the honorable peter stirling and what people thought of him by paul leicester ford stitt publishing company new york henry holt & co. to those dear to me at stoney wolde, turners, new york; pinehurst; norwich, connecticut; brook farm, proctorsville, vermont; and duneside, easthampton, new york, this book, written while among them, is dedicated. chapter i. romance and reality. mr. pierce was talking. mr. pierce was generally talking. from the day that his proud mamma had given him a sweetmeat for a very inarticulate "goo" which she translated into "papa," mr. pierce had found speech profitable. he had been able to talk his nurse into granting him every indulgence. he had talked his way through school and college. he had talked his wife into marrying him. he had talked himself to the head of a large financial institution. he had talked his admission into society. conversationally, mr. pierce was a success. he could discuss schopenhauer or cotillion favors; st. paul, the apostle, or st. paul, the railroad. he had cultivated the art as painstakingly as a professional musician. he had countless anecdotes, which he introduced to his auditors by a "that reminds me of." he had endless quotations, with the quotation marks omitted. finally he had an idea on every subject, and generally a theory as well. carlyle speaks somewhere of an "inarticulate genius." he was not alluding to mr. pierce. like most good talkers, mr. pierce was a tongue despot. conversation must take his course, or he would none of it. generally he controlled. if an upstart endeavored to turn the subject, mr. pierce waited till the intruder had done speaking, and then quietly, but firmly would remark: "relative to the subject we were discussing a moment ago--" if any one ventured to speak, even _sotto voce_, before mr. pierce had finished all he had to say, he would at once cease his monologue, wait till the interloper had finished, and then resume his lecture just where he had been interrupted. only once had mr. pierce found this method to fail in quelling even the sturdiest of rivals. the recollection of that day is still a mortification to him. it had happened on the deck of an ocean steamer. for thirty minutes he had fought his antagonist bravely. then, humbled and vanquished, he had sought the smoking-room, to moisten his parched throat, and solace his wounded spirit, with a star cocktail. he had at last met his superior. he yielded the deck to the fog-horn. at the present moment mr. pierce was having things very much his own way. seated in the standing-room of a small yacht, were some eight people. with a leaden sky overhead, and a leaden sea about it, the boat gently rose and fell with the ground swell. three miles away could be seen the flash-light marking the entrance to the harbor. but though slowly gathering clouds told that wind was coming, the yacht now lay becalmed, drifting with the ebb tide. the pleasure-seekers had been together all day, and were decidedly talked out. for the last hour they had been singing songs--always omitting mr. pierce, who never so trifled with his vocal organs. during this time he had been restless. at one point he had attempted to deliver his opinion on the relation of verse to music, but an unfeeling member of the party had struck up "john brown's body," and his lecture had ended, in the usual serial style, at the most interesting point, without even the promise of a "continuation in our next." finally, however, the singers had sung themselves hoarse in the damp night air, the last "spanish cavalier" had been safely restored to his inevitable true-love, and the sound of voices and banjo floated away over the water. mr. pierce's moment had come. some one, and it is unnecessary to mention the sex, had given a sigh, and regretted that nineteenth century life was so prosaic and unromantic. clearing his throat, quite as much to pre-empt the pause as to articulate the better, mr. pierce spoke: "that modern times are less romantic and interesting than bygone centuries is a fallacy. from time immemorial, love and the battle between evil and good are the two things which have given the world romance and interest. every story, whether we find it in the myths of the east, the folklore of europe, the poems of the troubadours, or in our newspaper of this morning, is based on one or the other of these factors, or on both combined. now it is a truism that love never played so important a part as now in shaping the destinies of men and women, for this is the only century in which it has obtained even a partial divorce from worldly and parental influences. moreover the great battle of society, to crush wrong and elevate right, was never before so bravely fought, on so many fields, by so many people as to-day. but because our lovers and heroes no longer brag to the world of their doings; no longer stand in the moonlight, and sing of their 'dering does,' the world assumes that the days of tourneys and guitars were the only days of true love and noble deeds. even our professed writers of romance join in the cry. 'draw life as it is,' they say. 'we find nothing in it but mediocrity, selfishness, and money-loving.' by all means let us have truth in our novels, but there is truth and truth. most of new york's firemen presumably sat down at noon to-day to a dinner of corned-beef and cabbage. but perhaps one of them at the same moment was fighting his way through smoke and flame, to save life at the risk of his own. boiled dinner and burned firemen are equally true. are they equally worthy of description? what would the age of chivalry be, if the chronicles had recorded only the brutality, filthiness and coarseness of their contemporaries? the wearing of underclothing unwashed till it fell to pieces; the utter lack of soap; the eating with fingers; the drunkenness and foul-mouthedness that drove women from the table at a certain point, and so inaugurated the custom, now continued merely as an excuse for a cigar? some one said once that a man finds in a great city just the qualities he takes to it. that's true of romance as well. modern novelists don't find beauty and nobility in life, because they don't look for them. they predicate from their inner souls that the world is 'cheap and nasty' and that is what they find it to be. there is more true romance in a new york tenement than there ever was in a baron's tower--braver battles, truer love, nobler sacrifices. romance is all about us, but we must have eyes for it. you are young people, with your lives before you. let me give you a little advice. as you go through life look for the fine things--not for the despicable. it won't make you any richer. it won't make you famous. it won't better you in a worldly way. but it will make your lives happier, for by the time you are my age, you'll love humanity, and look upon the world and call it good. and you will have found romance enough to satisfy all longings for mediæval times." "but, dear, one cannot imagine some people ever finding anything romantic in life," said a voice, which, had it been translated into words would have said, "i know you are right, of course, and you will convince me at once, but in my present state of unenlightenment it seems to me that--" the voice, already low, became lower. "now"--a moment's hesitation--"there is--peter stirling." "exactly," said mr. pierce. "that is a very case in point, and proves just what i've been saying. peter is like the novelists of whom i've been talking. i don't suppose we ought to blame him for it. what can you expect of a son of a mill-foreman, who lives the first sixteen years of his life in a mill-village? if his hereditary tendencies gave him a chance, such an experience would end it. if one lives in the country, one may get fine thoughts by contact with nature. in great cities one is developed and stimulated by art, music, literature, and contact with clever people. but a mill-village is one vast expanse of mediocrity and prosaicness, and it would take a bigger nature than peter's to recognize the beautiful in such a life. in truth, he is as limited, as exact, and as unimaginative as the machines of his own village. peter has no romance in him; hence he will never find it, nor increase it in this world. this very case only proves my point; that to meet romance one must have it. boccaccio said he did not write novels, but lived them. try to imagine peter living a romance! he could be concerned in a dozen and never dream it. they would not interest him even if he did notice them. and i'll prove it to you." mr. pierce raised his voice. "we are discussing romance, peter. won't you stop that unsocial tramp of yours long enough to give us your opinion on the subject?" a moment's silence followed, and then a singularly clear voice, coming from the forward part of the yacht, replied: "i never read them, mr. pierce." mr. pierce laughed quietly. "see," he said, "that fellow never dreams of there being romance outside of novels. he is so prosaic that he is unconscious of anything bigger than his own little sphere of life. peter may obtain what he wants in this world, for his desires will be of the kind to be won by work and money. but he will never be controlled by a great idea, nor be the hero of a true romance." steele once wrote that the only difference between the catholic church and the church of england was, that the former was infallible and the latter never wrong. mr. pierce would hardly have claimed for himself either of these qualities. he was too accustomed in his business to writing, "e. and o.e." above his initials, to put much faith in human dicta. but in the present instance he felt sure of what he said, and the little group clearly agreed. if they were right, this story is like that recounted in mother goose, which was ended before it was begun. but mr. pierce had said that romance is everywhere to those who have the spirit of it in them. perhaps in this case the spirit was lacking in his judges--not in peter stirling. chapter ii. appearances. the unconscious illustration of mr. pierce's theory was pacing backwards and forwards on the narrow space between the cuddy-roof and the gunwale, which custom dignifies with the name of deck. six strides forward and turn. six strides aft and turn. that was the extent of the beat. yet had peter been on sentry duty, he could not have continued it more regularly or persistently. if he were walking off his supper, as most of those seated aft would have suggested, the performance was not particularly interesting. the limit and rapidity of the walk resembled the tramp of a confined animal, exercising its last meal. but when one stands in front of the lion's cage, and sees that restless and tireless stride, one cannot but wonder how much of it is due to the last shin-bone, and how much to the wild and powerful nature under the tawny skin. the question occurs because the nature and antecedents of the lion are known. for this same reason the yachters were a unit in agreeing that stirling's unceasing walk was merely a digestive promenade. the problem was whether they were right? or whether, to apply mr. pierce's formula, they merely imposed their own frame of mind in place of stirling's, and decided, since their sole reason for walking at the moment would be entirely hygienic, that he too must be striding from the same cause? dr. holmes tells us that when james and thomas converse there are really six talkers. first, james as james thinks he is, and thomas as thomas thinks he is. second james as thomas thinks him, and thomas as james thinks him. finally, there are james and thomas as they really are. since this is neither an autobiography nor an inspired story, the world's view of peter stirling must be adopted without regard to its accuracy. and because this view was the sum of his past and personal, these elements must be computed before we can know on what the world based its conclusions concerning him. his story was as ordinary and prosaic as mr. and mrs. pierce seemed to think his character. neither riches nor poverty had put a shaping hand to it. the only child of his widowed mother, he had lived in one of the smaller manufacturing cities of new england a life such as falls to most lads. unquestionably he had been rather more shielded from several forms of temptation than had most of his playmates, for his mother's isolation had made him not merely her son, but very largely her companion. in certain ways this had tended to make him more manly than the average fellow of his age, but in others it had retarded his development; and this backwardness had been further accentuated by a deliberate mind, which hardly kept pace with his physical growth. his school record was fair: "painstaking, but slow," was the report in studies. "exemplary," in conduct. he was not a leader among the boys, but he was very generally liked. a characteristic fact, for good or bad, was that he had no enemies. from the clergyman to the "hired help," everybody had a kind word for him, but tinctured by no enthusiasm. all spoke of him as "a good boy," and when this was said, they had nothing more to say. one important exception to this statement is worthy of note. the girls of the high school never liked him. if they had been called upon for reasons, few could have given a tangible one. at their age, everything this world contains, be it the falls of niagara, or a stick of chewing gum, is positively or negatively "nice." for some crime of commission or omission, peter had been weighed and found wanting. "he isn't nice," was the universal verdict of the scholars who daily filed through the door, which the town selectmen, with the fine contempt of the narrow man for his unpaid "help," had labelled, "for females." if they had said that he was "perfectly horrid," there might have been a chance for him. but the subject was begun and ended with these three words. such terseness in the sex was remarkable and would have deserved a psychological investigation had it been based on any apparent data. but women's opinions are so largely a matter of instinct and feeling, and so little of judgment and induction, that an analysis of the mental processes of the hundred girls who had reached this one conclusion, would probably have revealed in each a different method of obtaining this product. the important point is to recognize this consensus of opinion, and to note its bearing on the development of the lad. that peter could remain ignorant of this feeling was not conceivable. it puzzled him not a little when he first began to realize the prejudice, and he did his best to reverse it. unfortunately he took the very worst way. had he avoided the girls persistently and obviously, he might have interested them intensely, for nothing is more difficult for a woman to understand than a woman-hater; and from the days of mother eve the unknown is rumored to have had for her sex a powerful fascination. but he tried to win their friendship by humbleness and kindness, and so only made himself the more cheap in their eyes. "fatty peter," as they jokingly called him, epitomized in two words their contempt of him. nor did things mend when he went to harvard. neither his mother's abilities nor his choice were able to secure for him an _entrée_ to the society which cambridge and boston dole out stintedly to certain privileged collegians. every friday afternoon he went home, to return by an early train monday morning. in his first year it is to be questioned if he exchanged ten words with women whose names were known to him, except during these home-visits. that this could long continue, was impossible. in his second year he was several times taken by his chum, watts d'alloi, to call. but always with one result. invariably peter would be found talking to mamma, or, better still, from his point of view, with pater-familias, while watts chatted with the presumptive attractions. watts laughed at him always. laughed still more when one of these calls resulted in a note, "requesting the pleasure" of mr. peter stirling's company to dinner. it was watts who dictated the acceptance, helped peter put the finishing touches to his toilet, and eventually landed him safely in mrs. purdie's parlor. his description to the boys that night of what followed is worthy of quotation: "the old fellow shook hands with mrs. p., o.k. something was said about the weather, and then mrs. p. said, 'i'll introduce you to the lady you are to take down, mr. stirling, but i shan't let you talk to her before dinner. look about you and take your choice of whom you would like to meet?' chum gave one agonized look round the room. there wasn't a woman over twenty-five in sight! and what do you think the wily old fox said? call him simple! not by a circumstance! a society beau couldn't have done it better. can't guess? well, he said, 'i'd like to talk to you, mrs. purdie.' fact! of course she took it as a compliment, and was as pleased as could be. well, i don't know how on earth he ever got through his introduction or how he ever reached the dining-room, for my inamorata was so pretty that i thought of nothing till we were seated, and the host took her attention for a moment. then i looked across at chum, who was directly opposite, to see how he was getting on. oh, you fellows would have died to see it! there he sat, looking straight out into vacancy, so plainly laboring for something to say that i nearly exploded. twice he opened his lips to speak, and each time closed them again. the girl of course looked surprised, but she caught my eye, and entered into the joke, and we both waited for developments. then she suddenly said to him, 'now let's talk about something else.' it was too much for me. i nearly choked. i don't know what followed. miss jevons turned and asked me something. but when i looked again, i could see the perspiration standing on peter's forehead, while the conversation went by jerks and starts as if it was riding over a ploughed field. miss callender, whom he took in, told me afterwards that she had never had a harder evening's work in her life. nothing but 'yeses' and 'noes' to be got from him. she wouldn't believe what i said of the old fellow." three or four such experiences ended peter's dining out. he was recognized as unavailable material. he received an occasional card to a reception or a dance, for anything in trousers passes muster for such functions. he always went when invited, and was most dutiful in the counter-calls. in fact, society was to him a duty which he discharged with the same plodding determination with which he did his day's studies. he never dreamed of taking his social moments frivolously. he did not recognize that society is very much like a bee colony--stinging those who approached it shyly and quietly, but to be mastered by a bold beating of tin pans. he neither danced nor talked, and so he was shunted by the really pleasant girls and clever women, and passed his time with wall-flowers and unbearables, who, in their normal sourness, regarded and, perhaps, unconsciously made him feel, hardly to his encouragement, that his companionship was a sort of penance. if he had been asked, at the end of his senior year, what he thought of young women and society, he would probably have stigmatized them, as he himself had been formerly: "not nice." all of which, again to apply mr. pierce's theory, merely meant that the phases which his own characteristics had shown him, had re-acted on his own mind, and had led him to conclude that girls and society were equally unendurable. the condition was a dangerous one, and if psychology had its doctors they would have predicted a serious heart illness in store for him. how serious, would depend largely on whether the fever ran its natural course, or whether it was driven inwards by disappointment. if these doctors had ceased studying his mental condition and glanced at his physical appearance, they would have had double cause to shake their heads doubtingly. peter was not good-looking. he was not even, in a sense, attractive. in spite of his taking work so hardly and life so seriously, he was entirely too stout. this gave a heaviness to his face that neutralized his really pleasant brown eyes and thick brown hair, which were his best features. manly the face was, but, except when speaking in unconscious moments, dull and unstriking. a fellow three inches shorter, and two-thirds his weight would have been called tall. "big" was the favorite adjective used in describing peter, and big he was. had he gone through college ten years later, he might have won unstinted fame and admiration as the full-back on the team, or stroke on the crew. in his time, athletics were but just obtaining, and were not yet approved of either by faculties or families. shakespeare speaks of a tide in the affairs of men. had peter been born ten years later the probabilities are that his name would have been in all the papers, that he would have weighed fifty pounds less, have been cheered by thousands, have been the idol of his class, have been a hero, have married the first girl he loved (for heroes, curiously, either marry or die, but never remain bachelors) and would have--but as this is a tale of fact, we must not give rein to imagination. to come back to realism, peter was a hero to nobody but his mother. such was the man, who, two weeks after graduation from harvard, was pacing up and down the deck of mr. pierce's yacht, the "sunrise," as she drifted with the tide in long island sound. yet if his expression, as he walked, could for a moment have been revealed to those seated aft, the face that all thought dull and uninteresting would have riveted their attention, and set each one questioning whether there might not be something both heroic and romantic underneath. the set determination of his look can best be explained by telling what had given his face such rigid lines. chapter iii. a crab chapter. mr. pierce and those about him had clearly indicated by the conversation, or rather monologue, already recorded, that peter was in a sense an odd number in the "sunrise's" complement of pleasure-seekers. whether or no mr. pierce's monologue also indicated that he was not a map who dealt in odd numbers, or showered hospitality on sons of mill-overseers, the fact was nevertheless true. "for value received," or "i hereby promise to pay," were favorite formulas of mr. pierce, and if not actually written in such invitations as he permitted his wife to write at his dictation to people whom he decided should be bidden to the shrubberies, a longer or shorter time would develop the words, as if written in sympathetic ink. yet peter had had as pressing an invitation and as warm a welcome at mr. pierce's country place as had any of the house-party ingathered during the first week of july. clearly something made him of value to the owner of the shrubberies. that something was his chum, watts d'alloi. peter and watts were such absolute contrasts that it seemed impossible that they could have an interest or sympathy, in common. therefore they had become chums. a chance in their freshman year had brought them together. watts, with the refined and delicate sense of humor abounding in collegians, had been concerned with sundry freshmen in an attempt to steal (or, in collegiate terms, "rag") the chapel bible, with a view to presenting it to some equally subtle humorists at yale, expecting a similar courtesy in return from that college. unfortunately for the joke, the college authorities had had the bad taste to guard against the annually attempted substitution. two of the marauders were caught, while watts only escaped by leaving his coat in the hands of the watchers. even then he would have been captured had he not met peter in his flight, and borrowed the latter's coat, in which he reached his room without detection. peter was caught by the pursuers, and summoned before the faculty, but he easily proved that the captured coat was not his, and that he had but just parted from one of the tutors, making it certain that he could not have been an offender. there was some talk of expelling him for aiding and abetting in the true culprit's escape, and for refusing to tell who it was. respect for his motives, however, and his unimpeachable record saved him from everything but an admonition from the president, which changed into a discussion of cotton printing before that august official had delivered half of his intended rebuke. people might not enthuse over peter, but no one ever quarrelled with him. so the interview, after travelling from cotton prints to spring radishes, ended with a warm handshake, and a courteous suggestion that he come again when there should be no charges nor admonitions to go through with. watts told him that he was a "devilish lucky" fellow to have been on hand to help, for peter had proved his pluck to his class, had made a friend of the president and, as watts considerately put it: "but for your being on the corner at : that evening, old chap, you'd never have known me." truly on such small chances do the greatest events of our life turn. perhaps, could peter have looked into the future, he would have avoided that corner. perhaps, could he have looked even further, he would have found that in that chance lay the greatest happiness of his life. who can tell, when the bitter comes, and we later see how we could have avoided it, what we should have encountered in its place? who can tell, when sweet comes, how far it is sweetened by the bitterness that went before? dodging the future in this world is a success equal to that of the old woman who triumphantly announced that she had borrowed money enough to pay all her debts. as a matter of course watts was grateful for the timely assistance, and was not slow either to say or show it. he told his own set of fellows that he was "going to take that stirling up and make him one of us," and watts had a remarkable way of doing what he chose. at first peter did not respond to the overtures and insistance of the handsome, well-dressed, free-spending, new york swell. he was too conscious of the difference between himself and watts's set, to wish or seek identification