful at all
+times until man puts his befouling hand upon the landscape it paints
+in street and alley, where poetry is never at home in summer. The
+great city lying silent under its soft white blanket at night, with
+its myriad of lights twinkling and rivalling the stars, is beautiful
+beyond compare. Go watch the moonlight on forest and lake in the park,
+when the last straggler has gone and the tramp of the lonely
+policeman's horse has died away under the hill; listen to the whisper
+of the trees, all shining with dew of Boreas's breath: of the dreams
+they dream in their long sleep, of the dawn that is coming, the warm
+sunlight of spring, and say that life is not worth living in America's
+metropolis, even in winter, whatever the price of coal, and I shall
+tell you that you are fit for nothing but treason, stratagem, and
+spoils; for you have no music in your soul.
+
+
+
+
+A CHIP FROM THE MAELSTROM
+
+
+"The cop just sceert her to death, that's what he done. For Gawd's
+sake, boss, don't let on I tole you."
+
+The negro, stopping suddenly in his game of craps in the Pell Street
+back yard, glanced up with a look of agonized entreaty. Discovering no
+such fell purpose in his questioner's face, he added quickly,
+reassured:--
+
+"And if he asks if you seed me a-playing craps, say no, not on yer
+life, boss, will yer?" And he resumed the game where he left off.
+
+An hour before he had seen Maggie Lynch die in that hallway, and it
+was of her he spoke. She belonged to the tenement and to Pell Street,
+as he did himself. They were part of it while they lived, with all
+that that implied; when they died, to make part of it again,
+reorganized and closing ranks in the trench on Hart's Island. It is
+only the Celestials in Pell Street who escape the trench. The others
+are booked for it from the day they are pushed out from the rapids of
+the Bowery into this maelstrom that sucks under all it seizes.
+Thenceforward they come to the surface only at intervals in the police
+courts, each time more forlorn, but not more hopeless, until at last
+they disappear and are heard of no more.
+
+When Maggie Lynch turned the corner no one there knows. The street
+keeps no reckoning, and it doesn't matter. She took her place
+unchallenged, and her "character" was registered in due time. It was
+good. Even Pell Street has its degrees and its standard of perfection.
+The standard's strong point is contempt of the Chinese, who are hosts
+in Pell Street. Maggie Lynch came to be known as homeless, without a
+man, though with the prospects of motherhood approaching, yet she "had
+never lived with a Chink." To Pell Street that was heroic. It would
+have forgiven all the rest, had there been anything to forgive. But
+there was not. Whatever else may be, cant is not among the vices of
+Pell Street.
+
+And it is well. Maggie Lynch lived with the Cuffs on the top floor of
+No. 21 until the Cuffs moved. They left an old lounge they didn't
+want, and Maggie. Maggie was sick, and the housekeeper had no heart to
+put her out. Heart sometimes survives in the slums, even in Pell
+Street, long after respectability has been hopelessly smothered. It
+provided shelter and a bed for Maggie when her only friends deserted
+her. In return she did what she could, helping about the hall and
+stairs. Queer that gratitude should be another of the virtues the slum
+has no power to smother, though dive and brothel and the scorn of the
+good do their best, working together.
+
+There was an old mattress that had to be burned, and Maggie dragged it
+down with an effort. She took it out in the street, and there set it
+on fire. It burned and blazed high in the narrow street. The policeman
+saw the sheen in the windows on the opposite side of the way, and saw
+the danger of it as he came around the corner. Maggie did not notice
+him till he was right behind her. She gave a great start when he spoke
+to her.
+
+"I've a good mind to lock you up for this," he said as he stamped out
+the fire. "Don't you know it's against the law?"
+
+The negro heard it and saw Maggie stagger toward the door, with her
+hand pressed upon her heart, as the policeman went away down the
+street. On the threshold she stopped, panting.
+
+"My Gawd, that cop frightened me!" she said, and sat down on the
+door-step.
+
+A tenant who came out saw that she was ill, and helped her into the
+hall. She gasped once or twice, and then lay back, dead.
+
+Word went around to the Elizabeth Street station, and was sent on from
+there with an order for the dead-wagon. Maggie's turn had come for
+the ride up the Sound. She was as good as checked for the Potter's
+Field, but Pell Street made an effort and came up almost to Maggie's
+standard.
+
+Even while the dead-wagon was rattling down the Bowery, one of the
+tenants ran all the way to Henry Street, where he had heard that
+Maggie's father lived, and brought him to the police station. The old
+man wiped his eyes as he gazed upon his child, dead in her sins.
+
+"She had a good home," he said to Captain Young, "but she didn't know
+it, and she wouldn't stay. Send her home, and I will bury her with her
+mother."
+
+The Potter's Field was cheated out of a victim, and by Pell Street.
+But the maelstrom grinds on and on.
+
+
+
+
+SARAH JOYCE'S HUSBANDS
+
+
+Policeman Muller had run against a boisterous crowd surrounding a
+drunken woman at Prince Street and the Bowery. When he joined the
+crowd it scattered, but got together again before it had run half a
+block, and slunk after him and his prisoner to the Mulberry Street
+station. There Sergeant Woodruff learned by questioning the woman that
+she was Mary Donovan and had come down from Westchester to have a
+holiday. She had had it without a doubt. The Sergeant ordered her to
+be locked up for safe-keeping, when, unexpectedly, objection was made.
+
+A small lot of the crowd had picked up courage to come into the
+station to see what became of the prisoner. From out of this, one
+spoke up: "Don't lock that woman up; she is my wife."
+
+"Eh," said the Sergeant, "and who are you?"
+
+The man said he was George Reilly and a salesman. The prisoner had
+given her name as Mary Donovan and said she was single. The Sergeant
+drew Mr. Reilly's attention to the street door, which was there for
+his accommodation, but he did not take the hint. He became so abusive
+that he, too, was locked up, still protesting that the woman was his
+wife.
+
+She had gone on her way to Elizabeth Street, where there is a matron,
+to be locked up there; and the objections of Mr. Reilly having been
+silenced at last, peace was descending once more upon the
+station-house, when the door was opened, and a man with a swagger
+entered.
+
+"Got that woman locked up here?" he demanded.
+
+"What woman?" asked the Sergeant, looking up.
+
+"Her what Muller took in."
+
+"Well," said the Sergeant, looking over the desk, "what of her?"
+
+"I want her out; she is my wife. She--"
+
+The Sergeant rang his bell. "Here, lock this man up with that woman's
+other husband," he said, pointing to the stranger.
+
+The fellow ran out just in time, as the doorman made a grab for him.
+The Sergeant drew a tired breath and picked up the ruler to make a red
+line in his blotter. There was a brisk step, a rap, and a young fellow
+stood in the open door.
+
+"Say, Serg," he began.
+
+The Sergeant reached with his left hand for the inkstand, while his
+right clutched the ruler. He never took his eyes off the stranger.
+
+"Say," wheedled he, glancing around and seeing no trap, "Serg, I say:
+that woman w'at's locked up, she's--"
+
+"She's what?" asked the Sergeant, getting the range as well as he
+could.
+
+"My wife," said the fellow.
+
+There was a bang, the slamming of a door, and the room was empty. The
+doorman came running in, looked out, and up and down the street. But
+nothing was to be seen. There is no record of what became of the third
+husband of Mary Donovan.
+
+The first slept serenely in the jail. The woman herself, when she saw
+the iron bars in the Elizabeth Street station, fell into hysterics and
+was taken to the Hudson Street Hospital.
+
+Reilly was arraigned in the Tombs Police Court in the morning. He paid
+his fine and left, protesting that he was her only husband.
+
+He had not been gone ten minutes when Claimant No. 4 entered.
+
+"Was Sarah Joyce brought here?" he asked Clerk Betts.
+
+The clerk couldn't find the name.
+
+"Look for Mary Donovan," said No. 4.
+
+"Who are you?" asked the clerk.
+
+"I am Sarah's husband," was the answer.
+
+Clerk Betts smiled, and told the man the story of the other three.
+
+"Well, I am blamed," he said.
+
+
+
+
+MERRY CHRISTMAS IN THE TENEMENTS
+
+
+It was just a sprig of holly, with scarlet berries showing against the
+green, stuck in, by one of the office boys probably, behind the sign
+that pointed the way up to the editorial rooms. There was no reason
+why it should have made me start when I came suddenly upon it at the
+turn of the stairs; but it did. Perhaps it was because that dingy
+hall, given over to dust and draughts all the days of the year, was
+the last place in which I expected to meet with any sign of Christmas;
+perhaps it was because I myself had nearly forgotten the holiday.
+Whatever the cause, it gave me quite a turn.
+
+I stood, and stared at it. It looked dry, almost withered. Probably it
+had come a long way. Not much holly grows about Printing-House Square,
+except in the colored supplements, and that is scarcely of a kind to
+stir tender memories. Withered and dry, this did. I thought, with a
+twinge of conscience, of secret little conclaves of my children, of
+private views of things hidden from mamma at the bottom of drawers,
+of wild flights when papa appeared unbidden in the door, which I had
+allowed for once to pass unheeded. Absorbed in the business of the
+office, I had hardly thought of Christmas coming on, until now it was
+here. And this sprig of holly on the wall that had come to remind
+me,--come nobody knew how far,--did it grow yet in the beech-wood
+clearings, as it did when I gathered it as a boy, tracking through the
+snow? "Christ-thorn" we called it in our Danish tongue. The red
+berries, to our simple faith, were the drops of blood that fell from
+the Saviour's brow as it drooped under its cruel crown upon the cross.
+
+Back to the long ago wandered my thoughts: to the moss-grown beech in
+which I cut my name and that of a little girl with yellow curls, of
+blessed memory, with the first jack-knife I ever owned; to the
+story-book with the little fir tree that pined because it was small,
+and because the hare jumped over it, and would not be content though
+the wind and the sun kissed it, and the dews wept over it and told it
+to rejoice in its young life; and that was so proud when, in the
+second year, the hare had to go round it, because then it knew it was
+getting big,--Hans Christian Andersen's story that we loved above all
+the rest; for we knew the tree right well, and the hare; even the
+tracks it left in the snow we had seen. Ah, those were the Yule-tide
+seasons, when the old Domkirke shone with a thousand wax candles on
+Christmas eve; when all business was laid aside to let the world make
+merry one whole week; when big red apples were roasted on the stove,
+and bigger doughnuts were baked within it for the long feast! Never
+such had been known since. Christmas to-day is but a name, a memory.
+
+A door slammed below, and let in the noises of the street. The holly
+rustled in the draught. Some one going out said, "A Merry Christmas to
+you all!" in a big, hearty voice. I awoke from my revery to find
+myself back in New York with a glad glow at the heart. It was not
+true. I had only forgotten. It was myself that had changed, not
+Christmas. That was here, with the old cheer, the old message of
+good-will, the old royal road to the heart of mankind. How often had I
+seen its blessed charity, that never corrupts, make light in the
+hovels of darkness and despair! how often watched its spirit of
+self-sacrifice and devotion in those who had, besides themselves,
+nothing to give! and as often the sight had made whole my faith in
+human nature. No! Christmas was not of the past, its spirit not dead.
+The lad who fixed the sprig of holly on the stairs knew it; my
+reporter's note-book bore witness to it. Witness of my contrition for
+the wrong I did the gentle spirit of the holiday, here let the book
+tell the story of one Christmas in the tenements of the poor:--
+
+It is evening in Grand Street. The shops east and west are pouring
+forth their swarms of workers. Street and sidewalk are filled with an
+eager throng of young men and women, chatting gayly, and elbowing the
+jam of holiday shoppers that linger about the big stores. The
+street-cars labor along, loaded down to the steps with passengers
+carrying bundles of every size and odd shape. Along the curb a string
+of pedlers hawk penny toys in push-carts with noisy clamor, fearless
+for once of being moved on by the police. Christmas brings a two
+weeks' respite from persecution even to the friendless street-fakir.
+From the window of one brilliantly lighted store a bevy of mature
+dolls in dishabille stretch forth their arms appealingly to a troop of
+factory-hands passing by. The young men chaff the girls, who shriek
+with laughter and run. The policeman on the corner stops beating his
+hands together to keep warm, and makes a mock attempt to catch them,
+whereat their shrieks rise shriller than ever. "Them stockin's o'
+yourn 'll be the death o' Santa Claus!" he shouts after them, as they
+dodge. And they, looking back, snap saucily, "Mind yer business,
+freshy!" But their laughter belies their words. "They giv' it to ye
+straight that time," grins the grocer's clerk, come out to snatch a
+look at the crowds; and the two swap holiday greetings.
+
+At the corner, where two opposing tides of travel form an eddy, the
+line of push-carts debouches down the darker side street. In its gloom
+their torches burn with a fitful glare that wakes black shadows among
+the trusses of the railroad structure overhead. A woman, with worn
+shawl drawn tightly about head and shoulders, bargains with a pedler
+for a monkey on a stick and two cents' worth of flitter-gold. Five
+ill-clad youngsters flatten their noses against the frozen pane of the
+toy-shop, in ecstasy at something there, which proves to be a milk
+wagon, with driver, horses, and cans that can be unloaded. It is
+something their minds can grasp. One comes forth with a penny goldfish
+of pasteboard clutched tightly in his hand, and, casting cautious
+glances right and left, speeds across the way to the door of a
+tenement, where a little girl stands waiting. "It's yer Chris'mas,
+Kate," he says, and thrusts it into her eager fist. The black doorway
+swallows them up.
+
+Across the narrow yard, in the basement of the rear house, the lights
+of a Christmas tree show against the grimy window pane. The hare
+would never have gone around it, it is so very small. The two children
+are busily engaged fixing the goldfish upon one of its branches. Three
+little candles that burn there shed light upon a scene of utmost
+desolation. The room is black with smoke and dirt. In the middle of
+the floor oozes an oil-stove that serves at once to take the raw edge
+off the cold and to cook the meals by. Half the window panes are
+broken, and the holes stuffed with rags. The sleeve of an old coat
+hangs out of one, and beats drearily upon the sash when the wind
+sweeps over the fence and rattles the rotten shutters. The family
+wash, clammy and gray, hangs on a clothes-line stretched across the
+room. Under it, at a table set with cracked and empty plates, a
+discouraged woman sits eying the children's show gloomily. It is
+evident that she has been drinking. The peaked faces of the little
+ones wear a famished look. There are three--the third an infant, put
+to bed in what was once a baby carriage. The two from the street are
+pulling it around to get the tree in range. The baby sees it, and
+crows with delight. The boy shakes a branch, and the goldfish leaps
+and sparkles in the candle-light.
+
+"See, sister!" he pipes; "see Santa Claus!" And they clap their hands
+in glee. The woman at the table wakes out of her stupor, gazes around
+her, and bursts into a fit of maudlin weeping.
+
+The door falls to. Five flights up, another opens upon a bare attic
+room which a patient little woman is setting to rights. There are only
+three chairs, a box, and a bedstead in the room, but they take a deal
+of careful arranging. The bed hides the broken plaster in the wall
+through which the wind came in; each chair-leg stands over a rat-hole,
+at once to hide it and to keep the rats out. One is left; the box is
+for that. The plaster of the ceiling is held up with pasteboard
+patches. I know the story of that attic. It is one of cruel desertion.
+The woman's husband is even now living in plenty with the creature for
+whom he forsook her, not a dozen blocks away, while she "keeps the
+home together for the childer." She sought justice, but the lawyer
+demanded a retainer; so she gave it up, and went back to her little
+ones. For this room that barely keeps the winter wind out she pays
+four dollars a month, and is behind with the rent. There is scarce
+bread in the house; but the spirit of Christmas has found her attic.
+Against a broken wall is tacked a hemlock branch, the leavings of the
+corner grocer's fitting-block; pink string from the packing-counter
+hangs on it in festoons. A tallow dip on the box furnishes the
+illumination. The children sit up in bed, and watch it with shining
+eyes.
+
+"We're having Christmas!" they say.
+
+The lights of the Bowery glow like a myriad twinkling stars upon the
+ceaseless flood of humanity that surges ever through the great highway
+of the homeless. They shine upon long rows of lodging-houses, in which
+hundreds of young men, cast helpless upon the reef of the strange
+city, are learning their first lessons of utter loneliness; for what
+desolation is there like that of the careless crowd when all the world
+rejoices? They shine upon the tempter setting his snares there, and
+upon the missionary and the Salvation Army lass, disputing his catch
+with him; upon the police detective going his rounds with coldly
+observant eye intent upon the outcome of the contest; upon the wreck
+that is past hope, and upon the youth pausing on the verge of the pit
+in which the other has long ceased to struggle. Sights and sounds of
+Christmas there are in plenty in the Bowery. Balsam and hemlock and
+fir stand in groves along the busy thoroughfare, and garlands of green
+embower mission and dive impartially. Once a year the old street
+recalls its youth with an effort. It is true that it is largely a
+commercial effort; that the evergreen, with an instinct that is not of
+its native hills, haunts saloon-corners by preference; but the smell
+of the pine woods is in the air, and--Christmas is not too
+critical--one is grateful for the effort. It varies with the
+opportunity. At "Beefsteak John's" it is content with artistically
+embalming crullers and mince-pies in green cabbage under the window
+lamp. Over yonder, where the mile-post of the old lane still
+stands,--in its unhonored old age become the vehicle of publishing the
+latest "sure cure" to the world,--a florist, whose undenominational
+zeal for the holiday and trade outstrips alike distinction of creed
+and property, has transformed the sidewalk and the ugly railroad
+structure into a veritable bower, spanning it with a canopy of green,
+under which dwell with him, in neighborly good-will, the Young Men's
+Christian Association and the Jewish tailor next door.
+
+In the next block a "turkey-shoot" is in progress. Crowds are trying
+their luck at breaking the glass balls that dance upon tiny jets of
+water in front of a marine view with the moon rising, yellow and big,
+out of a silver sea. A man-of-war, with lights burning aloft, labors
+under a rocky coast. Groggy sailormen, on shore leave, make unsteady
+attempts upon the dancing balls. One mistakes the moon for the target,
+but is discovered in season. "Don't shoot that," says the man who
+loads the guns; "there's a lamp behind it." Three scared birds in the
+window recess try vainly to snatch a moment's sleep between shots and
+the trains that go roaring overhead on the elevated road. Roused by
+the sharp crack of the rifles, they blink at the lights in the street,
+and peck moodily at a crust in their bed of shavings.
+
+The dime museum gong clatters out its noisy warning that "the lecture"
+is about to begin. From the concert hall, where men sit drinking beer
+in clouds of smoke, comes the thin voice of a short-skirted singer,
+warbling, "Do they think of me at home?" The young fellow who sits
+near the door, abstractedly making figures in the wet track of the
+"schooners," buries something there with a sudden restless turn, and
+calls for another beer. Out in the street a band strikes up. A host
+with banners advances, chanting an unfamiliar hymn. In the ranks
+marches a cripple on crutches. Newsboys follow, gaping. Under the
+illuminated clock of the Cooper Institute the procession halts, and
+the leader, turning his face to the sky, offers a prayer. The passing
+crowds stop to listen. A few bare their heads. The devoted group, the
+flapping banners, and the changing torch-light on upturned faces, make
+a strange, weird picture. Then the drum-beat, and the band files into
+its barracks across the street. A few of the listeners follow, among
+them the lad from the concert hall, who slinks shamefacedly in when
+he thinks no one is looking.
+
+Down at the foot of the Bowery is the "pan-handlers' beat," where the
+saloons elbow one another at every step, crowding out all other
+business than that of keeping lodgers to support them. Within call of
+it, across the square, stands a church which, in the memory of men yet
+living, was built to shelter the fashionable Baptist audiences of a
+day when Madison Square was out in the fields, and Harlem had a
+foreign sound. The fashionable audiences are gone long since. To-day
+the church, fallen into premature decay, but still handsome in its
+strong and noble lines, stands as a missionary outpost in the land of
+the enemy, its builders would have said, doing a greater work than
+they planned. To-night is the Christmas festival of its
+English-speaking Sunday-school, and the pews are filled. The banners
+of United Italy, of modern Hellas, of France and Germany and England,
+hang side by side with the Chinese dragon and the starry flag--signs
+of the cosmopolitan character of the congregation. Greek and Roman
+Catholics, Jews and joss-worshippers, go there; few Protestants, and
+no Baptists. It is easy to pick out the children in their seats by
+nationality, and as easy to read the story of poverty and suffering
+that stands written in more than one mother's haggard face, now
+beaming with pleasure at the little ones' glee. A gayly decorated
+Christmas tree has taken the place of the pulpit. At its foot is
+stacked a mountain of bundles, Santa Claus's gifts to the school. A
+self-conscious young man with soap-locks has just been allowed to
+retire, amid tumultuous applause, after blowing "Nearer, my God, to
+Thee" on his horn until his cheeks swelled almost to bursting. A
+trumpet ever takes the Fourth Ward by storm. A class of little girls
+is climbing upon the platform. Each wears a capital letter on her
+breast, and has a piece to speak that begins with the letter; together
+they spell its lesson. There is momentary consternation: one is
+missing. As the discovery is made, a child pushes past the doorkeeper,
+hot and breathless. "I am in 'Boundless Love,'" she says, and makes
+for the platform, where her arrival restores confidence and the
+language.
+
+In the audience the befrocked visitor from up-town sits cheek by jowl
+with the pigtailed Chinaman and the dark-browed Italian. Up in the
+gallery, farthest from the preacher's desk and the tree, sits a Jewish
+mother with three boys, almost in rags. A dingy and threadbare shawl
+partly hides her poor calico wrap and patched apron. The woman shrinks
+in the pew, fearful of being seen; her boys stand upon the benches,
+and applaud with the rest. She endeavors vainly to restrain them.
+"Tick, tick!" goes the old clock over the door through which wealth
+and fashion went out long years ago, and poverty came in.
+
+Tick, tick! the world moves, with us--without; without or with. She is
+the yesterday, they the to-morrow. What shall the harvest be?
+
+Loudly ticked the old clock in time with the doxology, the other day,
+when they cleared the tenants out of Gotham Court down here in Cherry
+Street, and shut the iron doors of Single and Double Alley against
+them. Never did the world move faster or surer toward a better day
+than when the wretched slum was seized by the health officers as a
+nuisance unfit longer to disgrace a Christian city. The snow lies deep
+in the deserted passageways, and the vacant floors are given over to
+evil smells, and to the rats that forage in squads, burrowing in the
+neglected sewers. The "wall of wrath" still towers above the buildings
+in the adjoining Alderman's Court, but its wrath at last is wasted.
+
+It was built by a vengeful Quaker, whom the alderman had knocked down
+in a quarrel over the boundary line, and transmitted its legacy of
+hate to generations yet unborn; for where it stood it shut out
+sunlight and air from the tenements of Alderman's Court. And at last
+it is to go, Gotham Court and all; and to the going the wall of wrath
+has contributed its share, thus in the end atoning for some of the
+harm it wrought. Tick! old clock; the world moves. Never yet did
+Christmas seem less dark on Cherry Hill than since the lights were put
+out in Gotham Court forever.
+
+In "The Bend" the philanthropist undertaker who "buries for what he
+can catch on the plate" hails the Yule-tide season with a pyramid of
+green made of two coffins set on end. It has been a good day, he says
+cheerfully, putting up the shutters; and his mind is easy. But the
+"good days" of The Bend are over, too. The Bend itself is all but
+gone. Where the old pigsty stood, children dance and sing to the
+strumming of a cracked piano-organ propelled on wheels by an Italian
+and his wife. The park that has come to take the place of the slum
+will curtail the undertaker's profits, as it has lessened the work of
+the police. Murder was the fashion of the day that is past. Scarce a
+knife has been drawn since the sunlight shone into that evil spot, and
+grass and green shrubs took the place of the old rookeries. The
+Christmas gospel of peace and good-will moves in where the slum moves
+out. It never had a chance before.
+
+The children follow the organ, stepping in the slush to the music,
+bareheaded and with torn shoes, but happy; across the Five Points and
+through "the Bay,"--known to the directory as Baxter Street,--to "the
+Divide," still Chatham Street to its denizens, though the aldermen
+have rechristened it Park Row. There other delegations of Greek and
+Italian children meet and escort the music on its homeward trip. In
+one of the crooked streets near the river its journey comes to an end.
+A battered door opens to let it in. A tallow dip burns sleepily on the
+creaking stairs. The water runs with a loud clatter in the sink: it is
+to keep it from freezing. There is not a whole window pane in the
+hall. Time was when this was a fine house harboring wealth and
+refinement. It has neither now. In the old parlor downstairs a knot of
+hard-faced men and women sit on benches about a deal table, playing
+cards. They have a jug between them, from which they drink by turns.
+On the stump of a mantel-shelf a lamp burns before a rude print of the
+Mother of God. No one pays any heed to the hand-organ man and his wife
+as they climb to their attic. There is a colony of them up
+there--three families in four rooms.
+
+"Come in, Antonio," says the tenant of the double flat,--the one with
+two rooms,--"come and keep Christmas." Antonio enters, cap in hand. In
+the corner by the dormer-window a "crib" has been fitted up in
+commemoration of the Nativity. A soap-box and two hemlock branches are
+the elements. Six tallow candles and a night-light illuminate a
+singular collection of rarities, set out with much ceremonial show. A
+doll tightly wrapped in swaddling-clothes represents "the Child." Over
+it stands a ferocious-looking beast, easily recognized as a survival
+of the last political campaign,--the Tammany tiger,--threatening to
+swallow it at a gulp if one as much as takes one's eyes off it. A
+miniature Santa Claus, a pasteboard monkey, and several other articles
+of bric-a-brac of the kind the tenement affords, complete the outfit.
+The background is a picture of St. Donato, their village saint, with
+the Madonna "whom they worship most." But the incongruity harbors no
+suggestion of disrespect. The children view the strange show with
+genuine reverence, bowing and crossing themselves before it. There are
+five, the oldest a girl of seventeen, who works for a sweater, making
+three dollars a week. It is all the money that comes in, for the
+father has been sick and unable to work eight months and the mother
+has her hands full: the youngest is a baby in arms. Three of the
+children go to a charity school, where they are fed, a great help, now
+the holidays have come to make work slack for sister. The rent is six
+dollars--two weeks' pay out of the four. The mention of a possible
+chance of light work for the man brings the daughter with her sewing
+from the adjoining room, eager to hear. That would be Christmas
+indeed! "Pietro!" She runs to the neighbors to communicate the joyful
+tidings. Pietro comes, with his new-born baby, which he is tending
+while his wife lies ill, to look at the maestro, so powerful and good.
+He also has been out of work for months, with a family of mouths to
+fill, and nothing coming in. His children are all small yet, but they
+speak English.
+
+"What," I say, holding a silver dime up before the oldest, a smart
+little chap of seven--"what would you do if I gave you this?"
+
+"Get change," he replies promptly. When he is told that it is his own,
+to buy toys with, his eyes open wide with wondering incredulity. By
+degrees he understands. The father does not. He looks questioningly
+from one to the other. When told, his respect increases visibly for
+"the rich gentleman."
+
+They were villagers of the same community in southern Italy, these
+people and others in the tenements thereabouts, and they moved their
+patron saint with them. They cluster about his worship here, but the
+worship is more than an empty form. He typifies to them the old
+neighborliness of home, the spirit of mutual help, of charity, and of
+the common cause against the common enemy. The community life survives
+through their saint in the far city to an unsuspected extent. The sick
+are cared for; the dreaded hospital is fenced out. There are no
+Italian evictions. The saint has paid the rent of this attic through
+two hard months; and here at his shrine the Calabrian village gathers,
+in the persons of these three, to do him honor on Christmas eve.
+
+Where the old Africa has been made over into a modern Italy, since
+King Humbert's cohorts struck the up-town trail, three hundred of the
+little foreigners are having an uproarious time over their Christmas
+tree in the Children's Aid Society's school. And well they may, for
+the like has not been seen in Sullivan Street in this generation.
+Christmas trees are rather rarer over here than on the East Side,
+where the German leavens the lump with his loyalty to home traditions.
+This is loaded with silver and gold and toys without end, until there
+is little left of the original green. Santa Claus's sleigh must have
+been upset in a snow-drift over here, and righted by throwing the
+cargo overboard, for there is at least a wagon-load of things that can
+find no room on the tree. The appearance of "teacher" with a double
+armful of curly-headed dolls in red, yellow, and green Mother-Hubbards,
+doubtful how to dispose of them, provokes a shout of approval, which
+is presently quieted by the principal's bell. School is "in" for the
+preliminary exercises. Afterward there are to be the tree and
+ice-cream for the good children. In their anxiety to prove their title
+clear, they sit so straight, with arms folded, that the whole row
+bends over backward. The lesson is brief, the answers to the point.
+
+"What do we receive at Christmas?" the teacher wants to know. The
+whole school responds with a shout, "Dolls and toys!" To the question,
+"Why do we receive them at Christmas?" the answer is not so prompt.
+But one youngster from Thompson Street holds up his hand. He knows.
+"Because we always get 'em," he says; and the class is convinced: it
+is a fact. A baby wails because it cannot get the whole tree at once.
+The "little mother"--herself a child of less than a dozen winters--who
+has it in charge, cooes over it, and soothes its grief with the aid of
+a surreptitious sponge-cake evolved from the depths of teacher's
+pocket. Babies are encouraged in these schools, though not originally
+included in their plan, as often the one condition upon which the
+older children can be reached. Some one has to mind the baby, with all
+hands out at work.
+
+The school sings "Santa Lucia" and "Children of the Heavenly King,"
+and baby is lulled to sleep.
+
+"Who is this King?" asks the teacher, suddenly, at the end of a verse.
+Momentary stupefaction. The little minds are on ice-cream just then;
+the lad nearest the door has telegraphed that it is being carried up
+in pails. A little fellow on the back seat saves the day. Up goes his
+brown fist.
+
+"Well, Vito, who is he?"
+
+"McKinley!" pipes the lad, who remembers the election just past; and
+the school adjourns for ice-cream.
+
+It is a sight to see them eat it. In a score of such schools, from the
+Hook to Harlem, the sight is enjoyed in Christmas week by the men and
+women who, out of their own pockets, reimburse Santa Claus for his
+outlay, and count it a joy, as well they may; for their beneficence
+sometimes makes the one bright spot in lives that have suffered of all
+wrongs the most cruel,--that of being despoiled of their childhood.
+Sometimes they are little Bohemians; sometimes the children of refugee
+Jews; and again, Italians, or the descendants of the Irish stock of
+Hell's Kitchen and Poverty Row; always the poorest, the shabbiest, the
+hungriest--the children Santa Claus loves best to find, if any one
+will show him the way. Having so much on hand, he has no time, you
+see, to look them up himself. That must be done for him; and it is
+done. To the teacher in the Sullivan Street school came one little
+girl, this last Christmas, with anxious inquiry if it was true that he
+came around with toys.
+
+"I hanged my stocking last time," she said, "and he didn't come at
+all." In the front house indeed, he left a drum and a doll, but no
+message from him reached the rear house in the alley. "Maybe he
+couldn't find it," she said soberly. Did the teacher think he would
+come if she wrote to him? She had learned to write.
+
+Together they composed a note to Santa Claus, speaking for a doll and
+a bell--the bell to play "go to school" with when she was kept home
+minding the baby. Lest he should by any chance miss the alley in spite
+of directions, little Rosa was invited to hang her stocking, and her
+sister's, with the janitor's children's in the school. And lo! on
+Christmas morning there was a gorgeous doll, and a bell that was a
+whole curriculum in itself, as good as a year's schooling any day!
+Faith in Santa Claus is established in that Thompson Street alley for
+this generation at least; and Santa Claus, got by hook or by crook
+into an Eighth Ward alley, is as good as the whole Supreme Court
+bench, with the Court of Appeals thrown in, for backing the Board of
+Health against the slum.
+
+But the ice-cream! They eat it off the seats, half of them kneeling or
+squatting on the floor; they blow on it, and put it in their pockets
+to carry home to baby. Two little shavers discovered to be feeding
+each other, each watching the smack develop on the other's lips as the
+acme of his own bliss, are "cousins"; that is why. Of cake there is a
+double supply. It is a dozen years since "Fighting Mary," the wildest
+child in the Seventh Avenue school, taught them a lesson there which
+they have never forgotten. She was perfectly untamable, fighting
+everybody in school, the despair of her teacher, till on Thanksgiving,
+reluctantly included in the general amnesty and mince-pie, she was
+caught cramming the pie into her pocket, after eying it with a look of
+pure ecstasy, but refusing to touch it. "For mother" was her
+explanation, delivered with a defiant look before which the class
+quailed. It is recorded, but not in the minutes, that the board of
+managers wept over Fighting Mary, who, all unconscious of having
+caused such an astonishing "break," was at that moment engaged in
+maintaining her prestige and reputation by fighting the gang in the
+next block. The minutes contain merely a formal resolution to the
+effect that occasions of mince-pie shall carry double rations
+thenceforth. And the rule has been kept--not only in Seventh Avenue,
+but in every industrial school--since. Fighting Mary won the biggest
+fight of her troubled life that day, without striking a blow.
+
+It was in the Seventh Avenue school last Christmas that I offered the
+truant class a four-bladed penknife as a prize for whittling out the
+truest Maltese cross. It was a class of black sheep, and it was the
+blackest sheep of the flock that won the prize. "That awful Savarese,"
+said the principal in despair. I thought of Fighting Mary, and bade
+her take heart. I regret to say that within a week the hapless
+Savarese was black-listed for banking up the school door with snow, so
+that not even the janitor could get out and at him.
+
+Within hail of the Sullivan Street school camps a scattered little
+band, the Christmas customs of which I had been trying for years to
+surprise. They are Indians, a handful of Mohawks and Iroquois, whom
+some ill wind has blown down from their Canadian reservation, and left
+in these West Side tenements to eke out such a living as they can,
+weaving mats and baskets, and threading glass pearls on slippers and
+pin-cushions, until, one after another, they have died off and gone
+to happier hunting-grounds than Thompson Street. There were as many
+families as one could count on the fingers of both hands when I first
+came upon them, at the death of old Tamenund, the basket maker. Last
+Christmas there were seven. I had about made up my mind that the only
+real Americans in New York did not keep the holiday at all, when, one
+Christmas eve, they showed me how. Just as dark was setting in, old
+Mrs. Benoit came from her Hudson Street attic--where she was known
+among the neighbors, as old and poor as she, as Mrs. Ben Wah, and was
+believed to be the relict of a warrior of the name of Benjamin Wah--to
+the office of the Charity Organization Society, with a bundle for a
+friend who had helped her over a rough spot--the rent, I suppose. The
+bundle was done up elaborately in blue cheese-cloth, and contained a
+lot of little garments which she had made out of the remnants of
+blankets and cloth of her own from a younger and better day. "For
+those," she said, in her French patois, "who are poorer than myself;"
+and hobbled away. I found out, a few days later, when I took her
+picture weaving mats in her attic room, that she had scarcely food in
+the house that Christmas day and not the car fare to take her to
+church! Walking was bad, and her old limbs were stiff. She sat by the
+window through the winter evening, and watched the sun go down behind
+the western hills, comforted by her pipe. Mrs. Ben Wah, to give her
+her local name, is not really an Indian; but her husband was one, and
+she lived all her life with the tribe till she came here. She is a
+philosopher in her own quaint way. "It is no disgrace to be poor,"
+said she to me, regarding her empty tobacco-pouch; "but it is
+sometimes a great inconvenience." Not even the recollection of the
+vote of censure that was passed upon me once by the ladies of the
+Charitable Ten for surreptitiously supplying an aged couple, the
+special object of their charity, with army plug, could have deterred
+me from taking the hint.
+
+Very likely, my old friend Miss Sherman, in her Broome Street
+cellar,--it is always the attic or the cellar,--would object to Mrs.
+Ben Wah's claim to being the only real American in my note-book. She
+is from Down East, and says "stun" for stone. In her youth she was
+lady's-maid to a general's wife, the recollection of which military
+career equally condones the cellar and prevents her holding any sort
+of communication with her common neighbors, who add to the offence of
+being foreigners the unpardonable one of being mostly men. Eight cats
+bear her steady company, and keep alive her starved affections. I
+found them on last Christmas eve behind barricaded doors; for the cold
+that had locked the water-pipes had brought the neighbors down to the
+cellar, where Miss Sherman's cunning had kept them from freezing.
+Their tin pans and buckets were even then banging against her door.
+"They're a miserable lot," said the old maid, fondling her cats
+defiantly; "but let 'em. It's Christmas. Ah!" she added, as one of the
+eight stood up in her lap and rubbed its cheek against hers, "they're
+innocent. It isn't poor little animals that does the harm. It's men
+and women that does it to each other." I don't know whether it was
+just philosophy, like Mrs. Ben Wah's, or a glimpse of her story. If
+she had one, she kept it for her cats.
+
+In a hundred places all over the city, when Christmas comes, as many
+open-air fairs spring suddenly into life. A kind of Gentile Feast of
+Tabernacles possesses the tenement districts especially.
+Green-embowered booths stand in rows at the curb, and the voice of the
+tin trumpet is heard in the land. The common source of all the show is
+down by the North River, in the district known as "the Farm." Down
+there Santa Claus establishes headquarters early in December and until
+past New Year. The broad quay looks then more like a clearing in a
+pine forest than a busy section of the metropolis. The steamers
+discharge their loads of fir trees at the piers until they stand
+stacked mountain-high, with foot-hills of holly and ground-ivy
+trailing off toward the land side. An army train of wagons is engaged
+in carting them away from early morning till late at night; but the
+green forest grows, in spite of it all, until in places it shuts the
+shipping out of sight altogether. The air is redolent with the smell
+of balsam and pine. After nightfall, when the lights are burning in
+the busy market, and the homeward-bound crowds with baskets and heavy
+burdens of Christmas greens jostle one another with good-natured
+banter,--nobody is ever cross down here in the holiday season,--it is
+good to take a stroll through the Farm, if one has a spot in his heart
+faithful yet to the hills and the woods in spite of the latter-day
+city. But it is when the moonlight is upon the water and upon the dark
+phantom forest, when the heavy breathing of some passing steamer is
+the only sound that breaks the stillness of the night, and the
+watchman smokes his only pipe on the bulwark, that the Farm has a mood
+and an atmosphere all its own, full of poetry which some day a
+painter's brush will catch and hold.
+
+Into the ugliest tenement street Christmas brings something of
+picturesqueness, of cheer. Its message was ever to the poor and the
+heavy-laden, and by them it is understood with an instinctive yearning
+to do it honor. In the stiff dignity of the brownstone streets up-town
+there may be scarce a hint of it. In the homes of the poor it blossoms
+on stoop and fire-escape, looks out of the front window, and makes the
+unsightly barber-pole to sprout overnight like an Aaron's-rod. Poor
+indeed is the home that has not its sign of peace over the hearth, be
+it but a single sprig of green. A little color creeps with it even
+into rabbinical Hester Street, and shows in the shop-windows and in
+the children's faces. The very feather dusters in the pedler's stock
+take on brighter hues for the occasion, and the big knives in the
+cutler's shop gleam with a lively anticipation of the impending goose
+"with fixin's"--a concession, perhaps, to the commercial rather than
+the religious holiday: business comes then, if ever. A crowd of
+ragamuffins camp out at a window where Santa Claus and his wife stand
+in state, embodiment of the domestic ideal that has not yet gone out
+of fashion in these tenements, gazing hungrily at the announcement
+that "A silver present will be given to every purchaser by a real
+Santa Claus.--M. Levitsky." Across the way, in a hole in the wall, two
+cobblers are pegging away under an oozy lamp that makes a yellow
+splurge on the inky blackness about them, revealing to the passer-by
+their bearded faces, but nothing of the environment save a single
+sprig of holly suspended from the lamp. From what forgotten brake it
+came with a message of cheer, a thought of wife and children across
+the sea waiting their summons, God knows. The shop is their house and
+home. It was once the hall of the tenement; but to save space, enough
+has been walled in to make room for their bench and bed; the tenants
+go through the next house. No matter if they are cramped; by and by
+they will have room. By and by comes the spring, and with it the
+steamer. Does not the green branch speak of spring and of hope? The
+policeman on the beat hears their hammers beat a joyous tattoo past
+midnight, far into Christmas morning. Who shall say its message has
+not reached even them in their slum?
+
+Where the noisy trains speed over the iron highway past the
+second-story windows of Allen Street, a cellar door yawns darkly in
+the shadow of one of the pillars that half block the narrow sidewalk.
+A dull gleam behind the cobweb-shrouded window pane supplements the
+sign over the door, in Yiddish and English: "Old Brasses." Four
+crooked and mouldy steps lead to utter darkness, with no friendly
+voice to guide the hapless customer. Fumbling along the dank wall, he
+is left to find the door of the shop as best he can. Not a likely
+place to encounter the fastidious from the Avenue! Yet ladies in furs
+and silk find this door and the grim old smith within it. Now and then
+an artist stumbles upon them, and exults exceedingly in his find. Two
+holiday shoppers are even now haggling with the coppersmith over the
+price of a pair of curiously wrought brass candlesticks. The old man
+has turned from the forge, at which he was working, unmindful of his
+callers roving among the dusty shelves. Standing there, erect and
+sturdy, in his shiny leather apron, hammer in hand, with the firelight
+upon his venerable head, strong arms bared to the elbow, and the
+square paper cap pushed back from a thoughtful, knotty brow, he stirs
+strange fancies. One half expects to see him fashioning a gorget or a
+sword on his anvil. But his is a more peaceful craft. Nothing more
+warlike is in sight than a row of brass shields, destined for
+ornament, not for battle. Dark shadows chase one another by the
+flickering light among copper kettles of ruddy glow, old-fashioned
+samovars, and massive andirons of tarnished brass. The bargaining goes
+on. Overhead the nineteenth century speeds by with rattle and roar; in
+here linger the shadows of the centuries long dead. The boy at the
+anvil listens open-mouthed, clutching the bellows-rope.
+
+In Liberty Hall a Jewish wedding is in progress. Liberty! Strange how
+the word echoes through these sweaters' tenements, where starvation is
+at home half the time. It is as an all-consuming passion with these
+people, whose spirit a thousand years of bondage have not availed to
+daunt. It breaks out in strikes, when to strike is to hunger and die.
+Not until I stood by a striking cloak-maker whose last cent was gone,
+with not a crust in the house to feed seven hungry mouths, yet who had
+voted vehemently in the meeting that day to keep up the strike to the
+bitter end,--bitter indeed, nor far distant,--and heard him at sunset
+recite the prayer of his fathers: "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God,
+King of the world, that thou hast redeemed us as thou didst redeem our
+fathers, hast delivered us from bondage to liberty, and from servile
+dependence to redemption!"--not until then did I know what of
+sacrifice the word might mean, and how utterly we of another day had
+forgotten. But for once shop and tenement are left behind. Whatever
+other days may have in store, this is their day of play, when all may
+rejoice.
+
+The bridegroom, a cloak-presser in a hired dress suit, sits alone and
+ill at ease at one end of the hall, sipping whiskey with a fine air of
+indifference, but glancing apprehensively toward the crowd of women
+in the opposite corner that surround the bride, a pale little
+shop-girl with a pleading, winsome face. From somewhere unexpectedly
+appears a big man in an ill-fitting coat and skullcap, flanked on
+either side by a fiddler, who scrapes away and away, accompanying the
+improvisator in a plaintive minor key as he halts before the bride and
+intones his lay. With many a shrug of stooping shoulders and queer
+excited gesture, he drones, in the harsh, guttural Yiddish of Hester
+Street, his story of life's joys and sorrows, its struggles and
+victories in the land of promise. The women listen, nodding and
+swaying their bodies sympathetically. He works himself into a frenzy,
+in which the fiddlers vainly try to keep up with him. He turns and
+digs the laggard angrily in the side without losing the metre. The
+climax comes. The bride bursts into hysterical sobs, while the women
+wipe their eyes. A plate, heretofore concealed under his coat, is
+whisked out. He has conquered; the inevitable collection is taken up.
+
+The tuneful procession moves upon the bridegroom. An Essex Street girl
+in the crowd, watching them go, says disdainfully: "None of this
+humbug when I get married." It is the straining of young America at
+the fetters of tradition. Ten minutes later, when, between double
+files of women holding candles, the couple pass to the canopy where
+the rabbi waits, she has already forgotten; and when the crunching of
+a glass under the bridegroom's heel announces that they are one, and
+that until the broken pieces be reunited he is hers and hers alone,
+she joins with all the company in the exulting shout of "Mozzel tov!"
+("Good luck!"). Then the _dupka_, men and women joining in, forgetting
+all but the moment, hands on hips, stepping in time, forward,
+backward, and across. And then the feast.
+
+They sit at the long tables by squads and tribes. Those who belong
+together sit together. There is no attempt at pairing off for
+conversation or mutual entertainment, at speech-making or toasting.
+The business in hand is to eat, and it is attended to. The bridegroom,
+at the head of the table, with his shiny silk hat on, sets the
+example; and the guests emulate it with zeal, the men smoking big,
+strong cigars between mouthfuls. "Gosh! ain't it fine?" is the
+grateful comment of one curly-headed youngster, bravely attacking his
+third plate of chicken-stew. "Fine as silk," nods his neighbor in
+knickerbockers. Christmas, for once, means something to them that they
+can understand. The crowd of hurrying waiters make room for one
+bearing aloft a small turkey adorned with much tinsel and many paper
+flowers. It is for the bride, the one thing not to be touched until
+the next day--one day off from the drudgery of housekeeping; she, too,
+can keep Christmas.
+
+A group of bearded, dark-browed men sit apart, the rabbi among them.
+They are the orthodox, who cannot break bread with the rest, for fear,
+though the food be kosher, the plates have been defiled. They brought
+their own to the feast, and sit at their own table, stern and
+justified. Did they but know what depravity is harbored in the impish
+mind of the girl yonder, who plans to hang her stocking overnight by
+the window! There is no fireplace in the tenement. Queer things happen
+over here, in the strife between the old and the new. The girls of the
+College Settlement, last summer, felt compelled to explain that the
+holiday in the country which they offered some of these children was
+to be spent in an Episcopal clergyman's house, where they had prayers
+every morning. "Oh," was the mother's indulgent answer, "they know it
+isn't true, so it won't hurt them."
+
+The bell of a neighboring church tower strikes the vesper hour. A man
+in working-clothes uncovers his head reverently, and passes on.
+Through the vista of green bowers formed of the grocer's stock of
+Christmas trees a passing glimpse of flaring torches in the distant
+square is caught. They touch with flame the gilt cross towering high
+above the "White Garden," as the German residents call Tompkins
+Square. On the sidewalk the holy-eve fair is in its busiest hour. In
+the pine-board booths stand rows of staring toy dogs alternately with
+plaster saints. Red apples and candy are hawked from carts. Pedlers
+offer colored candles with shrill outcry. A huckster feeding his horse
+by the curb scatters, unseen, a share for the sparrows. The cross
+flashes white against the dark sky.
+
+In one of the side streets near the East River has stood for thirty
+years a little mission church, called Hope Chapel by its founders, in
+the brave spirit in which they built it. It has had plenty of use for
+the spirit since. Of the kind of problems that beset its pastor I
+caught a glimpse the other day, when, as I entered his room, a
+rough-looking man went out.
+
+"One of my cares," said Mr. Devins, looking after him with contracted
+brow. "He has spent two Christmas days of twenty-three out of jail. He
+is a burglar, or was. His daughter has brought him round. She is a
+seamstress. For three months, now, she has been keeping him and the
+home, working nights. If I could only get him a job! He won't stay
+honest long without it; but who wants a burglar for a watchman? And
+how can I recommend him?"
+
+A few doors from the chapel an alley sets into the block. We halted at
+the mouth of it.
+
+"Come in," said Mr. Devins, "and wish Blind Jennie a Merry Christmas."
+
+We went in, in single file; there was not room for two. As we climbed
+the creaking stairs of the rear tenement, a chorus of children's
+shrill voices burst into song somewhere above.
+
+"It is her class," said the pastor of Hope Chapel, as he stopped on
+the landing. "They are all kinds. We never could hope to reach them;
+Jennie can. They fetch her the papers given out in the Sunday-school,
+and read to her what is printed under the pictures; and she tells them
+the story of it. There is nothing Jennie doesn't know about the
+Bible."
+
+The door opened upon a low-ceiled room, where the evening shades lay
+deep. The red glow from the kitchen stove discovered a jam of
+children, young girls mostly, perched on the table, the chairs, in one
+another's laps, or squatting on the floor; in the midst of them, a
+little old woman with heavily veiled face, and wan, wrinkled hands
+folded in her lap. The singing ceased as we stepped across the
+threshold.
+
+"Be welcome," piped a harsh voice with a singular note of cheerfulness
+in it. "Whose step is that with you, pastor? I don't know it. He is
+welcome in Jennie's house, whoever he be. Girls, make him to home."
+The girls moved up to make room.
+
+"Jennie has not seen since she was a child," said the clergyman,
+gently; "but she knows a friend without it. Some day she shall see the
+great Friend in his glory, and then she shall be Blind Jennie no
+more."
+
+The little woman raised the veil from a face shockingly disfigured,
+and touched the eyeless sockets. "Some day," she repeated, "Jennie
+shall see. Not long now--not long!" Her pastor patted her hand. The
+silence of the dark room was broken by Blind Jennie's voice, rising
+cracked and quavering: "Alas! and did my Saviour bleed?" The shrill
+chorus burst in:--
+
+  It was there by faith I received my sight,
+       And now I am happy all the day.
+
+The light that falls from the windows of the Neighborhood Guild, in
+Delancey Street, makes a white path across the asphalt pavement.
+Within, there is mirth and laughter. The Tenth Ward Social Reform Club
+is having its Christmas festival. Its members, poor mothers,
+scrubwomen,--the president is the janitress of a tenement near
+by,--have brought their little ones, a few their husbands, to share in
+the fun. One little girl has to be dragged up to the grab-bag. She
+cries at the sight of Santa Claus. The baby has drawn a woolly horse.
+He kisses the toy with a look of ecstatic bliss, and toddles away. At
+the far end of the hall a game of blindman's-buff is starting up. The
+aged grandmother, who has watched it with growing excitement, bids one
+of the settlement workers hold her grandchild, that she may join in;
+and she does join in, with all the pent-up hunger of fifty joyless
+years. The worker, looking on, smiles; one has been reached. Thus is
+the battle against the slum waged and won with the child's play.
+
+Tramp! tramp! comes the to-morrow upon the stage. Two hundred and
+fifty pairs of little feet, keeping step, are marching to dinner in
+the Newsboys' Lodging-house. Five hundred pairs more are restlessly
+awaiting their turn upstairs. In prison, hospital, and almshouse
+to-night the city is host, and gives of her plenty. Here an unknown
+friend has spread a generous repast for the waifs who all the rest of
+the days shift for themselves as best they can. Turkey, coffee, and
+pie, with "vegetubles" to fill in. As the file of eagle-eyed
+youngsters passes down the long tables, there are swift movements of
+grimy hands, and shirt-waists bulge, ragged coats sag at the pockets.
+Hardly is the file seated when the plaint rises: "I ain't got no pie!
+It got swiped on me." Seven despoiled ones hold up their hands.
+
+The superintendent laughs--it is Christmas eve. He taps one
+tentatively on the bulging shirt. "What have you here, my lad?"
+
+"Me pie," responds he, with an innocent look; "I wuz scart it would
+get stole."
+
+A little fellow who has been eying one of the visitors attentively
+takes his knife out of his mouth, and points it at him with
+conviction.
+
+"I know you," he pipes. "You're a p'lice commissioner. I seen yer
+picter in the papers. You're Teddy Roosevelt!"
+
+The clatter of knives and forks ceases suddenly. Seven pies creep
+stealthily over the edge of the table, and are replaced on as many
+plates. The visitors laugh. It was a case of mistaken identity.
+
+Farthest down town, where the island narrows toward the Battery, and
+warehouses crowd the few remaining tenements, the sombre-hued colony
+of Syrians is astir with preparation for the holiday. How comes it
+that in the only settlement of the real Christmas people in New York
+the corner saloon appropriates to itself all the outward signs of it?
+Even the floral cross that is nailed over the door of the Orthodox
+church is long withered and dead; it has been there since Easter, and
+it is yet twelve days to Christmas by the belated reckoning of the
+Greek Church. But if the houses show no sign of the holiday, within
+there is nothing lacking. The whole colony is gone a-visiting. There
+are enough of the unorthodox to set the fashion, and the rest follow
+the custom of the country. The men go from house to house, laugh,
+shake hands, and kiss one another on both cheeks, with the salutation,
+"Kol am va antom Salimoon." "Every year and you are safe," the Syrian
+guide renders it into English; and a non-professional interpreter
+amends it: "May you grow happier year by year." Arrack made from
+grapes and flavored with anise seed, and candy baked in little white
+balls like marbles, are served with the indispensable cigarette; for
+long callers, the pipe.
+
+In a top-floor room of one of the darkest of the dilapidated
+tenements, the dusty window panes of which the last glow in the winter
+sky is tinging faintly with red, a dance is in progress. The guests,
+most of them fresh from the hillsides of Mount Lebanon, squat about
+the room. A reed-pipe and a tambourine furnish the music. One has the
+centre of the floor. With a beer jug filled to the brim on his head,
+he skips and sways, bending, twisting, kneeling, gesturing, and
+keeping time, while the men clap their hands. He lies down and turns
+over, but not a drop is spilled. Another succeeds him, stepping
+proudly, gracefully, furling and unfurling a handkerchief like a
+banner. As he sits down, and the beer goes around, one in the corner,
+who looks like a shepherd fresh from his pasture, strikes up a song--a
+far-off, lonesome, plaintive lay. "'Far as the hills,'" says the
+guide; "a song of the old days and the old people, now seldom heard."
+All together croon the refrain. The host delivers himself of an epic
+about his love across the seas, with the most agonizing expression,
+and in a shockingly bad voice. He is the worst singer I ever heard;
+but his companions greet his effort with approving shouts of "Yi! yi!"
+They look so fierce, and yet are so childishly happy, that at the
+thought of their exile and of the dark tenement the question arises,
+"Why all this joy?" The guide answers it with a look of surprise.
+"They sing," he says, "because they are glad they are free. Did you
+not know?"
+
+The bells in old Trinity chime the midnight hour. From dark hallways
+men and women pour forth and hasten to the Maronite church. In the
+loft of the dingy old warehouse wax candles burn before an altar of
+brass. The priest, in a white robe with a huge gold cross worked on
+the back, chants the ritual. The people respond. The women kneel in
+the aisles, shrouding their heads in their shawls; a surpliced acolyte
+swings his censer; the heavy perfume of burning incense fills the
+hall.
+
+The band at the anarchists' ball is tuning up for the last dance.
+Young and old float to the happy strains, forgetting injustice,
+oppression, hatred. Children slide upon the waxed floor, weaving
+fearlessly in and out between the couples--between fierce, bearded men
+and short-haired women with crimson-bordered kerchiefs. A
+Punch-and-Judy show in the corner evokes shouts of laughter.
+
+Outside the snow is falling. It sifts silently into each nook and
+corner, softens all the hard and ugly lines, and throws the spotless
+mantle of charity over the blemishes, the shortcomings. Christmas
+morning will dawn pure and white.
+
+
+
+
+ABE'S GAME OF JACKS
+
+
+Time hung heavily on Abe Seelig's hands, alone, or as good as alone,
+in the flat on the "stoop" of the Allen Street tenement. His mother
+had gone to the butcher's. Chajim, the father,--"Chajim" is the
+Yiddish of "Herman,"--was long at the shop. To Abe was committed the
+care of his two young brothers, Isaac and Jacob. Abraham was nine, and
+past time for fooling. Play is "fooling" in the sweaters' tenements,
+and the muddling of ideas makes trouble, later on, to which the police
+returns have the index.
+
+"Don't let 'em on the stairs," the mother had said, on going, with a
+warning nod toward the bed where Jake and Ikey slept. He didn't intend
+to. Besides, they were fast asleep. Abe cast about him for fun of some
+kind, and bethought himself of a game of jacks. That he had no
+jackstones was of small moment to him. East Side tenements, where
+pennies are infrequent, have resources. One penny was Abe's hoard.
+With that, and an accidental match, he began the game.
+
+It went on well enough, albeit slightly lopsided by reason of the
+penny being so much the weightier, until the match, in one unlucky
+throw, fell close to a chair by the bed, and, in falling, caught fire.
+
+Something hung down from the chair, and while Abe gazed, open-mouthed,
+at the match, at the chair, and at the bed right alongside, with his
+sleeping brothers on it, the little blaze caught it. The flame climbed
+up, up, up, and a great smoke curled under the ceiling. The children
+still slept, locked in each other's arms, and Abe--Abe ran.
+
+He ran, frightened half out of his senses, out of the room, out of the
+house, into the street, to the nearest friendly place he knew, a
+grocery store five doors away, where his mother traded; but she was
+not there. Abe merely saw that she was not there, then he hid himself,
+trembling.
+
+In all the block, where three thousand tenants live, no one knew what
+cruel thing was happening on the stoop of No. 19.