with them. but no one who ever came under watts's influence could long stand out against his sunny face and frank manner, and so peter eventually allowed himself to be "taken up." perhaps the resistance encountered only whetted watts's intention. he was certainly aided by peter's isolation. whether the cause was single or multiple, peter was soon in a set from which many a seemingly far more eligible fellow was debarred. strangely enough, it did not change him perceptibly. he still plodded on conscientiously at his studies, despite laughter and attempts to drag him away from them. he still lived absolutely within the comfortable allowance that his mother gave him. he still remained the quiet, serious looking fellow of yore. the "gang," as they styled themselves, called him "kill-joy," "graveyard," or "death's head," in their evening festivities, but peter only puffed at his pipe good-naturedly, making no retort, and if the truth had really been spoken, not a man would have changed him a particle. his silence and seriousness added the dash of contrast needed to make the evening perfect. all joked him. the most popular verse in a class-song watts wrote, was devoted to burlesquing his soberness, the gang never tiring of singing at all hours and places: "goodness gracious! who's that in the 'yard' a yelling in the rain? that's the boy who never gave his mother any pain, but now his moral character is sadly on the wane, 'tis little peter stirling, bilin' drunk again. oh, the sunday-school boy, his mamma's only joy, is shouting drunk as usual, and raising cain!" yet joke peter as they would, in every lark, be it drive, sail, feed, drink, or smoke, whoever's else absence was commented upon, his never passed unnoticed. in sophomore year, watts, without quite knowing why, proposed that they should share rooms. nor would he take peter's refusal, and eventually succeeded in reversing it. "i can't afford your style of living," peter had said quietly, as his principal objection. "oh, i'll foot the bills for the fixings, so it shan't cost you a cent more," said watts, and when peter had finally been won over to give his assent, watts had supposed it was on this uneven basis. but in the end, the joint chambers were more simply furnished than those of the rest of the gang, who promptly christened them "the hermitage," and peter had paid his half of the expense. and though he rarely had visitors of his own asking at the chambers, all cost of wine and tobacco was equally borne by him. the three succeeding years welded very strong bands round these two. it was natural that they should modify each other strongly, but in truth, as in most cases, when markedly different characteristics are brought in contact, the only effect was to accentuate each in his peculiarities. peter dug at his books all the harder, by reason of watts's neglect of them. watts became the more free-handed with his money because of peter's prudence. watts talked more because of peter's silence, and peter listened more because of watts's talk. watts, it is true, tried to drag peter into society, yet in truth, peter was really left more alone than if he had been rooming with a less social fellow. each had in truth become the complement of the other, and seemed as mutually necessary as the positive and negative wires in electricity. peter, who had been taking the law lectures in addition to the regular academic course, and had spent his last two summers reading law in an attorney's office, in his native town, taking the new york examination in the previous january, had striven to get watts to do the same, with the ultimate intention of their hanging out a joint legal shingle in new york. "i'll see the clients, and work up the cases, watts, and you'll make the speeches and do the social end," said peter, making a rather long speech in the ardor of his wishes. watts laughed. "i don't know, old man. i rather fancy i shan't do anything. to do something requires that one shall make up one's mind what to do, and that's such devilish hard work. i'll wait till i've graduated, and had a chin with my governor about it perhaps he'll make up my mind for me, and so save my brain tissue. but anyway, you'll come to new york, and start in, for you must be within reach of me. besides, new york's the only place in this country worth living in." such were the relations between the two at graduation time. watts, who had always prepared his lessons in a tenth part of the time it had taken peter, buckled down in the last few weeks, and easily won an honorable mention. peter had tried hard to win honors, but failed. "you did too much outside work, old man," said watts, who would cheerfully have given his own triumph to his friend. "if you want success in anything, you've got to sacrifice other things and concentrate on the object. the mention's really not worth the ink it's written with, in my case, but i knew it would please mammy and pappy, so i put on steam, and got it. if i'd hitched on a lot of freight cars loaded with stuff that wouldn't have told in exams, i never could have been in on time." peter shook his head rather sadly. "you outclass me in brains, watts, as much as you do in other things" "nonsense," said watts. "i haven't one quarter of your head. but my ancestors--here's to the old coves--have been brain-culturing for three hundred years, while yours have been land-culturing; and of course my brain moves quicker and easier than yours. i take to a book, by hereditary instinct, as a duck to water, while you are like a yacht, which needs a heap of building and fitting before she can do the same. but you'll beat me in the long run, as easily as the boat does the duck. and the honor's nothing." "except, as you said, to one's"--peter hesitated for a moment, divided in mind by his wish to quote accurately, and his dislike of anything disrespectful, and then finished "to one's mother." "that's the last person it's needed for, chum," replied watts. "if there's one person that doesn't need the world's or faculty's opinion to prove one's merit, it's one's dear, darling, doating, self-deluded and undisillusioned mamma. heigh-ho. i'll be with mine two weeks from now, after we've had our visit at the pierces'. i'm jolly glad you are going, old man. it will be a sort of tapering-off time for the summer's separation. i don't see why you insist on starting in at once in new york? no one does any law business in the summertime. why, i even think the courts are closed. come, you'd better go on to grey-court with me, and try it, at least. my mammy will kill the fatted calf for you in great style." "we've settled that once," said peter, who was evidently speaking journalistically, for he had done the settling. watts said something in a half-articulate way, which certainly would have fired the blood of every dime museum-keeper in the country, had they been there to hear the conversation, for, as well as could be gathered from the mumbling, it related to a "pig-headed donkey" known of to the speaker. "i suppose you'll be backing out of the pierce affair yet," he added, discontentedly. "no," said peter. "an invitation to grey-court is worth two of the shrubberies. my mother knows only the right kind of people, while mr. pierce--" "is to be our host," interrupted peter, but with no shade of correction in his voice. "yes," laughed watts, "and he is a host. he'll not let any one else get a word in edgewise. you are just the kind of talker he'll like. mark my word, he'll be telling every one, before you've been two hours in the house, that you are a remarkably brilliant conversationalist." "what will he say of you?" said peter, in a sentence which he broke up into reasonable lengths by a couple of pulls at his pipe in the middle of it. "mr. pierce, chum," replied watts, with a look in his eyes which peter had learned to associate with mischief on watts's part, "has too great an affection for yours truly to object to anything i do. do you suppose, if i hadn't been sure of my footing at the shrubberies, that i should have dared to ask an invitation for"--then watts hesitated for a moment, seeing a half-surprised, half-anxious look come into peter's face, "for myself?" he continued. "tell truth and shame the devil," said peter. watts laughed. "confound you! that's what comes of letting even such a stupid old beggar as you learn to read one's thoughts. it's mighty ungrateful of you to use them against me. yes. i did ask to have you included in the party. but you needn't put your back up, mr. unbendable, and think you were forced on them. mr. pierce gave me _carte blanche_, and if it hadn't been you, it would have been some other donkey." "but mrs. pierce?" queried peter. "oh," explained watts, "of course mrs. pierce wrote the letter. i couldn't do it in my name, and so mr. pierce told her to do it. they're very land of me, old man, because my governor is the largest stockholder, and a director in mr. p.'s bank, and i was told i could bring down some fellows next week for a few days' jollity. i didn't care to do that, but of course i wouldn't have omitted you for any amount of ducats." which explanation solves the mystery of peter's presence at the shrubberies. to understand his face we must trace the period between his arrival and the moment this story begins. chapter iv. beginnings. how far watts was confining himself to facts in the foregoing dialogue is of no concern, for the only point of value was that peter was invited, without regard to whether watts first asked mr. pierce, or mr. pierce first asked watts. a letter which the latter wrote to miss pierce, as soon as it was settled that peter should go, is of more importance, and deserves quotation in full: june th. my dear helen-- between your pater and my peter, it has taken an amount of diplomacy to achieve the scheme we planned last summer, which would be creditable to palmerston at his palmiest and have made bismarck even more marked than he is. but the deed, the mighty deed is done, and june twenty-ninth will see chum and me at the shrubberies "if it kills every cow in the barn," which is merely another way of saying that in the bright lexicon of youth, there's no such word as fail. now a word as to the fellow you are so anxious to meet. i have talked to you so much about him, that you will probably laugh at my attempting to tell you anything new. i'm not going to try, and you are to consider all i say as merely a sort of underlining to what you already know. please remember that he will never take a prize for his beauty--nor even for his grace. he has a pleasing way with girls, not only of not talking himself, but of making it nearly impossible for them to talk. for instance, if a girl asks me if i play croquet, which by the way, is becoming very _passé_ (three last lines verge on poetry) being replaced by a new game called tennis, i probably say, "no. do you?" in this way i make croquet good for a ten minutes' chat, which in the end leads up to some other subject. peter, however, doesn't. he says "no," and so the girl can't go on with croquet, but must begin a new subject. it is safest to take the subject-headings from an encyclopædia, and introduce them in alphabetical order. allow about ninety to the hour, unless you are brave enough to bear an occasional silence. if you are, you can reduce this number considerably, and chum doesn't mind a pause in the least, if the girl will only look contented. if she looks worried, however, peter gets worried, too. just put the old chap between you and your mamma at meals, and pull him over any rough spots that come along. you, i know, will be able to make it easy for him. neglect me to any extent. i shan't be jealous, and shall use that apparent neglect as an excuse for staying on for a week after he goes, so as to have my innings. i want the dear old blunderbuss to see how nice a really nice girl can be, so do your prettiest to him, for the sake of watts clarkson d'alloi. when watts and peter saved the "cows in the barn" by stepping off the train on june th, the effect of this letter was manifest. watts was promptly bestowed on the front seat of the trap with mr. pierce, while peter was quickly sitting beside a girl on the back seat. of course an introduction had been made, but peter had acquired a habit of not looking at girls, and as a consequence had yet to discover how far miss pierce came up to the pleasant word-sketch watts had drawn of her. indeed, peter had looked longingly at the seat beside mr. pierce, and had attempted, in a very obvious manner, though one which seemed to him the essence of tact and most un-apparent, to have it assigned to him. but two people, far his superior in natural finesse and experience, had decided beforehand that he was to sit with helen, and he could not resist their skilful manoeuvres. so he climbed into place, hoping that she wouldn't talk, or if that was too much to expect, that at least watts would half turn and help him through. neither of these fitted, however, with miss pierce's plans. she gave peter a moment to fit comfortably into his seat, knowing that if she forced the running before he had done that, he would probably sit awry for the whole drive. then: "i can't tell you how pleased we all are over watts's success. we knew, of course, he could do it if he cared to, but he seemed to think the attempt hardly worth the making, and so we did not know if he would try." peter breathed more easily. she had not asked a question, and the intonation of the last sentence was such as left him to infer that it was not his turn to say something; which, peter had noticed, was the way in which girls generally ended their remarks. "oh, look at that absurd looking cow," was her next remark, made before peter had begun to worry over the pause. peter looked at the cow and laughed. he would like to have laughed longer, for that would have used up time, but the moment he thought the laugh could be employed in place of conversation, the laugh failed. however, to be told to look at a cow required no rejoinder, so there was as yet no cause for anxiety. "we are very proud of our roads about here," said miss pierce. "when we first bought they were very bad, but papa took the matter in hand and got them to build with a rock foundation, as they do in europe." three subjects had been touched upon, and no answer or remark yet forced upon him. peter thought of _rouge et noir_, and wondered what the odds were that he would be forced to say something by miss pierce's next speech. "i like the new england roadside," continued miss pierce, with an apparent relativeness to the last subject that delighted peter, who was used by this time to much disconnection of conversation, and found not a little difficulty in shifting quickly from one topic to another. "there is a tangled finish about it that is very pleasant. and in august, when the golden-rod comes, i think it is glorious. it seems to me as if all the hot sunbeams of the summer had been gathered up in--excuse the expression--it's a word of watts's--into 'gobs' of sunshine, and scattered along the roads and fields." peter wondered if the request to be excused called for a response, but concluded that it didn't. "papa told me the other day," continued miss pierce, "that there were nineteen distinct varieties of golden-rod. i had never noticed that there were any differences." peter began to feel easy and comfortable. he made a mental note that miss pierce had a very sweet voice. it had never occurred to peter before to notice if a girl had a pleasant voice. now he distinctly remembered that several to whom he had talked--or rather who had talked to him--had not possessed that attraction. "last year," said miss pierce, "when watts was here, we had a golden-rod party. we had the whole house decked with it, and yellow lamps on the lawn." "he told me about it," said peter. "he really was the soul of it," said miss pierce, "he wove himself a belt and chaplet of it and wore it all through the evening. he was so good-looking!" peter, quite unconscious that he had said anything, actually continued: "he was voted the handsomest man of the class." "was he really? how nice!" said miss pierce. "yes," said peter. "and it was true." peter failed to notice that a question had been asked, or that he had answered it. he began to think that he would like to look at miss pierce for a moment. miss pierce, during this interval, remarked to herself: "yes. that was the right way, helen, my dear." "we had quite a houseful for our party," miss pierce remarked, after this self-approval. "and that reminds me that i must tell you about whom you meet to-day." then the next ten minutes were consumed in naming and describing the two fashionable new york girls and their brother, who made the party then assembled. during this time peter's eyes strayed from watts's shapely back, and took a furtive glance at miss pierce. he found that she was looking at him as she talked, but for some reason it did not alarm him, as such observation usually did. before the guests were properly catalogued, peter was looking into her eyes as she rambled on, and forgot that he was doing so. the face that he saw was not one of any great beauty, but it was sweet, and had a most attractive way of showing every change of mood or thought. it responded quickly too, to outside influence. many a girl of more real beauty was less popular. people liked to talk to miss pierce, and many could not escape from saying more than they wished, impelled thereto by her ready sympathy. then her eyes were really beautiful, and she had the trimmest, dearest little figure in the world; "squeezable" was the word watts used to describe it, and most men thought the same. finally, she had a pleasant way of looking into people's eyes as she talked to them, and for some reason people felt very well satisfied when she did. it had this effect upon peter. as he looked down into the large gray eyes, really slate-color in their natural darkness, made the darker by the shadows of the long lashes, he entirely forgot place and circumstances; ceased to think whose turn it was to speak; even forgot to think whether he was enjoying the moment. in short he forgot himself and, what was equally important, forgot that he was talking to a girl. he felt and behaved as he did with men. "moly hoses!" said watts to himself on the front seat, "the old fellow's getting loquacious. garrulity must be contagious, and he's caught it from mr. pierce." which, being reduced to actual facts, means that peter had spoken eight times, and laughed twice, in the half hour that was passed between the station and the shrubberies' gate. chapter v. mines and counter-mines. the sight of the party on the veranda of the shrubberies brought a return of self-consciousness to peter, and he braced himself, as the trap slowed up, for the agony of formal greetings. if miss pierce had been a less sweet, sympathetic girl, she could hardly have kept from smiling at the way peter's face and figure stiffened, as the group came in sight. but miss pierce had decided, before she met peter, that she should like him, and, moreover, that he was a man who needed help. let any woman reach these conclusions about a man, and for some reason quite beyond logic or philosophy, he ceases to be ridiculous. so instead of smiling, she bridged over the awful greetings with feminine engineering skill quite equal to some great strategic movement in war. peter was made to shake hands with mrs. pierce, but was called off to help miss pierce out of the carriage, before speech was necessary. then a bundle was missing in the bottom of the carriage, and mr. pawling, the new york swell, was summoned to help peter find it, the incident being seized upon to name the two to each other. finally, he was introduced to the two girls, but, almost instantly, watts and peter were sent to their rooms; and miss pierce, nodding her head in a way which denoted satisfaction, remarked as she went to her own room, "really, helen, i don't think it will be so very hard, after all. he's very tractable." as peter came downstairs, before dinner, he speculated on whether he should be able to talk to miss pierce. he rather doubted from past experience, if such a result was attainable, seeing that there were two other men, who would of course endeavor to do the same. but strangely enough the two men were already seated by the new york girls, and a vacant chair was next that holding miss pierce. what was more, he was at once summoned to fill it, and in five minutes was again entirely unconscious of everything but the slate-colored eyes, looking so pleasantly into his. then he took miss pierce in to dinner, and sat between her and her mother again becoming absorbed in the slate-colored eyes, which seemed quite willing to be absorbed. after dinner, too, when the women had succeeded the weed, peter in someway found it very easy to settle himself near miss pierce. later that night peter sat in his room, or rather, with half his body out of the window, puffing his pipe, and thinking how well he had gone through the day. he had not made a single slip. nothing to groan over. "i'm getting more experienced," he thought, with the vanity noticeable in even the most diffident of collegians, never dreaming that everything that he had said or done in the last few hours, had been made easy for him by a woman's tact. the following week was practically a continuation of this first day. in truth peter was out of his element with the fashionables; mr. pierce did not choose to waste his power on him; and mrs. pierce, like the yielding, devoted wife she was, took her coloring from her husband. watts had intended to look after him, but watts played well on the piano, and on the billiard table; he rowed well and rode well; he sang, he danced, he swam, he talked, he played all games, he read aloud capitally, and, what was more, was ready at any or all times for any or all things. no man who can do half these had better intend seriously to do some duty in a house-party in july. for, however good his intentions, he will merely add to the pavement of a warmer place than even a july temperature makes long island sound. instinctively, peter turned to miss pierce at every opportunity. he should have asked himself if the girl was really enjoying his company more than she did that of the other young people. had he been to the manner born he would have known better than to force himself on a hostess, or to make his monopoly of a young girl so marked. but he was entirely oblivious of whether he was doing as he ought, conscious only that, for causes which he made no attempt to analyze, he was very happy when with her. for reasons best known to miss pierce, she allowed herself to be monopolized. she was even almost as devoted to peter as he was to her, and no comparison could be stronger. it is to be questioned if she enjoyed it very much, for peter was not talkative, and the little he did say was neither brilliant nor witty. with the jollity and "high jinks" (to use a word of watts's) going on about her, it is hardly possible that peter's society shone by contrast. yet in drawing-room or carriage, on the veranda, lawn, or yacht's deck, she was ever ready to give him as much of her attention and help as he seemed to need, and he needed a good deal. watts jokingly said that "the moment peter comes in sight, helen puts out a sign 'vacant, to let,'" and this was only one of many jokes the house-party made over the dual devotion. it was an experience full of danger to peter. for the first time in his life he was seeing the really charming phases which a girl has at command. attractive as these are to all men, they were trebly so to peter, who had nothing to compare with them but the indifferent attitudes hitherto shown him by the maidens of his native town, and by the few boston women who had been compelled to "endure" his society. if he had had more experience he would have merely thought miss pierce a girl with nice eyes, figure and manner. but as a single glass of wine is dangerous to the teetotaller, so this episode had an over-balancing influence on peter, entirely out of proportion to its true value. before the week was over he was seriously in love, and though his natural impassiveness and his entire lack of knowledge how to convey his feelings to miss pierce, prevented her from a suspicion of the fact, the more experienced father and mother were not so blind. "really, charles," said mrs. pierce, in the privacy of their own room, "i think it ought to be stopped." "exactly, my dear," replied her other half, with an apparent yielding to her views that amazed and rather frightened mrs. pierce, till he continued: "beyond question _it_ should be stopped, since you say so. _it_ is neuter, and as neutral things are highly objectionable, stop _it_ by all means." "i mean mr. stirling--" began mrs. pierce. "yes?" interrupted mr. pierce, in an encouraging, inquiring tone. "peter is certainly neuter. i think one might say negative, without gross exaggeration. still, i should hardly stop him. he finds enough difficulty in getting out an occasional remark without putting a stopper in him. perhaps, though, i mistake your meaning, and you want peter merely to stop here a little longer." "i mean, dear," replied mrs. pierce, with something like a tear in her voice, for she was sadly wanting in a sense of humor, and her husband's jokes always half frightened her, and invariably made her feel inferior to him, "i mean his spending so much time with helen. i'm afraid he'll fall in love with her." "my dear," said mr. pierce, "you really should be a professional mind-reader. your suggestion comes as an awful revelation to me. just supposing he should--aye--just supposing he has, fallen in love with helen!" "i really think he has," said mrs. pierce, "though he is so different from most men, that i am not sure." "then by all means we must stop him. by the way, how does one stop a man's falling in love?" asked mr. pierce. "charles!" said mrs. pierce. this remark of mrs. pierce's generally meant a resort to a handkerchief, and mr. pierce did not care for any increase of atmospheric humidity