+
+A train passed on the elevated road, slowing up for the station near
+by. The engineer saw one wild whirl of fire within the room, and
+opening the throttle of his whistle wide, let out a screech so long
+and so loud that in ten seconds the street was black with men and
+women rushing out to see what dreadful thing had happened.
+
+No need of asking. From the door of the Seelig flat, burned through,
+fierce flames reached across the hall, barring the way. The tenement
+was shut in.
+
+Promptly it poured itself forth upon fire-escape ladders, front and
+rear, with shrieks and wailing. In the street the crowd became a
+deadly crush. Police and firemen battered their way through, ran down
+and over men, women, and children, with a desperate effort.
+
+The firemen from Hook and Ladder Six, around the corner, had heard the
+shrieks, and, knowing what they portended, ran with haste. But they
+were too late with their extinguishers; could not even approach the
+burning flat. They could only throw up their ladders to those above.
+For the rest they must needs wait until the engines came.
+
+One tore up the street, coupled on a hose, and ran it into the house.
+Then died out the fire in the flat as speedily as it had come. The
+burning room was pumped full of water, and the firemen entered.
+
+Just within the room they came upon little Jacob, still alive, but
+half roasted. He had struggled from the bed nearly to the door. On the
+bed lay the body of Isaac, the youngest, burned to a crisp.
+
+They carried Jacob to the police station. As they brought him out, a
+frantic woman burst through the throng and threw herself upon him. It
+was the children's mother come back. When they took her to the
+blackened corpse of little Ike, she went stark mad. A dozen neighbors
+held her down, shrieking, while others went in search of the father.
+
+In the street the excitement grew until it became almost
+uncontrollable when the dead boy was carried out.
+
+In the midst of it little Abe returned, pale, silent, and frightened,
+to stand by his raving mother.
+
+
+
+
+A LITTLE PICTURE
+
+
+The fire-bells rang on the Bowery in the small hours of the morning.
+One of the old dwelling-houses that remain from the day when the
+"Bouwerie" was yet remembered as an avenue of beer-gardens and
+pleasure resorts was burning. Down in the street stormed the firemen,
+coupling hose and dragging it to the front. Upstairs in the peak of
+the roof, in the broken skylight, hung a man, old, feeble, and gasping
+for breath, struggling vainly to get out. He had piled chairs upon
+tables, and climbed up where he could grasp the edge, but his strength
+had given out when one more effort would have freed him. He felt
+himself sinking back. Over him was the sky, reddened now by the fire
+that raged below. Through the hole the pent-up smoke in the building
+found vent and rushed in a black and stifling cloud.
+
+"Air, air!" gasped the old man. "O God, water!"
+
+There was a swishing sound, a splash, and the copious spray of a
+stream sent over the house from the street fell upon his upturned
+face. It beat back the smoke. Strength and hope returned. He took
+another grip on the rafter just as he would have let go.
+
+"Oh, that I might be reached yet and saved from this awful death!" he
+prayed. "Help, O God, help!"
+
+An answering cry came over the adjoining roof. He had been heard, and
+the firemen, who did not dream that any one was in the burning
+building, had him in a minute. He had been asleep in the store when
+the fire aroused him and drove him, blinded and bewildered, to the
+attic, where he was trapped.
+
+Safe in the street, the old man fell upon his knees.
+
+"I prayed for water, and it came; I prayed for freedom, and was saved.
+The God of my fathers be praised!" he said, and bowed his head in
+thanksgiving.
+
+
+
+
+A DREAM OF THE WOODS
+
+
+Something came over Police Headquarters in the middle of the summer
+night. It was like the sighing of the north wind in the branches of
+the tall firs and in the reeds along lonely river-banks where the
+otter dips from the brink for its prey. The doorman, who yawned in the
+hall, and to whom reed-grown river banks have been strangers so long
+that he has forgotten they ever were, shivered and thought of
+pneumonia.
+
+The Sergeant behind the desk shouted for some one to close the door;
+it was getting as cold as January. The little messenger boy on the
+lowest step of the oaken stairs nodded and dreamed in his sleep of
+Uncas and Chingachgook and the great woods. The cunning old beaver was
+there in his hut, and he heard the crack of Deerslayer's rifle.
+
+He knew all the time he was dreaming, sitting on the steps of Police
+Headquarters, and yet it was all as real to him as if he were there,
+with the Mingoes creeping up to him in ambush all about and reaching
+for his scalp.
+
+While he slept, a light step had passed, and the moccasin of the
+woods left its trail in his dream. In with the gust through the
+Mulberry Street door had come a strange pair, an old woman and a
+bright-eyed child, led by a policeman, and had passed up to Matron
+Travers's quarters on the top floor.
+
+Strangely different, they were yet alike, both children of the woods.
+The woman was a squaw typical in looks and bearing, with the straight,
+black hair, dark skin, and stolid look of her race. She climbed the
+steps wearily, holding the child by the hand. The little one skipped
+eagerly, two steps at a time. There was the faintest tinge of brown in
+her plump cheeks, and a roguish smile in the corner of her eyes that
+made it a hardship not to take her up in one's lap and hug her at
+sight. In her frock of red-and-white calico she was a fresh and
+charming picture, with all the grace of movement and the sweet shyness
+of a young fawn.
+
+The policeman had found them sitting on a big trunk in the Grand
+Central Station, waiting patiently for something or somebody that
+didn't come. When he had let them sit until he thought the child ought
+to be in bed, he took them into the police station in the depot, and
+there an effort was made to find out who and what they were. It was
+not an easy matter. Neither could speak English. They knew a few
+words of French, however, and between that and a note the old woman
+had in her pocket the general outline of the trouble was gathered.
+They were of the Canaghwaga tribe of Iroquois, domiciled in the St.
+Regis reservation across the Canadian border, and had come down to
+sell a trunkful of beads, and things worked with beads. Some one was
+to meet them, but had failed to come, and these two, to whom the
+trackless wilderness was as an open book, were lost in the city of ten
+thousand homes.
+
+The matron made them understand by signs that two of the nine white
+beds in the nursery were for them, and they turned right in, humbly
+and silently thankful. The little girl had carried up with her, hugged
+very close under her arm, a doll that was a real ethnological study.
+It was a faithful rendering of the Indian pappoose, whittled out of a
+chunk of wood, with two staring glass beads for eyes, and strapped to
+a board the way Indian babies are, under a coverlet of very gaudy
+blue. It was a marvellous doll baby, and its nurse was mighty proud of
+it. She didn't let it go when she went to bed. It slept with her, and
+got up to play with her as soon as the first ray of daylight peeped in
+over the tall roofs.
+
+The morning brought visitors, who admired the doll, chirruped to the
+little girl, and tried to talk with her grandmother, for that they
+made her out to be. To most questions she simply answered by shaking
+her head and holding out her credentials. There were two letters: one
+to the conductor of the train from Montreal, asking him to see that
+they got through all right; the other, a memorandum, for her own
+benefit apparently, recounting the number of hearts, crosses, and
+other treasures she had in her trunk. It was from those she had left
+behind at the reservation.
+
+"Little Angus," it ran, "sends what is over to sell for him. Sarah
+sends the hearts. As soon as you can, will you try and sell some
+hearts?" Then there was "love to mother," and lastly an account of
+what the mason had said about the chimney of the cabin. They had sent
+for him to fix it. It was very dangerous the way it was, ran the
+message, and if mother would get the bricks, he would fix it right
+away.
+
+The old squaw looked on with an anxious expression while the note was
+being read, as if she expected some sense to come out of it that would
+find her folks; but none of that kind could be made out of it, so they
+sat and waited until General Parker should come in.
+
+General Ely S. Parker was the "big Indian" of Mulberry Street in a
+very real sense. Though he was a clerk in the Police Department and
+never went on the war-path any more, he was the head of the ancient
+Indian Confederacy, chief of the Six Nations, once so powerful for
+mischief, and now a mere name that frightens no one. Donegahawa--one
+cannot help wishing that the picturesque old chief had kept his name
+of the council lodge--was not born to sit writing at an office desk.
+In youth he tracked the bear and the panther in the Northern woods.
+The scattered remnants of the tribes East and West owned his rightful
+authority as chief. The Canaghwagas were one of these. So these lost
+ones had come straight to the official and actual head of their people
+when they were stranded in the great city. They knew it when they
+heard the magic name of Donegahawa, and sat silently waiting and
+wondering till he should come. The child looked up admiringly at the
+gold-laced cap of Inspector Williams, when he took her on his knee,
+and the stern face of the big policeman relaxed and grew tender as a
+woman's as he took her face between his hands and kissed it.
+
+When the general came in he spoke to them at once in their own tongue,
+and very sweet and musical it was. Then their troubles were soon over.
+The sachem, when he had heard their woes, said two words between puffs
+of his pipe that cleared all the shadows away. They sounded to the
+paleface ear like "Huh Hoo--ochsjawai," or something equally
+barbarous, but they meant that there were not so many Indians in town
+but that theirs could be found, and in that the sachem was right. The
+number of redskins in Thompson Street--they all live over there--is
+about seven.
+
+The old squaw, when she was told that her friend would be found, got
+up promptly, and, bowing first to Inspector Williams and the other
+officials in the room, and next to the general, said very sweetly,
+"Njeawa," and Lightfoot--that was the child's name, it appeared--said
+it after her; which meant, the general explained, that they were very
+much obliged. Then they went out in charge of a policeman to begin
+their search, little Lightfoot hugging her doll and looking back over
+her shoulder at the many gold-laced policemen who had captured her
+little heart. And they kissed their hands after her.
+
+Mulberry Street awoke from its dream of youth, of the fields and the
+deep woods, to the knowledge that it was a bad day. The old doorman,
+who had stood at the gate patiently answering questions for twenty
+years, told the first man who came looking for a lost child, with
+sudden resentment, that he ought to be locked up for losing her, and,
+pushing him out in the rain, slammed the door after him.
+
+
+
+
+'TWAS 'LIZA'S DOINGS
+
+
+Joe drove his old gray mare along the stony road in deep thought. They
+had been across the ferry to Newtown with a load of Christmas truck.
+It had been a hard pull uphill for them both, for Joe had found it
+necessary not a few times to get down and give old 'Liza a lift to
+help her over the roughest spots; and now, going home, with the
+twilight coming on and no other job a-waiting, he let her have her own
+way. It was slow, but steady, and it suited Joe; for his head was full
+of busy thoughts, and there were few enough of them that were
+pleasant.
+
+Business had been bad at the big stores, never worse, and what
+trucking there was there were too many about. Storekeepers who never
+used to look at a dollar, so long as they knew they could trust the
+man who did their hauling, were counting the nickels these days. As
+for chance jobs like this one, that was all over with the holidays,
+and there had been little enough of it, too.
+
+There would be less, a good deal, with the hard winter at the door,
+and with 'Liza to keep and the many mouths to fill. Still, he
+wouldn't have minded it so much but for mother fretting and worrying
+herself sick at home, and all along o' Jim, the eldest boy, who had
+gone away mad and never come back. Many were the dollars he had paid
+the doctor and the druggist to fix her up, but it was no use. She was
+worrying herself into a decline, it was clear to be seen.
+
+Joe heaved a heavy sigh as he thought of the strapping lad who had
+brought such sorrow to his mother. So strong and so handy on the
+wagon. Old 'Liza loved him like a brother and minded him even better
+than she did himself. If he only had him now, they could face the
+winter and the bad times, and pull through. But things never had gone
+right since he left. He didn't know, Joe thought humbly as he jogged
+along over the rough road, but he had been a little hard on the lad.
+Boys wanted a chance once in a while. All work and no play was not for
+them. Likely he had forgotten he was a boy once himself. But Jim was
+such a big lad, 'most like a man. He took after his mother more than
+the rest. She had been proud, too, when she was a girl. He wished he
+hadn't been hasty that time they had words about those boxes at the
+store. Anyway, it turned out that it wasn't Jim's fault. But he was
+gone that night, and try as they might to find him, they never had
+word of him since. And Joe sighed again more heavily than before.
+
+Old 'Liza shied at something in the road, and Joe took a firmer hold
+on the reins. It turned his thoughts to the horse. She was getting
+old, too, and not as handy as she was. He noticed that she was getting
+winded with a heavy load. It was well on to ten years she had been
+their capital and the breadwinner of the house. Sometimes he thought
+that she missed Jim. If she was to leave them now, he wouldn't know
+what to do, for he couldn't raise the money to buy another horse
+nohow, as things were. Poor old 'Liza! He stroked her gray coat
+musingly with the point of his whip as he thought of their old
+friendship. The horse pointed one ear back toward her master and
+neighed gently, as if to assure him that she was all right.
+
+Suddenly she stumbled. Joe pulled her up in time, and throwing the
+reins over her back, got down to see what it was. An old horseshoe,
+and in the dust beside it a new silver quarter. He picked both up and
+put the shoe in the wagon.
+
+"They say it is luck," he mused, "finding horse-iron and money. Maybe
+it's my Christmas. Get up, 'Liza!" And he drove off to the ferry.
+
+The glare of a thousand gas lamps had chased the sunset out of the
+western sky, when Joe drove home through the city's streets. Between
+their straight, mile-long rows surged the busy life of the coming
+holiday. In front of every grocery store was a grove of fragrant
+Christmas trees waiting to be fitted into little green stands with
+fairy fences. Within, customers were bargaining, chatting, and
+bantering the busy clerks. Pedlers offering tinsel and colored candles
+waylaid them on the door-step. The rack under the butcher's awning
+fairly groaned with its weight of plucked geese, of turkeys, stout and
+skinny, of poultry of every kind. The saloon-keeper even had wreathed
+his door-posts in ground-ivy and hemlock, and hung a sprig of holly in
+the window, as if with a spurious promise of peace on earth and
+good-will toward men who entered there. It tempted not Joe. He drove
+past it to the corner, where he turned up a street darker and lonelier
+than the rest, toward a stretch of rocky, vacant lots fenced in by an
+old stone wall. 'Liza turned in at the rude gate without being told,
+and pulled up at the house.
+
+A plain little one-story frame with a lean-to for a kitchen, and an
+adjoining stable-shed, overshadowed all by two great chestnuts of the
+days when there were country lanes where now are paved streets, and on
+Manhattan Island there was farm by farm. A light gleamed in the
+window looking toward the street. As 'Liza's hoofs were heard on the
+drive, a young girl with a shawl over her head ran out from some
+shelter where she had been watching, and took the reins from Joe.
+
+"You're late," she said, stroking the mare's steaming flank. 'Liza
+reached around and rubbed her head against the girl's shoulder,
+nibbling playfully at the fringe of her shawl.
+
+"Yes; we've come far, and it's been a hard pull. 'Liza is tired. Give
+her a good feed, and I'll bed her down. How's mother?"
+
+"Sprier than she was," replied the girl, bending over the shaft to
+unbuckle the horse; "seems as if she'd kinder cheered up for
+Christmas." And she led 'Liza to the stable while her father backed
+the wagon into the shed.
+
+It was warm and very comfortable in the little kitchen, where he
+joined the family after "washing up." The fire burned brightly in the
+range, on which a good-sized roast sizzled cheerily in its pot,
+sending up clouds of savory steam. The sand on the white-pine floor
+was swept in tongues, old-country fashion. Joe and his wife were both
+born across the sea, and liked to keep Christmas eve as they had kept
+it when they were children. Two little boys and a younger girl than
+the one who had met him at the gate received him with shouts of glee,
+and pulled him straight from the door to look at a hemlock branch
+stuck in the tub of sand in the corner. It was their Christmas tree,
+and they were to light it with candles, red and yellow and green,
+which mamma got them at the grocer's where the big Santa Claus stood
+on the shelf. They pranced about like so many little colts, and clung
+to Joe by turns, shouting all at once, each one anxious to tell the
+great news first and loudest.
+
+Joe took them on his knee, all three, and when they had shouted until
+they had to stop for breath, he pulled from under his coat a paper
+bundle, at which the children's eyes bulged. He undid the wrapping
+slowly.
+
+"Who do you think has come home with me?" he said, and he held up
+before them the veritable Santa Claus himself, done in plaster and all
+snow-covered. He had bought it at the corner toy-store with his lucky
+quarter. "I met him on the road over on Long Island, where 'Liza and I
+was to-day, and I gave him a ride to town. They say it's luck falling
+in with Santa Claus, partickler when there's a horseshoe along. I put
+hisn up in the barn, in 'Liza's stall. Maybe our luck will turn yet,
+eh! old woman?" And he put his arm around his wife, who was setting
+out the dinner with Jennie, and gave her a good hug, while the
+children danced off with their Santa Claus.
+
+She was a comely little woman, and she tried hard to be cheerful. She
+gave him a brave look and a smile, but there were tears in her eyes,
+and Joe saw them, though he let on that he didn't. He patted her
+tenderly on the back and smoothed his Jennie's yellow braids, while he
+swallowed the lump in his throat and got it down and out of the way.
+He needed no doctor to tell him that Santa Claus would not come again
+and find her cooking their Christmas dinner, unless she mended soon
+and swiftly.
+
+It may be it was the thought of that which made him keep hold of her
+hand in his lap as they sat down together, and he read from the good
+book the "tidings of great joy which shall be to all people," and said
+the simple grace of a plain and ignorant, but reverent, man. He held
+it tight, as though he needed its support, when he came to the
+petition for "those dear to us and far away from home," for his glance
+strayed to the empty place beside the mother's chair, and his voice
+would tremble in spite of himself. He met his wife's eyes there, but,
+strangely, he saw no faltering in them. They rested upon Jim's vacant
+seat with a new look of trust that almost frightened him. It was as if
+the Christmas peace, the tidings of great joy, had sunk into her heart
+with rest and hope which presently throbbed through his, with new
+light and promise, and echoed in the children's happy voices.
+
+So they ate their dinner together, and sang and talked until it was
+time to go to bed. Joe went out to make all snug about 'Liza for the
+night and to give her an extra feed. He stopped in the door, coming
+back, to shake the snow out of his clothes. It was coming on with bad
+weather and a northerly storm, he reported. The snow was falling thick
+already and drifting badly. He saw to the kitchen fire and put the
+children to bed. Long before the clock in the neighboring church tower
+struck twelve, and its doors were opened for the throngs come to
+worship at the midnight mass, the lights in the cottage were out, and
+all within it fast asleep.
+
+The murmur of the homeward-hurrying crowds had died out, and the last
+echoing shout of "Merry Christmas!" had been whirled away on the
+storm, now grown fierce with bitter cold, when a lonely wanderer came
+down the street. It was a lad, big and strong-limbed, and, judging
+from the manner in which he pushed his way through the gathering
+drifts, not unused to battle with the world, but evidently in hard
+luck. His jacket, white with the falling snow, was scant and worn
+nearly to rags, and there was that in his face which spoke of hunger
+and suffering silently endured. He stopped at the gate in the stone
+fence, and looked long and steadily at the cottage in the chestnuts.
+No life stirred within, and he walked through the gap with slow and
+hesitating step. Under the kitchen window he stood awhile, sheltered
+from the storm, as if undecided, then stepped to the horse shed and
+rapped gently on the door.
+
+"'Liza!" he called, "'Liza, old girl! It's me--Jim!"
+
+A low, delighted whinnying from the stall told the shivering boy that
+he was not forgotten there. The faithful beast was straining at her
+halter in a vain effort to get at her friend. Jim raised a bar that
+held the door closed by the aid of a lever within, of which he knew
+the trick, and went in. The horse made room for him in her stall, and
+laid her shaggy head against his cheek.
+
+"Poor old 'Liza!" he said, patting her neck and smoothing her gray
+coat, "poor old girl! Jim has one friend that hasn't gone back on him.
+I've come to keep Christmas with you, 'Liza! Had your supper, eh?
+You're in luck. I haven't; I wasn't bid, 'Liza; but never mind. You
+shall feed for both of us. Here goes!" He dug into the oats-bin with
+the measure, and poured it full into 'Liza's crib.
+
+"Fill up, old girl! and good night to you." With a departing pat he
+crept up the ladder to the loft above, and, scooping out a berth in
+the loose hay, snuggled down in it to sleep. Soon his regular
+breathing up there kept step with the steady munching of the horse in
+her stall. The two reunited friends were dreaming happy Christmas
+dreams.
+
+The night wore into the small hours of Christmas morning. The fury of
+the storm was unabated. The old cottage shook under the fierce blasts,
+and the chestnuts waved their hoary branches wildly, beseechingly,
+above it, as if they wanted to warn those within of some threatened
+danger. But they slept and heard them not. From the kitchen chimney,
+after a blast more violent than any that had gone before, a red spark
+issued, was whirled upward and beaten against the shingle roof of the
+barn, swept clean of snow. Another followed it, and another. Still
+they slept in the cottage; the chestnuts moaned and brandished their
+arms in vain. The storm fanned one of the sparks into a flame. It
+flickered for a moment and then went out. So, at least, it seemed. But
+presently it reappeared, and with it a faint glow was reflected in the
+attic window over the door. Down in her stall 'Liza moved uneasily.
+Nobody responding, she plunged and reared, neighing loudly for help.
+The storm drowned her calls; her master slept, unheeding.
+
+But one heard it, and in the nick of time. The door of the shed was
+thrown violently open, and out plunged Jim, his hair on fire and his
+clothes singed and smoking. He brushed the sparks off himself as if
+they were flakes of snow. Quick as thought, he tore 'Liza's halter
+from its fastening, pulling out staple and all, threw his smoking coat
+over her eyes, and backed her out of the shed. He reached in, and,
+pulling the harness off the hook, threw it as far into the snow as he
+could, yelling "Fire!" at the top of his voice. Then he jumped on the
+back of the horse, and beating her with heels and hands into a mad
+gallop, was off up the street before the bewildered inmates of the
+cottage had rubbed the sleep out of their eyes and come out to see the
+barn on fire and burning up.
+
+Down street and avenue fire-engines raced with clanging bells, leaving
+tracks of glowing coals in the snow-drifts, to the cottage in the
+chestnut lots. They got there just in time to see the roof crash into
+the barn, burying, as Joe and his crying wife and children thought,
+'Liza and their last hope in the fiery wreck. The door had blown shut,
+and the harness Jim threw out was snowed under. No one dreamed that
+the mare was not there. The flames burst through the wreck and lit up
+the cottage and swaying chestnuts. Joe and his family stood in the
+shelter of it, looking sadly on. For the second time that Christmas
+night tears came into the honest truckman's eyes. He wiped them away
+with his cap.
+
+"Poor 'Liza!" he said.
+
+A hand was laid with gentle touch upon his arm. He looked up. It was
+his wife. Her face beamed with a great happiness.
+
+"Joe," she said, "you remember what you read: 'tidings of great joy.'
+Oh, Joe, Jim has come home!"
+
+She stepped aside, and there was Jim, sister Jennie hanging on his
+neck, and 'Liza alive and neighing her pleasure. The lad looked at his
+father and hung his head.
+
+"Jim saved her, father," said Jennie, patting the gray mare; "it was
+him fetched the engines."
+
+Joe took a step toward his son and held out his hand to him.
+
+"Jim," he said, "you're a better man nor yer father. From now on, you
+'n' I run the truck on shares. But mind this, Jim: never leave mother
+no more."
+
+And in the clasp of the two hands all the past was forgotten and
+forgiven. Father and son had found each other again.
+
+"'Liza," said the truckman, with sudden vehemence, turning to the old
+mare and putting his arm around her neck, "'Liza! It was your doin's.
+I knew it was luck when I found them things. Merry Christmas!" And he
+kissed her smack on her hairy mouth, one, two, three times.
+
+
+
+
+HEROES WHO FIGHT FIRE
+
+
+Thirteen years have passed since,[2] but it is all to me as if it had
+happened yesterday--the clanging of the fire-bells, the hoarse shouts
+of the firemen, the wild rush and terror of the streets; then the
+great hush that fell upon the crowd; the sea of upturned faces, with
+the fire-glow upon it; and up there, against the background of black
+smoke that poured from roof and attic, the boy clinging to the narrow
+ledge, so far up that it seemed humanly impossible that help could
+ever come.
+
+                   [Footnote 2: Written in 1898.]
+
+But even then it was coming. Up from the street, while the crew of the
+truck company were laboring with the heavy extension-ladder that at
+its longest stretch was many feet too short, crept four men upon long,
+slender poles with cross-bars, iron-hooked at the end. Standing in one
+window, they reached up and thrust the hook through the next one
+above, then mounted a story higher. Again the crash of glass, and
+again the dizzy ascent. Straight up the wall they crept, looking like
+human flies on the ceiling, and clinging as close, never resting,
+reaching one recess only to set out for the next; nearer and nearer in
+the race for life, until but a single span separated the foremost from
+the boy. And now the iron hook fell at his feet, and the fireman stood
+upon the step with the rescued lad in his arms, just as the pent-up
+flame burst lurid from the attic window, reaching with impotent fury
+for its prey. The next moment they were safe upon the great ladder
+waiting to receive them below.
+
+Then such a shout went up! Men fell on each other's necks, and cried
+and laughed at once. Strangers slapped one another on the back, with
+glistening faces, shook hands, and behaved generally like men gone
+suddenly mad. Women wept in the street. The driver of a car stalled in
+the crowd, who had stood through it all speechless, clutching the
+reins, whipped his horses into a gallop, and drove away yelling like a
+Comanche, to relieve his feelings. The boy and his rescuer were
+carried across the street without any one knowing how. Policemen
+forgot their dignity, and shouted with the rest. Fire, peril, terror,
+and loss were alike forgotten in the one touch of nature that makes
+the whole world kin.
+
+Fireman John Binns was made captain of his crew, and the Bennett medal
+was pinned on his coat on the next parade-day. The burning of the St.
+George Flats was the first opportunity New York had of witnessing a
+rescue with the scaling-ladders that form such an essential part of
+the equipment of the fire-fighters to-day. Since then there have been
+many such. In the company in which John Binns was a private of the
+second grade, two others to-day bear the medal for brave deeds: the
+foreman, Daniel J. Meagher, and Private Martin M. Coleman, whose name
+has been seven times inscribed on the roll of honor for twice that
+number of rescues, any one of which stamped him as a man among men, a
+real hero. And Hook-and-Ladder No. 3 is not especially distinguished
+among the fire-crews of the metropolis for daring and courage. New
+Yorkers are justly proud of their firemen. Take it all in all, there
+is not, I think, to be found anywhere a body of men as fearless, as
+brave, and as efficient as the Fire Brigade of New York. I have known
+it well for twenty years, and I speak from a personal acquaintance
+with very many of its men, and from a professional knowledge of more
+daring feats, more hairbreadth escapes, and more brilliant work, than
+could well be recorded between the covers of this book.
+
+Indeed, it is hard, in recording any, to make a choice and to avoid
+giving the impression that recklessness is a chief quality in the
+fireman's make-up. That would not be true. His life is too full of
+real peril for him to expose it recklessly--that is to say,
+needlessly. From the time when he leaves his quarters in answer to an
+alarm until he returns, he takes a risk that may at any moment set him
+face to face with death in its most cruel form. He needs nothing so
+much as a clear head; and nothing is prized so highly, nothing puts
+him so surely in the line of promotion; for as he advances in rank and
+responsibility, the lives of others, as well as his own, come to
+depend on his judgment. The act of conspicuous daring which the world
+applauds is oftenest to the fireman a matter of simple duty that had
+to be done in that way because there was no other. Nor is it always,
+or even usually, the hardest duty, as he sees it. It came easy to him
+because he is an athlete, trained to do just such things, and because
+once for all it is easier to risk one's life in the open, in the sight
+of one's fellows, than to face death alone, caught like a rat in a
+trap. That is the real peril which he knows too well; but of that the
+public hears only when he has fought his last fight, and lost.
+
+How literally our every-day security--of which we think, if we think
+of it at all, as a mere matter of course--is built upon the supreme
+sacrifice of these devoted men, we realize at long intervals, when a
+disaster occurs such as the one in which Chief Bresnan and Foreman
+Rooney[3] lost their lives three years ago. They were crushed to
+death under the great water-tank in a Twenty-fourth Street factory
+that was on fire. Its supports had been burned away. An examination
+that was then made of the water-tanks in the city discovered eight
+thousand that were either wholly unsupported, except by the
+roof-beams, or propped on timbers, and therefore a direct menace, not
+only to the firemen when they were called there, but daily to those
+living under them. It is not pleasant to add that the department's
+just demand for a law that should compel landlords either to build
+tanks on the wall or on iron supports has not been heeded yet; but
+that is, unhappily, an old story.
+
+                   [Footnote 3: Rooney wore the Bennett medal for
+                   saving the life of a woman at the disastrous fire
+                   in the old "World" building, on January 31, 1882.
+                   The ladder upon which he stood was too short.
+                   Riding upon the topmost rung, he bade the woman
+                   jump, and caught and held her as she fell.]