just then. he therefore concluded that since his wit was taken seriously, he would try a bit of seriousness, as an antidote. "i don't think there is any occasion to interfere. whatever peter does can make no difference, for it is perfectly evident that helen is nice to him as a sort of duty, and, i rather suspect, to please watts. so anything she may do will be a favor to him, while the fact that she is attractive to peter will not lessen her value to--others." "then you don't think--?" asked mrs. pierce, and paused there. "don't insult my intelligence," laughed mr. pierce. "i do think. i think things can't be going better. i was a little afraid of mr. pawling, and should have preferred to have him and his sisters later, but since it is policy to invite them and they could not come at any other time, it was a godsend to have sensible, dull old peter to keep her busy. if he had been in the least dangerous, i should not have interfered, but i should have made him very ridiculous. that's the way for parents to treat an ineligible man. next week, when all are gone but watts, he will have his time, and shine the more by contrast with what she has had this week." "then you think helen and watts care for each other?" asked mrs. pierce, flushing with pleasure, to find her own opinion of such a delightful possibility supported by her husband's. "i think," said mr. pierce, "that the less we parents concern ourselves with love the better. if i have made opportunities for helen and watts to see something of each other, i have only done what was to their mutual interests. any courtesy i have shown him is well enough accounted for on the ground of his father's interest in my institution, without the assumption of any matrimonial intentions. however, i am not opposed to a marriage. watts is the son of a very rich man of the best social position in new york, besides being a nice fellow in himself. helen will make any man a good wife, and whoever wins her will not be the poorer. if the two can fix it between themselves, i shall cry _nunc dimittis_, but further than this, the deponent saith and doeth not." "i am sure they love each other," said mrs. pierce. "well," said mr. pierce, "i think if most parents would decide whom it was best for their child to marry, and see that the young people saw just enough of each other, before they saw too much of the world, they could accomplish their purpose, provided they otherwise kept their finger out of the pot of love. there is a certain period in a man's life when he must love something feminine, even if she's as old as his grandmother. there is a certain period in a girl's life when it is well-nigh impossible for her to say 'no' to a lover. he really only loves the sex, and she really loves the love and not the lover; but it is just as well, for the delusion lasts quite as long as the more personal love that comes later. and, being young, they need less breaking for double harness." mrs. pierce winced. most women do wince when a man really verges on his true conclusions concerning love in the abstract, however satisfactory his love in the concrete may be to them. "i am sure they love each other," she affirmed. "yes, i think they do," replied mr. pierce. "but five years in the world before meeting would have possibly brought quite a different conclusion. and now, my dear, if we are not going to have the young people eloping in the yacht by themselves, we had better leave both the subject and the room, for we have kept them fifteen minutes as it is." chapter vi. a monologue and a dialogue. it was at the end of this day's yachting that peter was having his "unsocial walk." early on the morrow he would be taking the train for his native town, and the thought of this, in connection with other thoughts, drew stern lines on his face. his conclusions were something to this effect: "i suspected before coming that watts and miss pierce loved each other. i was evidently wrong, for if they did they could not endure seeing so little of each other. how could he know her and not love her? but it's very fortunate for me, for i should stand no chance against him, even supposing i should try to win the girl he loved. she can't care for me! as watts says, 'i'm an old stupid naturally, and doubly so with girls.' still, i can't go to-morrow without telling her. i shan't see her again till next winter. i can't wait till then. some one else--i can't wait." then he strode up and down half a dozen times repeating the last three words over and over again. his thoughts took a new turn. "it's simply folly, and you have no right to give in to it. you have your own way to make. you have no right to ask mother for more than the fifteen hundred she says you are to have as an allowance, for you know that if she gave you more, it would be only by scrimping herself. what is fifteen hundred a year to such a girl? why, her father would think i was joking!" then peter looked out on the leaden waters and wished it was not cowardly to end the conflict by letting them close over him. the dark color made him think, however, of a pair of slate-colored eyes, so instead of jumping in, he repeated "i can't wait" a few times, and walked with redoubled energy. having stimulated himself thereby, he went on thinking. "she has been so kind to me that--no--she can't care for me. but if she--if by chance--if--supposing she does! why, the money is nothing. we can wait." peter repeated this last remark several times, clearly showing that he made a great distinction between "i can wait" and "we can wait." probably the same nice distinction has been made before, and lovers have good authority for the distinction, for many an editor's public "we think" is the exact opposite of his private "i think." then peter continued: "of course i shall have difficulty with mr. pierce. he's a worldly man. that's nothing, though, if she cares for me. if she cares for me?" peter repeated this last sentence a number of times and seemed to enjoy the prospect it conjured up. he saw peter stirling taking a fond farewell of a certain lady. he saw him entering the arena and struggling with the wild beasts, and of course conquering them. he saw the day when his successes would enable him to set up his own fireside. he saw that fireside made perfect by a pair of slate-colored eyes, which breakfast opposite him, follow him as he starts for his work, and greet him on his return. a pair of eyes to love when present, and think of when absent. heigho! how many firesides and homes have been built out of just such materials! from all this the fact can be gathered that peter was really, despite his calm, sober nature, no more sensible in love matters than are other boys verging on twenty-one. he could not see that success in this love would be his greatest misfortune. that he could not but be distracted from his work. that he would almost certainly marry before he could well afford it, and thus overweight himself in his battle for success. he forgot prudence and common-sense, and that being what a lover usually does, he can hardly be blamed for it. bump! down came the air-castle. home, fireside, and the slate-colored eyes dissolved into a wooden wharf. the dream was over. "bear a hand here with these lunch-baskets, chum," called watts. "make yourself useful as well as ornamental." and so peter's solitary tramp ceased, and he was helping lunch-baskets and ladies to the wharf. but the tramp had brought results which were quickly to manifest themselves. as the party paired off for the walk to the shrubberies, both watts and peter joined miss pierce, which was not at all to peter's liking. "go on with the rest, watts," said peter quietly. miss pierce and watts both stopped short in surprise. "eh?" said the latter. "you join the rest of the party on ahead," said peter. "i don't understand," said watts, who could hardly have been more surprised if peter had told him to drown himself. "i want to say something to miss pierce," explained peter. watts caught his breath. if peter had not requested his absence and given his reason for wishing it, in miss pierce's hearing, watts would have formed an instant conclusion as to what it meant, not far from the truth. but that a man should deliberately order another away, in the girl's hearing, so that he might propose to her, was too great an absurdity for watts to entertain for more than a second. he laughed, and said, "go on yourself, if you don't like the company." "no," said peter. "i want you to go on." peter spoke quietly, but there was an inflexion in his singularly clear voice, which had more command in it than a much louder tone in others. watts had learned to recognize it, and from past experience knew that peter was not to be moved when he used it. but here the case was different. hitherto he had been trying to make peter do something. now the boot was on the other leg, and watts saw therein a chance for some fun. he therefore continued to stand still, as they had all done since peter had exploded his first speech, and began to whistle. both men, with that selfishness common to the sex, failed entirely to consider whether miss pierce was enjoying the incident. "i think," remarked miss pierce, "that i will leave you two to settle it, and run on with the rest." "don't," spoke peter quickly. "i have something to say to you." watts stopped his whistling. "what the deuce is the old boy up to?" he thought to himself. miss pierce hesitated. she wanted to go, but something in peter's voice made it very difficult. "i had no idea he could speak so decidedly. he's not so tractable as i thought. i think watts ought to do what he asks. though i don't see why mr. stirling wants to send him away," she said to herself. "watts," said peter, "this is the last chance i shall really have to thank miss pierce, for i leave before breakfast to-morrow." there was nothing appealing in the way it was said. it seemed a mere statement of a fact. yet something in the voice gave it the character of a command. "'nough said, chum," said watts, feeling a little cheap at his smallness in having tried to rob peter of his farewell. the next moment he was rapidly overtaking the advance-party. by all conventions there should have been an embarrassing pause after this extraordinary colloquy, but there was not. when peter decided to do a thing, he never faltered in the doing. if making love or declaring it had been a matter of directness and plain-speaking, peter would have been a successful lover. but few girls are won by lovers who carry business methods and habits of speech into their courtship. "miss pierce," said peter, "i could not go without thanking you for your kindness to me. i shall never forget this week." "i am so glad you have enjoyed it," almost sang miss pierce, in her pleasure at this reward for her week of self-sacrifice. "and i couldn't go," said peter, his clear voice suddenly husking, "without telling you how i love you." "love me!" exclaimed miss pierce, and she brought the walk again to a halt, in her surprise. "yes," replied peter simply, but the monosyllable meant more than the strongest protestations, as he said it. "oh," almost cried his companion, "i am so sorry." "don't say that," said peter; "i don't want it to be a sorrow to you." "but it's so sudden," gasped miss pierce. "i suppose it is," said peter, "but i love you and can't help telling it. why shouldn't one tell one's love as soon as one feels it? it's the finest thing a man can tell a woman." "oh, please don't," begged miss pierce, her eyes full of tears in sympathy for him. "you make it so hard for me to say that--that you mustn't" "i really didn't think you could care for me--as i cared for you," replied peter, rather more to the voice than to the words of the last speech. "girls have never liked me." miss pierce began to sob. "it's all a mistake. a dreadful mistake," she cried, "and it is my fault." "don't say that," said peter, "it's nothing but my blundering." they walked on in silence to the shrubberies, but as they came near to the glare of the lighted doorway, peter halted a moment. "do you think," he asked, "that it could ever be different?" "no," replied miss pierce. "because, unless there is--is some one else," continued peter, "i shall not----" "there is," interrupted miss pierce, the determination in peter's voice frightening her info disclosing her secret. peter said to himself, "it is watts after all." he was tempted to say it aloud, and most men in the sting of the moment would have done so. but he thought it would not be the speech of a gentleman. instead he said, "thank you." then he braced himself, and added: "please don't let my love cause you any sorrow. it has been nothing but a joy to me. good-night and good-bye." he did not even offer to shake hands in parting. they went into the hallway together, and leaving the rest of the party, who were already raiding the larder for an impromptu supper, to their own devices, they passed upstairs, miss pierce to bathe her eyes and peter to pack his belongings. "where are helen and stirling?" inquired mr. pierce when the time came to serve out the welsh rarebit he was tending. "they'll be along presently," said watts. "helen forgot something, and they went back after it." "they will be properly punished by the leathery condition of the rarebit, if they don't hurry. and as we are all agreed that stirling is somewhat lacking in romance, he will not get a corresponding pleasure from the longer stroll to reward him for that. there, ladies and gentlemen, that is a rarebit that will melt in your mouth, and make the absent ones regret their foolishness. as the gourmand says in 'richelieu,' 'what's diplomacy compared to a delicious pâté?'" chapter vii. facing the world. army surgeons recognize three types of wounded. one type so nervous, that it drops the moment it is struck, whether the wound is disabling or not. another so nerveless, that it fights on, unconscious that it has been hit. a third, who, feeling the wound, goes on fighting, sustained by its nerve. it is over the latter sort that the surgeons shake their heads and look anxious. peter did his packing quietly and quickly, not pausing for a moment in the task. then he went downstairs, and joined the party, just finishing the supper. he refused, it is true, to eat anything, and was quiet, but this phase was so normal in him, that it occasioned no remark. asked where miss pierce was, he explained briefly that he had left her in the hall, in order to do his packing and had not seen her since. in a few moments the party broke up. peter said a good-bye to each, quite conscious of what he was doing, yet really saying more and better things than he had said in his whole visit, and quite surprising them all in the apparent ease with which he went through the duty. "you must come and see us when you have put your shingle out in new york," said mr. pierce, not quite knowing why, having previously decided that they had had enough of peter. "we shall be in the city early in september, and ready to see our friends." "thank you," replied peter. he turned and went upstairs to his room. he ought to have spent the night pacing his floor, but he did not. he went to bed instead whether peter slept, we cannot say. he certainly lay very still, till the first ray of daylight brightened the sky. then he rose and dressed. he went to the stables and explained to the groom that he would walk to the station, and merely asked that his trunk should be there in time to be checked. then he returned to the house and told the cook that he would breakfast on the way. finally he started for the station, diverging on the way, so as to take a roundabout road, that gave him a twelve-mile tramp in the time he had before the train left. perhaps the hardest thing peter encountered was answering his mother's questions about the visit. yet he never flinched nor dodged from a true reply, and if his mother had chosen, she could have had the whole story. but something in the way peter spoke of miss pierce made mrs. stirling careful, and whatever she surmised she kept to herself, merely kissing him good-night with a tenderness that was unusual not merely in a new-englander, but even in her. during the rest of his stay, the pierces were quite as much kept out of sight, as if they had never been known. mrs. stirling was not what we should call a "lady," yet few of those who rank as such, would have been as considerate or tender of peter's trouble, if the power had been given them to lay it bare. love, sympathy, unselfishness and forbearance are not bad equivalents for breeding and etiquette, and have the additional advantage of meeting new and unusual conditions which sometimes occur to even the most conventional. one hope did come to her, "perhaps, now that"--and mrs. stirling left "that" blank even in her thoughts; "now my boy, my peter, will not be so set on going to new york." in this, however, she was disappointed. on the second day of his stay, peter spoke of his intention to start for new york the following week. "don't you think you could do as well here?" said mrs. stirling. "up to a certain point, better. but new york has a big beyond," said peter. "i'll try it there first, and if i don't make my way, i'll come back here" few mothers hope for a son's failure, yet mrs. stirling allowed herself a moment's happiness over this possibility. then remembering that her peter could not possibly fail, she became despondent. "they say new york's full of temptations," she said. "i suppose it is, mother," replied peter, "to those who want to be tempted." "i know i can trust you, peter," said his mother, proudly, "but i want you to promise me one thing." "what?" "that if you do yield, if you do what you oughtn't to, you'll write and tell me about it?" mrs. stirling put her arms about peter's neck, and looked wistfully into his face. peter was not blind to what this world is. perhaps, had his mother known it as he did, she might have seen how unfair her petition was. he did not like to say yes, and could not say no. "i'll try to go straight, mother," he replied, "but that's a good deal to promise." "it's all i'm going to ask of you, peter," urged mrs. stirling. "i have gone through four years of my life with nothing in it i couldn't tell her," thought peter. "if that's possible, i guess another four is." then he said aloud, "well, mother, since you want it, i'll do it." the reason of peter's eagerness to get to new york, was chiefly to have something definite to do. he tried to obtain this distraction of occupation, at present, in a characteristic way, by taking excessively long walks, and by struggling with his mother's winter supply of wood. he thought that every long stride and every swing of the axe was working him free from the crushing lack of purpose that had settled upon him. he imagined it would be even easier when he reached new york. "there'll be plenty to keep me busy there," was his mental hope. all his ambitions and plans seemed in a sense to have become meaningless, made so by the something which but ten days before had been unknown to him. like moses he had seen the promised land. but moses died. he had seen it, and must live on without it. he saw nothing in the future worth striving for, except a struggle to forget, if possible, the sweetest and dearest memory he had ever known. he thought of the epigram: "most men can die well, but few can live well." three weeks before he had smiled over it and set it down as a bit of french cynicism. now--on the verge of giving his mental assent to the theory, a pair of slate-colored eyes in some way came into his mind, and even french wit was discarded therefrom. peter was taking his disappointment very seriously, if quietly. had he only known other girls, he might have made a safe recovery, for love's remedy is truly the homeopathic "similia similibus curantur," woman plural being the natural cure for woman singular. as the russian in the "last word" says, "a woman can do anything with a man--provided there is no other woman." in peter's case there was no other woman. what was worse, there seemed little prospect of there being one in the future. chapter viii. settling. the middle of july found peter in new york, eager to begin his grapple with the future. how many such stormers have dashed themselves against its high ramparts, from which float the flags of "worldly success;" how many have fallen at the first attack; how many have been borne away, stricken in the assault; how many have fought on bravely, till driven back by pressure, sickness or hunger; how few have reached the top, and won their colors! as already hinted, peter had chosen the law as his ladder to climb these ramparts. like many another fellow he had but a dim comprehension of the struggle before him. his college mates had talked over professions, and agreed that law was a good one in new york. the attorney in his native town, "had known of cases where men without knowing a soul in a place, had started in and by hard work and merit had built up a good practice, and i don't see why it can't be done as well in new york as in lawrence or lowell. if new york is bigger, then there is more to be done." so peter, whose new york acquaintances were limited to watts and four other collegians, the pierces and their fashionables, and a civil engineer originally from his native town, had decided that the way to go about it was to get an office, hang up a sign, and wait for clients. on the morning after his arrival, his first object was a lodging. selecting from the papers the advertisements of several boarding-houses, he started in search of one. watts had told him about where to locate, "so as to live in a decent part of the city," but after seeing and pricing a few rooms near the "avenue," about thirtieth street, peter saw that watts had been thinking of his own purse, rather than of his friend's. "can you tell me where the cheaper boarding-houses are?" he asked the woman who had done the honors of the last house. "if it's cheapness you want, you'd better go to bleecker street," said the woman with a certain contemptuousness. peter thanked her, and, walking away, accosted the first policeman. "it's blaker strate, is it? take the sixth avenue cars, there beyant," he was informed. "is it a respectable street?" asked peter. "don't be afther takin' away a strate's character," said the policeman, grinning good-naturedly. "i mean," explained peter, "do respectable people live there?" "shure, it's mostly boarding-houses for young men," replied the unit of "the finest." "ye know best what they're loike." reassured, peter, sought and found board in bleecker street, not comprehending that he had gone to the opposite extreme. it was a dull season, and he had no difficulty in getting such a room as suited both his expectations and purse. by dinner-time he had settled his simple household goods to his satisfaction, and slightly moderated the dreariness of the third floor front, so far as the few pictures and other furnishings from his college rooms could modify the effect of well-worn carpet, cheap, painted furniture, and ugly wall-paper. descending to his dinner, in answer to a bell more suitable for a fire-alarm than for announcing such an ordinary occurrence as meals, he was introduced to the four young men who were all the boarders the summer season had left in the house. two were retail dry-goods clerks, another filled some function in a butter and cheese store, and the fourth was the ticket-seller at one of the middle-grade theatres. they all looked at peter's clothes before looking at his face, and though the greetings were civil enough, peter's ready-made travelling suit, bought in his native town, and his quiet cravat, as well as his lack of jewelry, were proof positive to them that he did not merit any great consideration. it was very evident that the ticket-seller, not merely from his natural self-assertion but even more because of his enviable acquaintance with certain actresses and his occasional privileges in the way of free passes, was the acknowledged autocrat of the table. under his guidance the conversation quickly turned to theatrical and "show" talk. much of it was vulgar, and all of it was dull. it was made the worse by the fact that they all tried to show, off a little before the newcomer, to prove their superiority and extreme knowingness to him. to make peter the more conscious of this, they asked him various questions. "do you like--?" a popular soubrette of the day. "what, never seen her? where on earth have you been living?" "oh? well, she's got too good legs to waste herself on such a little place." they would like to have asked him questions about himself, but feared to seem to lower themselves from their fancied superiority, by showing interest in peter. one indeed did ask him what business he was in. "i haven't got to work yet," answered peter "looking for a place" was the mental comment of all, for they could not conceive of any one entitled to practise law not airing his advantage. so they went on patronizing peter, and glorifying themselves. when time had developed the facts that he was a lawyer, a college graduate, and a man who seemed to have plenty of money (from the standpoint of dry-goods clerks) their respect for him considerably increased. he could not, however, overcome his instinctive dislike to them. after the manly high-minded, cultivated harvard classmates, every moment of their society was only endurable, and he neither went to their rooms nor asked them to his. peter had nothing of the snob in him, but he found reading or writing, or a tramp about the city, much the pleasanter way of passing his evenings. the morning after this first day in new york, peter called on his friend, the civil engineer, to consult him about an office; for watts had been rather hazy in regard to where he might best locate that. mr. converse shook his head when peter outlined his plan. "do you know any new york people," he asked, "who will be likely to give you cases?" "no," said peter. "then it's absolutely foolish of you to begin that way," said mr. converse. "get into a lawyer's office, and make friends first before you think of starting by yourself. you'll otherwise never get a client." peter shook his head. "i've thought it out," he added, as if that settled it. mr. converse looked at him, and, really liking the fellow, was about to explain the real facts to him, when a client came in. so he only said, "if that's so, go ahead. locate on broadway, anywhere between the battery and canal street." later in the day, when he had time, he shook his head, and said, "poor devil! like all the rest." anywhere between the battery and canal street represented a fairly large range of territory, but peter went at the matter directly, and for the next three days passed his time climbing stairs, and inspecting rooms and dark cells. at the end of that time he took a moderate-sized office, far back in a building near worth street. another day saw it fitted with a desk, two chairs (for peter as yet dreamed only of single clients) and a shelf containing the few law books that were the monuments of his harvard law course, and his summer reading. on the following monday, when peter faced his office door he felt a glow of satisfaction at seeing in very black letters on the very newly scrubbed glass the sign of: peter stirling attorney and counsellor-at-law. he had come to his office early, not merely because at his boarding place they breakfasted betimes, but because he believed that early hours were one way of winning success. he was a little puzzled what to do with himself. he sat down at his desk and thrummed it for a minute. then he rose, and spread his books more along the shelf, so as to leave little spaces between them, thinking that he could make them look more imposing thereby. after that he took down a book--somebody "on torts,"--and dug into it. in the harvard course, he had had two hours a week of this book, but peter worked over it for nearly three hours. then he took paper, and in a very clear, beautifully neat hand, made an abstract of what he had read. then he compared his abstract with the book. returning the book to the shelf, very much pleased with the accuracy of his memory, he looked at his watch. it was but half-past eleven. peter sat down at his desk. "would all the days go like this?" he asked himself. he had got through the first week by his room and office-seeking and furnishing. but now? he could not read law for more than four hours a day, and get anything from it. what was to be done with the rest of the time? what could he do to keep himself from thinking of--from thinking? he looked out of his one window, over the dreary stretch of roofs and the drearier light shafts spoken of flatteringly as yards. he compressed his lips, and resorted once more to his book. but he found his mind wandering, and realized that he had done all he was equal to on a hot july morning. again he looked out over the roofs. then he rose and stood in the middle at his room, thinking. he looked at his watch again, to make sure that he was right. then he opened his door and glanced about the hall. it was one blank, except for the doors. he went down the two flights of stairs to the street. even that had the deserted look of summer. he turned and went back to his room. sitting down once more at his desk, and opening somebody "on torts" again, he took up his pen and began to copy the pages literally. he wrote steadily for a time, then with pauses. finally, the hand ceased to follow the lines, and became straggly. then he ceased to write. the words blurred, the paper faded from view, and all peter saw was a pair of slate-colored eyes. he laid his head down on the blotter, and the erect, firm figure relaxed. there is no more terrible ordeal of courage than passive waiting. most of us can be brave with something to do, but to be brave for months, for years, with nothing to be done and without hope of the future! so it was in peter's case. it was waiting--waiting--for what? if clients came, if fame came, if every form of success came,--for what? there is nothing in loneliness to equal the loneliness of a big city. about him, so crowded and compressed together as to risk life and health, were a million people. yet not a soul of that million knew that peter sat at his desk, with his head on his blotter, immovable, from noon one day till daylight of the next. chapter ix. happiness by proxy. the window of peter's office faced east, and the rays of the morning sun shining dazzlingly in his eyes forced him back to a consciousness of things mundane. he rose, and went downstairs, to find the night watch-man just opening the building. fortunately he had already met the man, so that he was not suspected as an intruder; and giving him a pleasant "good-morning," peter passed into the street. it was a good morning indeed, with all that freshness and coolness which even a great city cannot take from a summer dawn. for some reason peter felt more encouraged. perhaps it was the consciousness of having beaten his loneliness and misery by mere physical endurance. perhaps it was only the natural spring of twenty years. at all events, he felt dimly, that miserable and unhopeful as the future looked, he was not conquered yet; that he was going to fight on, come what might. he turned to the river front, and after bargaining with a passing cart for a pint of what the poorer people of the city buy as milk, he turned north, and quickening his pace, walked till he had left the city proper and had reached the new avenue or "drive," which, by the liberality of mr. tweed with other people's money, was then just approaching completion. after walking the length of it, he turned back to his boarding-place, and after a plunge, felt as if he could face and fight the future to any extent. as a result of this he was for the first time late at breakfast the presider over the box-office had ascertained that peter had spent the night out, and had concluded he would have a gird or two at him. he failed, however, to carry out his intention. it was not the first time that both he and his companions had decided to "roast" peter, absent, but had done other wise with peter, present. he had also decided to say to peter, "who's your dandy letter-writer?" but he also failed to do that. this last intention referred to a letter that lay at peters place, and which was examined by each of the four in turn. that letter had an air about it. it was written on linen paper of a grade which, if now common enough, was not so common at that time. then it was postmarked from one of the most, fashionable summer resorts of the country. finally, it was sealed with wax, then very unusual, and the wax bore the impression of a crest. they were all rather disappointed when peter put that letter in his pocket, without opening it. peter read the letter at his office that morning. it was as follows: grey-court, july st. dear. old man-- like a fool i overslept myself on the morning you left, so did not get my talk with you. you know i never get up early, and never can, so you have only your refusal to let me in that night to blame for our not having a last chat. if i had had the news to tell you that i now have, i should not have let you keep me out, even if you had forced me to break my way in. chum, the nicest girl in the world has told me that she loves me, and we are both as happy as happy can be, i know you will not be in a moment's doubt as to who she is, i have only run down here to break it to my family, and shall go back to the shrubberies early next week--to talk to mr. pierce, you understand! my governor has decided that a couple of years' travel will keep me out of mischief as well as anything else he can devise, and as the prospect is not unpleasant, i am not going to let my new plans interfere with it, merely making my journeyings a _solitude à deux_, instead of solus. so we shall be married in september, at the shrubberies, and sail for europe almost immediately. now, i want you to stand by me in this, as you have in other things, and help me through. i want you, in short, to be my "best man" as you have been my best friend. "best man," i should inform you, is an english wedding institution, which our swell people have suddenly discovered is a necessity to make a marriage ceremony legal. he doesn't do much. holding his principal's hat, i believe, is the most serious duty that falls to him, though perhaps not stepping on the bridal dresses is more difficult. my mamma wants me to drive with her, so this must be continued in our next. aff., w. peter did not read law that morning. but after sitting in his chair for a couple of hours, looking at the opposite wall, and seeing something quite different, he took his pen, and without pause, or change of face, wrote two letters, as follows: dear watts: you hardly surprised me by your letter. i had suspected, both from your frequent visits to the shrubberies, and from a way in which you occasionally spoke of miss pierce, that you loved her. after seeing her, i felt that it was not possible you did not. so i was quite prepared for your news. you have indeed been fortunate in winning such a girl. that i wish you every joy and happiness i need not say. i think you could have found some other of the fellows better suited to stand with you, but if you think otherwise, i shall not fail you. you will have to tell me about details, clothes, etc. perhaps you can suggest a gift that will do? i remember miss pierce saying she was very fond of pearls. would it be right to give something of that kind? faithfully yours, peter. dear miss pierce: a letter from watts this morning tells me of his good fortune. fearing lest my blindness may perhaps still give you pain, i write to say that your happiness is the most earnest wish of my life, and nothing which increases it can be other than good news to me. if i can ever serve you in any way, you will be doing me a great favor by telling me how. please give my regards to mr. and mrs. pierce, and believe me, yours ever sincerely, peter stirling. after these letters were written, peter studied the wall again for a time. studied it till long after the hour when he should have lunched. the wall had three cracks in it which approximated to an outline of italy, but though peter gazed at this particular wall a good many hours in the next few weeks, he did not discover this interesting fact till long after this time of wall-gazing. in the early morning and after dinner, in spite of the summer heat, he took long walks. during the day he sat in his office doing nothing, with the exception of an occasional letter to his mother, and one or two to watts in respect to the coming wedding. two visits to the tailor's, and another to tiffany's, which resulted in a pearl pin rather out of proportion to his purse, were almost the sole variations of this routine. it was really a relief to this terrible inactivity, when he found himself actually at the shrubberies, the afternoon before the wedding. peter was rather surprised at the ease with which he went through the next twenty-four hours. it is true that the house was too full, and each person too busy, to trouble the silent groomsman with attention, so he might have done pretty much what he wished, without being noticed. he arrived late, thus having no chance for greetings till after a hurried dressing for dinner, when they were made in the presence of the whole party, who had waited his coming to go to the meal. he went through the ordeal well, even that with miss pierce, actually showing less embarrassment than she did. what was more astonishing, he calmly offered his arm to the bridesmaid who fell to his lot, and, after seating her, chatted without thinking that he was talking. indeed, he hardly heeded what he did say, but spoke mechanically, as a kind of refuge from thought and feeling. "i didn't find him a bit so," the girl said to miss pierce, later in the evening, with an indefiniteness which, if not merely feminine, must presuppose a previous conversation. "he isn't exactly talkative, but he is perfectly easy to get on with. i tried him on new york, and found he had gone into a good many odd places and can tell about them. he describes things very well, so that one sees them." "it must be your tact, then, miss leroy," said mrs. pierce, "for we could get nothing out of him before." "no? i had nothing to do with it, and, between ourselves, i think he disapproved of me. if helen hadn't told me about him, i should have been very cool to him, his manner was so objectionable. he clearly talked to me because he felt it a duty, and not a pleasure." "that's only that unfortunate manner of his," said helen. "i really think at heart he's dreadfully afraid of us. at least that's what watts says. but he only behaves as if--as if--well, you know what i mean, alice!" "exactly," said alice. "you can't describe it. he's so cool, and stolid, and silent, that you feel shoddy and cheap, and any simple little remark doesn't seem enough to say. you try to talk up to him, and yet feel small all the time." "not at all," said helen. "you talk down to him, as if he were--were--your old grandfather, or some one else you admired, but thought very dull and old-fashioned." "but the worst is the way he looks at you. so gravely, even when you try to joke. now i really think i'm passably pretty, but mr. stirling said as plainly as could be: 'i look at you occasionally because that's the proper thing to do, when one talks, but i much prefer looking at that picture over your head.' i don't believe he noticed how my hair was dressed, or the color of my eyes. such men are absolutely maddening. when they've finished their smoke, i'm going to make him notice me." but miss leroy failed in her plan, try as she would. peter did not notice girls any more. after worrying in his school and college days, over what women thought of him and how they treated him, he had suddenly ceased to trouble himself about them. it was as if a man, after long striving for something, had suddenly discovered that he did not wish it--that to him women's opinions had become worthless. perhaps in this case it was only the fox and the grapes over again. at all events, from this time on peter cared little what women did. courteous he tried to be, for he understood this to be a duty. but that was all. they might laugh at him, snub him, avoid him. he cared not. he had struck women out of his plan of life. and this disregard, as we have already suggested, was sure to produce a strange change, not merely in peter, but in women's view and treatment of him. peter trying to please them, by dull, ordinary platitudes, was one thing. peter avoiding them and talking to them when needs must, with that distant, uninterested look and voice, was quite another. the next morning, peter, after finding what a fifth wheel in a coach all men are at weddings, finally stood up with his friend. he had not been asked to stay on for another night, as had most of the bridal party, so he slipped away as soon as his duty was done, and took a train that put him into new york that evening. a week later he said good-bye to the young couple, on the deck of a steamship. "don't forget us, peter," shouted watts, after the fasts were cast off and the steamer was slowly moving into mid-stream. peter waved his hat, and turning, walked off the pier. "could he forget them?" was the question he asked himself. chapter x waiting. "my friend," said an old and experienced philosopher to a young man, who with all the fire and impatience of his years wished to conquer the world quickly, "youth has many things to learn, but one of the most important is never to let another man beat you at waiting." peter went back to his desk, and waited. he gave up looking at the wall of his office, and took to somebody "on torts" again. when that was finished he went through the other law books of his collection. those done, he began to buy others, and studied them with great thoroughness and persistence. in one of his many walks, he stumbled upon the apprentices' library. going in, he inquired about its privileges, and became a regular borrower of books. peter had always been a reader, but now he gave from three or four hours a day to books, aside from his law study. although he was slow, the number of volumes, he not merely read, but really mastered was marvellous. books which he liked, without much regard to their popular reputation, he at once bought; for his simple life left him the ability to indulge himself in most respects within moderation. he was particularly careful to read a classic occasionally to keep up his greek and latin, and for the same reason he read french and german books aloud to himself. before the year was out, he was a recognized quantity in certain book-stores, and was privileged to browse at will both among old and new books without interference or suggestion from the "stock" clerks. "there isn't any good trying to sell him anything," remarked one. "he makes up his mind for himself." his reading was broadened out from the classic and belles-lettres grooves that were still almost a cult with the college graduate, by another recreation now become habitual with him. in his long tramps about the city, to vary the monotony, he would sometimes stop and chat with people--with a policeman, a fruit-vender, a longshoreman or a truckster. it mattered little who it was. then he often entered manufactories and "yards" and asked if he could go through them, studying the methods, and talking to the overseer or workers about the trade. when he occasionally encountered some one who told him "your kind ain't got no business here" he usually found the statement "my father was a mill-overseer" a way to break down the barrier. he had to use it seldom, for he dressed plainly and met the men in a way which seldom failed to make them feel that he was one of them. after such inspection and chat, he would get books from the library, and read up about the business or trade, finding that in this way he could enjoy works otherwise too technical, and really obtain a very good knowledge of many subjects. just how interesting he found such books as "our fire-laddies," which he read from cover to cover, after an inspection of, and chat with, the men of the nearest fire-engine station; or latham's "the sewage difficulty," which the piping of uptown new york induced him to read; and others of diverse types is questionable. probably it was really due to his isolation, but it was much healthier than gazing at blank walls. when the courts opened, peter kept track of the calendars, and whenever a case or argument promised to be interesting, or to call out the great lights of the profession, he attended and listened to them. he tried to write out the arguments used, from notes, and finally this practice induced him to give two evenings a week during the winter mastering shorthand. it was really only a mental discipline, for any case of importance was obtainable in print almost as soon as argued, but peter was trying to put a pair of slate-colored eyes out of his thoughts, and employed this as one of the means. when winter came, and his long walks became less possible, he turned to other things. more from necessity than choice, he visited the art and other exhibitions as they occurred, he went to concerts, and to plays, all with due regard to his means, and for this reason the latter were the most seldom indulged in. art and music did not come easy to him, but he read up on both, not merely in standard books, but in the reviews of the daily press, and just because there was so much in both that he failed to grasp, he studied the more carefully and patiently. one trait of his new england training remained to him. he had brought a letter from his own congregational church in his native town, to one of the large churches of the same sect in new york, and when admitted, hired a sitting and became a regular attendant at both morning and evening service. in time this produced a call from his new pastor. it was the first new friend he had gained in new york. "he seems a quiet, well-informed fellow," was the clergyman's comment; "i shall make a point of seeing something of him." but he was pastor of a very large and rich congregation, and was a hard-worked and hard-entertained man, so his intention was not realized. peter spent christmastide with his mother, who worried not a little over his loss of flesh. "you have been overworking," she said anxiously. "why mother, i haven't had a client yet," laughed peter. "then you've worried over not getting on," said his mother, knowing perfectly well that it was nothing of the sort. she had hoped that peter would be satisfied with his six months' trial, but did not mention her wish. she marvelled to herself that new york had not yet discovered his greatness. when peter returned to the city, he made a change in his living arrangements. his boarding-place had filled up with the approach of winter, but with the class of men he already knew too well. even though he met them only at meals, their atmosphere was intolerable to him. when a room next his office fell vacant, and went begging at a very cheap price, he decided to use it as a bedroom. so he moved his few belongings on his return from his visit to his mother's. although he had not been particularly friendly to the other boarders, nor made himself obtrusive in the least, not one of them failed to speak of his leaving. two or three affected to be pleased, but "butter-and-cheese" said he "was a first-rate chap," and this seemed to gain the assent of the table generally. "i'm dreadfully sorry to lose him," his landlady informed her other boarders, availing herself, perhaps, of the chance to deliver a side hit at some of them. "he never has complained once, since he came here, and he kept his room as neat as if he had to take care of it himself." "well," said the box-office oracle, "i guess he's o.k., if he is a bit stiff; and a fellow who's best man to a big new york swell, and gets his name in all the papers, doesn't belong in a seven-dollar, hash-seven-days-a-week, bleecker street boarding-house." peter fitted his room up simply, the sole indulgence (if properly so called) being a bath, which is not a usual fitting of a new york business office, consciences not yet being tubbable. he had made his mother show him how to make coffee, and he adopted the continental system of meals, having rolls and butter sent in, and making a french breakfast in his own rooms. then he lunched regularly not far from his office, and dined wherever his afternoon walk, or evening plans carried him. he found that he saved no money by the change, but he saved his feelings, and was far freer to come and go as he chose. he did not hear from the honeymoon party. watts had promised to write to him and send his address "as soon as we decide whether we pass the winter in italy or on the nile." but no letter came. peter called on the pierces, only to find them out, and as no notice was taken of his pasteboard, he drew his own inference, and did not repeat the visit. such was the first year of peter's new york life. he studied, he read, he walked, and most of all, he waited. but no client came, and he seemed no nearer one than the day he had first seen his own name on his office door. "how much longer will i have to wait? how long will my patience hold out?" these were the questions he asked himself, when for a moment he allowed himself to lose courage. then he would take to a bit of wall-gazing, while dreaming of a pair of slate-colored eyes. chapter xi. new friends. mr. converse had evidently thought that the only way for peter to get on was to make friends. but in this first year peter did not made a single one that could be really called such. his second summer broadened his acquaintance materially, though in a direction which promised him little law practice. when the warm weather again closed the courts and galleries, and brought an end to the concerts and theatres, peter found time harder to kill, the more, because he had pretty well explored the city. still he walked much to help pass the time, and to get outside of his rooms into the air. for the same reason he often carried his book, after the heat of the day was over, to one of the parks, and did his reading there. not far from his office, eastwardly, where two streets met at an angle, was a small open space too limited to be called a square, even if its shape had not been a triangle. here, under the shade of two very sickly trees, surrounded by tall warehouses, were a couple of benches. peter sat here many evenings smoking his pipe. though these few square feet made perhaps the largest "open" within half a mile of his office, the angle was confined and dreary. hence it is obvious there must have been some attraction to peter, since he was such a walker, to make him prefer spending his time there rather than in the parks not far distant the attraction was the children. only a few hundred feet away was one of the most densely crowded tenement districts of new york. it had no right to be there, for the land was wanted for business purposes, but the hollow on which it was built had been a swamp in the old days, and the soft land, and perhaps the unhealthiness, had prevented the erection of great warehouses and stores, which almost surrounded it. so it had been left to the storage of human souls instead of merchandise, for valuable goods need careful housing, while any place serves to pack humanity. it was not a nice district to go through, for there was a sense of heat and dirt, and smell, and crowd, and toil and sorrow throughout. it was probably no nicer to live in, and nothing proved it better than the overflow of the children therefrom into the little, hot, paved, airless angle. here they could be found from five in the morning till twelve at night. here, with guards set, to give notice of the approach of the children's joy-destroying siva--otherwise the policeman--they played ball. here "cat" and "one old cat" render bearable many a wilting hour for the little urchins. here "sally in our alley" and "skip-rope" made the little girls forget that the temperature was far above blood-heat. here of an evening, peter smoked and watched them. at first he was an object of suspicion, and the sport visibly ceased when he put in an appearance. but he simply sat on one of the benches and puffed his pipe, and after a few evenings they lost all fear of him, and went on as if he were not there. in time, an intercourse sprang up between them. one evening peter appeared with a stick of wood, and as he smoked, he whittled at it with a _real_ jack-knife! he was scrutinized by the keen-eyed youngsters with interest at once, and before he had whittled long, he had fifty children sitting in the shape of a semicircle on the stone pavement, watching his doings with almost breathless interest. when the result of his work actually developed into a "cat" of marvellous form and finish, a sigh of intense joy passed through the boy part of his audience. when the "cat" was passed over to their mercies, words could not be found to express their emotions. another evening, the old clothes-line that served for a jump-rope, after having bravely rubbed against the pavement many thousand times in its endeavor to lighten the joyless life of the little pack, finally succumbed, worn through the centre and quite beyond hope of further knotting. then peter rose, and going to one of the little shops that supplied the district, soon returned with a _real_ jump-rope, with _wooden handles!