+
+Seventeen years ago the collapse of a Broadway building during a fire
+convinced the community that stone pillars were unsafe as supports.
+The fire was in the basement, and the firemen had turned the hose on.
+When the water struck the hot granite columns, they cracked and fell,
+and the building fell with them. There were upon the roof at the time
+a dozen men of the crew of Truck Company No. 1, chopping holes for
+smoke-vents. The majority clung to the parapet, and hung there till
+rescued. Two went down into the furnace from which the flames shot up
+twenty feet when the roof broke. One, Fireman Thomas J. Dougherty, was
+a wearer of the Bennett medal, too. His foreman answers on parade-day,
+when his name is called, that he "died on the field of duty." These,
+at all events, did not die in vain. Stone columns are not now used as
+supports for buildings in New York.
+
+So one might go on quoting the perils of the firemen as so many steps
+forward for the better protection of the rest of us. It was the
+burning of the St. George Flats, and more recently of the Manhattan
+Bank, in which a dozen men were disabled, that stamped the average
+fire-proof construction as faulty and largely delusive. One might even
+go further, and say that the fireman's risk increases in the ratio of
+our progress or convenience. The water-tanks came with the very high
+buildings, which in themselves offer problems to the fire-fighters
+that have not yet been solved. The very air-shafts that were hailed as
+the first advance in tenement-house building added enormously to the
+fireman's work and risk, as well as to the risk of every one dwelling
+under their roofs, by acting as so many huge chimneys that carried the
+fire to the windows opening upon them in every story. More than half
+of all the fires in New York occur in tenement houses. When the
+Tenement House Commission of 1894 sat in this city, considering means
+of making them safer and better, it received the most practical help
+and advice from the firemen, especially from Chief Bresnan, whose
+death occurred only a few days after he had testified as a witness.
+The recommendations upon which he insisted are now part of the general
+tenement-house law.
+
+Chief Bresnan died leading his men against the enemy. In the Fire
+Department the battalion chief leads; he does not direct operations
+from a safe position in the rear. Perhaps this is one of the secrets
+of the indomitable spirit of his men. Whatever hardships they have to
+endure, his is the first and the biggest share. Next in line comes the
+captain, or foreman, as he is called. Of the six who were caught in
+the fatal trap of the water-tank, four hewed their way out with axes
+through an intervening partition. They were of the ranks. The two who
+were killed were the chief and Assistant Foreman John L. Rooney, who
+was that day in charge of his company, Foreman Shaw having just been
+promoted to Bresnan's rank. It was less than a year after that Chief
+Shaw was killed in a fire in Mercer Street. I think I could reckon up
+as many as five or six battalion chiefs who have died in that way,
+leading their men. The men would not deserve the name if they did not
+follow such leaders, no matter where the road led.
+
+In the chief's quarters of the Fourteenth Battalion up in Wakefield
+there sits to-day a man, still young in years, who in his maimed body
+but unbroken spirit bears such testimony to the quality of New York's
+fire-fighters as the brave Bresnan and his comrade did in their death.
+Thomas J. Ahearn led his company as captain to a fire in the
+Consolidated Gas-Works on the East Side. He found one of the buildings
+ablaze. Far toward the rear, at the end of a narrow lane, around which
+the fire swirled and arched itself, white and wicked, lay the body of
+a man--dead, said the panic-stricken crowd. His sufferings had been
+brief. A worse fate threatened all unless the fire was quickly put
+out. There were underground reservoirs of naphtha--the ground was
+honeycombed with them--that might explode at any moment with the fire
+raging overhead. The peril was instant and great. Captain Ahearn
+looked at the body, and saw it stir. The watch-chain upon the man's
+vest rose and fell as if he were breathing.
+
+"He is not dead," he said. "I am going to get that man out." And he
+crept down the lane of fire, unmindful of the hidden dangers, seeing
+only the man who was perishing. The flames scorched him; they blocked
+his way; but he came through alive, and brought out his man, so badly
+hurt, however, that he died in the hospital that day. The Board of
+Fire Commissioners gave Ahearn the medal for bravery, and made him
+chief. Within a year he all but lost his life in a gallant attempt to
+save the life of a child that was supposed to be penned in a burning
+Rivington Street tenement. Chief Ahearn's quarters were near by, and
+he was first on the ground. A desperate man confronted him in the
+hallway. "My child! my child!" he cried, and wrung his hands. "Save
+him! He is in there." He pointed to the back room. It was black with
+smoke. In the front room the fire was raging. Crawling on hands and
+feet, the chief made his way into the room the man had pointed out. He
+groped under the bed, and in it, but found no child there. Satisfied
+that it had escaped, he started to return. The smoke had grown so
+thick that breathing was no longer possible, even at the floor. The
+chief drew his coat over his head, and made a dash for the hall door.
+He reached it only to find that the spring-lock had snapped shut. The
+door-knob burned his hand. The fire burst through from the front room,
+and seared his face. With a last effort, he kicked the lower panel out
+of the door, and put his head through. And then he knew no more.
+
+His men found him lying so when they came looking for him. The coat
+was burned off his back, and of his hat only the wire rim remained. He
+lay ten months in the hospital, and came out deaf and wrecked
+physically. At the age of forty-five the board retired him to the
+quiet of the country district, with this formal resolution, that did
+the board more credit than it could do him. It is the only one of its
+kind upon the department books:--
+
+     _Resolved_, That in assigning Battalion Chief Thomas J. Ahearn to
+     command the Fourteenth Battalion, in the newly annexed district,
+     the Board deems it proper to express the sense of obligation felt
+     by the Board and all good citizens for the brilliant and
+     meritorious services of Chief Ahearn in the discharge of duty
+     which will always serve as an example and an inspiration to our
+     uniformed force, and to express the hope that his future years of
+     service at a less arduous post may be as comfortable and pleasant
+     as his former years have been brilliant and honorable.
+
+Firemen are athletes as a matter of course. They have to be, or they
+could not hold their places for a week, even if they could get into
+them at all. The mere handling of the scaling-ladders, which, light
+though they seem, weigh from sixteen to forty pounds, requires unusual
+strength. No particular skill is needed. A man need only have steady
+nerve, and the strength to raise the long pole by its narrow end, and
+jam the iron hook through a window which he cannot see but knows is
+there. Once through, the teeth in the hook and the man's weight upon
+the ladder hold it safe, and there is no real danger unless he loses
+his head. Against that possibility the severe drill in the school of
+instruction is the barrier. Any one to whom climbing at dizzy heights,
+or doing the hundred and one things of peril to ordinary men which
+firemen are constantly called upon to do, causes the least discomfort,
+is rejected as unfit. About five percent of all appointees are
+eliminated by the ladder test, and never get beyond their probation
+service. A certain smaller percentage takes itself out through loss of
+"nerve" generally. The first experience of a room full of smothering
+smoke, with the fire roaring overhead, is generally sufficient to
+convince the timid that the service is not for him. No cowards are
+dismissed from the department, for the reason that none get into it.
+
+The notion that there is a life-saving corps apart from the general
+body of firemen rests upon a mistake. They are one. Every fireman
+nowadays must pass muster at life-saving drill, must climb to the top
+of any building on his scaling-ladder, slide down with a rescued
+comrade, or jump without hesitation from the third story into the
+life-net spread below. By such training the men are fitted for their
+work, and the occasion comes soon that puts them to the test. It came
+to Daniel J. Meagher, of whom I spoke as foreman of Hook-and-Ladder
+Company No. 3, when, in the midnight hour, a woman hung from the
+fifth-story window of a burning building, and the longest ladder at
+hand fell short ten or a dozen feet of reaching her. The boldest man
+in the crew had vainly attempted to get to her, and in the effort had
+sprained his foot. There were no scaling-ladders then. Meagher ordered
+the rest to plant the ladder on the stoop and hold it out from the
+building so that he might reach the very topmost step. Balanced thus
+where the slightest tremor might have caused ladder and all to crash
+to the ground, he bade the woman drop, and receiving her in his arms,
+carried her down safe.
+
+No one but an athlete with muscles and nerves of steel could have
+performed such a feat, or that which made Dennis Ryer, of the crew of
+Engine No. 36, famous three years ago. That was on Seventh Avenue at
+One Hundred and Thirty-fourth Street. A flat was on fire, and the
+tenants had fled; but one, a woman, bethought herself of her parrot,
+and went back for it, to find escape by the stairs cut off when she
+again attempted to reach the street. With the parrot-cage, she
+appeared at the top-floor window, framed in smoke, calling for help.
+Again there was no ladder to reach. There were neighbors on the roof
+with a rope, but the woman was too frightened to use it herself.
+Dennis Ryer made it fast about his own waist, and bade the others let
+him down, and hold on for life. He drew the woman out, but she was
+heavy, and it was all they could do above to hold them. To pull them
+over the cornice was out of the question. Upon the highest step of the
+ladder, many feet below, stood Ryer's father, himself a fireman of
+another company, and saw his boy's peril.
+
+"Hold fast, Dennis!" he shouted. "If you fall I will catch you." Had
+they let go, all three would have been killed. The young fireman saw
+the danger, and the one door of escape, with a glance. The window
+before which he swung, half smothered by the smoke that belched from
+it, was the last in the house. Just beyond, in the window of the
+adjoining house, was safety, if he could but reach it. Putting out a
+foot, he kicked the wall, and made himself swing toward it, once,
+twice, bending his body to add to the motion. The third time he all
+but passed it, and took a mighty grip on the affrighted woman,
+shouting into her ear to loose her own hold at the same time. As they
+passed the window on the fourth trip, he thrust her through sash and
+all with a supreme effort, and himself followed on the next rebound,
+while the street, that was black with a surging multitude, rang with a
+mighty cheer. Old Washington Ryer, on his ladder, threw his cap in the
+air, and cheered louder than all the rest. But the parrot was
+dead--frightened to death, very likely, or smothered.
+
+I once asked Fireman Martin M. Coleman, after one of those exhibitions
+of coolness and courage that thrust him constantly upon the notice of
+the newspaper men, what he thought of when he stood upon the ladder,
+with this thing before him to do that might mean life or death the
+next moment. He looked at me in some perplexity.
+
+"Think?" he said slowly. "Why, I don't think. There ain't any time to.
+If I'd stopped to think, them five people would 'a' been burnt. No; I
+don't think of danger. If it is anything, it is that--up there--I am
+boss. The rest are not in it. Only I wish," he added, rubbing his arm
+ruefully at the recollection, "that she hadn't fainted. It's hard when
+they faint. They're just so much dead-weight. We get no help at all
+from them heavy women."
+
+And that was all I could get out of him. I never had much better luck
+with Chief Benjamin A. Gicquel, who is the oldest wearer of the
+Bennett medal, just as Coleman is the youngest, or the one who
+received it last. He was willing enough to talk about the science of
+putting out fires; of Department Chief Bonner, the "man of few words,"
+who, he thinks, has mastered the art beyond any man living; of the
+back-draught, and almost anything else pertaining to the business: but
+when I insisted upon his telling me the story of the rescue of the
+Schaefer family of five from a burning tenement down in Cherry Street,
+in which he earned his rank and reward, he laughed a good-humored
+little laugh, and said that it was "the old man"--meaning
+Schaefer--who should have had the medal. "It was a grand thing in him
+to let the little ones come out first." I have sometimes wished that
+firemen were not so modest. It would be much easier, if not so
+satisfactory, to record their gallant deeds. But I am not sure that it
+is, after all, modesty so much as a wholly different point of view. It
+is business with them, the work of their lives. The one feeling that
+is allowed to rise beyond this is the feeling of exultation in the
+face of peril conquered by courage, which Coleman expressed. On the
+ladder he was boss! It was the fancy of a masterful man, and none but
+a masterful man would have got upon the ladder at all.
+
+Doubtless there is something in the spectacular side of it that
+attracts. It would be strange if there were not. There is everything
+in a fireman's existence to encourage it. Day and night he leads a
+kind of hair-trigger life, that feeds naturally upon excitement, even
+if only as a relief from the irksome idling in quarters. Try as they
+may to give him enough to do there, the time hangs heavily upon his
+hands, keyed up as he is, and need be, to adventurous deeds at
+shortest notice. He falls to grumbling and quarrelling, and the
+necessity becomes imperative of holding him to the strictest
+discipline, under which he chafes impatiently. "They nag like a lot of
+old women," said Department Chief Bonner to me once; "and the best at
+a fire are often the worst in the house." In the midst of it all the
+gong strikes a familiar signal. The horses' hoofs thunder on the
+planks; with a leap the men go down the shining pole to the main
+floor, all else forgotten; and with crash and clatter and bang the
+heavy engine swings into the street, and races away on a wild gallop,
+leaving a trail of fire behind.
+
+Presently the crowd sees rubber-coated, helmeted men with pipe and
+hose go through a window from which such dense smoke pours forth that
+it seems incredible that a human being could breathe it for a second
+and live. The hose is dragged squirming over the sill, where shortly a
+red-eyed face with dishevelled hair appears, to shout something
+hoarsely to those below, which they understand. Then, unless some
+emergency arise, the spectacular part is over. Could the citizen whose
+heart beat as he watched them enter see them now, he would see grimy
+shapes, very unlike the fine-looking men who but just now had roused
+his admiration, crawling on hands and knees, with their noses close to
+the floor if the smoke be very dense, ever pointing the "pipe" in the
+direction where the enemy is expected to appear. The fire is the
+enemy; but he can fight that, once he reaches it, with something of a
+chance. The smoke kills without giving him a show to fight back. Long
+practice toughens him against it, until he learns the trick of "eating
+the smoke." He can breathe where a candle goes out for want of oxygen.
+By holding his mouth close to the nozzle, he gets what little air the
+stream of water brings with it and sets free; and within a few inches
+of the floor there is nearly always a current of air. In the last
+emergency, there is the hose that he can follow out. The smoke always
+is his worst enemy. It lays ambushes for him which he can suspect, but
+not ward off. He tries to, by opening vents in the roof as soon as the
+pipemen are in place and ready; but in spite of all precautions, he is
+often surprised by the dreaded back-draught.
+
+I remember standing in front of a burning Broadway store, one night,
+when the back-draught blew out the whole front without warning. It is
+simply an explosion of gases generated by the heat, which must have
+vent, and go upon the line of least resistance, up, or down, or in a
+circle--it does not much matter, so that they go. It swept shutters,
+windows, and all, across Broadway, in this instance, like so much
+chaff, littering the street with heavy rolls of cloth. The crash was
+like a fearful clap of thunder. Men were knocked down on the opposite
+sidewalk, and two teams of engine horses, used to almost any kind of
+happening at a fire, ran away in a wild panic. It was a blast of that
+kind that threw down and severely injured Battalion Chief M'Gill, one
+of the oldest and most experienced of firemen, at a fire on Broadway
+in March, 1890; and it has cost more brave men's lives than the
+fiercest fire that ever raged. The "puff," as the firemen call it,
+comes suddenly, and from the corner where it is least expected. It is
+dread of that, and of getting overcome by the smoke generally, which
+makes firemen go always in couples or more together. They never lose
+sight of one another for an instant, if they can help it. If they do,
+they go at once in search of the lost. The delay of a moment may prove
+fatal to him.
+
+Lieutenant Samuel Banta of the Franklin Street company, discovering
+the pipe that had just been held by Fireman Quinn at a Park Place
+fire thrashing aimlessly about, looked about him, and saw Quinn
+floating on his face in the cellar, which was running full of water.
+He had been overcome, had tumbled in, and was then drowning, with the
+fire raging above and alongside. Banta jumped in after him, and
+endeavored to get his head above water. While thus occupied, he
+glanced up, and saw the preliminary puff of the back-draught bearing
+down upon him. The lieutenant dived at once, and tried to pull his
+unhappy pipe-man with him; but he struggled and worked himself loose.
+From under the water Banta held up a hand, and it was burnt. He held
+up the other, and knew that the puff had passed when it came back
+unsinged. Then he brought Quinn out with him; but it was too late.
+Caught between flood and fire, he had no chance. When I asked the
+lieutenant about it, he replied simply: "The man in charge of the hose
+fell into the cellar. I got him out; that was all." "But how?" I
+persisted. "Why, I went down through the cellar," said the lieutenant,
+smiling, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
+
+It was this same Banta who, when Fireman David H. Soden had been
+buried under the falling walls of a Pell Street house, crept through a
+gap in the basement wall, in among the fallen timbers, and, in
+imminent peril of his own life, worked there with a hand-saw two long
+hours to free his comrade, while the firemen held the severed timbers
+up with ropes to give him a chance. Repeatedly, while he was at work,
+his clothes caught fire, and it was necessary to keep playing the hose
+upon him. But he brought out his man safe and sound, and, for the
+twentieth time perhaps, had his name recorded on the roll of merit.
+His comrades tell how, at one of the twenty, the fall of a building in
+Hall Place had left a workman lying on a shaky piece of wall,
+helpless, with a broken leg. It could not bear the weight of a ladder,
+and it seemed certain death to attempt to reach him, when Banta,
+running up a slanting beam that still hung to its fastening with one
+end, leaped from perch to perch upon the wall, where hardly a goat
+could have found footing, reached his man, and brought him down slung
+over his shoulder, and swearing at him like a trooper lest the peril
+of the descent cause him to lose his nerve and with it the lives of
+both.
+
+Firemen dread cellar fires more than any other kind, and with reason.
+It is difficult to make a vent for the smoke, and the danger of
+drowning is added to that of being smothered when they get fairly to
+work. If a man is lost to sight or touch of his fellows there for ever
+so brief a while, there are five chances to one that he will not
+again be seen alive. Then there ensues such a fight as the city
+witnessed only last May at the burning of a Chambers Street
+paper-warehouse. It was fought out deep underground, with fire and
+flood, freezing cold and poisonous gases, leagued against Chief
+Bonner's forces. Next door was a cold-storage house, whence the cold.
+Something that was burning--I do not know that it was ever found out
+just what--gave forth the smothering fumes before which the firemen
+went down in squads. File after file staggered out into the street,
+blackened and gasping, to drop there. The near engine-house was made
+into a hospital, where the senseless men were laid on straw hastily
+spread. Ambulance surgeons worked over them. As fast as they were
+brought to, they went back to bear a hand in the work of rescue. In
+delirium they fought to return. Down in the depths one of their number
+was lying helpless.
+
+There is nothing finer in the records of glorious war than the story
+of the struggle these brave fellows kept up for hours against
+tremendous odds for the rescue of their comrade. Time after time they
+went down into the pit of deadly smoke, only to fail. Lieutenant Banta
+tried twice and failed. Fireman King was pulled up senseless, and
+having been brought round went down once more. Fireman Sheridan
+returned empty-handed, more dead than alive. John O'Connell, of Truck
+No. 1, at length succeeded in reaching his comrade and tying a rope
+about him, while from above they drenched both with water to keep them
+from roasting. They drew up a dying man; but John G. Reinhardt dead is
+more potent than a whole crew of firemen alive. The story of the fight
+for his life will long be told in the engine-houses of New York, and
+will nerve the Kings and the Sheridans and the O'Connells of another
+day to like deeds.
+
+How firemen manage to hear in their sleep the right signal, while they
+sleep right through any number that concerns the next company, not
+them, is one of the mysteries that will probably always remain
+unsolved. "I don't know," said Department Chief Bonner, when I asked
+him once. "I guess it is the same way with everybody. You hear what
+you have to hear. There is a gong right over my bed at home, and I
+hear every stroke of it, but I don't hear the baby. My wife hears the
+baby if it as much as stirs in its crib, but not the gong." Very
+likely he is right. The fact that the fireman can hear and count
+correctly the strokes of the gong in his sleep has meant life to many
+hundreds, and no end of properly saved; for it is in the early
+moments of a fire that it can be dealt with summarily. I recall one
+instance in which the failure to interpret a signal properly, or the
+accident of taking a wrong road to the fire, cost a life, and,
+singularly enough, that of the wife of one of the firemen who answered
+the alarm. It was all so pitiful, so tragic, that it has left an
+indelible impression on my mind. It was the fire at which Patrick F.
+Lucas earned the medal for that year by snatching five persons out of
+the very jaws of death in a Dominick Street tenement. The alarm-signal
+rang in the hook-and-ladder company's quarters in North Moore Street,
+but was either misunderstood or they made a wrong start. Instead of
+turning east to West Broadway, the truck turned west, and went
+galloping toward Greenwich Street. It was only a few seconds, the time
+that was lost, but it was enough. Fireman Murphy's heart went up in
+his throat when, from his seat on the truck as it flew toward the
+fire, he saw that it was his own home that was burning. Up on the
+fifth floor he found his wife penned in. She died in his arms as he
+carried her to the fire-escape. The fire, for once, had won in the
+race for a life.
+
+While I am writing this, the morning paper that is left at my door
+tells the story of a fireman who, laid up with a broken ankle in an
+up-town hospital, jumped out of bed, forgetting his injury, when the
+alarm-gong rang his signal, and tried to go to the fire. The
+fire-alarms are rung in the hospitals for the information of the
+ambulance corps. The crippled fireman heard the signal at the dead of
+night, and, only half awake, jumped out of bed, groped about for the
+sliding-pole, and, getting hold of the bedpost, tried to slide down
+that. The plaster cast about his ankle was broken, the old injury
+reopened, and he was seriously hurt.
+
+New York firemen have a proud saying that they "fight fire from the
+inside." It means unhesitating courage, prompt sacrifice, and victory
+gained, all in one. The saving of life that gets into the newspapers
+and wins applause is done, of necessity, largely from the outside, but
+is none the less perilous for that. Sometimes, though rarely, it has
+in its intense gravity almost a comic tinge, as at one of the
+infrequent fires in the Mulberry Bend some years ago. The Italians
+believe, with reason, that there is bad luck in fire, therefore do not
+insure, and have few fires. Of this one the Romolo family shrine was
+the cause. The lamp upon it exploded, and the tenement was ablaze when
+the firemen came. The policeman on the beat had tried to save Mrs.
+Romolo; but she clung to the bedpost, and refused to go without the
+rest of the family. So he seized the baby, and rolled down the
+burning stairs with it, his beard and coat afire. The only way out was
+shut off when the engines arrived. The Romolos shrieked at the
+top-floor window, threatening to throw themselves out. There was not a
+moment to be lost. Lying flat on the roof, with their heads over the
+cornice, the firemen fished the two children out of the window with
+their hooks. The ladders were run up in time for the father and
+mother.
+
+The readiness of resource no less than the intrepid courage and
+athletic skill of the rescuers evoke enthusiastic admiration. Two
+instances stand out in my recollection among many. Of one Fireman
+Howe, who had on more than one occasion signally distinguished
+himself, was the hero. It happened on the morning of January 2, 1896,
+when the Geneva Club on Lexington Avenue was burnt out. Fireman Howe
+drove Hook-and-Ladder No. 7 to the fire that morning, to find two
+boarders at the third-story window, hemmed in by flames which already
+showed behind them. Followed by Fireman Pearl, he ran up in the
+adjoining building, and presently appeared at a window on the third
+floor, separated from the one occupied by the two men by a blank
+wall-space of perhaps four or five feet. It offered no other footing
+than a rusty hook, but it was enough. Astride of the window-sill, with
+one foot upon the hook, the other anchored inside by his comrade, his
+body stretched at full length along the wall, Howe was able to reach
+the two, and to swing them, one after the other, through his own
+window to safety. As the second went through, the crew in the street
+below set up a cheer that raised the sleeping echoes of the street.
+Howe looked down, nodded, and took a firmer grip; and that instant
+came his great peril.
+
+A third face had appeared at the window just as the fire swept
+through. Howe shut his eyes to shield them, and braced himself on the
+hook for a last effort. It broke; and the man, frightened out of his
+wits, threw himself headlong from the window upon Howe's neck.
+
+The fireman's form bent and swayed. His comrade within felt the
+strain, and dug his heels into the boards. He was almost dragged out
+of the window, but held on with a supreme effort. Just as he thought
+the end had come, he felt the strain ease up. The ladder had reached
+Howe in the very nick of time, and given him support, but in his
+desperate effort to save himself and the other, he slammed his burden
+back over his shoulder with such force that he went crashing through,
+carrying sash and all, and fell, cut and bruised, but safe, upon
+Fireman Pearl, who grovelled upon the door, prostrate and panting.
+
+The other case New York remembers yet with a shudder. It was known
+long in the department for the bravest act ever done by a fireman--an
+act that earned for Foreman William Quirk the medal for 1888. He was
+next in command of Engine No. 22 when, on a March morning, the Elberon
+Flats in East Eighty-fifth street were burned. The Westlake family,
+mother, daughter, and two sons, were in the fifth story, helpless and
+hopeless. Quirk ran up on the scaling-ladder to the fourth floor, hung
+it on the sill above, and got the boys and their sister down. But the
+flames burst from the floor below, cutting off their retreat. Quirk's
+captain had seen the danger, and shouted to him to turn back while it
+was yet time. But Quirk had no intention of turning back. He measured
+the distance and the risk with a look, saw the crowd tugging
+frantically at the life-net under the window, and bade them jump, one
+by one. They jumped, and were saved. Last of all, he jumped himself,
+after a vain effort to save the mother. She was already dead. He
+caught her gown, but the body slipped from his grasp and fell crashing
+to the street fifty feet below. He himself was hurt in his jump. The
+volunteers who held the net looked up, and were frightened; they let
+go their grip, and the plucky fireman broke a leg and hurt his back in
+the fall.
+
+"Like a cry of fire in the night" appeals to the dullest imagination
+with a sense of sudden fear. There have been nights in this city when
+the cry swelled into such a clamor of terror and despair as to make
+the stoutest heart quake--when it seemed to those who had to do with
+putting out fires as if the end of all things was at hand. Such a
+night was that of the burning of "Cohnfeld's Folly," in Bleecker
+Street, March 17, 1891. The burning of the big store involved the
+destruction, wholly or in part, of ten surrounding buildings, and
+called out nearly one-third of the city's Fire Department. While the
+fire raged as yet unchecked,--while walls were falling with shock and
+crash of thunder, the streets full of galloping engines and ambulances
+carrying injured firemen, with clangor of urgent gongs; while
+insurance patrolmen were being smothered in buildings a block away by
+the smoke that hung like a pall over the city,--another disastrous
+fire broke out in the dry-goods district, and three alarm-calls came
+from West Seventeenth Street. Nine other fires were signalled, and
+before morning all the crews that were left were summoned to Allen
+Street, where four persons were burned to death in a tenement. Those
+are the wild nights that try firemen's souls, and never yet found them
+wanting. During the great blizzard, when the streets were impassable
+and the system crippled, the fires in the city averaged nine a
+day,--forty-five for the five days from March 12 to 16,--and not one
+of them got beyond control. The fire commissioners put on record their
+pride in the achievement, as well they might. It was something to be
+proud of, indeed.
+
+Such a night promised to be the one when the Manhattan Bank and the
+State Bank across the street on the other Broadway corner, with three
+or four other buildings, were burned, and when the ominous "two nines"
+were rung, calling nine-tenths of the whole force below Central Park
+to the threatened quarter. But, happily, the promise was not fully
+kept. The supposed fire-proof bank crumbled in the withering blast
+like so much paper; the cry went up that whole companies of firemen
+were perishing within it; and the alarm had reached Police
+Headquarters in the next block, where they were counting the election
+returns. Thirteen firemen, including the deputy department chief, a
+battalion chief, and two captains, limped or were carried from the
+burning bank, more or less injured. The stone steps of the fire-proof
+stairs had fallen with them or upon them. Their imperilled comrades,
+whose escape was cut off, slid down hose and scaling-ladders. The
+last, the crew of Engine Company No. 3, had reached the street, and
+all were thought to be out, when the assistant foreman, Daniel
+Fitzmaurice, appeared at the fifth-story window. The fire beating
+against it drove him away, but he found footing at another, next
+adjoining the building on the north. To reach him from below, with the
+whole building ablaze, was impossible. Other escape there was none,
+save a cornice ledge extending halfway to his window; but it was too
+narrow to afford foothold.
+
+Then an extraordinary scene was enacted in the sight of thousands. In
+the other building were a number of fire-insurance patrolmen, covering
+goods to protect them against water damage. One of these--Patrolman
+John Rush--stepped out on the ledge, and edged his way toward a spur
+of stone that projected from the bank building. Behind followed
+Patrolman Barnett, steadying him and pressing him close against the
+wall. Behind him was another, with still another holding on within the
+room, where the living chain was anchored by all the rest. Rush, at
+the end of the ledge, leaned over and gave Fitzmaurice his hand. The
+fireman grasped it, and edged out upon the spur. Barnett, holding the
+rescuer fast, gave him what he needed--something to cling to. Once he
+was on the ledge, the chain wound itself up as it had unwound itself.
+Slowly, inch by inch, it crept back, each man pushing the next flat
+against the wall with might and main, while the multitudes in the
+street held their breath, and the very engines stopped panting, until
+all were safe.
+
+John Rush is a fireman to-day, a member of "Thirty-three's" crew in
+Great Jones Street. He was an insurance patrolman then. The
+organization is unofficial. Its main purpose is to save property; but
+in the face of the emergency firemen and patrolmen become one body,
+obeying one head.
+
+That the spirit which has made New York's Fire Department great
+equally animates its commercial brother has been shown more than once,
+but never better than at the memorable fire in the Hotel Royal, which
+cost so many lives. No account of heroic life-saving at fires, even as
+fragmentary as this, could pass by the marvellous feat, or feats, of
+Sergeant (now Captain) John R. Vaughan on that February morning six
+years ago. The alarm rang in patrol station No. 3 at 3.20 o'clock on
+Sunday morning. Sergeant Vaughan, hastening to the fire with his men,
+found the whole five-story hotel ablaze from roof to cellar. The fire
+had shot up the elevator shaft, round which the stairs ran, and from
+the first had made escape impossible. Men and women were jumping and
+hanging from windows. One, falling from a great height, came within
+an inch of killing the sergeant as he tried to enter the building.
+Darting up into the next house, and leaning out of the window with his
+whole body, while one of the crew hung on to one leg,--as Fireman
+Pearl did to Howe's in the splendid rescue at the Geneva Club,--he
+took a half-hitch with the other in some electric-light wires that ran
+up the wall, trusting to his rubber boots to protect him from the
+current, and made of his body a living bridge for the safe passage
+from the last window of the burning hotel of three men and a woman
+whom death stared in the face, steadying them as they went with his
+free hand. As the last passed over, ladders were being thrown up
+against the wall, and what could be done there was done.
+
+Sergeant Vaughan went up on the roof. The smoke was so dense there
+that he could see little, but through it he heard a cry for help, and
+made out the shape of a man standing upon a window-sill in the fifth
+story, overlooking the courtyard of the hotel. The yard was between
+them. Bidding his men follow,--they were five, all told,--he ran down
+and around in the next street to the roof of the house that formed an
+angle with the hotel wing. There stood the man below him, only a jump
+away, but a jump which no mortal might take and live. His face and
+hands were black with smoke. Vaughan, looking down, thought him a
+negro. He was perfectly calm.
+
+"It is no use," he said, glancing up. "Don't try. You can't do it."
+
+The sergeant looked wistfully about him. Not a stick or a piece of
+rope was in sight. Every shred was used below. There was absolutely
+nothing. "But I couldn't let him," he said to me, months after, when
+he had come out of the hospital, a whole man again, and was back at
+work,--"I just couldn't, standing there so quiet and brave." To the
+man he said sharply:--
+
+"I want you to do exactly as I tell you, now. Don't grab me, but let
+me get the first grab." He had noticed that the man wore a heavy
+overcoat, and had already laid his plan.
+
+"Don't try," urged the man. "You cannot save me. I will stay here till
+it gets too hot; then I will jump."
+
+"No, you won't," from the sergeant, as he lay at full length on the
+roof, looking over. "It is a pretty hard yard down there. I will get
+you, or go dead myself."
+
+The four sat on the sergeant's legs as he swung free down to the
+waist; so he was almost able to reach the man on the window with
+outstretched hands.
+
+"Now jump--quick!" he commanded; and the man jumped. He caught him by
+both wrists as directed, and the sergeant got a grip on the collar of
+his coat.
+
+"Hoist!" he shouted to the four on the roof; and they tugged with
+their might. The sergeant's body did not move. Bending over till the
+back creaked, it hung over the edge, a weight of two hundred and three
+pounds suspended from and holding it down. The cold sweat started upon
+his men's foreheads as they tried and tried again, without gaining an
+inch. Blood dripped from Sergeant Vaughan's nostrils and ears. Sixty
+feet below was the paved courtyard; over against him the window,
+behind which he saw the back-draught coming, gathering headway with
+lurid, swirling smoke. Now it burst through, burning the hair and the
+coats of the two. For an instant he thought all hope was gone.
+
+But in a flash it came back to him. To relieve the terrible
+dead-weight that wrenched and tore at his muscles, he was swinging the
+man to and fro like a pendulum, head touching head. He could _swing
+him up_! A smothered shout warned his men. They crept nearer the edge
+without letting go their grip on him, and watched with staring eyes
+the human pendulum swing wider and wider, farther and farther, until
+now, with a mighty effort, it swung within their reach. They caught
+the skirt of the coat, held on, pulled in, and in a moment lifted him
+over the edge.
+
+They lay upon the roof, all six, breathless, sightless, their faces
+turned to the winter sky. The tumult on the street came up as a faint
+echo; the spray of a score of engines pumping below fell upon them,
+froze, and covered them with ice. The very roar of the fire seemed far
+off. The sergeant was the first to recover. He carried down the man he
+had saved, and saw him sent off to the hospital. Then first he noticed
+that he was not a negro; the smut had been rubbed from his face.
+Monday had dawned before he came to, and days passed before he knew
+his rescuer. Sergeant Vaughan was laid up himself then. He had
+returned to his work, and finished it; but what he had gone through
+was too much for human strength. It was spring before he returned to
+his quarters, to find himself promoted, petted, and made much of.
+
+From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a little step. Among the
+many who journeyed to the insurance patrol station to see the hero of
+the great fire, there came, one day, a woman. She was young and
+pretty, the sweetheart of the man on the window-sill. He was a lawyer,
+since a state senator of Pennsylvania. She wished the sergeant to
+repeat exactly the words he spoke to him in that awful moment when he
+bade him jump--to life or death. She had heard them, and she wanted
+the sergeant to repeat them to her, that she might know for sure he
+was the man who did it. He stammered and hitched--tried subterfuges.
+She waited, inexorable. Finally, in desperation, blushing fiery red,
+he blurted out "a lot of cuss-words." "You know," he said
+apologetically, in telling of it, "when I am in a place like that I
+can't help it."
+
+When she heard the words which her fiance had already told her,
+straightway she fell upon the fireman's neck. The sergeant stood
+dumfounded. "Women are queer," he said.
+
+Thus a fireman's life. That the very horses that are their friends in
+quarters, their comrades at the fire, sharing with them what comes of
+good and evil, catch the spirit of it, is not strange. It would be
+strange if they did not. With human intelligence and more than human
+affection, the splendid animals follow the fortunes of their masters,
+doing their share in whatever is demanded of them. In the final
+showing that in thirty years, while with the growing population the
+number of fires has steadily increased, the average loss per fire has
+as steadily decreased, they have their full share, also, of the
+credit. In 1866 there were 796 fires in New York, with an average loss
+of $8075.38 per fire. In 1876, with 1382 fires, the loss was but
+$2786.70 at each. In 1896, 3890 fires averaged only $878.81. It means
+that every year more fires are headed off than run down--smothered at
+the start, as a fire should be. When to the verdict of "faithful unto
+death" that record is added, nothing remains to be said. The firemen
+know how much of that is the doing of their four-legged comrades. It
+is the one blot on the fair picture that the city which owes these
+horses so much has not seen fit, in gratitude, to provide comfort for
+their worn old age. When a fireman grows old, he is retired on
+half-pay for the rest of his days. When a horse that has run with the
+heavy engines to fires by night and by day for perhaps ten or fifteen
+years is worn out, it is--sold, to a huckster, perhaps, or a
+contractor, to slave for him until it is fit only for the bone-yard!
+The city receives a paltry two or three thousand dollars a year for
+this rank treachery, and pockets the blood-money without a protest.
+There is room next, in New York, for a movement that shall secure to
+the fireman's faithful friend the grateful reward of a quiet farm, a
+full crib, and a green pasture to the end of its days, when it is no
+longer young enough and strong enough to "run with the machine."
+
+
+
+
+JOHN GAVIN, MISFIT
+
+
+John Gavin was to blame--there is no doubt of that. To be sure, he was
+out of a job, with never a cent in his pockets, his babies starving,
+and notice served by the landlord that day. He had travelled the
+streets till midnight looking for work, and had found none. And so he
+gave up. Gave up, with the Employment Bureau in the next street
+registering applicants; with the Wayfarers' Lodge over in Poverty Gap,
+where he might have earned fifty cents, anyway, chopping wood; with
+charities without end, organized and unorganized, that would have sat
+upon and registered his case, and numbered it properly. With all these
+things and a hundred like them to meet their wants, the Gavins of our
+day have been told often enough that they have no business to lose
+hope. That they will persist is strange. But perhaps this one had
+never heard of them.
+
+Anyway, Gavin is dead. But yesterday he was the father of six
+children, running from May, the eldest, who was thirteen and at
+school, to the baby, just old enough to poke its little fingers into
+its father's eyes and crow and jump when he came in from his long and
+dreary tramps. They were as happy a little family as a family of eight
+could be with the wolf scratching at the door, its nose already poking
+through. There had been no work and no wages in the house for months,
+and the landlord had given notice that at the end of the week, out
+they must go, unless the back rent was paid. And there was about as
+much likelihood of its being paid as of a slice of the February sun
+dropping down through the ceiling into the room to warm the shivering
+Gavin family.
+
+It began when Gavin's health gave way. He was a lather and had a
+steady job till sickness came. It was the old story: nothing laid
+away--how could there be, with a houseful of children--and nothing
+coming in. They talk of death-rates to measure the misery of the slum
+by, but death does not touch the bottom. It ends the misery. Sickness
+only begins it. It began Gavin's. When he had to drop hammer and
+nails, he got a job in a saloon as a barkeeper; but the saloon didn't
+prosper, and when it was shut up, there was an end. Gavin didn't know
+it then. He looked at the babies and kept up spirits as well as he
+could, though it wrung his heart.
+
+He tried everything under the sun to get a job. He travelled early and
+travelled late, but wherever he went they had men and to spare. And
+besides, he was ill. As they told him bluntly, sometimes, they didn't
+have any use for sick men. Men to work and earn wages must be strong.
+And he had to own that it was true.
+
+Gavin was not strong. As he denied himself secretly the nourishment he
+needed that his little ones might have enough, he felt it more and
+more. It was harder work for him to get around, and each refusal left
+him more downcast. He was yet a young man, only thirty-four, but he
+felt as if he was old and tired--tired out; that was it.
+
+The feeling grew on him while he went his last errand, offering his
+services at saloons and wherever, as he thought, an opening offered.
+In fact, he thought but little about it any more. The whole thing had
+become an empty, hopeless formality with him. He knew at last that he
+was looking for the thing he would never find; that in a cityful where
+every man had his place he was a misfit with none. With his dull brain
+dimly conscious of that one idea, he plodded homeward in the midnight
+hour. He had been on the go since early morning, and excepting some
+lunch from the saloon counters, had eaten nothing.
+
+The lamp burned dimly in the room where May sat poring yet over her
+books, waiting for papa. When he came in she looked up and smiled,
+but saw by his look, as he hung up his hat, that there was no good
+news, and returned with a sigh to her book. The tired mother was
+asleep on the bed, dressed, with the baby in her arms. She had lain
+down to quiet it and had been lulled to sleep with it herself.
+
+Gavin did not wake them. He went to the bed where the four little ones
+slept, and kissed them, each in his turn, then came back and kissed
+his wife and baby.
+
+May nestled close to him as he bent over her and gave her, too, a
+little hug.
+
+"Where are you going, papa?" she asked.
+
+He turned around at the door and cast a look back at the quiet room,
+irresolute. Then he went back once more to kiss his sleeping wife and
+baby softly.
+
+But however softly, it woke the mother. She saw him making for the
+door, and asked him where he meant to go so late.
+
+"Out, just a little while," he said, and his voice was husky. He
+turned his head away.
+
+A woman's instinct made her arise hastily and go to him.
+
+"Don't go," she said; "please don't go away."
+
+As he still moved toward the door, she put her arm about his neck and
+drew his head toward her.
+
+She strove with him anxiously, frightened, she hardly knew herself by
+what. The lamplight fell upon something shining which he held behind
+his back. The room rang with the shot, and the baby awoke crying, to
+see its father slip from mamma's arms to the floor, dead.
+
+For John Gavin, alive, there was no place. At least he did not find
+it; for which, let it be said and done with, he was to blame. Dead,
+society will find one for him. And for the one misfit got off the list
+there are seven whom not employment bureau nor woodyard nor charity
+register can be made to reach. Social economy the thing is called;
+which makes the eighth misfit.
+
+
+
+
+A HEATHEN BABY
+
+
+A stack of mail comes to Police Headquarters every morning from the
+precincts by special department carrier. It includes the reports for
+the last twenty-four hours of stolen and recovered goods, complaints,
+and the thousand and one things the official mail-bag contains from
+day to day. It is all routine, and everything has its own pigeonhole
+into which it drops and is forgotten until some raking up in the
+department turns up the old blotters and the old things once more. But
+at last the mail-bag contained something that was altogether out of
+the usual run, to wit, a Chinese baby.
+
+Pickaninnies have come in it before this, lots of them, black and
+shiny, and one pappoose from a West Side wigwam; but a Chinese baby
+never.
+
+Sergeant Jack was so astonished that it took his breath away. When he
+recovered he spoke learnedly about its clothes as evidence of its
+heathen origin. Never saw such a thing before, he said. They were like
+they were sewn on; it was impossible to disentangle that child by any
+way short of rolling it on the floor.
+
+Sergeant Jack is an old bachelor, and that is all he knows about
+babies. The child was not sewn up at all. It was just swaddled, and no
+Chinese had done that, but the Italian woman who found it. Sergeant
+Jack sees such babies every night in Mulberry Street, but that is the
+way with old bachelors. They don't know much, anyhow.
+
+It was clear that the baby thought so. She was a little girl, very
+little, only one night old; and she regarded him through her almond
+eyes with a supercilious look, as who should say, "Now, if he was only
+a bottle, instead of a big, useless policeman, why, one might put up
+with him;" which reflection opened the flood-gates of grief and set
+the little Chinee squalling: "Yow! Yow! Yap!" until the Sergeant held
+his ears, and a policeman carried it upstairs in a hurry.
+
+Downstairs first, in the Sergeant's big blotter, and upstairs in the
+matron's nursery next, the baby's brief official history was recorded.
+There was very little of it, indeed, and what there was was not marked
+by much ceremony. The stork hadn't brought it, as it does in far-off
+Denmark; nor had the doctor found it and brought it in, on the
+American plan.
+
+An Italian woman had just scratched it out of an ash barrel. Perhaps
+that's the way they find babies in China, in which case the sympathy
+of all American mothers and fathers will be with the present
+despoilers of the heathen Chinee, who is entitled to no consideration
+whatever until he introduces a new way.
+
+The Italian woman was Mrs. Maria Lepanto. She lives in Thompson
+Street, but she had come all the way down to the corner of Elizabeth
+and Canal streets with her little girl to look at a procession passing
+by. That, as everybody knows, is next door to Chinatown. It was ten
+o'clock, and the end of the procession was in sight, when she noticed
+something stirring in an ash barrel that stood against the wall. She
+thought first it was a rat, and was going to run, when a noise that
+was certainly not a rat's squeal came from the barrel. The child clung
+to her hand and dragged her toward the sound.
+
+"Oh, mamma!" she cried, in wild excitement, "hear it! It isn't a rat!
+I know! Hear!"
+
+It was a wail, a very tiny wail, ever so sorry, as well it might be,
+coming from a baby that was cradled in an ash barrel. It was little
+Susie's eager hands that snatched it out. Then they saw that it was
+indeed a child, a poor, helpless, grieving little baby.
+
+It had nothing on at all, not even a rag. Perhaps they had not had
+time to dress it.
+
+"Oh, it will fit my dolly's jacket!" cried Susie, dancing around and
+hugging it in glee. "It will, mamma! A real live baby! Now Tilde
+needn't brag of theirs. We will take it home, won't we, mamma?"
+
+The bands brayed, and the flickering light of many torches filled the
+night. The procession had gone down the street, and the crowd with it.
+The poor woman wrapped the baby in her worn shawl and gave it to the
+girl to carry. And Susie carried it, prouder and happier than any of
+the men that marched to the music. So they arrived home. The little
+stranger had found friends and a resting-place.
+
+But not for long. In the morning Mrs. Lepanto took counsel with the
+neighbors, and was told that the child must be given to the police.
+That was the law, they said, and though little Susie cried bitterly at
+having to part with her splendid new toy, Mrs. Lepanto, being a
+law-abiding woman, wrapped up her find and took it to the Macdougal
+Street station.
+
+That was the way it got to Headquarters with the morning mail, and
+how Sergeant Jack got a chance to tell all he didn't know about
+babies. Matron Travers knew more, a good deal. She tucked the little
+heathen away in a trundle-bed with a big bottle, and blessed silence
+fell at once on Headquarters. In five minutes the child was asleep.
+
+While it slept, Matron Travers entered it in her book as "No. 103" of
+that year's crop of the gutter, and before it woke up she was on the
+way with it, snuggled safely in a big gray shawl, up to the Charities.
+There Mr. Bauer registered it under yet another number, chucked it
+under the chin, and chirped at it in what he probably thought might
+pass for baby Chinese. Then it got another big bottle and went to
+sleep once more.
+
+At ten o'clock there came a big ship on purpose to give the little
+Mott Street waif a ride up the river, and by dinner-time it was on a
+green island with four hundred other babies of all kinds and shades,
+but not one just like it in the whole lot. For it was New York's first
+and only Chinese foundling. As to that Superintendent Bauer, Matron
+Travers, and Mrs. Lepanto agreed. Sergeant Jack's evidence doesn't
+count, except as backed by his superiors. He doesn't know a heathen
+baby when he sees one.
+
+The island where the waif from Mott Street cast anchor is called
+Randall's Island, and there its stay ends, or begins. The chances are
+that it ends, for with an ash barrel filling its past and a foundling
+asylum its future, a baby hasn't much of a show. Babies were made to
+be hugged each by one pair of mother's arms, and neither white-capped
+nurses nor sleek milch cows fed on the fattest of meadow-grass can
+take their place, try as they may. The babies know that they are
+cheated, and they will not stay.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHRISTENING IN BOTTLE ALLEY
+
+
+All Bottle Alley was bidden to the christening. It being Sunday, when
+Mulberry Street was wont to adjust its differences over the cards and
+the wine-cup, it came "heeled," ready for what might befall. From
+Tomaso, the ragpicker in the farthest rear cellar, to the Signor
+Undertaker, mainstay and umpire in the varying affairs of life, which
+had a habit in The Bend of lapsing suddenly upon his professional
+domain, they were all there, the men of Malpete's village. The baby
+was named for the village saint, so that it was a kind of communal
+feast as well. Carmen was there with her man, and Francisco Cessari.
+
+If Carmen had any other name, neither Mulberry Street nor the Alley
+knew it. She was Carmen to them when, seven years before, she had
+taken up with Francisco, then a young mountaineer straight as the
+cedar of his native hills, the breath of which was yet in the songs
+with which he wooed her. Whether the priest had blessed their bonds no
+one knew or asked. The Bend only knew that one day, after three years
+during which the Francisco tenement had been the scene of more than
+one jealous quarrel, not, it was whispered, without cause, the
+mountaineer was missing. He did not come back. From over the sea The
+Bend heard, after a while, that he had reappeared in the old village
+to claim the sweetheart he had left behind. In the course of time new
+arrivals brought the news that Francisco was married and that they
+were living happily, as a young couple should. At the news Mulberry
+Street looked askance at Carmen; but she gave no sign. By tacit
+consent, she was the Widow Carmen after that.
+
+The summers passed. The fourth brought Francisco Cessari, come back to
+seek his fortune, with his wife and baby. He greeted old friends
+effusively and made cautious inquiries about Carmen. When told that
+she had consoled herself with his old rival, Luigi, with whom she was
+then living in Bottle Alley, he laughed with a light heart, and took
+up his abode within half a dozen doors of the alley. That was but a
+short time before the christening at Malpete's. There their paths
+crossed each other for the first time since his flight.
+
+She met him with a smile on her lips, but with hate in her heart. He,
+manlike, saw only the smile. The men smoking and drinking in the court
+watched them speak apart, saw him, with the laugh that sat so lightly
+upon his lips, turn to his wife, sitting by the hydrant with the
+child, and heard him say, "Look, Carmen! our baby!"
+
+The woman bent over it, and, as she did, the little one woke suddenly
+out of its sleep and cried out in affright. It was noticed that Carmen
+smiled again then, and that the young mother shivered, why she herself
+could not have told. Francisco, joining the group at the farther end
+of the yard, said carelessly that Carmen had forgotten. They poked fun
+at him and spoke her name loudly, with laughter.
+
+From the tenement, as they did, came Luigi and asked threateningly who
+insulted his wife. They only laughed the more, said he had drunk too
+much wine, and shouldering him out, bade him go look to his woman. He
+went. Carmen had witnessed it all from the house. She called him a
+coward and goaded him with bitter taunts until mad with anger and
+drink he went out in the court once more and shook his fist in the
+face of Francisco. They hailed his return with bantering words. Luigi
+was spoiling for a fight they laughed, and would find one before the
+day was much older. But suddenly silence fell upon the group. Carmen
+stood on the step, pale and cold. She hid something under her apron.
+
+"Luigi!" she called, and he came to her. She drew from under the
+apron a cocked pistol, and, pointing to Francisco, pushed it into his
+hand. At the sight the alley was cleared as suddenly as if a tornado
+had swept through it. Malpete's guests leaped over fences, dived into
+cellar-ways anywhere for shelter. The door of the woodshed slammed
+behind Francisco just as his old rival reached it. The maddened man
+tore it open and dragged him out by the throat. He pinned him against
+the fence, and levelled the pistol with frenzied curses. They died on
+his lips. The face that was turning livid in his grasp was the face of
+his boyhood's friend. They had gone to school together, danced
+together at the fairs in the old days. They had been friends--till
+Carmen came. The muzzle of the weapon fell.
+
+"Shoot!" said a hard voice behind him. Carmen stood there with face of
+stone. She stamped her foot. "Shoot!" she commanded, pointing,
+relentless, at the struggling man. "Coward, shoot!"
+
+Her lover's finger crooked itself upon the trigger. A shriek, wild and
+despairing, rang through the alley. A woman ran madly from the house,
+flew across the pavement, and fell panting at Carmen's feet.
+
+"Mother of God! mercy!" she cried, thrusting her babe before the
+assassin's weapon. "Jesus Maria! Carmen, the child! He is my
+husband!"
+
+No gleam of pity came into the cold eyes. Only hatred, fierce and
+bitter, was there. In one swift, sweeping glance she saw it all: the
+woman fawning at her feet, the man she hated limp and helpless in the
+grasp of her lover.
+
+"He was mine once," she said, "and he had no mercy." She pushed the
+baby aside. "Coward, shoot!"
+
+The shot was drowned in the shriek, hopeless, despairing, of the widow
+who fell upon the body of Francisco as it slipped lifeless from the
+grasp of the assassin. The christening party saw Carmen standing over
+the three with the same pale smile on her cruel lips.
+
+For once The Bend did not shield a murderer. The door of the tenement
+was shut against him. The women spurned him. The very children spat
+upon him as he fled to the street. The police took him there. With him
+they seized Carmen. She made no attempt to escape. She had bided her
+time, and it had come. She had her revenge. To the end of its lurid
+life Bottle Alley remembered it as the murder accursed of God.
+
+
+
+
+IN THE MULBERRY STREET COURT
+
+
+"Conduct unbecoming an officer," read the charge, "in this, to wit,
+that the said defendants brought into the station-house, by means to
+deponent unknown, on the said Fourth of July, a keg of beer, and, when
+apprehended, were consuming the contents of the same." Twenty
+policemen, comprising the whole off platoon of the East One Hundred
+and Fourth Street squad, answered the charge as defendants. They had
+been caught grouped about a pot of chowder and the fatal keg in the
+top-floor dormitory, singing, "Beer, beer, glorious beer!" Sergeant
+McNally and Roundsman Stevenson interrupted the proceedings.
+
+The Commissioner's eyes bulged as, at the call of the complaint clerk,
+the twenty marched up and ranged themselves in rows, three deep,
+before him.
+
+They took the oath collectively, with a toss and a smack, as if to
+say, "I don't care if I do," and told separately and identically the
+same story, while the Sergeant stared and the Commissioner's eyes grew
+bigger and rounder.
+
+Missing his reserves, Sergeant McNally had sent the Roundsman in
+search of them. He was slow in returning, and the Sergeant went on a
+tour of inspection himself. He journeyed to the upper region, and
+there came upon the party in full swing. Then and there he called the
+roll. Not one of the platoon was missing.
+
+They formed a hollow square around something that looked uncommonly
+like a beer-keg. A number of tin growlers stood beside it. The
+Sergeant picked up one and turned the tap. There was enough left in
+the keg to barely half fill it. Seeing that, the platoon followed him
+downstairs without a murmur.
+
+One by one the twenty took the stand after the Sergeant had left it,
+and testified without a tremor that they had seen no beer-keg. In
+fact, the majority would not know one if they saw it. They were tired
+and hungry, having been held in reserve all day, when a pleasant smell
+assailed their nostrils.
+
+Each of the twenty followed his nose independently to the top floor,
+where he was surprised to see the rest gathered about a pot of
+steaming chowder. He joined the circle and partook of some. It was
+good. As to beer, he had seen none and drunk less. There was something
+there of wood with a brass handle to it. What it was none of them
+seemed to know. They were all shocked at the idea that it might have
+been a beer-keg. Such things are forbidden in police stations.
+
+The Sergeant himself could not tell how it could have got in there,
+while stoutly maintaining that it was a keg. He scratched his head and
+concluded that it might have come over the roof, or, somehow, from a
+building that is in course of erection next door. The chowder had come
+in by the main door. At least one policeman had seen it carried
+upstairs. He had fallen in behind it immediately.
+
+When the Commissioner had heard this story told exactly twenty times
+the platoon fell in and marched off to the elevated station. When he
+can decide what punishment to inflict on a policeman who does not know
+a beer-keg when he sees it, they all will be fined accordingly, and a
+doorman who has served a term as a barkeeper will be sent to the East
+One Hundred and Fourth Street station to keep the police there out of
+harm's way.
+
+
+
+
+DIFFICULTIES OF A DEACON
+
+
+It is my firm opinion that newspaper men should not be deacons. Not
+that there is any moral or spiritual reason why they should
+abstain--not that; but it doesn't work; the chances are all against
+it. I know it from experience. I was a deacon myself once.
+
+It was at a time when they were destroying gambling tools at Police
+Headquarters. I was there, and I carried away as a memento of the
+occasion a pocketful of red, white, yellow, and blue chips. They were
+pretty, and I thought they would be nice to have around. That was the
+beginning of the mischief. I was a very energetic deacon, and attended
+to the duties of the office with zeal. It was a young church; I had
+helped to found it myself; and at the Thursday night meetings I was
+rarely missing. The very next week it was my turn to lead it, and I
+started in to interpret the text to the best of my ability, and with
+much approval from the brethren.
+
+I have a nervous habit, when talking, of fingering my watch, keys,
+knife, or whatever I happen to fish out of my pocket first. It
+happened to be the poker chips this time. Now, I have never played
+poker. I don't know the game from the smallpox. But it seems that the
+congregation did. I could not at first account for the enthusiasm of
+the brethren as I laid down the law, and checked off the points
+successively on a white, a red, and a yellow chip, summing the
+argument up on a blue. I was rather flattered by my success at
+presenting the matter in a convincing light; and when the dominie
+leaned over and examined the chips attentively, I gave him a handful
+for the baby, cheerfully telling him that I had plenty more at home.
+
+The look of horror on the good man's face remained a puzzle to me
+until some of the congregation asked me on the train in the morning,
+in a confidential kind of way, where the game was, and how high was
+the ante. The explanation that ensued was not a success. I think that
+it shook the confidence of the brethren in me for the first time.
+
+It occurs to me now, looking back, that the fact that I had a black
+eye on that occasion may have contributed in a measure to this result.
+Yet it was as innocent an eye as those chips; in fact, it was
+distinctly an ecclesiastical black eye, if I may so call it. I was
+never a fighter, any more than I was a gambler. Only once in my life
+was I accused of fighting, and then most unjustly. It was when a man
+who had come into my office with a hickory club to punish me for a
+wrong, as he insisted upon considering it,--while in reality it was an
+act of strictest justice to him,--happened to fall out of a window,
+taking the whole sash with him. The simple fact was that I didn't
+strike a blow. He literally fell out. However, that is another story,
+and a much older one.