_ so from time to time, _real_ tops, _real_ dolls, _real_ marbles and various other _real_, if cheap, things, hitherto only enjoyed in dreams, or at most through home-made attempts, found their way into the angle, and were distributed among the little imps. they could not resist such subtle bribery, and soon peter was on as familiar and friendly a footing as he could wish. he came to know each by name, and was made the umpire in all their disputes and the confidant in all their troubles. they were a dirty, noisy, lawless, and godless little community, but they were interesting to watch, and the lonely fellow grew to like them much, for with all their premature sharpness, they were really natural, and responded warmly to his friendly overtures. after a time, peter tried to help them a little more than by mere small gifts. a cheap box of carpenter's tools was bought, and under his superintendence, evenings were spent in the angle, in making various articles. a small wheel barrow, a knife-and-fork basket, a clock-bracket and other easy things were made, one at a time. all boys, and indeed some girls, were allowed to help. one would saw off the end of a plank; another would rule a pencil line; the next would plane the plank down to that line; the next would bore the holes in it; the next would screw it into position; the next would sandpaper it the work went very slowly, but every one who would, had his share in it, while the rest sat and watched. when the article was completed, lots were drawn for it, and happy was the fortunate one who drew the magnificent prize in life's lottery! occasionally too, peter brought a book with him, and read it aloud to them. he was rather surprised to find that they did not take to sunday-school stories or fairy tales. wild adventures in foreign lands were the most effective; and together they explored the heart of africa, climbed the swiss mountains, fought the western indians, and attempted to discover the north pole. they had a curious liking for torture, blood-letting, and death. nor were they without discrimination. "i guess that fellow is only working his jaw," was one little chap's criticism at a certain point of the narrative of a well-known african explorer, rather famous for his success in advertising himself. again, "that's bully," was the comment uttered by another, when peter, rather than refuse their request to read aloud, had been compelled to choose something in macaulay's essays, and had read the description of the black hole of calcutta, "say, mister," said another, "i don't believe that fellow wasn't there, for he never could a told it like that, if he wasn't." as soon as his influence was secure, peter began to affect them in other ways. every fight, every squabble, was investigated, and the blame put where it belonged. then a mandate went forth that profanity was to cease: and, though contrary to every instinct and habit, cease it did after a time, except for an occasional unconscious slip. "sporadic swearing," peter called it, and explained what it meant to the children, and why he forgave that, while punishing the intentional swearer with exclusion from his favor. so, too, the girls were told that to "poke" tongues at each other, and make faces, was but another way of swearing; "for they all mean that there is hate in your hearts, and it is that which is wrong, and not the mere words or faces." he ran the risk of being laughed at, but they didn't laugh, for something in his way of talking to them, even when verging on what they called "goody-goody," inspired them with respect. before many weeks of this intercourse, peter could not stroll east from his office without being greeted with yells of recognition. the elders, too, gave him "good-evening" pleasantly and smiled genially. the children had naturally told their parents about him of his wonderful presents, and great skill with knife and string. "he can whittle anything you ask!" "he knows how to make things you want!" "he can tie a knot sixteen different kinds!" "he can fold a newspaper into soldiers' and firemen's caps!" "he's friends with the policeman!" such laudations, and a hundred more, the children sang of him to their elders. "oh," cried one little four-year-old girl, voicing the unanimous feeling of the children, "mister peter is just shplendid." so the elders nodded and smiled when they met him, and he was pretty well known to several hundred people whom he knew not. but another year passed, and still no client came. chapter xii. his first client. peter sat in his office, one hot july day, two years after his arrival, writing to his mother. he had but just returned to new york, after a visit to her, which had left him rather discouraged, because, for the first time, she had pleaded with him to abandon his attempt and return to his native town. he had only replied that he was not yet prepared to acknowledge himself beaten; but the request and his mother's disappointment had worried him. while he wrote came a knock at the door, and, in response to his "come in," a plain-looking laborer entered and stood awkwardly before him. "what can i do for you?" asked peter, seeing that he must assist the man to state his business. "if you please, sir," said the man, humbly, "it's missy. and i hope you'll pardon me for troubling you." "certainly," said peter. "what about missy?" "she's--the doctor says she's dying," said the man, adding, with a slight suggestion of importance, blended with the evident grief he felt: "sally, and bridget milligan are dead already." "and what can i do?" said peter, sympathetically, if very much at sea. "missy wants to see you before she goes. it's only a child's wish, sir, and you needn't trouble about it. but i had to promise her i'd come and ask you. i hope it's no offence?" "no." peter rose, and, passing to the next room, took his hat, and the two went into the street together. "what is the trouble?" asked peter, as they walked. "we don't know, sir. they were all took yesterday, and two are dead already." the man wiped the tears from his eyes with his shirtsleeve, smearing the red brick dust with which it was powdered, over his face. "you've had a doctor?" "not till this morning. we didn't think it was bad at first." "what is your name?" "blackett, sir--jim blackett." peter began to see daylight. he remembered both a sally and matilda blackett.--that was probably "missy." a walk of six blocks transferred them to the centre of the tenement district. two flights of stairs brought them to the blackett's rooms. on the table of the first, which was evidently used both as a kitchen and sitting-room, already lay a coffin containing a seven-year-old girl. candles burned at the four corners, adding to the bad air and heat. in the room beyond, in bed, with a tired-looking woman tending her, lay a child of five. wan and pale as well could be, with perspiration standing in great drops on the poor little hot forehead, the hand of death, as it so often does, had put something into the face never there before. "oh, mister peter," the child said, on catching sight of him, "i said you'd come." peter took his handkerchief and wiped the little head. then he took a newspaper, lying on a chair, twisted it into a rude fan, and began fanning the child as he sat on the bed. "what did you want me for?" he asked. "won't you tell me the story you read from the book? the one about the little girl who went to the country, and was given a live dove and real flowers." peter began telling the story as well as he could remember it, but it was never finished. for while he talked another little girl went to the country, a far country, from which there is no return--and a very ordinary little story ended abruptly. the father and mother took the death very calmly. peter asked them a few questions, and found that there were three other children, the eldest of whom was an errand boy, and therefore away. the others, twin babies, had been cared for by a woman on the next floor. he asked about money, and found that they had not enough to pay the whole expenses of the double funeral. "but the undertaker says he'll do it handsome, and will let the part i haven't money for, run, me paying it off in weekly payments," the man explained, when peter expressed some surprise at the evident needless expense they were entailing on themselves. while he talked, the doctor came in. "i knew there was no chance," he said, when told of the death. "and you remember i said so," he added, appealing to the parents. "yes, that's what he said," responded the father. "well," said the doctor, speaking in a brisk, lively way peculiar to him, "i've found what the matter was." "no?" said the mother, becoming interested at once. "it was the milk," the doctor continued. "i thought there was something wrong with it, the moment i smelt it, but i took some home to make sure." he pulled a paper out of his pocket. "that's the test, and dr. plumb, who has two cases next door, found it was just the same there." the blacketts gazed at the written analysis, with wonder, not understanding a word of it. peter looked too, when they had satisfied their curiosity. as he read it, a curious expression came into his face. a look not unlike that which his face had worn on the deck of the "sunrise." it could hardly be called a change of expression, but rather a strengthening and deepening of his ordinary look. "that was in the milk drunk by the children?" he asked, placing his finger on a particular line. "yes," replied the doctor. "the milk was bad to start with, and was drugged to conceal the fact. these carbonates sometimes work very unevenly, and i presume this particular can of milk got more than its share of the doctoring. "there are almost no glycerides," remarked peter, wishing to hold the doctor till he should have had time to think. "no," said the doctor. "it was skim milk." "you will report it to the health board?" asked peter. "when i'm up there," said the doctor. "not that it will do any good. but the law requires it" "won't they investigate?" "they'll investigate too much. the trouble with them is, they investigate, but don't prosecute." "thank you," said peter. he shook hands with the parents, and went upstairs to the fourth floor. the crape on a door guided him to where bridget milligan lay. here preparations had gone farther. not merely were the candles burning, but four bottles, with the corks partly drawn, were on the cold cooking stove, while a wooden pail filled with beer, reposed in the embrace of a wash-tub, filled otherwise with ice. peter asked a few questions. there was only an elder brother and sister. patrick worked as a porter. ellen rolled cigars. they had a little money laid up. enough to pay for the funeral. "mr. moriarty gave us the whisky and beer at half price," the girl explained incidentally. "thank you, sir. we don't need anything." peter rose to go. "bridget was often speaking of you to us. and i thank you for what you did for her." peter went down, and called next door, to see dr. plumb's patients. these were in a fair way for recovery. "they didn't get any of the milk till last night," the gray-haired, rather sad-looking doctor told him, "and i got at them early this morning. then i suspected the milk at once, and treated them accordingly. i've been forty years doing this sort of thing, and it's generally the milk. dr. sawyer, next door, is a new man, and doesn't get hold quite as quick. but he knows more of the science of the thing, and can make a good analysis." "you think they have a chance?" "if this heat will let up a bit" said the doctor, mopping his forehead. "it's ninety-eight in here; that's enough to kill a sound child." "could they be moved?" "to-morrow, perhaps." "mrs. dooley, could you take your children away to the country to-morrow, if i find a place for you?" "it's very little money i have, sir." "it won't cost you anything. can you leave your family?" "there's only moike. and he'll do very well by himself," he was told. "then if the children can go, be ready at : to-morrow, and you shall all go up for a couple of weeks to my mother's in massachusetts. they'll have plenty of good food there," he explained to the doctor, "grass and flowers close to the house and woods not far away." "that will fix them," said the doctor. "about this milk. won't the health board punish the sellers?" peter asked. "probably not," he was told "it's difficult to get them to do anything, and at this season so many of them are on vacations, it is doubly hard to make them stir." peter went to the nearest telegraph, and sent a dispatch to his mother. then he went back to his office, and sitting down, began to study his wall. but he was not thinking of a pair of slate-colored eyes. he was thinking of his first case. he had found a client. chapter xiii. the case. peter went to work the next morning at an hour which most of us, if we are indiscreet enough to wake, prefer to use as the preface to a further two to four hours' nap. he had spent his evening in a freshening of his knowledge in certain municipal laws, and other details which he thought he might need, and as early as five o clock he was at work in the tenement district, asking questions and taking notes. the inquiry took little skill the milk had come from the cart of a certain company, which passed daily through the locality, not to supply orders, but to peddle milk to whoever cared to buy. peter had the cart pointed out that morning, but, beyond making a note of the exact name of the company, he paid no attention to it. he was aiming at bigger game than a milk cart or its driver. his work was interrupted only by his taking mrs. dooley and the two children to the train. that done, peter walked northwardly and westwardly, till he had nearly reached the river front. it took some little inquiry, but after a while he stumbled on a small shanty which had a sign: national milk company. office. the place, however, was closed and no one around seemed connected with it, though a number of milk carts were standing about. close to these was a long line of sheds, which in turn backed up against a great brewery. a couple of men lounged at the door of the sheds. peter walked up to them, and asked if they could tell him where he could find any one connected with the milk company. "the boss is off for lunch," said one. "i can take an order, if that's what you want." peter said it was not an order, and began chatting with the men. before he had started to question them, a third man, from inside the sheds, joined the group at the door. "that cow's dead," he remarked as he came up. "is it?" said the one called bill. both rose, and went into the shed. peter started to go with them. "you can't come in," said the new-comer. but peter passed in, without paying the least attention to him. "come back," called the man, following peter. peter turned to him: "you are one of the employees of the national milk company?" he asked. "yes," said the man, "and we have orders--" peter usually let a little pause occur after a remark to him, but in this case he spoke before the man completed his speech. he spoke, too, with an air of decision and command that quieted the man. "go back to your work," he said, "and don't order me round. i know what i'm about." then he walked after the other two men as rapidly as the dimness permitted. the employee scratched his head, and then followed. dim as the light was, peter could discern that he was passing between two rows of cows, with not more than space enough for men to pass each other between the rows. it was filthy, and very warm, and there was a peculiar smell in the air which peter did not associate with a cow stable. it was a kind of vapor which brought some suggestion to his mind, yet one he could not identify. presently he came upon the two men. one had lighted a lantern and was examining a cow that lay on the ground. that it was dead was plain. but what most interested peter, although he felt a shudder of horror at the sight, were the rotted tail and two great sores on the flank that lay uppermost. "that's a bad-looking cow," he said. "ain't it?" replied the one with the lantern. "but you can't help their havin' them, if you feed them on mash." "hold your tongue, bill," said the man who had followed peter. "take some of your own advice," said peter, turning quickly, and speaking in a voice that made the man step back. a terrible feeling was welling up in peter's heart. he thought of the poor little fever-stricken children. he saw the poor fever-stricken cow. he would like to--to--. he dropped the arm he had unconsciously raised. "give me that lantern," he demanded. the man hesitated and looked at the others. "give me that lantern," said peter, speaking low, but his voice ringing very clear. the lantern was passed to him, and taking it, he walked along the line of cows. he saw several with sores more or less developed. one or two he saw in the advanced stages of the disease, where the tail had begun to rot away. the other men followed him on his tour of inspection, and whispered together nervously. it did not take peter long to examine all he wanted to see. handing back the lantern at the door, he said: "give me your names." the men looked nonplussed, and shifted their weights uneasily from leg to leg. "you," said peter, looking at the man who had interfered with him. "wot do yer want with it?" he was asked. "that's my business. what's your name?" "john tingley." "where do you live?" " west st street." peter obtained and wrote down the names and addresses of the trio. he then went to the "office" of the company, which was now opened. "is this an incorporated company?" he asked of the man tilted back in a chair. "no," said the man, adding two chair legs to terra firma, and looking at peter suspiciously. "who owns it?" peter queried. "i'm the boss." "that isn't what i asked." "that's what i answered." "and your name is?" "james coldman." "do you intend to answer my question?" "not till i know your business." "i'm here to find out against whom to get warrants for a criminal prosecution." "for what?" "the warrant will say." the man squirmed in his chair. "will you give me till to-morrow?" "no. the warrant is to be issued to-day. decide at once, whether you or your principal, shall be the man to whom it shall be served." "i guess you'd better make it against me," said the man. "very well," said peter. "of course you know your employer will be run down, and as i'm not after the rest of you, you will only get him a few days safety at the price of a term in prison." "well, i've got to risk it," said the man. peter turned and walked away. he went down town to the blacketts. "i want you to carry the matter to the courts," he told the father. "these men deserve punishment, and if you'll let me go on with it, it shan't cost you anything; and by bringing a civil suit as well, you'll probably get some money out of it." blackett gave his assent. so too did patrick milligan, and "moike" dooley. they had won fame already by the deaths and wakes, but a "coort case" promised to give them prestige far beyond what even these distinctions conferred. so the three walked away proudly with peter, and warrants were sworn to and issued against the "boss" as principal, and the driver and the three others as witnesses, made returnable on the following morning. on many a doorstep of the district, that night, nothing else was talked of, and the trio were the most envied men in the neighborhood. even mrs. blackett and ellen milligan forgot their grief, and held a joint _soirée_ on their front stoop. "shure, it's mighty hard for mrs. dooley, that she's away!" said one. "she'll be feeling bad when she knows what she's missed." the next morning, peter, the two doctors, the blacketts, the milligans, dooley, the milk quintet, and as many inhabitants of the "district" as could crush their way in, were in court by nine o'clock. the plaintiffs and their friends were rather disappointed at the quietness of the proceedings. the examinations were purely formal except in one instance, when peter asked for the "name or names of the owner or owners" of the national milk company. here the defendant's attorney, a shrewd criminal lawyer, interfered, and there was a sharp passage at arms, in which an attempt was made to anger peter. but he kept his head, and in the end carried his point. the owner turned out to be the proprietor of the brewery, as peter had surmised, who thus utilized the mash from his vats in feeding cattle. but on peter's asking for an additional warrant against him, the defendant's lawyer succeeded in proving, if the statement of the overseer proved it, that the brewer was quite ignorant that the milk sold in the "district" was what had been unsalable the day before to better customers, and that the skimming and doctoring of it was unknown to him. so an attempt to punish the rich man as a criminal was futile. he could afford to pay for straw men. "arrah!" said dooley to peter as they passed out of the court, "oi think ye moight have given them a bit av yer moind." "wait till the trial," said peter. "we mustn't use up our powder on the skirmish line." so the word was passed through the district that "theer'd be fun at the rale trial," and it was awaited with intense interest by five thousand people. chapter xiv. new york justice. peter saw the district attorney the next morning for a few moments, and handed over to him certain memoranda of details that had not appeared in the committing court's record. "it shall go before the grand jury day after to-morrow," that official told him, without much apparent interest in the matter. "how soon can it be tried, if they find a true bill? asked peter. "can't say," replied the official. "i merely wished to know," said peter, "because three of the witnesses are away, and i want to have them back in time." "probably a couple of weeks," yawned the man, and peter, taking the hint, departed. the rest of the morning was spent in drawing up the papers in three civil suits against the rich brewer. peter filed them as soon as completed, and took the necessary steps for their prompt service. these produced an almost immediate result, in the shape of a call the next morning from the same lawyer who had defended the milkmen in the preliminary examination. peter, as he returned from his midday meal, met the lawyer on the stairs. "ah, mr. stirling. good-morning," said the man, whose name was dummer. "i've just left your office, finding it closed." "come in," said peter. the lawyer glanced around the plain room, and a quiet look of satisfaction came over his face. the two sat down. "about those cases, mr. stirling?" "well?" "for reasons you can easily understand, we don't wish them to come to trial." "well?" "and we take it for granted that your clients will be quite willing to settle them." "we will talk about that, after the criminal trial is over" "why not now?" "because we hope to make coldman speak the truth in the trial, and thus be able to reach bohlmann." "you're wasting your time." "not if there's the smallest chance of sending the brewer to prison." "there isn't. coldman will stick to what he said if the thing is ever tried, which it won't be." peter eyed dummer without changing a muscle. "the district attorney told me that it ought to be in the courts in a couple of weeks." dummer smiled blandly, and slowly closed one eye. "the district attorney tries to tell the truth," he said, "and i have no doubt he thought that was what he was telling you. now, name your figure?" "the civil suits will not be compromised till the criminal one is finished." "but i tell you the criminal one is dead. squashed. bohlmann and i have seen the right people, and they've seen the district attorney. that case won't even go to the grand jury. so now, drop it, and say what you'll settle the civil suits for?" "james coldman shall go to prison for killing those children," said peter, "and till he does, it is waste time to talk of dropping or settling anything." "humph," half laughed the lawyer, though with obvious disgust at the mulishness in peter's face and voice. "you think you know it all. but you don't. you can work for ten years, and that case will be no nearer trial than it is to-day. i tell you, young man, you don't know new york." "i don't know new york," said peter, "but--" "exactly," interrupted dummer. "and i do." "probably," replied peter quietly, "you may know new york, mr. dummer, but you don't know me. that case shall be tried." "well," laughed dummer, "if you'll agree not to press the civil suits, till that's out of the way, we shall have no need to compromise. good-day." the next morning peter went to the district attorney's office, and inquired for him. "he's gone to bar harbor for a couple of weeks' vacation," he was told. "whom must i see in his stead?" and