+
+This black eye was a direct outcome of my zeal as deacon. Between the
+duties it imposed upon me, and my work as a newspaper man, I was
+getting very much in need of exercise of some sort. The doctor
+recommended Indian clubs; but the boys in the office liked boxing, and
+it seemed to me to have some advantages. So we clubbed together, and
+got a set of gloves, and when we were not busy would put them on and
+have a friendly set-to. It was inevitable that our youthful spirits
+should rise at these meetings, and with them occasionally certain
+lumps, which afterward shaded off into various tints bordering more or
+less on black until we learned to keep a leech on hand for
+emergencies. You see, what with the spirit of the contest, the
+tenderness of our untrained flesh, and certain remembered scores which
+were thus paid off in an entirely friendly and Christian manner,
+leaving no bad blood behind,--especially after we had engaged the
+leech,--this was not only reasonable, but inevitable. But the brethren
+knew nothing of this, and couldn't be persuaded to listen to it; and,
+in fairness, it must be owned that the spectacle of a deacon with a
+black eye and a handful of poker chips expounding the text in
+prayer-meeting was--well, let us say that appearances were against me.
+
+Still, I might have come through it all right had it not been for Mac.
+Mac was the dog. It never rains but it pours; and just at this time
+midnight burglars took to raiding our suburban town, and dogs came
+into fashion. Mac came into it with a long jump. He had been part of
+the outfit of a dog pit in a low dive on the East Side which the
+police had broken up. Sergeant Jack had heard of my need, and gave him
+to me for old acquaintance' sake, warranting him to keep anybody away
+from the house. Upon this point there was never the least doubt. We
+might just as well have lived on a desert island while we had him.
+People went around the next block to avoid our house. It was not
+because Mac was unsociable; quite the contrary. He took to the town
+from the first, especially to the other dogs. These he generally took
+by the throat, to the great distress of their owners. I have never
+heard that bulldogs as a class have theories, and I am not prepared
+to discuss the point. I know that Mac had. He was an evolutionist,
+with a firm belief in the principle of the survival of the fittest;
+and he did all one dog could do to carry it into practice. His efforts
+eventually brought it down to a question between himself and a big
+long-haired dog in the next street. I think of this with regret,
+because it was the occasion of my one real slip. The dog led me into
+temptation.
+
+If it only had not been Sunday, and church time, when the issue became
+urgent, and the long-haired one accepted our invitation for a walk in
+the deep woods! In this saddening reflection I was partly comforted,
+while taking the by-paths for home afterward,--with Mac limping along
+on three legs, and minus one ear,--by the knowledge that our view of
+the case had prevailed. The long-haired one troubled us no more
+thereafter.
+
+Mac had his strong points, but he had also his failings. One of these
+was a weakness for stale beer. I suppose he had been brought up on it
+in the dog pit. The pure air of Long Island, and the usual environment
+of his new home, did not wean him from it. He had not been long in our
+house before he took to absenting himself for days and nights at a
+time, returning ragged and fagged out, as if from a long spree. We
+found out, by accident, that he spent those vacations in a low saloon
+a mile up the plank road, which he had probably located on one of his
+excursions through the country to extend his doctrine of evolution. It
+was the conductor on the horse-car that ran past the saloon who told
+me of it. Mac had found the cars out, too, and rode regularly up and
+down to the place, surveying the country from the rear platform. The
+conductor prudently refrained from making any remarks after Mac had
+once afforded him a look at his jaw. I am sorry to say that I think
+Mac got drunk on those trips. I judged, from remarks I overheard once
+or twice about the "deacon's drunken dog," that the community shared
+my conviction. It was always quick to jump at conclusions,
+particularly about deacons.
+
+Sober second thought should have acquitted me of all the allegations
+against me, except the one matter of the Sunday discussion in the
+woods, which, however, I had forgotten to mention. But sober second
+thought, that ought always and specially to attach itself to the
+deaconry, was apparently at a premium in our town. I had begun to tire
+of the constant explanations that were required, when the climax came
+in a manner wholly unforeseen and unexpected. The cashier in the
+office had run away, or was under suspicion, or something, and it
+became necessary to overhaul the accounts to find out where the
+office stood. When that was done, my chief summoned me down town for a
+private interview. Upon the table lay my weekly pay-checks for three
+years back, face down. My employer eyed them and me, by turns,
+curiously.
+
+"Mr. Riis," he began stiffly, "I'm not going to judge you unheard;
+and, for that matter, it is none of my business. I have known you all
+this time as a sober, steady man; I believe you are a deacon in your
+church; and I never heard that you gambled or bet money. It seems now
+that I was never more mistaken in a man in my life. Tell me, how do
+you do it, anyhow? Do you blow in the whole of your salary every week
+on policy, or do you run a game of your own up there? Look at those
+checks."
+
+He pointed to the lot. I stared at them in bewilderment. They were my
+own checks, sure enough; and underneath my name, on the back of each
+one, was the indorsement of the infamous blackleg whose name had been
+a byword ever since I could remember as that of the chief devil in the
+policy blackmail conspiracy that had robbed the poor and corrupted the
+police force to the core.
+
+I went home and resigned my office as deacon. I did not explain. We
+were having a little difficulty at the time, about another matter,
+which made it easy. I did not add this straw, though the explanation
+was simple enough. My chief grasped it at once; but then, he was not a
+deacon. I had simply got my check cashed every week in a cigar-store
+next door that was known to be a policy-shop for the special
+accommodation of Police Headquarters in those days, and the check had
+gone straight into the "backer's" bank-account. That was how. But, as
+I said, it was hopeless to try to explain, and I didn't. I simply
+record here what I said at the beginning, that it is no use for a
+newspaper man, more particularly a police reporter, to try to be a
+deacon too. The chances are all against it.
+
+
+
+
+FIRE IN THE BARRACKS
+
+
+The rush and roar, the blaze and the wild panic of a great fire filled
+Twenty-third Street. Helmeted men stormed and swore; horses tramped
+and reared; crying women, hurrying hither and thither, stumbled over
+squirming hose on street and sidewalk.
+
+The throbbing of a dozen pumping-engines merged all other sounds in
+its frantic appeal for haste. In the midst of it all, seven
+red-shirted men knelt beside a heap of trunks, hastily thrown up as
+for a breastwork, and prayed fervently with bared heads.
+
+Firemen and policemen stumbled up against them with angry words,
+stopped, stared, and passed silently by. The fleeing crowd hailed and
+fell back. The rush and the roar swirled to the right and to the left,
+leaving the little band as if in an eddy, untouched and serene, with
+the glow of the fire upon it and the stars paling overhead.
+
+The seven were the Swedish Salvation Army. Their barracks were burning
+up in a blast of fire so sudden and so fierce that scant time was
+left to save life and goods.
+
+From the tenements next door men and women dragged bundles and
+feather-beds, choking stairs and halls, and shrieking madly to be let
+out. The police struggled angrily with the torrent. The lodgers in the
+Holly-Tree Inn, who had nothing to save, ran for their lives.
+
+In the station-house behind the barracks they were hastily clearing
+the prison. The last man had hardly passed out of his cell when, with
+a deafening crash, the toppling wall fell upon and smashed the roof of
+the jail.
+
+Fire-bells rang in every street as engines rushed from north and
+south. A general alarm had called out the reserves. Every hydrant for
+blocks around was tapped. Engine crews climbed upon the track of the
+elevated road, picketed the surrounding tenements, and stood their
+ground on top of the police station.
+
+Up there two crews labored with a Siamese joint hose throwing a stream
+as big as a man's thigh. It got away from them, and for a while there
+was panic and a struggle up on the heights as well as in the street.
+The throbbing hose bounded over the roof, thrashing right and left,
+and flinging about the men who endeavored to pin it down like
+half-drowned kittens. It struck the coping, knocked it off, and the
+resistless stream washed brick and stone down into the yard as upon
+the wave of a mighty flood.
+
+Amid the fright and uproar the seven alone were calm. The sun rose
+upon their little band perched upon the pile of trunks, victorious and
+defiant. It shone upon Old Glory and the Salvation Army's flag
+floating from their improvised fort, and upon an ample lake, sprung up
+within an hour where yesterday there was a vacant sunken lot. The fire
+was out, the firemen going home.
+
+The lodgers in the Holly-Tree Inn, of whom there is one for every day
+in the year, looked upon the sudden expanse of water, shivered, and
+went in. The tenants returned to their homes. The fright was over,
+with the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+WAR ON THE GOATS
+
+
+War has been declared in Hell's Kitchen. An indignant public opinion
+demands to have "something done ag'in' them goats," and there is alarm
+at the river end of the street. A public opinion in Hell's Kitchen
+that demands anything besides schooners of mixed ale is a sign. Surer
+than a college settlement and a sociological canvass, it foretells the
+end of the slum. Sebastopol, the rocky fastness of the gang that gave
+the place its bad name, was razed only the other day, and now the
+police have been set on the goats. Cause enough for alarm.
+
+A reconnaissance in force by the enemy showed some foundation for the
+claim that the goats owned the block. Thirteen were found foraging in
+the gutters, standing upon trucks, or calmly dozing in doorways. They
+evinced no particularly hostile disposition, but a marked desire to
+know the business of every chance caller in the block. This caused a
+passing unpleasantness between one big white goat and the janitress of
+the tenement on the corner. Being crowded up against the wall by the
+animal, bent on exploring her pockets, she beat it off with her
+scrubbing-pail and mop. The goat, thus dismissed, joined a horse at
+the curb in apparently innocent meditation, but with one leering eye
+fixed back over its shoulder upon the housekeeper setting out an ash
+barrel.
+
+Her back was barely turned when it was in the barrel, with head and
+fore feet exploring its depths. The door of the tenement opened upon
+the housekeeper trundling another barrel just as the first one fell
+and rolled across the sidewalk, with the goat capering about. Then was
+the air filled with bad language and a broomstick and a goat for a
+moment, and the woman was left shouting her wrongs.
+
+"What de divil good is dem goats anyhow?" she said, panting. "There's
+no housekeeper in de United Shtates can watch de ash cans wid dem
+divil's imps around. They near killed an Eyetalian child the other
+day, and two of them got basted in de neck when de goats follied dem
+and didn't get nothing. That big white one o' Tim's, he's the worst in
+de lot, and he's got only one horn, too."
+
+This wicked and unsymmetrical animal is denounced for its malice
+throughout the block by even the defenders of the goats. Singularly
+enough, he cannot be located, and neither can Tim. If the scouting
+party has better luck and can seize this wretched beast, half the
+campaign may be over. It will be accepted as a sacrifice by one side,
+and the other is willing to give it up.
+
+Mrs. Shallock lives in a crazy old frame-house, over a saloon. Her
+kitchen is approached by a sort of hen-ladder, a foot wide, which
+terminates in a balcony, the whole of which was occupied by a big gray
+goat. There was not room for the police inquisitor and the goat too,
+and the former had to wait till the animal had come off his perch.
+Mrs. Shallock is a widow. A load of anxiety and concern overspread her
+motherly countenance when she heard of the trouble.
+
+"Are they after dem goats again?" she said. "Sarah! Leho! come right
+here, an' don't you go in the street again. Excuse me, sor! but it's
+all because one of dem knocked down an old woman that used to give it
+a paper every day. She is the mother of the blind newsboy around on
+the avenue, an' she used to feed an old paper to him every night. So
+he follied her. That night she didn't have any, an' when he stuck his
+nose in her basket an' didn't find any, he knocked her down, an' she
+bruk her arrum."
+
+Whether it was the one-horned goat that thus insisted upon his
+sporting extra does not appear. Probably it was.
+
+"There's neighbors lives there has got 'em on floors," Mrs. Shallock
+kept on. "I'm paying taxes here, an' I think it's my privilege to have
+one little goat."
+
+"I just wish they'd take 'em," broke in the widow's buxom daughter,
+who had appeared in the doorway, combing her hair. "They goes up in
+the hall and knocks on the door with their horns all night. There's
+sixteen dozen of them on the stoop, if there's one. What good are
+they? Let's sell 'em to the butcher, mamma; he'll buy 'em for mutton,
+the way he did Bill Buckley's. You know right well he did."
+
+"They ain't much good, that's a fact," mused the widow. "But yere's
+Leho; she's follying me around just like a child. She is a regular
+pet, is Leho. We got her from Mr. Lee, who is dead, and we called her
+after him, Leho [Leo]. Take Sarah; but Leho, little Leho, let's keep."
+
+Leho stuck her head in through the front door and belied her name. If
+the widow keeps her, another campaign will shortly have to be begun in
+Forty-sixth Street. There will be more goats where Leho is.
+
+Mr. Cleary lives in a rear tenement and has only one goat. It belongs,
+he says, to his little boy, and is no good except to amuse him. Minnie
+is her name, and she once had a mate. When it was sold, the boy cried
+so much that he was sick for two weeks. Mr. Cleary couldn't think of
+parting with Minnie.
+
+Neither will Mr. Lennon, in the next yard, give up his. He owns the
+stable, he says, and axes no odds of anybody. His goat is some good
+anyhow, for it gives milk for his tea. Says his wife, "Many is the
+dime it has saved us." There are two goats in Mr. Lennon's yard, one
+perched on top of a shed surveying the yard, the other engaged in
+chewing at a buck-saw that hangs on the fence.
+
+Mrs. Buckley does not know how many goats she has. A glance at the
+bigger of the two that are stabled at the entrance to the tenement
+explains her doubts, which are temporary. Mrs. Buckley says that her
+husband "generally sells them away," meaning the kids, presumably to
+the butcher for mutton.
+
+"Hey, Jenny!" she says, stroking the big one at the door. Jenny eyes
+the visitor calmly, and chews an old newspaper. She has two horns.
+
+"She ain't as bad as they lets on," says Mrs. Buckley.
+
+The scouting party reports the new public opinion of the Kitchen to be
+of healthy but alien growth, as yet without roots in the soil strong
+enough to stand the shock of a general raid on the goats. They
+recommend as a present concession the seizure of the one-horned Billy
+that seems to have no friends on the block, if indeed he belongs
+there, and an ambush is being laid accordingly.
+
+
+
+
+HE KEPT HIS TRYST
+
+
+Policeman Schultz was stamping up and down his beat in Hester Street,
+trying to keep warm, on the night before Christmas, when a human
+wreck, in rum and rags, shuffled across his path and hailed him:--
+
+"You allus treated me fair, Schultz," it said; "say, will you do a
+thing for me?"
+
+"What is it, Denny?" said the officer. He had recognized the wreck as
+Denny the Robber, a tramp who had haunted his beat ever since he had
+been on it, and for years before, he had heard, further back than any
+one knew.
+
+"Will you," said the wreck, wistfully--"will you run me in and give me
+about three months to-morrow? Will you do it?"
+
+"That I will," said Schultz. He had often done it before, sometimes
+for three, sometimes for six months, and sometimes for ten days,
+according to how he and Denny and the justice felt about it. In the
+spell between trips to the island, Denny was a regular pensioner of
+the policeman, who let him have a quarter or so when he had so little
+money as to be next to desperate. He never did get quite to that
+point. Perhaps the policeman's quarters saved him. His nickname of
+"the Robber" was given to him on the same principle that dubbed the
+neighborhood he haunted the Pig Market--because pigs are the only ware
+not for sale there. Denny never robbed anybody. The only thing he ever
+stole was the time he should have spent in working. There was no
+denying it, Denny was a loafer. He himself had told Schultz that it
+was because his wife and children put him out of their house in
+Madison Street five years before. Perhaps if his wife's story had been
+heard it would have reversed that statement of facts. But nobody ever
+heard it. Nobody took the trouble to inquire. The O'Neil family--that
+was understood to be the name--interested no one in Jewtown. One of
+its members was enough. Except that Mrs. O'Neil lived in Madison
+Street, somewhere "near Lundy's store," nothing was known of her.
+
+"That I will, Denny," repeated the policeman, heartily, slipping him a
+dime for luck. "You come around to-morrow, and I will run you in. Now
+go along."
+
+But Denny didn't go, though he had the price of two "balls" at the
+distillery. He shifted thoughtfully on his feet, and said:--
+
+"Say, Schultz, if I should die now,--I am all full o' rheumatiz, and
+sore,--if I should die before, would you see to me and tell the
+wife?"
+
+"Small fear of yer dying, Denny, with the price of two drinks," said
+the policeman, poking him facetiously in the ribs with his club.
+"Don't you worry. All the same, if you will tell me where the old
+woman lives, I will let her know. What's the number?"
+
+But the Robber's mood had changed under the touch of the silver dime
+that burned his palm. "Never mind, Schultz," he said; "I guess I won't
+kick; so long!" and moved off.
+
+The snow drifted wickedly down Suffolk Street Christmas morning,
+pinching noses and ears and cheeks already pinched by hunger and want.
+It set around the corner into the Pig Market, where the hucksters
+plodded knee-deep in the drifts, burying the horse-radish man and his
+machine and coating the bare, plucked breasts of the geese that swung
+from countless hooks at the corner stand with softer and whiter down
+than ever grew there. It drove the suspender-man into the hallway of a
+Suffolk Street tenement, where he tried to pluck the icicles from his
+frozen ears and beard with numb and powerless fingers.
+
+As he stepped out of the way of some one entering with a blast that
+set like a cold shiver up through the house, he stumbled over
+something, and put down his hand to feel what it was. It touched a
+cold face, and the house rang with a shriek that silenced the clink of
+glasses in the distillery, against the side door of which the
+something lay. They crowded out, glasses in hand, to see what it was.
+
+"Only a dead tramp," said some one, and the crowd went back to the
+warm saloon, where the barrels lay in rows on the racks. The clink of
+glasses and shouts of laughter came through the peep-hole in the door
+into the dark hallway as Policeman Schultz bent over the stiff, cold
+shape. Some one had called him.
+
+"Denny," he said, tugging at his sleeve.
+
+"Denny, come. Your time is up. I am here." Denny never stirred. The
+policeman looked up, white in the face.
+
+"My God!" he said, "he's dead. But he kept his date."
+
+And so he had. Denny the Robber was dead. Rum and exposure and the
+"rheumatiz" had killed him. Policeman Schultz kept his word, too, and
+had him taken to the station on a stretcher.
+
+"He was a bad penny," said the saloon-keeper, and no one in Jewtown
+was found to contradict him.
+
+
+
+
+ROVER'S LAST FIGHT
+
+
+The little village of Valley Stream nestles peacefully among the woods
+and meadows of Long Island. The days and the years roll by
+uneventfully within its quiet precincts. Nothing more exciting than
+the arrival of a party of fishermen from the city, on a vain hunt for
+perch in the ponds that lie hidden among its groves and feed the
+Brooklyn waterworks, troubles the every-day routine of the village.
+Two great railroad wrecks are remembered thereabouts, but these are
+already ancient history. Only the oldest inhabitants know of the
+earlier one. There hasn't been as much as a sudden death in the town
+since, and the constable and chief of police--probably one and the
+same person--haven't turned an honest or dishonest penny in the whole
+course of their official existence. All of which is as it ought to be.
+
+But at last something occurred that ought not to have been. The
+village was aroused at daybreak by the intelligence that a robbery had
+been committed overnight, and a murder. The house of Gabriel Dodge, a
+well-to-do farmer, had been sacked by thieves, who left in their trail
+the farmer's murdered dog. Rover was a collie, large for his kind, and
+quite as noisy as the rest of them. He had been left as an outside
+guard, according to Farmer Dodge's awkward practice. Inside, he might
+have been of use by alarming the folks when the thieves tried to get
+in. But they had only to fear his bark; his bite was harmless.
+
+The whole of Valley Stream gathered at Farmer Dodge's house to watch,
+awe-struck, the mysterious movements of the police force as it went
+tiptoeing about, peeping into corners, secretly examining tracks in
+the mud, and squinting suspiciously at the brogans of the bystanders.
+When it had all been gone through, this record of facts bearing on the
+case was made:--
+
+Rover was dead.
+
+He had apparently been smothered.
+
+With the hand, not a rope.
+
+There was a ladder set up against the window of the spare bedroom.
+
+That it had not been there before was evidence that the thieves had
+set it up.
+
+The window was open, and they had gone in.
+
+Several watches, some good clothes, sundry articles of jewellery, all
+worth some six or seven hundred dollars, were missing and could not
+be found.
+
+In conclusion, the constable put on record his belief that the thieves
+who had smothered the dog and set up the ladder had taken the
+property.
+
+The solid citizens of the village sat upon the verdict in the store,
+solemnly considered it, and agreed that it was so. This point settled,
+there was left only the other: Who were the thieves? The solid
+citizens by a unanimous decision concluded that Inspector Byrnes was
+the man to tell them.
+
+So they came over to New York and laid the matter before him, with a
+mental diagram of the village, the house, the dog, and the ladder at
+the window. There was just the suspicion of a twinkle in the corner of
+the inspector's eye as he listened gravely and then said:--
+
+"It was the spare bedroom, wasn't it?"
+
+"The spare bedroom," said the committee, in one breath.
+
+"The only one in the house?" queried the inspector, further.
+
+"The only one," responded the echo.
+
+"H'm!" pondered the inspector. "You keep hands on your farm, Mr.
+Dodge?"
+
+Mr. Dodge did.
+
+"Sleep in the house?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Discharged any one lately?"
+
+The committee rose as one man, and, staring at each other with bulging
+eyes, said "Jake!" all at once.
+
+"Jakey, b'gosh!" repeated the constable to himself, kicking his own
+shins softly as he tugged at his beard. "Jake, by thunder!"
+
+Jake was a boy of eighteen, who had been employed by the farmer to do
+chores. He was shiftless, and a week or two before had been sent away
+in disgrace. He had gone no one knew whither.
+
+The committee told the inspector all about Jake, gave him a minute
+description of him,--of his ways, his gait, and his clothes,--and went
+home feeling that they had been wondrous smart in putting so sharp a
+man on the track he would never have thought of if they hadn't
+mentioned Jake's name. All he had to do now was to follow it to the
+end, and let them know when he had reached it. And as these good men
+had prophesied, even so it came to pass.
+
+Detectives of the inspector's staff were put on the trail. They
+followed it from the Long Island pastures across the East River to the
+Bowery, and there into one of the cheap lodging-houses where thieves
+are turned out ready-made while you wait. There they found Jake.
+
+They didn't hail him at once, or clap him into irons, as the constable
+from Valley Stream would have done. They let him alone and watched
+awhile to see what he was doing. And the thing that they found him
+doing was just what they expected: he was herding with thieves. When
+they had thoroughly fastened this companionship upon the lad, they
+arrested the band. They were three.
+
+They had not been locked up many hours at Headquarters before the
+inspector sent for Jake. He told him he knew all about his dismissal
+by Farmer Dodge, and asked him what he had done to the old man. Jake
+blurted out hotly, "Nothing" and betrayed such feeling that his
+questioner soon made him admit that he was "sore on the boss." From
+that to telling the whole story of the robbery was only a little way,
+easy to travel in such company as Jake was in then. He told how he had
+come to New York, angry enough to do anything, and had "struck" the
+Bowery. Struck, too, his two friends, not the only two of that kind
+who loiter about that thoroughfare.
+
+To them he told his story while waiting in the "hotel" for something
+to turn up, and they showed him a way to get square with the old man
+for what he had done to him. The farmer had money and property he
+would hate to lose. Jake knew the lay of the land, and could steer
+them straight; they would take care of the rest. "See?" said they.
+
+Jake saw, and the sight tempted him. But in his mind's eye he saw also
+Rover and heard him bark. How could he be managed?
+
+"He will come to me if I call him," pondered Jake, while his two
+companions sat watching his face, "but you may have to kill him. Poor
+Rover!"
+
+"You call the dog and leave him to me," said the oldest thief, and
+shut his teeth hard. And so it was arranged.
+
+That night the three went out on the last train, and hid in the woods
+down by the gatekeeper's house at the pond, until the last light had
+gone out in the village and it was fast asleep. Then they crept up by
+a back way to Farmer Dodge's house. As expected, Rover came bounding
+out at their approach, barking furiously. It was Jake's turn then.
+
+"Rover," he called softly, and whistled. The dog stopped barking and
+came on, wagging his tail, but still growling ominously as he got
+scent of the strange men.
+
+"Rover, poor Rover," said Jake, stroking his shaggy fur and feeling
+like the guilty wretch he was; for just then the hand of Pfeiffer, the
+thief, grabbed the throat of the faithful beast in a grip as of an
+iron vice, and he had barked his last bark. Struggle as he might, he
+could not free himself or breathe, while Jake, the treacherous Jake,
+held his legs. And so he died, fighting for his master and his home.
+
+In the morning the ladder at the open window and poor Rover dead in
+the yard told of the drama of the night.
+
+The committee of farmers came over and took Jake home, after
+congratulating Inspector Byrnes on having so intelligently followed
+their directions in hunting down the thieves. The inspector shook
+hands with them and smiled.
+
+
+
+
+HOW JIM WENT TO THE WAR
+
+
+Jocko and Jim sat on the scuttle-stairs and mourned; times were out of
+joint with them. Since an ill wind had blown one of the recruiting
+sergeants for the Spanish War into the next block, the old joys of the
+tenement had palled on Jim. Nothing would do but he must go to the
+war.
+
+The infection was general in the neighborhood. Even base-ball had lost
+its savor. The Ivy nine had disbanded at the first drum-beat, and had
+taken the fever in a body. Jim, being fourteen, and growing "muscle"
+with daily pride, "had it bad." Naturally Jocko, being Jim's constant
+companion, developed the symptoms too, and, to external appearances,
+thirsted for gore as eagerly as a naturally peace-loving, long-tailed
+monkey could.
+
+Jocko had belonged to an Italian organ-grinder in the days of "the
+persecution," when the aldermen issued an edict, against monkeys. Now
+he was "hung up" for rent, unpaid. And, literally, he remained hung up
+most of the time, usually by his tail from the banisters, in which
+position he was able both to abet the mischief of the children, and
+to elude the stealthy grabs of their exasperated elders by skipping
+nimbly to the other side.
+
+The tenement was one of the old-fashioned kind, built for a better
+use, with wide, oval stairwell and superior opportunities for
+observation and escape. Jocko inhabited the well by day, and from it
+conducted his raids upon the tenants' kitchens with an impartiality
+which, if it did not disarm, at least had stayed the hand of vengeance
+so far.
+
+That he gave great provocation not even his stanchest boy friend could
+deny. His pursuit of information was persistent. The sight of Jocko
+cracking stolen eggs on the stairs to see the yolk run out and then
+investigating the empty shell with grave concern was cheering to the
+children, but usually provoked a shower of execrations and
+scrubbing-brushes from the despoiled households.
+
+When the postman's call was heard in the hall, Jocko was on hand to
+receive the mail. Once he did receive it, the impartial zeal with
+which he distributed the letters to friend and foe brought forth more
+scrubbing-brushes, and Jocko retired to his attic aerie, there to
+ponder with Jim, his usual companion when in disgrace, the relation
+of eggs and letters and scrubbing-brushes in a world that seemed all
+awry to their simple minds.
+
+The sense was heavy upon them this day as they sat silently brooding
+on the stairs, Jim glum and hopeless, with his arms buried to the
+elbow in his trousers pockets, Jocko, a world of care in his wrinkled
+face, humped upon the step at his shoulder with limp tail. The rain
+beat upon the roof in fitful showers, and the April storm rattled the
+crazy shutters, adding to the depression of the two.
+
+Jim broke the silence when a blast fiercer than the rest shook the old
+house. "'Tain't right," he said dolefully, "I know it ain't, Jock!
+There's Tom and Foley gone off an' 'listed, and them only four years
+older nor me. What's four years?" This with a sniff of contempt.
+
+Jocko gazed straight ahead. Four years of scrubbing-brushes and
+stealthy grabs at his tail on the stairs! To Jocko they were a long,
+long time.
+
+"An' dad!" wailed Jim, unheeding. "I hear him tell Mr. Murphy himself
+that he was a drummer-boy in the war, and he won't let me at them
+dagoes!"
+
+A slightly upward curl of Jocko's tail testified to his sympathy.
+
+"I seen 'em march to de camp with their guns and drums." There was a
+catch in Jim's voice now. "And Susie's feller was there in
+soger-clo'es, Jock--soger-clo'es!"
+
+Jim broke down in desolation and despair at the recollection. Jocko
+hitched as close to him as the step would let him, and brought his
+shaggy side against the boy's jacket in mute compassion. So they sat
+in silence until suddenly Jim got up and strode across the floor
+twice.
+
+"Jock," he said, stopping short in front of his friend, "I know what
+I'll do. Jock, do you hear? I know what I'm going to do!"
+
+Jocko sat up straight, erected his tail into a huge interrogation
+point, cocked his wise little head on one side, and regarded his ally
+expectantly. The storm was over, and the afternoon sun sent a ray
+slanting across the floor.
+
+"I'm going anyhow! I'll run away, Jock! That's what I'll do! I'll get
+a whack at them dagoes yet!"