after some time peter was brought face to face with the acting official. "mr. nelson told me he should present the coldman case to the grand jury to-day, and finding he has left the city, i wish to know who has it in charge?" asked peter. "he left all the presentments with me," the deputy replied, "but there was no such case as that." "could he have left it with some one else to attend to?" "no." peter went back to his office, took down the code and went over certain sections. his eyes had rather a sad look as they gazed at his wall, after his study, as if what he had read had not pleased him. but if the eyes were sad, the heavy jaw had a rigidness and setness which gave no indication of weakness or yielding. for two weeks peter waited, and then once more invaded officialdom. "the district attorney's engaged, and can't see you," he was told. peter came again in the afternoon, with the same result. the next morning, brought only a like answer, and this was duplicated in the afternoon. the third day he said he would wait, and sat for hours in the ante-room, hoping to be called, or to intercept the officer. but it was only to see man after man ushered into the private office, and finally to be told that the district attorney had gone to lunch, and would not return that day. the man who told him this grinned, and evidently considered it a good joke, nor had peter been unconscious that all the morning the clerks and underlings had been laughing, and guying him as he waited. yet his jaw was only set the more rigidly, as he left the office. he looked up the private address of the officer in the directory, and went to see him that evening. he was wise enough not to send in his name, and mr. nelson actually came into the hall to see him. the moment he saw peter, however, he said: "oh, it's you. well, i never talk business except in business hours." "i have tried to see you--" began peter. "try some more," interrupted the man, smiling, and going toward the parlor. peter followed him, calmly. "mr. nelson," he said, "do you intend to push that case?" "of course," smiled nelson. "after i've finished four hundred indictments that precede it." "not till then?" "no." "mr. nelson, can't you overlook politics for a moment, and think of--" "who said anything of politics?" interrupted nelson, "i merely tell you there are indictments which have been in my office for five years and are yet to be tried, and that your case is going to take its turn." nelson passed into the back room, leaving his caller alone. peter left the room, and passed out of the front door, just as a man was about to ring the bell. "is mr. nelson in?" asked the man. "i have just left him, mr. dummer," said peter. "ah! good-evening, mr. stirling. i think i can guess your business. well. how do you come on?" dummer was obviously laughing internally. peter started down the steps without answering. "perhaps i can help you?" said dummer. "i know mr. nelson very well in politics, and so does mr. bohlmann. if you'll tell me what you are after, i'll try to say a good word for you?" "i don't need your help, thank you," said peter calmly. "good," said dummer. "you think a briefless lawyer of thirty can go it alone, do you, even against the whole city government?" "i know i have not influence enough to get that case pushed, mr. dummer, but the law is on my side, and i'm not going to give up yet." "well, what are you going to do about it?" said dummer, sneeringly. "fight," said peter, walking away. he went back to his office, and sitting at his desk, wrote a formal letter to the district attorney, calling his attention to the case, and asking information as to when it would be brought to trial. then he copied this, and mailed the original. then he read the code again. after that he went over the new york reports, making notes. for a second time the morning sun found peter still at his desk. but this time his head was not bowed upon his blotter, as if he were beaten or dead. his whole figure was stiff with purpose, and his jaw was as rigid as a mastiff's. chapter xv. the fight. the only reply which peter received to his letter to the district-attorney, was a mere formal reiteration of that officer's verbal statement, that the case would be taken up in its due order, after those which preceded it had been dealt with. peter knew enough of the numberless cases which never reach trial to understand that this meant in truth, the laying aside of the case, till it was killed by the statute of limitations. on receiving this reply, peter made another move, by going to three newspapers, and trying to see their managing editors. one declined to see him. a second merely told peter, after his statement, which the editor only allowed him partly to explain, that he was very busy and could not take time to look into it, but that peter might come again in about a month. the third let peter tell his story, and then shook his head: "i have no doubt you are right, but it isn't in shape for us to use. such a case rarely goes to trial for six months or a year, and so, if we begin an attack now, it will simply fall flat. if you can get us a written statement from the district attorney that he doesn't intend to push the case, we can do something, but i suppose he's far too shrewd to commit himself." "yes." "then there's no use in beginning an attack, for you really have no powder. come in again a year from now, and then we may be able to say something, if he hasn't acted in the meantime." peter left the office, knowing that that chance of pressure was gone. if the papers of the republican party would not use it, it was idle spending time in seeing or trying to see the editors of the democratic papers. he wasted therefore no more efforts on newspapers. the next three days peter passed in the new york law institute library, deep in many books. then he packed his bag, and took an afternoon train for albany. he was going to play his last card, with the odds of a thousand to one against his winning. but that very fact only nerved him the more. promptly at ten o'clock, the morning after his arrival at the state capital, he sent in his card to the governor. fortunately for him, the middle of august is not a busy time with that official, and after a slight delay, he was ushered into the executive chamber. peter had been planning this interview for hours, and without explanation or preamble, he commenced his statement. he knew that he must interest the governor promptly, or there would be a good chance of his being bowed out. so he began with a description of the cow-stables. then he passed to the death of the little child. he sketched both rapidly, not taking three minutes to do it, but had he been pleading for his own life, he could not have spoken more earnestly nor feelingly. the governor first looked surprised at peter's abruptness; then weary; then interested; and finally turned his revolving chair so as to put his back to peter. and after peter had ended his account, he remained so for a moment. that back was very expressive to peter. for the first time he felt vanquished. but suddenly the governor turned, and peter saw tears on his cheek. and he said, after a big swallow, "what do you want of me?" in a voice that meant everything to peter. "will you listen to me for five minutes?" asked peter, eagerly. "yes." than peter read aloud a statement of the legal proceedings, and of his interviews with the district attorney and with dummer, in the clearest and most compact sentences he had been able to frame. "you want me to interfere?" asked the governor. "yes." "i'm afraid it's not possible. i can of course remove the district attorney, but it must be for cause, and i do not see that you can absolutely prove his non intention to prosecute those scoundrels." "that is true. after study, i did not see that you could remove him. but there's another remedy." "what is that?" "through the state attorney you can appoint a special counsel for this case." "are you sure?" peter laid one of the papers in his hands before the governor. after reading it, the governor rang a bell. "send for mr. miller," he said to the boy. then he turned, and with peter went over the court papers, till mr. miller put in an appearance. "state the matter to mr. miller," said the governor, and peter read his paper again and told what he wished. "the power unquestionably exists," said the attorney-general. "but it has not been used in many years. perhaps i had better look into it a bit." "go with mr. miller, mr. stirling, and work over your papers with him," said the governor. "thank you," said peter simply, but his hand and face and voice said far more, as he shook hands. he went out with the first look of hope his face had worn for two years. the ground which the attorney-general and his subordinates had to traverse was that over which peter had so well travelled already, that he felt very much at home, while his notes indeed aided the study, and were doubly welcomed, because the summer season had drained the office of its underlings. half as assistant, and half as principal, he worked till three o'clock, with pleasure that grew, as he saw that the opinion of the attorney-general seemed to agree more and more with his own. then they returned to the governor, to whom the attorney-general gave his opinion that his present conclusion was that the governor could empower him, or some appointee, to prosecute the case. "well," said the governor, "i'm glad you think so. but if we find that it isn't possible, mr. stirling, i'll have a letter written to the district attorney that may scare him into proceeding with the case." peter thanked him, and rose to go. "are you going to new york at once?" asked the governor. "yes. unless i can be of use here." "suppose you dine with me, and take a late train?" "it will be a great pleasure," said peter. "very well. six sharp." then after peter had left the room, the governor asked, "how is he on law?" "very good. clear-headed and balanced." "he knows how to talk," said the governor. "he brought my heart up in my mouth as no one has done in years. now, i must get word to some of the people in new york to find out who he is, and if this case has any concealed boomerang in it." the dinner was a very quiet one with only the governor and his wife. the former must have told his better-half something about peter, for she studied him with a very kind look in her face, and prosaic and silent as peter was, she did not seem bored. after the dinner was eaten, and some one called to talk politics with the governor, she took peter off to another room, and made him tell her about the whole case, and how he came to take it up, and why he had come to the governor for help. she cried over it, and after peter had gone, she went upstairs and looked at her own two sleeping boys, quite large enough to fight the world on their own account, but still little children to the mother's heart, and had another cry over them. she went downstairs later to the governor's study, and interrupting him in the work to which he had settled down, put her arms about his neck, and kissed him. "you must help him, william," she said. "do everything you can to have those scoundrels punished, and let him do it." the governor only laughed; but he pushed back his work, and his wife sat down, and told of her admiration and sympathy for peter's fight. there was a bad time ahead for the criminal and his backers. they might have political influence of the strongest character, fighting their battle, but there was a bigger and more secret one at work. say what we please, the strongest and most subtle "pull" this world as yet contains is the under-current of a woman's influence. peter went back to new york that night, feeling hopeful, yet doubtful. it almost seemed impossible that he had succeeded, yet at twenty-three, failure is hard to believe in. so he waited, hoping to see some move on the part of the state, and dreaming of nothing better. but better came, for only five days after his return his mail brought him a large envelope, and inside that envelope was a special commission, which made peter a deputy of the attorney-general, to prosecute in the court of sessions, the case of "the people of the state of new york _versus_ james goldman." if any one could have seen peter's face, as he read the purely formal instrument, he would not have called it dull or heavy. for peter knew that he had won; that in place of justice blocking and hindering him, every barrier was crushed down; that this prosecution rested with no officials, but was for him to push; that that little piece of parchment bound every court to support him; that if necessary fifty thousand troops would enforce the power which granted it. within three hours, the first formal steps to place the case in the courts had been taken, and peter was working at the evidence and law in the matter. these steps produced a prompt call from dummer, who showed considerably less assurance than hitherto, even though he tried to take peter's success jauntily. he wanted peter to drop the whole thing, and hinted at large sums of money, but peter at first did not notice his hints, and finally told him that the case should be tried. then dummer pleaded for delay. peter was equally obdurate. later they had a contest in the court over this. but peter argued in a quiet way, which nevertheless caught the attention of the judge, who ended the dispute by refusing to postpone. the judge hadn't intended to act in this way, and was rather surprised at his own conduct. the defendant's lawyer was furious. no stone was left unturned, however, to prevent the case going to trial. pressure of the sharpest and closest kind was brought to bear on the governor himself--pressure which required backbone to resist. but he stood by his act: perhaps because he belonged to a different party than that in control of the city government; perhaps because of peter's account, and the truthfulness in his face as he told it; perhaps because the attorney-general had found it legal; perhaps because of his wife; perhaps it was a blending of all these. certain it is, that all attempts to block failed, and in the last week in august it came before the court. peter had kept his clients informed as to his struggles, and they were tremendously proud of the big battle and ultimate success, as indeed were the residents of the whole district, who felt that it was really their own case. then the politicians were furious and excited over it, while the almost unexampled act of the governor had created a good deal of public interest in the case. so the court was packed and the press had reporters in attendance. since the trial was fully reported, it is needless to go over the testimony here. what peter could bring out, is already known. the defence, by "experts," endeavored to prove that the cowsheds were not in a really unhygienic condition; that feeding cows on "mash" did not affect their milk, nor did mere "skin sores;" that the milk had been sold by mistake, in ignorance that it was thirty-six hours old, and skimmed; and that the proof of this particular milk being the cause of the deaths was extremely inadequate and doubtful. the only dramatic incident in the testimony was the putting the two little dooleys (who had returned in fat and rosy condition, the day before) on the stand. "did you find country milk different from what you have here?" peter asked the youngest. "oh, yes," she said. "here it comes from a cart, but in the country it squirts from a cow." "order," said the judge to the gallery. "does it taste differently?" "yes. it's sweet, as if they put sugar in it. it's lovely i like cow milk better than cart milk." "damn those children!" said dummer, to the man next him. the event of the trial came, however, when peter summed up. he spoke quietly, in the simplest language, using few adjectives and no invective. but as the girl at the pierces' dinner had said, "he describes things so that one sees them." he told of the fever-stricken cows, and he told of the little fever-stricken children in such a way that the audience sobbed; his clients almost had to be ordered out of court; the man next dummer mopped his eyes with his handkerchief; the judge and jury thoughtfully covered their eyes (so as to think the better); the reporters found difficulty (owing to the glary light), in writing the words despite their determination not to miss one; and even the prisoner wiped his eyes on his sleeve. peter was unconscious that he was making a great speech; great in its simplicity, and great in its pathos. he afterwards said he had not given it a moment's thought and had merely said what he felt. perhaps his conclusion indicated why he was able to speak with the feeling he did. for he said: "this is not merely the case of the state _versus_ james goldman. it is the case of the tenement-house children, against the inhumanity of man's greed." dummer whispered to the man next him, "there's no good. he's done for us." then he rose, and made a clever defence. he knew it was wasting his time. the judge charged against him, and the jury gave the full verdict: "man-slaughter in the first degree." except for the desire for it, the sentence created little stir. every one was still feeling and thinking of peter's speech. and to this day that speech is talked of in "the district." chapter xvi. the consequences. nor was it the district alone which talked of the speech. perhaps the residents of it made their feelings most manifest, for they organized a torchlight procession that night, and went round and made peter an address of thanks. mr. dennis moriarty being the spokesman. the judge shook hands with him after the trial, and said that he had handled his case well. the defendant's lawyer told him he "knew his business." a number of the reporters sought a few words with him, and blended praise with questions. the reporters did far more than this, however. it was the dull newspaper season, and the case had turned out to be a thoroughly "journalistic" one. so they questioned and interviewed every one concerned, and after cleverly winnowing the chaff, which in this case meant the dull, from the gleanings, most of them gave several columns the next morning to the story. peter's speech was printed in full, and proved to read almost as well as it had sounded. the reporters were told, and repeated the tales without much attempt at verification, that peter had taken the matter up without hope of profit; had paid the costs out of his own pocket; had refused to settle "though offered nine thousand dollars:" had "saved the dooley children's lives by sending them into the country;" and "had paid for the burials of the little victims." so all gave him a puff, and two of the better sort wrote really fine editorials about him. at election time, or any other than a dull season, the case would have had small attention, but august is the month, to reverse an old adage, when "any news is good news." the press began, too, a crusade against the swill-milk dealers, and the men who had allowed all this to be possible. "what is the health board about, that poison for children can be sold in the public streets?" "where is the district attorney, that prosecutions for the public good have to be brought by public-spirited citizens?" they demanded. lynx-eyed reporters tracked the milk-supplies of the city, and though the alarm had been given, and many cows had been hastily sent to the country, they were able to show up certain companies, and print details which were quite lurid enough, when sufficiently "colored" by their skilful pens. most residents of new york can remember the "swill-milk" or "stump-tail milk" exposures and prosecutions of that summer, and of the reformation brought about thereby in the board of health. as the details are not pleasant reading, any one who does not remember is referred to the daily press, and, if they want horrible pictures, to frank leslie's illustrated weekly. except for the papers, it is to be questioned if peter's case would have resulted in much more than the punishment of the man actually convicted; but by the press taking the matter up, the moment's indignation was deepened and intensified to a degree which well-nigh swept every cow-stable off the island, and drove the proper officials into an activity leading to great reforms. no one was more surprised than peter, at the sudden notoriety, or at the far-reaching results. he collected the articles, and sent them to his mother. he wrote: "don't think that this means any great start. in truth, i am a hundred dollars the poorer for the case, and shall have to cut off a few expenses for the rest of the year. i tell you this, because i know you will not think for a moment that i grudge the money, and you are not to spoil my trifling self-denial by any offer of assistance you did quite enough in taking in those two little imps. were they very bad? did they tramp on your flowers, and frighten poor old russet [russet was the cat] out of his fast waning lives? it was a great pleasure to me to see them so plump and brown, and i thank you for it. their testimony in court was really amusing, though at the same time pathetic. people tell me that my speech was a good one. what is more surprising, they tell me that i made the prisoner, and mr. bohlmann, the brewer, who sat next to dummer, both cry. i confess i grieve over the fact that i was not prosecuting bohlmann. he is the real criminal, yet goes scot free. but the moral effect is, i suppose, the important thing, and any one to whom responsibility could be traced (and convicted) gives us that. i find that mr. bohlmann goes to the same church i attend!" his mother was not surprised. she had always known her peter was a hero, and needed no "york papers" to teach her the fact. still she read every line of the case, and of the subsequent crusade. she read peter's speech again and again, stopping to sob at intervals, and hugging the clipping to her bosom from time to time, as the best equivalent for peter, while sobbing: "my boy, my darling boy." every one in the mill-town knew of it, and the clippings were passed round among peter's friends, beginning with the clergyman and ending with his school-boy companions. they all wondered why peter had spoken so briefly. "if i could talk like that," said a lawyer to the proud mother, "i'd have spoken for a couple of hours." mrs. stirling herself wished it had been longer. four columns of evidence, and only a little over a half column of speech! it couldn't have taken him twenty minutes at the most. "even the other lawyer, who had nothing to say but lies, took over a column to his speech. and his was printed close together, while that of peter's was spread out (_e.g._ solid and leaded) making the difference in length all the greater." mrs. stirling wondered if there could be a conspiracy against her peter, on the part of the metropolitan press. she had promptly subscribed for a year to the new york paper which glorified peter the most, supposing that from this time on his name would appear on the front page. when she found it did not and that it was not mentioned in the press and health board crusade against the other "swill-milk" dealers, she became convinced that there was some definite attempt to rob peter of his due fame. "why, peter began it all," she explained, "and now the papers and health board pretend it's all their doings." she wrote a letter to the editor of the paper--a letter which was passed round the office, and laughed over not a little by the staff. she never received an answer, nor did the paper give peter the more attention because of it. two days after the trial, peter had another call from dummer. "you handled that case in great style, mr. stirling," he told peter. "you know the ropes as well as far older men. you got just the right evidence out of your witnesses, and not a bit of superfluous rubbish. that's the mistake most young men make. they bury their testimony in unessential details, i tell you, those two children were worth all the rest put together. did you send them to the country on purpose to get that kind of evidence?" "no," said peter. "well, every man in that jury was probably a father, and that child's talk took right hold of them. not but that your speech would have done the business. you were mighty clever in just telling what you saw, and not going into the testimony. you could safely trust the judge to do that. it was a great speech." "thank you," said peter. "he's not to be taffied," thought the lawyer. "plain talking's the way to deal with him." he ended his allusions to the trial, and said: "now, mr. stirling, mr. bohlmann doesn't want to have these civil suits go any further. mr. bohlmann's a man of respectability, with a nice wife and some daughters. the newspapers are giving him quite enough music without your dragging him into court." "it's the only way i can reach him," said peter. "but you mustn't want to reach him. he's really a well-meaning man, and if you ask your clergyman--for i believe you go to dr. purple's church?