+
+Jim danced a gleeful breakdown on the patch of sunlight, winding up by
+making a grab for Jocko, who evaded him by jumping over his head to
+the banister, where he became an animated pinwheel in approval of the
+new mischief. They stopped at last, out of breath.
+
+"Jock," said the boy, considering his playmate approvingly, "you will
+make a soldier yourself yet. Come on, let's have a drill! This way,
+Jock, up straight! Now, attention! Right hand--salute!" Jocko exactly
+imitated his master, and so learned the rudiments of the soldier's art
+as Jim knew it.
+
+"You'll do, Jock," he said, when the dusk stole into the attic, "but
+you can't go this trip. Good-by to you. Here goes for the soger camp!"
+
+There was surprise in the tenement when Jim did not come home for
+supper; as the evening wore on the surprise became consternation. His
+father gave over certain preparations for his reception which, if Jim
+had known of them, might well have decided him to stick to "sogering,"
+and went to the police station to learn if the boy had been heard of
+there. He had not, and an alarm which the Sergeant sent out discovered
+no trace of him the next day.
+
+Jim was lost, but how? His mother wept, and his father spent weary
+days and nights inquiring of every one within a distance of many
+blocks for a red-headed boy in "knee-pants" and a base-ball cap. The
+grocer's clerk on the corner alone furnished a clew. He remembered
+giving Jim two crackers on the afternoon of the storm and seeing him
+turn west. The clew began and ended there. Slowly the conviction
+settled on the tenement that Jim had really run away to enlist.
+
+"I'll enlist him!" said his father; and the tenement acquiesced in the
+justice of his intentions and awaited developments. And all the time
+Jocko kept Jim's secret safe.
+
+Jocko had troubles enough of his own. Jim's friendship and quick wit
+had more than once saved the monkey; for despite of harum-scarum ways,
+the boy with the sunny smile was a general favorite. Now that he was
+gone, the tenement rose in wrath against its tormentor; and Jocko
+accepted the challenge.
+
+All his lawless instincts were given full play. Even of the banana man
+at the street stand who had given him peanuts when trade was good, or
+sold them to him in exchange for pilfered pennies, he made an enemy by
+grabbing bananas when his back was turned. Mrs. Rafferty, on the
+second floor rear, one of his few champions, he estranged by
+exchanging the "war extra" which the carrier left at the door for her,
+for the German paper served to Mrs. Schultz, her pet aversion on the
+floor below. Mrs. Rafferty upset the wash-tub in her rage at this
+prank.
+
+"Ye imp," she shrieked, laying about her with a wet towel, "wid yer
+hathen Dootch! It's that yer up to, is it?" and poor Jocko paid dearly
+for his mistake.
+
+As he limped painfully to his attic retreat, his bitterest reflection
+might have been that even the children, his former partners in every
+plot against the public peace, had now joined in the general assault
+upon him. Truly, every man's hand was raised against Jocko, and in the
+spirit of Ishmael he entered on his crowning exploit.
+
+On the top floor of the rear house was Mrs. Hoffman, a quiet German
+tenant, who had heretofore escaped Jocko's unwelcome attentions. Now,
+in his banishment to the upper regions, he bestowed them upon her with
+an industry to which she objected loudly, but in vain. Shut off from
+his accustomed base of supplies, he spent his hours watching her
+kitchen from the fire-escape, and if she left it but for a minute, he
+was over the roof and, by way of the shutter, in her flat, foraging
+for food.
+
+In the battles that ensued, when Mrs. Hoffman surprised him, some of
+her spare crockery was broken without damage to the monkey. Vainly did
+she turn the key of her ice-box and think herself safe. Jocko had
+watched her do it, and turned it, too, on his next trip, with results
+satisfactory to himself. The climax came when he was discovered
+sitting at the open skylight, under which Mrs. Hoffman and her husband
+were working at their tailoring trade, calmly puffing away at Mr.
+Hoffman's cherished meerschaum, and leisurely picking the putty from
+the glass and dropping it upon the heads of the maddened couple.
+
+The old German's terror and emotion at the sight nearly choked him.
+"Jocko," he called, with shaking voice, "you fool monkey! Jocko!
+Papa's pet! Come down mit mine pipe!"
+
+But Jocko merely brandished the pipe, and shook it at the tailor with
+a wicked grin that showed all his sharp little teeth. Mrs. Hoffman
+wanted to call a policeman and the board of health, but the thirst for
+vengeance suggested a more effective plan to the tailor.
+
+"Wait! I fix him! I fix him good!" he vowed, and forthwith betook
+himself to the kitchen, where stood the ice-box.
+
+From his attic lookout Jocko saw the tailor take from the ice-box a
+bottle of beer, and drawing the cork with careful attention to detail,
+partake of its contents with apparent relish. Finally the tailor put
+back the bottle and went away, after locking the ice-box, but leaving
+the key in the lock.
+
+His step was yet on the stairs when the monkey peered through the
+window, reached the ice-box with a bound and turned the key. There was
+the bottle, just as the tailor had left it. Jocko held it as he had
+seen him do, and pulled the cork. It came out easily. He held the
+bottle to his mouth. After a while he put it down, and thoughtfully
+rubbed the pit of his stomach. Then he took another pull, following
+directions to the letter.
+
+The last ray of the evening sun stole through the open window as Jocko
+arose and wandered unsteadily toward the bedroom, the door of which
+stood ajar. There was no one within. On the wall hung Mrs. Hoffman's
+brocade shawl and Sunday hat. Jocko had often watched her put them on.
+Now he possessed himself of both, and gravely carried them to his
+attic.
+
+In the early twilight such a wail of bereavement arose in the rear
+house that the tenants hurried from every floor to learn what was the
+matter. It was Mrs. Hoffman, bemoaning the loss of her shawl and
+Sunday hat.
+
+A hurried search left no doubt who was the thief. There was the open
+window, and the empty bottle on the door by the ice-box. Jocko's hour
+of expiation had come. In the uproar that swelled louder as the angry
+crowd of tenants made for the attic, his name was heard coupled with
+direful threats. Foremost in the mob was Jim's father, with the stick
+he had peeled and seasoned against the boy's return. In some way, not
+clear to himself, he connected the monkey with Jim's truancy, and it
+was something to be able to avenge himself on its hairy hide.
+
+But Jocko was not in the attic. The mob ranged downstairs, searching
+every nook and getting angrier as it went. The advance-guard had
+reached the first floor landing, when a shout of discovery from one of
+the boy scouts directed all eyes to the wall niche at the turn of the
+stairs.
+
+There, in the place where the Venus of Milo or the winged Mercury had
+stood in the days when wealth and fashion inhabited Houston Street,
+sat Jocko, draped in Mrs. Hoffman's brocade shawl, her Sunday hat
+tilted rakishly on one side, and with his tail at "port-arms" over his
+left shoulder. He blinked lazily at the foe and then his head tilted
+forward under Mrs. Hoffman's hat.
+
+"Saints presarve us!" gasped Mrs. Rafferty, crossing herself. "The
+baste is drunk!"
+
+Yes, Jocko was undeniably tipsy. For one brief moment a sense of the
+ludicrous struggled with the just anger of the mob. That moment
+decided the fate of Jocko. There came a thunderous rap at the door,
+and there stood a policeman with Jim, the runaway, in his grasp.
+
+"Does this boy--" he shouted, and stopped short, his gaze riveted upon
+the monkey. Jim, shivering with apprehension, all desire to be a
+soldier gone out of him, felt rather than saw the whole tenement
+assembled in judgment, and he the culprit. He raised his tear-stained
+face and beheld Jocko mounting guard. Policeman, camp, failure, and
+the expected beating were all alike forgotten. He remembered only the
+sunny attic and his pranks with Jocko, their last game of soldiering.
+
+"Attention!" he piped at the top of his shrill voice. "Right
+hand--salute!"
+
+At the word of command Jocko straightened up like a veteran, looked
+sleepily around, and raising his right paw, saluted in military
+fashion. The movement pushed the hat back on his head, and gave a
+swaggering look to the forlorn figure that was irresistibly comical.
+
+It was too much for the spectators. With a yell of laughter, the
+tenement abandoned vengeance. Peal after peal rang out, in which the
+policeman, Jim, and his father joined, old scores forgotten and
+forgiven.
+
+The cyclone of mirth aroused Jocko. He made a last groping effort to
+collect his scattered wits, and met the eyes of Jim at the foot of the
+stairs. With a joyful squeal of recognition he gave it up, turned one
+mighty, inebriated somersault and went flying down, shedding Mrs.
+Hoffman's garments to the right and left in his flight, and landed
+plump on Jim's shoulder, where he sat grinning general amnesty, while
+a rousing cheer went up for the two friends.
+
+The slate was wiped clean. Jim had come home from the war.
+
+
+
+
+A BACKWOODS HERO
+
+
+I had started out to explore the Magnetawan River from our camp on
+Lake Wahwaskesh toward the Georgian Bay, thirty miles south, but
+speedily found my way blocked by the canal rapids. The river there
+rushes through a deep and narrow canon strewn with sharp rocks, a
+perilous pass at all times for the most expert canoeist. We did not
+attempt it, but, making a landing in Deep Bay, took the safer portage
+around. At the end of a two-mile tramp we reached a clearing at the
+foot of the canon where the loggers had camped at one time. Black bass
+and partridge go well together when a man is hungry, and there was
+something so suggestive of birds about the place that I took a turn
+around with my gun, while Aleck looked after the packs. Poking about
+on the edge of the clearing, in the shadow of some big pines which the
+lumbermen had spared, I came suddenly upon the most unlikely thing of
+all in that wilderness, miles from any human habitation--a
+burying-ground! Two mounds, each with a weather-beaten board for a
+headstone, were all it contained; just heaps of sand with a few
+withered shrubs upon them. But a stout fence of cedar slabs, roughly
+fashioned into pickets, to keep prowling animals away, hedged them
+in--evidence that some one had cared. "Ormand Morden," I read upon one
+of the boards, cut deep to last with a jack-knife. The other, nailed
+up in the shape of a cross, bore the name "M. McDonald." The date
+under both names was the same: June 8, 1899.
+
+What tragedy had happened here in the deep woods a year before? Even
+while the question was shaping itself in my mind, it was answered by
+another discovery. Slung on the fence at the foot of one grave was a
+pair of spiked shoes; at the foot of the other the dead man's
+shoepacks with sand and mud in them. Two river-drivers, then; drowned
+in the rapids probably. I remembered the grave on Deadman's Island,
+hard by the favorite haunt of the bass, which was still kept up after
+thirty years, even as the memory of its lonely tenant lived on the
+lake where another generation of woodsmen had replaced his. But what
+was the old black brier-wood pipe doing on the head-rail between the
+two graves? I looked about me with an involuntary start as I noticed
+that the ashes of the last smoke were still in the bowl, expecting I
+hardly knew what in the ghostly twilight of the forest.
+
+Over our camp fire that evening Aleck set my fears at rest and told me
+the story of the two graves, a tale of every-day heroism of the kind
+of which life on the frontier has many to tell, to the credit of our
+poor human nature. He was "cadging" supplies to the camp that winter
+and was a witness at first hand of what happened.
+
+Morden and "Mike" McDonald were "bunkies" in a gang of river-drivers
+that had been cutting logs on the Deer River near its junction with
+the Magnetawan. Morden was the older, and had a wife and children in
+the settlements "up north." He had been working his farm for a spell
+and had gone back reluctantly to shantying because he needed the money
+in a slack season. But he could see his way ahead now. When at night
+they squatted by the fire in their log hut and took turns at the one
+pipe they had between them, he spoke hopefully to his chum of the days
+that were coming. Once this drive of logs was in, that was the end of
+it for him. He would live like a man after that with the old woman and
+the kids. Mike listened and smoked in silence. He was a man of few
+words. But there was between them a strong bond of sympathy, despite
+the disparity in their age and belief. McDonald was a Catholic and
+single. Younger by ten years than the other, he was much the stronger
+and abler, the athlete of a camp where there were no weaklings.
+
+The water was low and the drive did not get through the lake until
+spring was past and gone. It was a good week into June before the last
+logs had gone over the canal rapids. The gang was preparing to follow,
+to pitch camp on the spot where we were then sitting. Whether because
+they didn't know the danger of it, or from a reckless determination to
+take chances, the foreman with five of his men started to shoot the
+rapids in the cook's punt. McDonald and Morden were of the venturesome
+crew. They had not gone halfway before the punt was upset, and all six
+were thrown out into the boiling waters. Five of them clung to the
+slippery rocks and held on literally for life. Morden alone could not
+swim. He went under, rose once, and floated head down past McDonald,
+who was struggling to save himself. He put out a hand to grasp him,
+but only tore the shirt from his back. The doomed man was whirled down
+to sure death.
+
+Just beyond were the most dangerous rocks with a tortuous fall, in
+which the strongest swimmer might hardly hope to live. Nothing was
+said; no words were wasted. Looking around from his own perilous
+perch, the foreman saw Mike let go his hold and make after his
+bunkie, swimming free with powerful strokes. The next moment the fall
+swallowed both up. They were seen no more.
+
+Three days they camped in the clearing, searching for their dead. On
+the fourth, just as dynamite was coming from the settlement to stir up
+the river bottom with, they recovered the body of McDonald in Trout
+Lake, some miles below. A team was sent to the nearest storehouse for
+planks to make a coffin of. As they were hammering it together, the
+body of his lost bunkie rose in the eddy just below the rapids, in
+sight of the camp. So they made two boxes and buried them on the hill,
+side by side. In death, as in life, they bunked together. Their
+shoepacks they left at the foot of their graves, as I had found them,
+and the pipe they smoked in common, to show that they were chums.
+
+There was no priest and no time to fetch one. The rough woodsmen stood
+around in silence, with the sunset glinting through the dark pines on
+their bared heads. A swamp-robin in the brush made the responses. The
+older men threw a handful of sand into each open grave. The one Roman
+Catholic among them crossed himself devoutly: "God rest their souls."
+"Amen!" from a score of deep voices, and the service was over. The men
+went back to their perilous work, harder by so much to all of them
+because two were gone.
+
+The shadows were deepening in the woods; the roar of the rapids came
+up from the river like a distant chant of requiem as Aleck finished
+his story. Except that the drivers sent Morden's wife his month's pay
+and raised sixty dollars among themselves to put with it, there was
+nothing more to tell. The two silent mounds under the pines told all
+the rest.
+
+"Come," I said, "give me your knife;" and I cut in the cross on
+McDonald's grave the letters I. H. S.
+
+"What do they stand for?" asked Aleck, looking on. I told him, and
+wrote under the name, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man
+lay down his life for his friends."
+
+Aleck nodded. "Ay!" he said, "that's him."
+
+
+
+
+JACK'S SERMON
+
+
+Jack sat on the front porch in a very bad humor indeed. That was in
+itself something unusual enough to portend trouble; for ordinarily
+Jack was a philosopher well persuaded that, upon the whole, this was a
+very good world and Deacon Pratt's porch the centre of it on
+week-days. On Sundays it was transferred to the village church, and on
+these days Jack received there with the family. If the truth were
+told, it would probably have been found that Jack conceived the
+services to be some sort of function specially designed to do him
+honor at proper intervals, for he always received an extra petting on
+these occasions. He sat in the pew beside the deacon through the
+sermon as decorously as befitted a dog come to years of discretion
+long since, and wagged his tail in a friendly manner when the minister
+came down and patted him on the head after the benediction. Outside he
+met the Sunday-school children on their own ground, and on their own
+terms. Jack, if he didn't have blood, had sense, which for working
+purposes is quite as good, if not so common. The girls gave him candy
+and called him Jack Sprat. His joyous bark could be heard long after
+church as he romped with the boys by the creek on the way home. It was
+even suspected that on certain Sabbaths they had enjoyed a furtive
+cross-country run together; but by tacit consent the village
+overlooked it and put it down to the dog. Jack was privileged and not
+to blame. There was certainly something, from the children's point of
+view, also, in favor of Jack's conception of Sunday.
+
+On week-day nights there were the church meetings of one kind and
+another, for which Deacon Pratt's house was always the place, not
+counting the sociables which Jack attended with unfailing regularity.
+They would not, any of them, have been quite regular without Jack.
+Indeed, many a question of grave church polity had been settled only
+after it had been submitted to and passed upon in meeting by Jack. "Is
+not that so, Jack?" was a favorite clincher to arguments which, it was
+felt, had won over his master. And Jack's groping paw cemented a
+treaty of good-will and mutual concession that had helped the village
+church over more than one hard place. For there were hard heads and
+stubborn wills in it as there are in other churches; and Deacon
+Pratt, for all he was a just man, was set on having his way.
+
+And now all this was changed. What had come over the town Jack
+couldn't make out, but that it was something serious nobody was needed
+to tell him. Folks he used to meet at the gate, going to the trains of
+mornings, on neighborly terms, hurried past him without as much as a
+look. And Deacon Jones, who gave him ginger-snaps out of the
+pantry-crock as a special bribe for a hand-shake, had even put out his
+foot to kick him, actually kick him, when he waylaid him at the corner
+that morning. The whole week there had not been as much as a visitor
+at the house, and what with Christmas in town--Jack knew the signs
+well enough; they meant raisins and goodies that came only when they
+burned candles on trees in the church--it was enough to make any dog
+cross. To top it all, his mistress must come down sick, worried into
+it all, as like as not, he had heard the doctor say. If Jack's
+thoughts could have been put into words as he sat on the porch looking
+moodily over the road, they would doubtless have taken something like
+this shape, that it was a pity that men didn't have the sense of dogs,
+but would bear grudges and make themselves and their betters unhappy.
+And in the village there would have been more than one to agree with
+him secretly.
+
+Jack wouldn't have been any the wiser had he been told that the
+trouble that had come to town was that of all things most worrisome, a
+church quarrel. What was it about and how did it come? I doubt if any
+of the men and women who strove in meeting for principle and
+conscience with might and main, and said mean things about each other
+out of meeting, could have explained it. I know they all would have
+explained it differently, and so added fuel to the fire that was hot
+enough already. In fact, that was what had happened the night before
+Jack encountered his special friend, Deacon Jones, and it was in
+virtue of his master's share in it that he had bestowed the memorable
+kick upon him. Deacon Pratt was the valiant leader of the opposing
+faction.
+
+To the general stress of mind the holiday had but added another cause
+of irritation. Could Jack have understood the ethics of men he would
+have known that it strangely happens that:
+
+  "Forgiveness to the injured does belong,
+   But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong,"
+
+and that everybody in a church quarrel having injured everybody else
+within reach for conscience's sake, the season of good-will and even
+the illness of that good woman, the wife of Deacon Pratt, admittedly
+from worry over the trouble, practically put a settlement of it out
+of the question. But being only a dog he did not understand. He could
+only sulk; and as this went well enough with things as they were in
+general, it proved that Jack was, as was well known, a very
+intelligent dog.
+
+He had yet to give another proof of it, that very day, by preaching to
+the divided congregation its Christmas sermon, a sermon that is to
+this day remembered in Brownville; but of that neither they nor he,
+sitting there on the stoop nursing his grievances, had at that time
+any warning.
+
+It was Christmas Eve. Since the early Lutherans settled there, away
+back in the last century, it had been the custom in the village to
+celebrate the Holy Eve with a special service and a Christmas tree;
+and preparations had been going forward for it all the afternoon. It
+was noticeable that the fighting in the congregation in no wise
+interfered with the observance of the established forms of worship;
+rather, it seemed to lend a keener edge to them. It was only the
+spirit that suffered. Jack, surveying the road from the porch, saw
+baskets and covered trays carried by, and knew their contents. He had
+watched the big Christmas tree going down on the grocer's sled, and
+his experience plus his nose supplied the rest. As the lights came out
+one by one after twilight, he stirred uneasily at the unwonted
+stillness in his house. Apparently no one was getting ready for
+church. Could it be that they were not going; that this thing was to
+be carried to the last ditch? He decided to go and investigate.
+
+His investigations were brief, but entirely conclusive. For the second
+time that day he was spurned, and by a friend. This time it was the
+deacon himself who drove him from his wife's room, whither he had
+betaken him with true instinct to ascertain the household intentions.
+The deacon seemed to be, if anything, in a worse humor than even Jack
+himself. The doctor had told him that afternoon that Mrs. Pratt was a
+very sick woman, and that, if she was to pull through at all, she must
+be kept from all worriment in an atmosphere which fairly bristled with
+it. The deacon felt that he had a contract on his hands which might
+prove too heavy for him. He felt, too, with bitterness, that he was an
+ill-used man, that all his years of faithful labor, in the vineyard
+went for nothing because of some wretched heresy which the enemy had
+devised to wreck it; and all his humbled pride and his pent-up wrath
+gathered itself into the kick with which he sent poor Jack flying back
+where he had come from. It was clear that the deacon was not going to
+church.
+
+Lonely and forsaken, Jack took his old seat on the porch and pondered.
+The wrinkles in his brow multiplied and grew deeper as he looked down
+the road and saw the Joneses, the Smiths, and the Allens go by toward
+the church. When the Merritts had passed, too, under the lamp, he knew
+that it must be nearly time for the sermon. They always came in after
+the long prayer. Jack took a turn up and down the porch, whined at the
+door once, and, receiving no answer, set off down the road by himself.
+
+The church was filled. It had never looked handsomer. The rival
+factions had vied with each other in decorating it. Spruce and hemlock
+sprouted everywhere, and garlands of ground-ivy festooned walls and
+chancel. The delicious odor of balsam and of burning wax-candles was
+in the air. The people were all there in their Sunday clothes and the
+old minister in the pulpit; but the Sunday feeling was not there.
+Something was not right. Deacon Pratt's pew alone of them all was
+empty, and the congregation cast wistful glances at it, some secretly
+behind their hymn-books, others openly and sorrowfully. What the
+doctor had said in the afternoon had got out. He himself had told Mrs.
+Mills that it was doubtful if the deacon's wife got around, and it sat
+heavily upon the conscience of the people.
+
+The opening hymns were sung; the Merritts, late as usual, had taken
+their seats. The minister took up the Book to read the Christmas
+gospel from the second chapter of Luke. He had been there longer than
+most of those who were in the church to-night could remember, had
+grown old with the people, had loved them as the shepherd who is
+answerable to the Master for his flock. Their griefs and their
+troubles were his. If he could not ward them off, he could suffer with
+them. His voice trembled a little as he read of the tidings of great
+joy. Perhaps it was age; but it grew firmer as he proceeded toward the
+end:--
+
+"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly
+host praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on
+earth peace, good-will toward men.'"
+
+The old minister closed the Book and looked out over the congregation.
+He looked long and yearningly, and twice he cleared his throat, only
+to repeat, "on earth peace, good-will toward men." The people settled
+back in their seats, uneasily; they strangely avoided the eye of their
+pastor. It rested in its slow survey of the flock upon Deacon Pratt's
+empty pew. And at that moment a strange thing occurred.
+
+Why it should seem strange was, perhaps, not the least strange part of
+it. Jack had come in alone before. He knew the trick of the
+door-latch, and had often opened it unaided. He was in the habit of
+attending the church with the folks; there was no reason why they
+should not expect him, unless they knew of one themselves. But somehow
+the click of the latch went clear through the congregation as the
+heavenly message of good-will had not. All eyes were turned upon the
+deacon's pew; and they waited.
+
+Jack came slowly and gravely up the aisle and stopped at his master's
+pew. He sniffed of the empty seat disapprovingly once or twice--he had
+never seen it in that state before--then he climbed up and sat,
+serious and attentive as he was wont, in his old seat, facing the
+pulpit, nodding once as who should say, "I'm here; proceed!"
+
+It is recorded that not even a titter was heard from the
+Sunday-school, which was out in force. In the silence that reigned in
+the church was heard only a smothered sob. The old minister looked
+with misty eyes at his friend. He took off his spectacles, wiped them
+and put them on again, and tried to speak; but the tears ran down his
+cheeks and choked his voice. The congregation wept with him.
+
+"Brethren," he said, when he could speak, "glory to God in the
+highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men! Jack has preached
+a better sermon than I can to-night. Let us pray together."
+
+It is further recorded that the first and only quarrel in the
+Brownville church ended on Christmas Eve and was never heard of again,
+and that it was all the work of Jack's sermon.
+
+
+
+
+SKIPPY OF SCRABBLE ALLEY
+
+
+Skippy was at home in Scrabble Alley. So far as he had ever known home
+of any kind it was there in the dark and mouldy basement of the rear
+house, farthest back in the gap that was all the builder of those big
+tenements had been able to afford of light and of air for the poor
+people whose hard-earned wages, brought home every Saturday, left them
+as poor as if they had never earned a dollar, to pile themselves up in
+his strong box. The good man had long since been gathered to his
+fathers: gone to his better home. It was in the newspapers, and in the
+alley it was said that it was the biggest funeral--more than a hundred
+carriages, and four black horses to pull the hearse. So it must be
+true, of course.
+
+Skippy wondered vaguely, sometimes, when he thought of it, what kind
+of a home it might be where people went in a hundred carriages. He had
+never sat in one. The nearest he had come to it was when Jimmy
+Murphy's cab had nearly run him down once, and his "fare," a big man
+with whiskers, had put his head out and angrily called him a brat,
+and told him to get out of the way, or he would have him arrested. And
+Jimmy had shaken his whip at him and told him to skip home. Everybody
+told him to skip. From the policeman on the block to the hard-fisted
+man he knew as his father, and who always had a job for him with the
+"growler" when he came home, they were having Skippy on the run.
+Probably that was how he got his name. No one cared enough about it,
+or about the boy, to find out.
+
+Was there anybody anywhere who cared about boys, anyhow? Were there
+any boys in that other home where the carriages and the big hearse had
+gone? And if there were, did they have to live in an alley, and did
+they ever have any fun? These were thoughts that puzzled Skippy's
+young brain once in a while. Not very long or very hard, for Skippy
+had not been trained to think; what training the boys picked up in the
+alley didn't run much to deep thinking.
+
+Perhaps it was just as well. There were one or two men there who were
+said to know a heap, and who had thought and studied it all out about
+the landlord and the alley. But it was very tiresome that it should
+happen to be just those two, for Skippy never liked them. They were
+always cross and ugly, never laughed and carried on as other men did
+once in a while, and made his little feet very tired running with the
+growler early and late. He well remembered, too, that it was one of
+them who had said, when they brought him home, sore and limping, from
+under the wheels of Jimmy Murphy's cab, that he'd been better off if
+it had killed him. He had always borne a grudge against him for that,
+for there was no occasion for it that he could see. Hadn't he been to
+the gin-mill for him that very day twice?
+
+Skippy's horizon was bounded by the towering brick walls of Scrabble
+Alley. No sun ever rose or set between them. On the hot summer days,
+when the saloon-keeper on the farther side of the street pulled up his
+awning, the sun came over the housetops and looked down for an hour or
+two into the alley. It shone upon broken flags, a mud-puddle by the
+hydrant where the children went splashing with dirty, bare feet, and
+upon unnumbered ash barrels. A stray cabbage leaf in one of those was
+the only green thing it found, for no ray ever strayed through the
+window in Skippy's basement to trace the green mould on the wall.
+
+Once, while he had been lying sick with a fever, Skippy had struck up
+a real friendly acquaintance with that mouldy wall. He had pictured to
+himself woods and hills and a regular wilderness, such as he had heard
+of, in its green growth; but even that pleasure they had robbed him
+of. The charity doctor had said that the mould was bad, and a man
+scraped it off and put whitewash on the wall. As if everything that
+made fun for a boy was bad.
+
+Down the street a little way, was a yard just big enough and nice to
+play ball in, but the agent had put up a sign that he would have no
+boys and no ball-playing in his yard, and that ended it; for the "cop"
+would have none of it in the street either. Once he had caught them at
+it and "given them the collar." They had been up before the judge; and
+though he let them off, they had been branded, Skippy and the rest, as
+a bad lot.
+
+That was the starting-point in Skippy's career. With the brand upon
+him he accepted the future it marked out for him, reasoning as little,
+or as vaguely, about the justice of it as he had about the home
+conditions of the alley. The world, what he had seen of it, had taught
+him one lesson: to take things as he found them, because that was the
+way they were; and that being the easiest, and, on the whole, best
+suited to Skippy's general make-up, he fell naturally into the _role_
+assigned him. After that he worked the growler on his own hook most of
+the time. The "gang" he had joined found means of keeping it going
+that more than justified the brand the policeman had put upon it. It
+was seldom by honest work. What was the use? The world owed them a
+living, and it was their business to collect it as easily as they
+could. It was everybody's business to do that, as far as they could
+see, from the man who owned the alley, down.