--you'll find he's very charitable and generous with his money." peter smiled curiously. "distributing money made that way is not much of a charity." "he didn't know," said the lawyer. then catching a look which came into peter's face, he instantly added, "at least, he had no idea it was that bad. he tells me that he hadn't been inside those cow-sheds for four years." "come and see me to-morrow," said peter. after dummer had gone, peter walked uptown, and saw his clergyman. "yes," he was told, "mr. bohlmann has always stood high in the church, and has been liberal and sensible with his money. i can't tell you how this whole thing has surprised and grieved me, mr. stirling. it must be terrible for his wife. his daughters, too, are such nice sweet girls. you've probably noticed them in church?" "no," peter had not noticed them. he did not add that he did not notice young girls--that for some reason they had not interested him since--since-- "where does he live?" inquired peter. "not ten blocks from here," replied dr. purple, and named the street and number. peter looked at his watch and, thanking the clergyman, took his leave. he did not go back to his office, but to the address, and asked for mr. bohlmann. a respectable butler showed him into a handsome parlor and carried his name to the brewer. there were already two girls in the room. one was evidently a caller. the other, a girl with a sweet, kindly, german face, was obviously one of the "nice" daughters. his arrival checked the flow of conversation somewhat, but they went on comparing their summer experiences. when the butler came back and said aloud, "mr. bohlmann will see you in the library, mr. stirling," peter noticed that both girls turned impulsively to look at him, and that the daughter flushed red. he found mr. bohlmann standing uneasily on the rug by the fireplace, and a stout woman gazing out of the window, with her back to the room. "i had a call from your lawyer this morning, mr. bohlmann," said peter, "and i have taken the liberty of coming to see you about the cases." "sid down, sid down," said his host, nervously, though not sitting himself. peter sat down. "i want to do what is best about the matter," he said. the woman turned quickly to look at him, and peter saw that there were tears in her eyes. "vell," said the brewer, "what is dat?" "i don't know," said peter, "and that's why i've come to see you." mr. bohlmann's face worked for a moment. then suddenly he burst into tears. "i give you my word, mr. stirling," he said, "that i didn't know it was so. i haven't had a happy moment since you spoke that day in court." he had heretofore spoken in english with a slight german accent. but this he said in german. he sat down at the table and buried his face in his arms. his wife, who was also weeping, crossed to him, and tried to comfort him by patting him on the back. "i think," said peter, "we had best drop the suits." mr. bohlmann looked up. "it is not the money, mr. stirling," he said, still speaking in german. "see." he drew from a drawer in his desk a check-book, and filling up a check, handed it to peter. it was dated and signed, but the amount was left blank. "there," he said, "i leave it to you what is right." "i think mr. dummer will feel we have not treated him fairly," said peter, "if we settle it in this way." "do not think of him. i will see that he has no cause for complaint," the brewer said. "only let me know it is ended, so that my wife and my daughters--" he choked, and ended the sentence thus. "very well," said peter. "we'll drop the suits." the husband and wife embraced each other in true german fashion. peter rose and came to the table. "three of the cases were for five thousand each, and the other two were for two thousand each," he said, and then hesitated. he wished to be fair to both sides. "i will ask you to fill in the check for eight thousand dollars. that will be two each for three, and one each for two." mr. bohlmann disengaged himself from his wife, and took his pen. "you do not add your fee," he said. "i forgot it," laughed peter, and the couple laughed with him in their happiness. "make it for eight thousand, two hundred and fifty." "och," said the brewer once more resuming his english. "dat is too leedle for vive cases." "no," said peter. "it was what i had decided to charge in case i got any damages." so the check was filled in, and peter, after a warm handshake from both, went back to his office. "dat iss a fine yoong mahn," said the brewer. chapter xvii. a new friend. the day after this episode, peter had the very unusual experience of a note by his morning's mail. except for his mother's weekly letter, it was the first he had received since watts had sailed, two years before. for the moment he thought that it must be from him, and the color came into his face at the mere thought that he would have news of--of--watts. but a moment's glance at the writing showed him he was wrong, and he tore the envelope with little interest in his face. indeed after he had opened it, he looked at his wall for a moment before he fixed his mind on it. it contained a brief note, to this effect: "a recent trial indicates that mr. stirling needs neither praise not reward as incentives for the doing of noble deeds. "but one who prefers to remain unknown cannot restrain her grateful thanks to mr. stirling for what he did; and being debarred from such acts herself, asks that at least she may be permitted to aid him in them by enclosing a counsel fee for 'the case of the tenement children of new york against the inhumanity of men's greed.' "september third." peter looked at the enclosure, and found it was a check for five hundred dollars. he laid it on his desk, and read the note over again. it was beyond question written by a lady. every earmark showed that, from the delicate scent of the paper, to the fine, even handwriting. peter wanted to know who she was. he looked at the check to see by whom it was signed; to find that it was drawn by the cashier of the bank at which it was payable. half an hour later, a rapid walk had brought him to the bank the name of which was on the check. it was an uptown one, which made a specialty of family and women's accounts. peter asked for the cashier. "i've called about this check," he said, when that official materialized, handing the slip of paper to him. "yes," said the cashier kindly, though with a touch of the resigned sorrow in his voice which cashiers of "family's" and women's banks acquire. "you must sign your name on the back, on the left-hand end, and present it to the paying-teller, over at that window. you'll have to be identified if the paying-teller doesn't know you." "i don't want the money," said peter, "i want to know who sent the check to me?" the cashier looked at it more carefully. "oh!" he said. then he looked up quickly at peter? with considerable interest, "are you mr. stirling?" "yes." "well, i filled this up by order of the president, and you'll have to see him about it, if you want more than the money." "can i see him?" "come this way." they went into a small office at the end of the bank. "mr. dyer," said the cashier, "this is mr. stirling, and he's come to see about that check." "glad to see you, mr. stirling. sit down." "i wish to learn who sent the check." "very sorry we can't oblige you. we had positive instructions from the person for whom we drew it, that no name was to be given." "can you receive a letter?" "that was forbidden too." "a message?" "nothing was said about that." "then will you do me the favor to say to the lady that the check will not be cashed till mr. stirling has been able to explain something to her." "certainly. she can't object to that." "thank you." "not at all." the president rose and escorted him to the door. "that was a splendid speech of yours, mr. stirling," he added. "i'm not a bit ashamed to say that it put salt water in my old eyes." "i think," said peter, "it was the deaths of the poor little children, more than anything i said, that made people feel it." the next morning's mail brought peter a second note, in the same handwriting as that of the day before. it read: "miss de voe has received mr. stirling's message and will be pleased to see him in regard to the check, at half after eleven to-day (wednesday) if he will call upon her. "miss de voe regrets the necessity of giving mr. stirling such brief notice, but she leaves new york on thursday." as peter walked up town that morning, he was a little surprised that he was so cool over his intended call. in a few minutes he would be in the presence of a lady, the firmness of whose handwriting indicated that she was not yet decrepit. three years ago such a prospect would have been replete with terror to him. down to that--that week at the pierce's, he had never gone to a place where he expected to "encounter" (for that was the word he formerly used) women without dread. since that week--except for the twenty-four hours of the wedding, he had not "encountered" a lady. yet here he was, going to meet an entire stranger without any conscious embarrassment or suffering. he was even in a sense curious. peter was not given to self-analysis, but the change was too marked a one for him to be unconscious of it. was it merely the poise of added years? was it that he had ceased to care what women thought of him? or was it that his discovery that a girl was lovable had made the sex less terrible to him? such were the questions he asked himself as he walked, and he had not answered them when he rang the bell of the old-fashioned, double house on second avenue. he was shown into a large drawing-room, the fittings of which were still shrouded in summer coverings, preventing peter from inferring much, even if he had had time to do so. but the butler had scarcely left him when, with a well-bred promptness from which peter might have drawn an inference, the rustle of a woman's draperies was heard. rising, peter found himself facing a tall, rather slender woman of between thirty-five and forty. it did not need a second glance from even peter's untrained eye, to realize the suggestion of breeding in the whole atmosphere about her. the gown was of the simplest summer material, but its very simplicity, and a certain lack of "latest fashion" rather than "old-fashionedness" gave it a quality of respectability. every line of the face, the set of the head, and even more the carriage of the figure, conveyed the "look of race." "i must thank you, mr. stirling," she said, speaking deliberately, in a low, mellow voice, by no means so common then as our women's imitation of the english tone and inflexion has since made it, "for suiting your time to mine on such short notice." "you were very kind," said peter, "to comply with my request. any time was convenient to me." "i am glad it suited you." peter had expected to be asked to sit down, but, nothing being said, began his explanation. "i am very grateful, miss de voe, for your note, and for the check. i thank you for both. but i think you probably sent me the latter through a mistake, and so i did not feel justified in accepting it." "a mistake?" "yes. the papers made many errors in their statements. i'm not a 'poor young lawyer' as they said. my mother is comfortably off, and gives me an ample allowance." "yes?" "and what is more," continued peter, "while they were right in saying that i paid some of the expenses of the case, yet i was more than repaid by my fees in some civil suits i brought for the relatives of the children, which we settled very advantageously." "won't you sit down, mr. stirling?" said miss de voe. "i should like to hear about the cases." peter began a very simple narrative of the matter. but miss de voe interjected questions or suppositions here and there, which led to other explanations, and before peter had finished, he had told not merely the history of the cases, but much else. his mention of the two dooley children had brought out the fact of their visit to his mother, and this had explained incidentally her position in the world. the settlement of the cases involved the story of the visit to the brewer's home, and peter, to justify his action, added his interview with his pastor, peter's connection with the case compelled him to speak of his evenings in the "angle," and the solitary life that had sent him there. afterwards, peter was rather surprised at how much he had told. he did not realize that a woman with tact and experience can, without making it evident, lead a man to tell nearly anything and everything he knows, if she is so minded. if women ever really take to the bar seriously, may providence protect the average being in trousers, when on the witness stand. as peter talked, a clock struck. stopping short, he rose. "i must ask your pardon," he said. "i had no idea i had taken so much of your time." then putting his hand in his pocket, he produced the check. "you see that i have made a very good thing out of the whole matter and do not need this." "one moment, mr. stirling," said the lady, still sitting. "can you spare the time to lunch with me? we will sit down at once, and you shall be free to go whenever you wish." peter hesitated. he knew that he had the time, and it did not seem easy to refuse without giving an excuse, which he did not have. yet he did not feel that he had the right to accept an invitation which he had perhaps necessitated by his long call. "thank you," said his hostess, before he had been able to frame an answer. "may i trouble you to pull that bell?" peter pulled the bell, and coming back, tendered the check rather awkwardly to miss de voe. she, however, was looking towards a doorway, which the next moment was darkened by the butler. "morden," she said, "you may serve luncheon at once." "luncheon is served, madam," said morden. miss de voe rose. "mr. stirling, i do not think your explanation has really affected the circumstances which led me to send that check. you acknowledge yourself that you are the poorer for that prosecution, and received no fees for trying it. as i wrote you, i merely was giving a retaining fee in that case, and as none other has been given, i still wish to do it. i cannot do such things myself, but i am weal--i--i can well afford to aid others to do them, and i hope you will let me have the happiness of feeling that i have done my little in this matter." "thank you," said peter. "i was quite willing to take the money, but i was afraid you might have sent it under a misconception." miss de voe smiled at peter with a very nice look in her face. "i am the one to say 'thank you,' and i am most grateful. but we will consider that as ended, and discuss luncheon in its place." peter, despite his usual unconsciousness could not but notice the beauty of the table service. the meal itself was the simplest of summer luncheons, but the silver and china and glass were such as he had never seen before. "what wine will you have with your luncheon, mr. stirling?" he was asked by his hostess. "i don't--none for me," replied peter. "you don't approve of wine?" asked his hostess. "personally i have no feeling about it." "but?" and there was a very big question mark in miss de voe's voice. "my mother is strongly prejudiced against it, so i do not take it. it is really no deprivation to me, while it would mean great anxiety to her if i drank." this started the conversation on peter's mother and his early years, and before it had ended, his hostess had succeeded in learning much more about his origin and his new york life. the clock finally cut him short again, for they lingered at the table long after the meal was finished, though miss de voe made the pretence of eating a grape occasionally. when three o'clock struck, peter, without the least simulating any other cause for going, rose hastily. "i have used up your whole afternoon," he said, apologetically. "i think," smiled miss de voe, "that we are equal culprits in that. i leave town to-morrow, mr. stirling, but return to the city late in october, and if your work and inclination favor it, i hope you will come to see me again?" peter looked at the silver and the china. then he looked at miss de voe, so obviously an aristocrat. "i shall be happy to," he said, "if, when you return, you will send me word that you wish to see me." miss de voe had slightly caught her breath while peter hesitated. "i believe he is going to refuse!" she thought to herself, a sort of stunned amazement seizing her. she was scarcely less surprised at his reply. "i never ask a man twice to call on me, mr. stirling," she said, with a slight hauteur in her voice. "i'm sorry for that," said peter quietly. miss de voe caught her breath again. "good-afternoon," she said, holding out her hand. "i shall hope to see you." "good-bye," said peter, and the next moment was walking towards his office. miss de voe stood for a moment thinking. "that was curious," she thought, "i wonder if he intends to come?" the next evening she was dining with relatives in one of the fashionable summering places, and was telling them about her call "from mr. stirling, the lawyer who made that splendid speech." "i thought," she said, "when i received the message, that i was going to be buried under a bathos of thanks, or else have my gift declined with the expectation that i would gush over the disinterestedness of the refusal. since i couldn't well avoid seeing him, i was quite prepared to snub him, or to take back the money without a word. but he wasn't a bit that kind of creature. he isn't self-assured nor tonguey--rather the reverse. i liked him so, that i forced him to stay to luncheon, and made him tell me a good deal about himself, without his knowing i was doing so. he leads a very unusual life, without seeming conscious that he does, and he tells about it very well. uses just the right word every time, so that you know exactly what he means, without taxing your own brain to fill up blanks. he has such a nice voice too. one that makes you certain of the absolute truth underneath. no. he isn't good looking, though he has fine eyes, and hair. his face and figure are both too heavy." "is he a gentleman, cousin anneke?" asked one of the party. "he is a little awkward, and over-blunt at moments, but nothing to which one would give a second thought. i was so pleased with him that i asked him to call on me." "it seems to me," said another, "that you are over-paying him." "that was the most curious part," replied miss de voe. "i'm not at all sure that he means to come. it was really refreshing not to be truckled to, but it is rather startling to meet the first man who does not want to win his way to my visiting list. i don't think he even knows who miss de voe is." "he will find out quick enough," laughed a girl, "and then he will do what they all do." "no," said miss de voe. "i suspect it will make no difference. he isn't that kind, i think. i really am curious to see if i have to ask him a second time. it will be the only case i can remember. i'm afraid, my dears, your cousin is getting to be an old woman." peter, had in truth, met, and spent over four hours in the company of a woman whom every one wished to know. a woman equally famous for her lineage, her social position, her wealth and her philanthropy. it would not have made any difference, probably, had he known it, though it might have increased his awkwardness a little. that he was not quite as unconscious as miss de voe seemed to think, is shown by a passage in a letter he wrote to his mother: "she was very much interested in the case, and asked a good many questions about it, and about myself. some which i would rather not have answered, but since she asked them i could not bring myself to dodge them. she asked me to come and see her again. it is probably nothing but a passing interest, such as this class feel for the moment."--[then peter carefully inked out "such as this class feel for the moment," and reproved himself that his bitterness at--at--at one experience, should make him condemn a whole class]--"but if she asks me again i shall go, for there is something very sweet and noble about her. i think she is probably some great personage." later on in the letter he wrote: "if you do not disapprove, i will put this money in the savings bank, in a special or trustee account, and use it for any good that i can do for the people about here. i gave the case my service, and do not think i am entitled to take pay when the money can be so much better employed for the benefit of the people i tried to help." chapter xviii. another client. peter had seen his clients on the morning following the settlement of the cases, and told them of their good fortune. they each had a look at bohlmann's check, and then were asked how they would like their shares. "sure," said dooley, "oi shan't know what to do wid that much money." "i think," said peter, "that your two thousand really belongs to the children." "that it does," said mrs. dooley, quite willing to deprive her husband of it, for the benefit of her children. "but what shall oi do wid it?" asked mr. dooley. "i'd like mr. stirling to take charge of mine," said blackett. "that's the idea," said dooley. and so it was settled by all. peter said the best thing would be to put it in the savings bank. "perhaps later we'll find something better." they all went around to a well-known institution on the bowery, and peter interviewed the cashier. it proved feasible to endorse over the check to the bank, and credit the proper share to each. "i shall have to ask you to give me the odd two hundred and fifty," peter said, "as that is my legal fee." "you had better let me put that in your name, mr. stirling?" said the president, who had been called into the consultation. "very well," said peter. "i shall want some of it before long, but the rest will be very well off here." so a book was handed him, and the president shook him by the hand with all the warmth that eight thousand two hundred and fifty dollars of increased assets and four new depositors implied. peter did not need to draw any of the two hundred and fifty dollars, however. in november he had another knock at his door. it proved to be mr. dennis moriarty, of whom we have incidentally spoken in connection with the half-price drinks for the milligan wake, and as spokesman of the torchlight procession. "good-mornin' to yez, sir," said the visitor. it was a peculiarity of peter's that he never forgot faces. he did not know mr. moriarty's name, never having had it given him, but he placed him instantly. "thank you," said peter, holding out his hand. peter did not usually shake hands in meeting people, but he liked the man's face. it would never take a prize for beauty. the hair verged on a fiery red, the nose was a real sky-scraper and the upper lip was almost proboscidian in its length. but every one liked the face. "it's proud oi'm bein' shakin' the hand av misther stirling," said the irishman. "sit down," said peter. "my name's moriarty, sir, dinnis moriarty, an' oi keeps a saloon near centre street, beyant." "you were round here in the procession." "oi was, sir. shure, oi'm not much at a speech, compared to the likes av yez, but the b'ys would have me do it." peter said something appropriate, and then there was a pause. "misther stirling," finally said moriarty, "oi was up before justice gallagher yesterday, an' he fined me bad. oi want yez to go to him, an' get him to be easier wid me. it's yezself can do it." "what were you fined for?" asked peter. "for bein' open on sunday." "then you ought to be fined." "don't say that till oi tell yez. oi don't want to keep my place open, but it's in my lease, an' so oi have to." "in your lease?" enquired peter. "yes." and the paper was handed over to him. peter ran over the three documents. "i see," he said, "you are only the caretaker really, the brewer having an assignment of the lease and a chattel mortgage on your fixtures and stock." "that's it," said dennis. "it's mighty quick yez got at it. it's caretaker oi am, an' a divil of a care it is. shure, who wants to work seven days a week, if he can do wid six?" "you should have declined to agree to that condition?" "then oi'd have been turned out. begobs, it's such poor beer that it's little enough oi sell even in seven days." "why don't you get your beer elsewhere then?" "why, it's edelhein put me in there to sell his stuff, an' he'd never let me sell anythin' else." "then edelhein is really the principal, and you are only put in to keep him out of sight?" "that's it" "and you have put no money in yourself?" "divil a cent." "then why doesn't he pay the fine?" "he says oi have no business to be afther bein' fined. as if any one sellin' his beer could help bein' fined!" "how is that?" said peter, inferring that selling poor beer was a finable offence, yet ignorant of the statute. "why yez see, sir, the b'ys don't like that beer--an' sensible they are--so they go to other places, an' don't come to my place." "but that doesn't explain your fines." "av course it does. shure, if the boys don't come to my place, it's little oi can do at the primary, an' so it's no pull oi have in politics, to get the perlice an' the joodges to be easy wid me, like they are to the rest." peter studied his blank wall a bit. "shure, if it's good beer oi had," continued moriarty, "oi'd be afther beatin' them all, for oi was always popular wid the b'ys, on account of my usin' my fists so fine." peter smiled. "why don't you go into something else?" he asked. "well, there's mother and the three childers to be supported, an' then oi'd lose my influence at the primary." "what kind of beer does mr. bohlmann make?" asked peter, somewhat irrelevantly. "ah," said moriarty, "that's the fine honest beer! there's never anythin' wrong wid his. an' he treats his keepers fair. lets them do as they want about keepin' open sundays, an' never squeezes a man when he's down on his luck." peter looked at his wall again. peter was learning something. "supposing," he asked, "i was able to get your fine remitted, and that clause struck out of the lease. would you open on sunday?" "divil a bit." "when must you pay the fine?" "oi'm out on bail till to-morrow, sir." "then leave these papers with me, and come in about this time." peter studied his wall for a bit after his new client was gone. he did not like either saloon-keepers or law-breakers, but this case seemed to him to have--to have--extenuating circumstances. his cogitations finally resulted in his going to justice gallagher's court. he found the judge rather curt. "he's been up here three times in as many months, and i intend to make an example of him." "but why is only he arrested, when every saloon keeper in the neighborhood does the same thing?" "now, sir," said the judge, "don't waste any more of my time. what's the next case?" a look we have mentioned once or twice came into peter's face. he started to leave the court, but encountered at the door one of the policemen whom he was "friends with," according to the children, which meant that they had chatted sometimes in the "angle." "what sort of a man is dennis moriarty?" he asked of him. "a fine young fellow, supporting his mother and his younger brothers." "why is justice gallagher so down on him?" the