+
+They made the alley pan out in their own way. It had advantages the
+builder hadn't thought of, though he provided them. Full of secret ins
+and outs, runways and passages not easily found, to the surrounding
+tenements, it offered chances to get away when one or more of the gang
+were "wanted" for robbing this store on the avenue, tapping that till,
+or raiding the grocer's stock, that were A No. 1. When some tipsy man
+had been waylaid and "stood up," it was an unequalled spot for
+dividing the plunder. It happened once or twice, as time went by, that
+a man was knocked on the head and robbed within the bailiwick of the
+now notorious Scrabble Alley gang, or that a drowned man floated
+ashore in the dock with his pockets turned inside out. On such
+occasions the police made an extra raid, and more or less of the gang
+were scooped in; but nothing ever came of it. Dead men tell no tales,
+and they were not more silent than the Scrabbles, if, indeed, these
+had anything to tell.
+
+It came gradually to be an old story. Skippy and his associates were
+long since in the Rogues' Gallery, numbered and indexed as truly a
+bad lot now. They were no longer boys, but toughs. Most of them had
+"done time" up the river and come back more hardened than they went,
+full of new tricks always, which they were eager to show the boys, to
+prove that they had not been idle while they were away. On the police
+returns they figured as "speculators," a term that sounded better than
+thief, and meant, as they understood it, much the same; viz. a man who
+made a living out of other people's labor. It was conceded in the
+slums, everywhere, that the Scrabble Alley gang was a little the
+boldest that had for a long time defied the police. It had the call on
+the other gangs in all the blocks around, for it had the biggest
+fighters as well as the cleverest thieves of them all.
+
+Then one holiday morning, when in a hundred churches the paean went up,
+"On earth peace, good-will toward men," all New York rang with the
+story of a midnight murder committed by Skippy's gang. The
+saloon-keeper whose place they were sacking to get the "stuff" for
+keeping Christmas in their way had come upon them, and Skippy had shot
+him down while the others ran. A universal shout for vengeance went up
+from outraged Society.
+
+It sounded the death-knell of the gang. It was scattered to the four
+winds, all except Skippy, who was tried for murder and hanged. The
+papers spoke of his phenomenal calmness under the gallows; said it was
+defiance. The priest who had been with him in his last hours said he
+was content to go to a better home. They were all wrong. Had the
+pictures that chased each other across Skippy's mind as the black cap
+was pulled over his face been visible to their eyes, they would have
+seen Scrabble Alley with its dripping hydrant, and the puddle in which
+the children splashed with dirty, bare feet; the dark basement room
+with its mouldy wall; the notice in the yard, "No ball-playing allowed
+here"; the policeman who stamped him as one of a bad lot, and the
+sullen man who thought it had been better for him, the time he was run
+over, if he had died. Skippy asked himself moodily if he was right
+after all, and if boys were ever to have any show. He died with the
+question unanswered.
+
+They said that no such funeral ever went out of Scrabble Alley before.
+There was a real raid on the undertaker's where Skippy lay in state
+two whole days, and the wake was talked of for many a day as something
+wonderful. At the funeral services it was said that without a doubt
+Skippy had gone to a better home. His account was squared.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Skippy's story is not invented to be told here. In its main facts it
+is a plain account of a well-remembered drama of the slums, on which
+the curtain was rung down in the Tombs yard. There are Skippies
+without number growing up in those slums to-day, vaguely wondering why
+they were born into a world that does not want them; Scrabble Alleys
+to be found for the asking, all over this big city where the tenements
+abound, alleys in which generations of boys have lived and
+died--principally died, and thus done for themselves the best they
+could, according to the crusty philosopher of Skippy's set--with
+nothing more inspiring than a dead blank wall within reach of their
+windows all the days of their cheerless lives. Theirs is the account
+to be squared--by justice, not vengeance. Skippy is but an item on the
+wrong side of the ledger. The real reckoning of outraged society is
+not with him, but with Scrabble Alley.
+
+
+
+
+MAKING A WAY OUT OF THE SLUM
+
+
+One stormy night in the winter of 1882, going across from my office to
+the Police Headquarters of New York City, I nearly stumbled over an
+odd couple that crouched on the steps. As the man shifted his seat to
+make way for me, the light from the green lamp fell on his face, and I
+knew it as one that had haunted the police office for days with a mute
+appeal for help. Sometimes a woman was with him. They were Russian
+Jews, poor immigrants. No one understood or heeded them. Elbowed out
+of the crowd, they had taken refuge on the steps, where they sat
+silently watchful of the life that moved about them, but beyond a
+swift, keen scrutiny of all who came and went, having no share in it.
+
+That night I heard their story. Between what little German they knew
+and such scraps of their harsh jargon as I had picked up, I found out
+that they were seeking their lost child--little Yette, who had strayed
+away from the Essex Street tenement and disappeared as utterly as if
+the earth had swallowed her up. Indeed, I often thought of that in the
+weeks and months of weary search that followed. For there was
+absolutely no trace to be found of the child, though the tardy police
+machinery was set in motion and worked to the uttermost. It was not
+until two years later, when we had long given up the quest, that
+little Yette was found by the merest accident in the turning over of
+the affairs of an orphan asylum. Some one had picked her up in the
+street and brought her in. She could not tell her name, and, with one
+given to her there, and garbed in the uniform of the place, she was so
+effectually lost in the crowd that the police alarm failed to identify
+her. In fact, her people had no little trouble in "proving property,"
+and but for the mother love that had refused to part with a little
+gingham slip her lost baby had worn, it might have proved impossible.
+It was the mate of the one which Yette had on when she was brought
+into the asylum, and which they had kept there. So the child was
+restored, and her humble home made happy.
+
+That was my first meeting with the Russian Jew. In after years my path
+crossed his often. I saw him herded with his fellows like cattle in
+the poorest tenements, slaving sullenly in the sweat-shop, or rising
+in anger against his tyrant in strikes that meant starvation as the
+price of his vengeance. And always I had a sense of groping in the
+memories of the past for a lost key to something. The other day I met
+him once more. It was at sunset, upon a country road in southern New
+Jersey. I was returning with Superintendent Sabsovich from an
+inspection of the Jewish colonies in that region. The cattle were
+lowing in the fields. The evening breathed peace. Down the sandy road
+came a creaking farm wagon loaded with cedar posts for a vineyard hard
+by. Beside it walked a sunburned, bearded man with an axe on his
+shoulder, in earnest conversation with his boy, a strapping young
+fellow in overalls. The man walked as one who is tired after a hard
+day's work, but his back was straight and he held his head high. He
+greeted us with a frank nod, as one who meets an equal.
+
+The superintendent looked after him with a smile. To me there came
+suddenly the vision of the couple under the lamp, friendless and
+shrinking, waiting for a hearing, always waiting; and, as in a flash,
+I understood. I had found the key. The farmer there had it. It was the
+Jew who had found himself.
+
+It is eighteen years since the first of the south Jersey colonies was
+started.[4] There had been a sudden, unprecedented immigration of
+refugees from Russia, where Jew-baiting was then the orthodox pastime.
+They lay in heaps in Castle Garden, helpless and penniless, and their
+people in New York feared prescriptive measures. What to do with them
+became a burning question. To turn those starving multitudes loose on
+the labor market of the metropolis would make trouble of the gravest
+kind. The alternative of putting them back on the land, and so of
+making producers of them, suggested itself to the Emigrant Aid
+Society. Land was offered cheap in south Jersey, and the experiment
+was made with some hundreds of families.
+
+                   [Footnote 4: This was written in 1900.]
+
+It was well meant; but the projectors experienced the not unfamiliar
+fact that cheap land is sometimes very dear land. They learned, too,
+that you cannot make farmers in a day out of men who have been denied
+access to the soil for generations. That was the set purpose of
+Russia, and the legacy of feudalism in western Europe, which of
+necessity made the Jew a trader, a town dweller. With such a history,
+a man is not logically a pioneer. The soil of south Jersey is sandy,
+has to be coaxed into bearing paying crops. The colonists had not the
+patient skill needed for the task. Neither had they the means. Above
+all, they lacked the market where to dispose of their crops when once
+raised. Discouragements beset them. Debts threatened to engulf them.
+The trustees of the Baron de Hirsch Fund, entering the field eleven
+years later, in 1891, found of three hundred families only two-thirds
+remaining on their farms. In 1897, when they went to their relief,
+there were seventy-six families left. The rest had gone back to the
+city and to the Ghetto. So far, the experiment had failed.
+
+The Hirsch Fund people had been watching it attentively. They were not
+discouraged. In the midst of the outcry that the Jew could not be made
+a farmer, they settled a tract of unbroken land in the northwest part
+of Cape May County, within easy reach of the older colonies. They
+called their settlement Woodbine. Taught by the experience of the
+older colonists, they brought their market with them. They persuaded
+several manufacturing firms to remove their plants from the city to
+Woodbine, agreeing to furnish their employees with homes. Thus an
+industrial community was created to absorb the farmer's surplus
+products. The means they had in abundance in the large revenues of
+Baron de Hirsch's princely charity, which for all purposes amounts to
+over $6,000,000. There was still lacking necessary skill at husbandry,
+and this they set about supplying without long delay. In the second
+year of the colony, a barn built for horses was turned into a
+lecture-hall for the young men, and became the nucleus of the Hirsch
+Agricultural School, which to-day has nearly a hundred pupils.
+Woodbine, for which the site was cleared half a dozen years before in
+woods so dense that the children had to be corralled and kept under
+guard lest they should be lost, was a thriving community by the time
+the crisis came in the affairs of the older colonies.
+
+The settlers were threatened with eviction. The Jewish Colonization
+Association, upon the recommendation of the Hirsch Fund trustees, and
+with their cooeperation, came to their rescue. It paid off the
+mortgages under which they groaned, brought out factories, and turned
+the tide that was setting back toward the cities. The carpenter's
+hammer was heard again, after years of silence and decay, in
+Rosenhayn, Alliance, and Carmel. They built new houses there. Nearly
+$500,000 invested in the villages was paying a healthy interest, where
+before general ruin was impending. As for Woodbine, Jewish industry
+had raised the town taxes upon its 5300 acres of land from $72 to
+$1800, and only the slow country ways kept it from becoming the
+county-seat, as it is already the county's centre of industrial and
+mental activity.
+
+It was to see for myself what the movement of which this is the brief
+historical outline was like that I had gone down from Philadelphia to
+Woodbine, some twenty-five miles from Atlantic City. I saw a
+straggling village, hedged in by stunted woods, with many freshly
+painted frame-houses lining broad streets, some of them with gardens
+around in which jonquil and spiderwort were growing, and the peach and
+gooseberry budding into leaf; some of them standing in dreary,
+unfenced wastes, in which the clay was trodden hard between the stumps
+of last year's felling. In these lived the latest graduates from the
+slum. I had just come from the clothing factory hard by the depot, in
+which a hundred of them or more were at work, and had compared the
+bright, clean rooms with the traditional sweat-shop of the city,
+wholly to the disadvantage of the latter. I had noticed the absence of
+the sullen looks that used to oppress me. Now as I walked along,
+stopping to chat with the women in the houses, it interested me to
+class the settlers as those of the first, the second, and the third
+year's stay and beyond. The signs were unmistakable. The first year
+was, apparently, taken up in contemplation of the house. The lot had
+no possibilities. In the second, it was dug up. A few potato-vines
+were planted, perhaps a peach tree. There were the preliminary signs
+of a fence. In the third, under the stimulus of a price offered by the
+management, a garden was evolved, with, necessarily, a fence. At this
+point the potato became suddenly an element. It had fed the family the
+winter before without other outlay than a little scratching of the
+ground. Its possibilities loomed large. The garden became a farm on a
+small scale. Its owner applied for more land and got it. That was the
+very purpose of the colony.
+
+A woman, with a strong face and shrewd, brown eyes, rose from an onion
+bed she had been weeding to open the gate.
+
+"Come in," she said, "and be welcome." Upon a wall of the best room
+hung a picture of Michael Bakounine, the nihilist. I found it in these
+colonies everywhere side by side with Washington's, Lincoln's, and
+Baron de Hirsch's. Mrs. Breslow and her husband left home for cause.
+He was a carpenter. Nine months they starved in a Forsyth Street
+tenement, paying $15 a month for three rooms. This cottage is their
+own. They have paid for it ($800) since they came out with the first
+settlers. The lot was given to them, but they bought the adjoining one
+to raise truck in.
+
+"_Gott sei dank_," says the woman, with shining eyes, "we owe nothing
+and pay no rent, and are never more hungry."
+
+Down the street a little way is the cottage of one who received the
+first prize for her garden last year. Fragrant box hedges in the plot.
+A cow with crumpled horn stands munching corncobs at the barn. Four
+hens are sitting in as many barrels, eying the stranger with
+half-anxious, half-hostile looks. A topknot, tied by the leg to the
+fence, struggles madly to escape. The children bring dandelions and
+clover to soothe its captivity.
+
+The shadows lengthen. The shop gives up its workers. There is no
+overtime here. A ten-hour day rules. Families gather upon porches--the
+mother with the sleeping babe at her breast, the grandfather smoking a
+peaceful pipe, while father and the boys take a turn tending the
+garden. Theirs is not paradise. It is a little world full of hard
+work, but a world in which the work has ceased to be a curse. Ludlow
+Street, with its sweltering tenements, is but a few hours' journey
+away. For these, at all events, the problem of life has been solved.
+
+Strolling over the outlying farms, we came to one with every mark of
+thrift and prosperity about it. The vineyard was pruned and trimmed,
+the fields ready for their crops, the outbuildings well kept, and the
+woodpile stout and trim. A girl with a long braid of black hair came
+from the house to greet us. An hour before, I had seen her sewing on
+buttons in the factory. She recognized me, and looked questioningly at
+the superintendent. When he spoke my name, she held out her hand with
+frank dignity, and bade me welcome on her father's farm. He was a
+clothing-cutter in New York, explained my guide as we went our way,
+but tired of the business and moved out upon the land. His thirty-acre
+farm is to-day one of the finest in that neighborhood. The man is on
+the road to substantial wealth.
+
+Labor or lumber--both, perhaps--must be cheaper even than land in
+south Jersey. This five-room cottage, one of half a hundred such, was
+sold to the tenant for $500; the Hirsch Fund taking a first mortgage
+of $300, the manufacturer, or the occupant, if able, paying the rest
+The mortgage is paid off in monthly instalments of $3.75. Even if he
+had not a cent to start with, by paying less than one-half the rent
+for the Forsyth Street flat of three cramped rooms, dark and stuffy,
+the tenant becomes the absolute owner of his home in a little over
+eight years. I looked in upon a score of them. The rooms were large by
+comparison, and airy; oil-painted, clean. The hopeless disorder, the
+discouragement of the slum, were nowhere. The children were stout and
+rosy. They played under the trees, safe from the shop till the school
+gives up its claim to them. Superintendent Sabsovich sees to it that
+it is not too early. He is himself a school trustee, elected after a
+fight on the "Woodbine ticket," which gave notice to the farmers of
+the town that the aliens of that settlement are getting naturalized
+to the point of demanding their rights. The opposition retaliated by
+nicknaming the leader of the victorious faction the "Czar of
+Woodbine." He in turn invited them to hear the lectures at the
+Agricultural School. His text went home.
+
+"The American is wasteful of food, energies--of everything," he said.
+"We teach here that farming can be made to pay by saving expenses."
+They knew it to be true. The Woodbine farm products, its flowers and
+chickens, took the prizes at the county fair. Yet in practice they did
+not compete. The Woodbine milk was dearer than the neighboring
+farmers'. If in spite of that it was preferred because it was better,
+that was their lookout. The rest must come up to it then. So with the
+output of the hennery, the apiary, the blacksmith-shop in the place.
+On that plan Woodbine has won the respect of the neighborhood. The
+good-will will follow, says its Czar, confidently.
+
+He, too, was a nihilist, who dreamed with the young of his people for
+a better day. He has lived to see it dawn on a far-away shore.
+Concerning his task, he has no illusions. There is no higher
+education, no "frills," at Woodbine. Its scheme is intensely
+practical. It is to make, if possible, a Jewish yeomanry fit to take
+their place with the native tillers of the soil, as good citizens as
+they. With that end in view, everything is "for present purposes, with
+an eye on the future." The lad is taught dairying with scientific
+precision, because on that road lies the profit in keeping cows. He is
+taught the commercial value of extreme cleanliness in handling milk
+and making butter. He learns the management of the poultry-yard, of
+bees, of pigeons, and of field crops. He works in the nursery, the
+greenhouse, and the blacksmith-shop. If he does not get to know the
+blacksmith's trade, he learns how to mend a broken farm wagon and
+"save expense." So he shall be able to make farming pay, to keep his
+grip on the land. His native shrewdness will teach him the rest.
+
+The vineyards were budding, and the robins sang joyously as we drove
+over the twenty-four-mile stretch through the colonies of Carmel,
+Rosenhayn, Alliance, and Brotmansville. Everywhere there were signs of
+reawakened thrift. Fields and gardens were being got ready for their
+crops; fence-corners were being cleaned, roofs repaired, and houses
+painted. In Rosenhayn they were building half a dozen new houses. A
+clothing factory there that employs seventy hands brought out
+twenty-four families from New York and Philadelphia, for whom shelter
+had to be found. Some distance beyond the village we halted to inspect
+the forty-acre farm of a Jew who some years ago kept a street stand
+in Philadelphia. He bought the land and went back to his stand to earn
+the money with which to run it. In three years he moved his family
+out.
+
+"I couldn't raise the children in the city," he explained. A son and
+two daughters now run the adjoining farm. Two boys were helping him
+look after a berry patch that alone would "make expenses" this year.
+The wife minded the seven cows. The farm is free and clear save for
+$400 lent by the Hirsch people to pay off an onerous mortgage. Some
+comment was made upon the light soil. The farmer pointed significantly
+to the barnyard.
+
+"I make him good," he said. Across the road was a large house with a
+pretentious dooryard and evergreen hedges. A Gentile farmer with many
+acres lived in it. The lean fields promised but poor crops. The
+neighborhood knew that he never paid anything on his mortgage;
+claimed, in fact, that he could not.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Sabsovich, emerging from a wrangle with his client
+about matters agricultural, "he has not learned to 'make him good.'
+Come over to the school, and I will show you stock. You can't afford
+to keep poor cows. They cost too much."
+
+The other shook his head energetically. "Them's the seven finest cows
+in the country," he yelled after us as we started. The superintendent
+laughed a little.
+
+"You see what they are--stubborn; will have their way in an argument.
+But that fellow will be over to Woodbine before the week is out, to
+see what he can learn. He is not going to let me crow if he can help
+it. Not to be driven, they can be led, though it is not always easy.
+Suspicious, hard at driving a bargain as the Russian Jew is, I
+sometimes think I can see his better nature coming out already."
+
+As we drove along, I thought so, too, more than once. From every farm
+and byway came men to have a word with the superintendent. For me they
+had a sidelong look, and a question, put in Hebrew. To the answer they
+often shook their heads, demanding another. After such a conference, I
+asked what it was about.
+
+"You," said Mr. Sabsovich. "They are asking, 'Who is he?' I tell them
+that you are not a Jew. This is the answer they give: 'I don't care if
+he is a Jew. Is he a good man?'"
+
+Over the supper table that night, I caught the burning eyes of a young
+nihilist fixed upon me with a look I have not yet got over. I had been
+telling of my affection for the Princess Dagmar, whom I knew at
+Copenhagen in my youth. I meant it as something we had in common; she
+became Empress of Russia in after years. I forgot that it was by
+virtue of marrying Alexander III. I heard afterward that he protested
+vehemently that I could not possibly be a good man. Well for me I did
+not tell him my opinion of the Czar himself! It was gleaned from
+Copenhagen, where they thought him the prince of good fellows.
+
+At Carmel I found the hands in the clothing factory making from $10 to
+$13 a week at human hours, and the population growing. Forty families
+had come from Philadelphia, where the authorities were helping the
+colonies by rigidly enforcing the sweat-shop ordinances. Inquiries I
+made as to the relative cost of living in the city and in the country
+brought out the following facts: A contractor with a family of eight
+paid shop rent in Sheriff Street, New York, $20 per month; for four
+rooms in a Monroe Street tenement, $15; household expenses, $60. Here
+he pays shop rent (whole house), $6; dwelling on farm, $4; household,
+$35. This family enjoys greater comfort in the country for $50 a month
+less. A working family of eight paid $11 for three rooms in an Essex
+Street tenement, $35 for the household; here the rent is $5, and the
+household expenses $24--better living for $17 less a month.
+
+Near the village a Jewish farmer who had tracked us from one of the
+other villages caught up with us to put before Mr. Sabsovich his
+request for more land. We halted to debate it in the road beside a
+seven-acre farm worked by a Lithuanian brickmaker. The old man in his
+peaked cap and sheepskin jacket was hoeing in the back lot. His wife,
+crippled and half blind, sat in the sunshine with a smile upon her
+wrinkled face, and listened to the birds. They came down together,
+when they heard our voices, to say that four of the seven acres were
+worked up. The other three would come. They had plenty, and were
+happy. Only their boy, who should help, was gone.
+
+It was the one note of disappointment I heard: the boys would not stay
+on the farm. To the aged it gave a new purpose, new zest in life.
+There was a place for them, whereas the tenement had none. The young
+could not be made to stay. It was the old story. I had heard it in New
+England in explanation of its abandoned farms; the work was too hard,
+was without a break. The good sense of the Jew recognizes the issue
+and meets it squarely. In Woodbine strenuous efforts were being made
+to develop the social life by every available means. No opportunity is
+allowed to pass that will "give the boy a chance." Here on the farms
+there were wiser fathers than the Lithuanian. Let one of them speak
+for himself.
+
+His was one of a little settlement of fifteen families that had fought
+it out alone, being some distance from any of the villages. In the
+summer they farmed, and in the winter tailoring for the Philadelphia
+shops helped them out. Radetzky was a presser in the city ten years.
+There were nine in his house. "Seven to work on the farm," said the
+father, proudly, surveying the brown, muscular troop, "but the two
+little ones are good in summer at berry-picking." They had just then
+come in from the lima-bean field, where they had planted poles. Even
+the baby had helped.
+
+"I put two beans in a hill instead of four. I tell you why," said the
+farmer; "I wait three days, and see if they come up. If they do not, I
+put down two more. Most of them come up, and I save two beans. A
+farmer has got to make money on saving expenses."
+
+The sound of a piano interrupted him. "It is my daughter," he said.
+"They help me, and I let them have in turn what young people
+want--piano, music lessons, a good horse to drive. It pays. They are
+all here yet. In the beginning we starved together, had to eat corn
+with the cows, but the winter tailoring pulled us through. Now I want
+to give it up. I want to buy the next farm. With our 34 acres, it will
+make 60, and we can live like men, and let those that need the
+tailoring get it. I wouldn't exchange this farm for the best property
+in the city."
+
+His two eldest sons nodded assent to his words.
+
+Late that night, when we were returning to Woodbine, we came suddenly
+upon a crowd of boys filling the road. They wore the uniform of the
+Hirsch School. It was within ten minutes of closing-time, and they
+were half a mile from home. The superintendent pulled up and asked
+them where they were going. There was a brief silence, then the
+hesitating answer:--
+
+"It is a surprise party."
+
+Mr. Sabsovich eyed the crowd sharply and thought awhile.
+
+"Oh," he said, remembering all at once, "it is Mr. Billings and his
+new wife. Go ahead, boys!"
+
+To me, trying vainly to sleep in the village hotel in the midnight
+hour with a tin-pan serenade to the newly married teacher going on
+under the window, there came in a lull, with the challenge of the
+loudest boy, "Mr. Billings! If you don't come down, we will never go
+home," an appreciation of the Woodbine system of discipline which I
+had lacked till then. It was the Radetzky plan over again, of giving
+the boys a chance, to make them stay on the farm.
+
+If it is difficult to make the boy stay, it is sometimes even harder
+to make the father go. Out of a hundred families picked on New York's
+East Side as in especial need of transplanting to the land, just seven
+consented when it came to the journey. They didn't relish the "society
+of the stumps." The Jews' colonies need many things before they can
+hope to rival the attraction of the city to the man whom the slum has
+robbed of all resources. They sum themselves up in the social life of
+which the tenement has such unsuspected stores in the closest of touch
+with one's fellows. The colonies need business opportunities to boom
+them, facilities for marketing produce in the cities, canning-factories,
+store cellars for the product of the vineyards--all of which time must
+supply. Though they have given to hundreds the chance of life, it
+cannot be said for them that they have demonstrated yet the Jews'
+ability to stand alone upon the land, backed as they are by the Hirsch
+Fund millions. In fact, I have heard no such claim advanced. But it
+can at least be said that for these they have solved the problem of
+life and of the slum. And that is something!
+
+Nor is it all. Because of its being a concerted movement, this of
+south Jersey, it has been, so to speak, easier to make out. But
+already, upon the experience gained there, 700 families, with some
+previous training and fitness for farming, have been settled upon New
+England farms and are generally doing well. More than $2,000,000 worth
+of property in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and their sister states is
+owned by Jewish husbandmen. They are mostly dairy-farmers, poultrymen,
+sheep breeders. The Russian Jew will not in this generation be fit for
+what might be called long-range farming. He needs crops that turn his
+money over quickly. With that in sight, he works hard and faithfully.
+The Yankee, as a rule, welcomes him. He has the sagacity to see that
+his coming will improve economic conditions, now none too good. As
+shrewd traders, the two are well matched. The public school brings the
+children together on equal terms, levelling out any roughness that
+might remain.
+
+If the showing that the Jewish population of New England has increased
+in 17 years from 9000 to 74,000 gives anybody pause, it is not at
+least without its compensation. The very need of the immigrant to
+which objection is made, plus the energy that will not let him sit
+still and starve, make a way for him that opens it at the same time
+for others. In New York he _made_ the needle industry, which he
+monopolized. He brought its product up from $30,000,000 to
+$300,000,000 a year, that he might live, and founded many a great
+fortune by his midnight toil. In New England, while peopling its
+abandoned farms, in self-defence he takes up on occasion abandoned
+manufacturing plants to make the work he wants. At Colchester,
+Connecticut, 120 Jewish families settled about the great rubber-works.
+The workings of a trust shut it down after 40 years' successful
+operation, causing loss of wages and much suffering to 1500 hands. The
+Christian employees, who must have been in overwhelming majority,
+probably took it out in denouncing trusts. I didn't hear that they did
+much else, except go away, I suppose, in search of another job. The
+Jews did not go away. Perhaps they couldn't. They cast about for some
+concern to supply the place of the rubber-works. At last accounts I
+heard of them negotiating with a large woollen concern in Leeds to
+move its plant across the Atlantic to Colchester. How it came out, I
+do not know.
+
+The attempt to colonize Jewish immigrants had two objects: to relieve
+the man and to drain the Ghetto. In this last it failed. In 18 years
+1200 families had been moved out. In five months just before I wrote
+this 12,000 came to stay in New York City. The number of immigrant
+Jews during those months was 15,233, of whom only 3881 went farther.
+The population of the Ghetto passed already 250,000. It was like
+trying to bail out the ocean. The Hirsch Fund people saw it and took
+another tack. Instead of arguing with unwilling employees to take the
+step they dreaded, they tried to persuade manufacturers to move out of
+the city, depending upon the workers to follow their work.
+
+They did bring out one, and built homes for his hands. The argument
+was briefly that the clothing industry makes the Ghetto by lending
+itself most easily to tenement manufacture. The Ghetto, with its
+crowds and unhealthy competition, makes the sweat-shop in turn, with
+all the bad conditions that disturb the trade. To move the crowds out
+is at once to kill the Ghetto and the sweat-shops, and to restore the
+industry to healthy ways. The argument is correct. The economic gains
+by such an exodus are equally clear, provided the philanthropy that
+starts it will maintain a careful watch to prevent the old slum
+conditions being reproduced in the new places and unscrupulous
+employers from taking advantage of the isolation of their workers.
+With this chance removed, strikes are not so readily fomented by
+home-owners. The manufacturer secures steady labor, the worker a
+steady job. The young are removed from the contamination of the
+tenement. The experiment was interesting, but the fraction of a cent
+that was added by the freight to the cost of manufacture killed it.
+The factory moved back and the crowds with it.
+
+Very recently, the B'nai B'rith has taken the lead in a movement that
+goes straight to the heart of the matter. It is now proposed to head
+off the Ghetto. Places are found for the immigrants all over the
+country, and they are not allowed to stop in New York on coming over,
+but are sent out at once. Where they go others follow instead of
+plunging into the city maelstrom and being swallowed up by it. Soon,
+it is argued, a rut will have been made for so much of the immigration
+to follow to the new places, and so much will have been diverted from
+the cities. To that extent, then, a real "way out" of the slum will
+have been found.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Children of the Tenements, by Jacob A. Riis
+
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