policeman looked about a moment. "it's politics, sir, and he's had orders." "from whom?" "that's more than we know. there was a row last spring in the primary, and we've had orders since then to lay for him." peter stood and thought for a moment. "what saloon-keeper round here has the biggest pull?" he asked. "it's all of them, mostly, but blunkers is a big man." "thank you," said peter. he stood in the street thinking a little. then he walked a couple of blocks and went into blunkers's great gin palace. "i want to see the proprietor," he said. "dat's me," said a man who was reading a paper behind the bar. "do you know justice gallagher?" "do i? well, i guess," said the man. "will you do me the favor to go with me to his court, and get him to remit dennis moriarty's fine?" "will i? no. i will not. der's too many saloons, and one less will be bully." "in that case," said peter quietly, "i suppose you won't mind my closing yours up?" "wot der yer mean?" angrily inquired the man. "if it comes to closing saloons, two can play at that game." "who is yer, anyway?" the man came out from behind the bar, squaring his shoulders in an ugly manner. "my name's stirling. peter stirling." the man looked at him with interest. "how'll yer close my place?" "get evidence against you, and prosecute you." "dat ain't de way." "it will be my way." "wot yer got against me?" "nothing. but i intend to see moriarty have fair play. you want to fight on the square too. you're not a man to hit a fellow in the dark." peter was not flattering the man. he had measured him and was telling him the result of that measure. he told it, too, in a way that made the other man realize the opinion behind the words. "come on," said blunkers, good-naturedly. they went over to the court, and a whispered colloquy took place between the justice and the bartender. "that's all right, mr. stirling," presently said the judge. "clerk, strike dennis moriarty's fine off the list." "thank you," said peter to the saloon-keeper. "if i can ever do a turn for you, let me know it." "dat's hunky," said the man, and they parted. peter went out and walked into the region of the national milk company, but this time he went to the brewery. he found mr. bohlmann, and told him the story, asking his advice at the end. "dondt you vool von minute mit dod edelheim. i dells you vot i do. i harf choost a blace vacant down in zender streed, and your frient he shall it haf." so they chatted till all the details had been arranged. dennis was to go in as caretaker, bound to use only bohlmann's beer, with a percentage on that, and the profits on all else. he was to pay the rent, receiving a sub-lease from bohlmann, who was only a lesee himself, and to give a chattel mortgage on the stock supplied him. finally he was to have the right of redemption of stock, lease, and good-will at any time within five years, on making certain payments. "you draw up der babers, misder stirling, and send der bill to me. ve vill give der yoonger a chance," the brewer said. when dennis called the next day, he was "spacheless" at the new developments. he wrung peter's hand. "arrah, what can oi say to yez?" he exclaimed finally. then having found something, he quickly continued: "now, patsy blunkers, lookout for yezself. it's the divil oi'll give yez in the primary this year." he begged peter to come down the opening night, and help to "celebrate the event." "thank you," said peter, "but i don't think i will." "shure," said dennis, "yez needn't be afraid it won't be orderly. it's myself can do the hittin', an' the b'ys know it." "my mother brought me up," peter explained, "not to go into saloons, and when i came to new york i promised her, if i ever did anything she had taught me not to, that i would write her about it. she would hardly understand this visit, and it might make her very unhappy." peter earned fifty dollars by drawing the papers, and at the end of the first month dennis brought him fifty more. "trade's been fine, sir, an' oi want to pay something for what yez did." so peter left his two hundred and fifty dollars in the bank, having recouped the expenses of the first case out of his new client. he wrote all about it to his mother: "i am afraid you won't approve of what i did entirely, for i know your strong feeling against men who make and sell liquor. but i somehow have been made to feel in the last few days that more can be done in the world by kindness and help than by frowns and prosecutions. i had no thought of getting money out of the case, so i am sure i was not influenced by that. it seemed to me that a man was being unfairly treated, and that too, by laws which are meant for other purposes. i really tried to think it out, and do what seemed right to me. my last client has a look and a way of speaking that makes me certain he's a fine fellow, and i shall try to see something of him, provided it will not worry you to think of me as friendly with a saloon-keeper. i know i can be of use to him." little did peter know how useful his last client would be to him. chapter xix. the primary. after this rush of work, peter's life became as routine as of yore. the winter passed without an event worth noting, if we except a steadily growing acquaintance with the dwellers of the district. but in july a new phase was injected into it by a call from dennis moriarty. "good-mornin' to yez, sir, an' a fine day it is," said the latter, with his usually breezy way. "yes," said peter. "misther stirling. an' is it engaged yez are for this night?" "no." peter had nothing. "then," said dennis, "maybe ye'll be afther goin' wid me to the primary?" "what primary?" "for the election of delegates to the convention, shure." "no. what party?" "what party is it?" "yes." "misther stirling, do yez know my name?" "dennis moriarty, isn't it?" "yes. an' what's my business?" "you keep a saloon." "yes. an' what ward do oi live in?" "the sixth, don't you?" "then," said dennis, his upper lip twisting into a smile of enormous proportions, "oi suppose yez afther thinkin' oi'm a dirty black republican." peter laughed, as few could help doing, when dennis led the way. "look here, dennis," he said, "don't you run down that party. my father was a democrat, but he voted for lincoln, and fought for the blacks when the time came, and though i'm a democrat like him, the republicans are only black in their sympathies, and not in their acts." "an' what do yez say to the whisky frauds, an' black friday, an' credit mobilier?" asked dennis. "of course i don't like them," said peter; "but that's the politicians, not the party." "shure," said dennis, "what's the party but the men that run it?" "you've seen something of mr. bohlmann lately, dennis?" "yes." "well, he was the man who put goldman in charge of that cow stable. yet he's an honest man." dennis scratched his head. "it's a convincin' way yez have wid yez," he said; "but it's scoundrels the republicans are, all the same. look at them in the district; there's not one a decent man would invite to drink wid him." "i think, dennis," said peter, "that when all the decent men get into one party, there'll be only one worth talking about." "av course," replied dennis. "that's the reason there's only the democratic party in new york city." "tell me about this primary," said peter, concluding that abstract political philosophy was not the way to liberalize dennis. "it's most important, it is," he was told, "it's on top patsy blunkers an' his gang av dirty spalpeens (dennis seemed to forget that he had just expressed the opinion that all the "decent" men were democrats) have been this two years, but we've got orders for a new enrollment at last, an' if we don't knock them this time, my name isn't dinnis moriarty." "what is the question before the meeting?" "afther the enrollment, it's to vote for delegates." "oh! then it's just a struggle over who shall be elected?" "that's it. but a fine, big fight it will be. the whole district's so excited, sir, that it's twice oi've had to pound the b'ys a bit in my saloon to keep the peace." "what do you want of me?" "shure, every vote counts on a night like this. an' ye'd be afther helpin' us big, for the district likes yez." "but, dennis, i can't vote without knowing something about the way things are. i shouldn't know whether i was voting rightly." "why, a man votes right when he votes for his friends!" "no; a man votes right when he votes for his convictions." "convictions, is it?" "yes. that is, he votes as he thinks is best for the country." "that, maybe, is the way yez do it where yez come from," said dennis, "but it's no good it would be here. convictions, whatever they be, are never nominated here. it's real things we're afther votin' for in new york." peter laughed. "i've got to take you in hand, dennis, and you've got to take me in hand. i think we both need each other's help. yes, i'll come to the primary. will they let me vote?" "the dirty spalpeens will never dare to stop yez! thank yez, sir. oi'll be along for yez about eight." "remember, though, dennis--i don't say how i'll vote." "yez just listen, an i'm not afraid av what ye'll do." that evening, peter was ushered into a large hot room, pretty well packed with men, and the interstices already filled in with dense tobacco smoke. he looked about him curiously, and was surprised to find how many of the faces he knew. blackett, dooley, and milligan were there, and shook hands with him warmly. judge gallagher and blunkers were in evidence. in plain clothes were two policemen, and three of the "fire-laddies," who formed part of the "crew" of the nearest engine, with all of whom he had often chatted. mr. dummer, his rival lawyer in the case, and one of the jurymen in it, likewise were visible. also many faces which were familiar to peter by a former occasional friendly word or nod exchanged in passing. intense excitement evidently reigned, and every one was whispering in a sort of breathless way, which showed how deeply interested they were. at dennis's suggestion, made in walking to the room, peter presented himself without guidance, at the desk. some one behind him asked if he lived in the ward, and for how long, but this was the only apparent opposition made to the prompt entering of his name. then peter strolled round and talked to those whom he knew, and tried to find out, without much success, just what was the division. every one knew that a fight was on, but in just what it consisted they seemed neither to know nor care. he noticed that hot words were constantly exchanged at the enrolling desk, over would-be members, but not understanding the exact nature of the qualifications needed, he could not follow the disputes. finally these ceased, for want of applicants. "misther stirling," said dennis, coming up to him hurriedly. "will yez be afther bein' chairman for us?" "no. i don't know anything about the proceedings." "it don't take any," said dennis. "it's only fair play we're afther." he was gone again before peter could say anything. the next instant, the enrolling officer rose and spoke. "are there any more to be enrolled?" he called. no one came forward, so after a moment he said: "will the meeting choose a presiding officer?" "mr. chairman," rang two voices so quickly that they in truth cut the presiding officer off in his suggestion. "mr. muldoon," said that officer. "oi spoke first," shouted dennis, and peter felt that he had, and that he was not having fair play. instantly a wave of protest, denials, charges, and counter-charges swept through the room, peter thought there was going to be a fight, but the position was too critical to waste a moment on what dennis styled "a diversion." it was business, not pleasure, just then. "mr. muldoon," said the officer again, not heeding the tempest in the least. "mr. chairman," shouted muldoon, "i am proud to nominate justice gallagher, the pride of the bar, for chairman of this distinguished meeting, and i move to make his election unanimous." "misther chairman," shouted dennis. "mr. moriarty," said the officer. "misther chairman, oi have the honor to nominate for chairman av this meetin' the people's an' the children's friend, misther peter stirling, an' oi don't have to move to make it unanimous, for such is the intelligince an' manhood av this meetin' that it will be that way for shure." peter saw a hurried consultation going on between gallagher, muldoon, and two others, during the latter part of this speech, and barely had dennis finished his remarks, when justice gallagher spoke up. "mr. chairman." "the honorable justice gallagher," said that gentleman. "i take pride in withdrawing in favor of mr. stirling, who so justly merits the honor of presiding on this important occasion. from recent events too well known to need mention, i am sure we can all look to him for justice and fairness." "bad cess to him!" groaned dennis. "oi hoped they'd be just fools enough to oppose yez, an' then we'd have won the first blood." peter was chosen without dissent, and was escorted to the seat behind the desk. "what is the first business before the meeting?" he asked of gallagher, aside, as he was taking his seat. "election of delegates to the state convention. that's all to-night," he was told. peter had presided at college in debates, and was not flurried. "will you stay here so as to give me the names of those i don't know?" he said to the enrolling officer. "the meeting will please come to order," he continued aloud. "the nomination of delegates to the state convention is the business to be acted upon." "misther chairman," yelled dennis, evidently expecting to find another rival as before. but no one spoke. "mr. moriarty," said peter. "misther chairman. it's my delight to nominate as delegates to the state convention, the honorable misther schlurger, our distinguished representative in the assembly, the honorable misther kennedy, our noble police-commissioner, an' misther caggs, whom it would be insult for me to praise in this company." "second the motion," said some one. "mr. chairman," shouted a man. "that's caggs," said the enrolling officer. "mr. caggs," said peter. "mr. chairman," said caggs. "i must decline the honor offered me from such a source." "what?" shrieked dennis, amazement and rage contesting for first place in voice and expression. "mr. chairman," said dummer. "mr. dummer," said peter. "i have the honor to nominate the honorable justice gallagher, mr. peter sweeney, and mr. caggs, to whom mr. moriarty has just paid so glowing a tribute, as delegates to the state convention." "second the--" shouted some one, but the rest was drowned by another storm which swept through the room. even above the tumult, peter could hear dennis challenging and beseeching mr. caggs to come "outside an' settle it like gentlemen." caggs, from a secure retreat behind blunkers's right arm, declined to let the siren's song tempt him forth. finally peter's pounding brought a degree of quiet again. "misther chairman," said dennis. "mr. moriarty," said peter. "misther chairman. oi'll not take the valuable time av this meetin' to speak av dirty, cowardly, black-hearted, treacherous snakes, wid souls blacker than the divil's own--" "order!" said peter to the crowd. "no," continued dennis, in answer to the audible remarks of the opposition. "it's no names oi'm callin'. if yez know such a beast, such a snake, fit it to him. oi'm mentionin' no names. as oi was sayin', misther chairman, oi'll not waste the time av this meetin' wid discribin' the conduct av a beast so vile that he must be the contempt av every honest man. who would have been driven out by st. patrick, wid the rest av the reptiles, if he'd lived at that time. oi only rise to widdraw the name av caggs from the list oi nominated for delegates to the state convention, an' to put in place av it that av a man who is as noble an' true, as some are false an' divilish. that of misther peter stirling, god bless him!" once more chaos came. peter pounded in vain. both sides were at fever heat. finally peter rose. "gentlemen," he shouted, in a voice that rang through the hall above even the tumult, "if this meeting does not come to order, i shall declare it adjourned." instant quiet fell, for all had paused a moment to hear his words, and they concluded that he was in earnest. "was the last motion seconded?" asked the chairman calmly. "i seconded it," shouted blackett and milligan together. "you have heard the nominations, gentlemen. has any one any remarks to make?" a man next justice gallagher said, "mr. chairman," and being duly recognized, proceeded to talk for ten minutes in a very useless way. but during this time, peter noticed first a good deal of whispering among blunkers's friends, and then an interview between gallagher and dennis. the latter was apparently not reconcilable, and shook his head in a way that meant war. then there was more consultation between the opposition, and another confab with dennis, with more headshakes on his part. finally a compromise having been evidently made impossible, the orator was "called down" and it was voted to proceed to an election. peter named one of the firemen, dooley, and blunkers, tellers, who, after a ballot, announced that dennis had carried his nominations, peter heading the list with two hundred and twelve votes, and the others getting one hundred and seventy-two, and one hundred and fifty-eight respectively. the "snake" got but fifty-seven votes. "shure," said dennis, later, "maybe we don't vote for convictions here, but we don't vote for the likes av him!" "then you are voting for convictions," said peter. "it's yezself is the convictions then," said dennis. perhaps he was right. chapter xx. a political debut. peter declared the meeting adjourned as soon as the results of the election had been read, and slipped away in the turmoil that immediately followed, without a word to any one. he was in truth not bewildered--because he had too much natural poise and phlegm--but he was surprised by the suddenness of it all, and wanted to think before talking with others. so he took advantage of the mutual bickerings and recriminations which seemed the order of the day, to get back to his office, and there he sat, studying his wall for a time. then he went to bed, and slept as quickly and as calmly as if he had spent his evening in reading the "modern cottage architecture" or "questions de sociologie," which were on his table instead of presiding at a red-hot primary, and being elected a delegate. the next morning dennis came to see him as early as well could be. "misther stirling," he said, his face expanding into the broadest of grins, "let me salute the delegate to the state convention." "look here, dennis," said peter, "you know you had no business to spring that on me." "ah, sir! shure, when that dirty little spalpeen av a caggs went back on us so, what could oi do? oi know it's speak to yez oi ought, but wid de room yellin' like that it's divilish tryin' to do the right thing quick, barrin' it's not hittin' some one's head, which always comes natural." "well," said peter, "of course i'm very much pleased to have been chosen, but i wish it could have been done with less hard feeling." "hard feelin,' is it?" "yes." "shure, the b'ys are as pleased and kindly this mornin' as can be. it's a fight like that makes them yieldin' an' friendly. nothin' but a little head-punchin' could make them in a sweeter mood, an' we'd a given them that if little caggs had had any sense in him." "you mean gallagher and blunkers and the rest of them?" "av course. that little time last night didn't mean much. no one feels bad over that. shure, it's gallagher was in my place later last night, an' we had a most friendly time, he treatin' the whole crowd twice. we've got to fight in the primary to keep the b'ys interested, but it's seldom that they're not just as friendly the next day." peter looked at his wall. he had not liked gallagher at either time he had met him. "still," he thought to himself, "i have no right to prevent him and dennis being friends, from the little i've seen." "now, sir, about the convention?" said dennis. "i suppose porter is the best man talked of for the nomination," remarked peter. "begobs, sir, that he's not," said dennis. "it's justice gallagher was tellin' me himself that he was a poor kind av creature, wid a strong objection to saloons." peter's eye lost its last suggestion of doubt. "oh, justice gallagher told you that?" he asked. "when?" "last night." "after the primary?" "av course." "whom does he favor?" "catlin." "well, dennis, you've made me a delegate, but i've got to vote my own way." "shure, sir, oi'd not have yez do any thin' else. it's yezself knows better than me. oi was only tellin' yez what the justice--" a knock at the door interrupted him. it proved to be gallagher, who greeted them both in a hearty, friendly way. peter brought another chair from his bedroom. "well, mr. stirling, that was a fine contest we had last night," said his honor. "it seemed to be earnest," said peter. "it's just as well our friend here sprang your nomination on us as a surprise, for if we had known, we should not have put up an opposition candidate. you are just the sort of a man we want to represent us in the convention." "i have never met my colleagues," said peter. "what kind of men are they?" so he got gallagher's opinion, and dennis's opinion. then he wanted to know about the candidates, asking questions about them at considerable length. the intentions of the other city delegates were next introduced. finally the probable planks of the platform were brought up. while they were still under discussion gallagher said the sitting of his court compelled him to leave. "i'll come in some time when i have more to spare." gallagher went to his court, and found a man waiting for him there. "he's either very simple or very deep," said gallagher. "he did nothing but ask questions; and try my best i could not get him to show his hand, nor commit himself. it will be bad if there's a split in a solid delegation!" "i hope it will be a lesson to you to have things better arranged." "blunkers would have it that way, and he's not the kind of man to offend. we all thought he would win." "oh, let them have their fights," said the man crossly; "but it's your business to see that the right men are put up, so that it doesn't make any difference which side wins." "well," said gallagher, "i've done all i could to put things straight. i've made peace, and got moriarty on our side, and i've talked to this stirling, and made out a strong case for catlin, without seeming to care which man gets the nomination." "is there any way of putting pressure on him?" "not that i can find out. he's a young lawyer, who has no business." "then he's a man we don't need to conciliate, if he won't behave?" "no. i can't say that. he's made himself very popular round here by that case and by being friendly to people. i don't think, if he's going into politics, that it will do to fight him." "he's such a green hand that we ought to be able to down him." "he's new, but he's a pretty cool, knowing chap, i think. i had one experience with him, which showed me that any man who picked him up for a fool would drop him quick." then he told how dennis's fine had been remitted. in the next few weeks peter met a good many men who wanted to talk politics with him. gallagher brought some; dennis others; his fellow-ward delegates, more. but peter could not be induced to commit himself. he would talk candidates and principles endlessly, but without expressing his own mind. twice he was asked point blank, "who's your man?" but he promptly answered that he had not yet decided. he had always read a democratic paper, but now he read two, and a republican organ as well. his other reading lessened markedly, and the time gained was spent in talking with men in the "district." he even went into the saloons and listened to the discussions. "i don't drink," he had to explain several times, "because my mother doesn't like it." for some reason this explanation seemed to be perfectly satisfactory. one man alone sneered at him. "does she feed yer still on milk, sonny?" he asked. "no," said peter, "but everything i have comes from her, and that's the kind of a mother a fellow wants to please; don't you think so?" the sneerer hesitated, and finally said he "guessed it was." so peter was made one of them, and smoked and listened. he said very little, but that little was sound, good sense, and, if he did not talk, he made others do so; and, after the men had argued over something, they often looked at peter, rather than at their opponents, to see if he seemed to approve of their opinions. "it's a fine way he has wid the b'ys," dennis told his mother. "he makes them feel that he's just the likes av them, an' that he wants their minds an' opinions to help him. shure, they'd rather smoke one pipe av his tobaccy than drink ten times at gallagher's expense." after peter had listened carefully and lengthily, he wrote to "the honorable lemuel porter, hudson, n.y.," asking him if he could give him an hour's talk some day. the reply was prompt, and told peter that porter would be glad to see him any time that should suit his convenience. so peter took a day off and ran up to hudson. "i am trying to find out for whom i should vote," he explained to porter. "i'm a new man at this sort of thing, and, not having met any of the men talked of, i preferred to see them before going to the convention." porter found that peter had taken the trouble to go over a back file of papers, and read some of his speeches. "of course," peter explained, "i want, as far as possible, to know what you think of questions likely to be matters for legislation." "the difficulty in doing that, mr. stirling," he was told, "is that every nominee is bound to surrender his opinions in a certain degree to the party platform, while other opinions have to be modified to new conditions." "i can see that," said peter. "i do not for a moment expect that what you say to-day is in any sense a pledge. if a man's honest, the poorest thing we can do to him is to tie him fast to one course of action, when the conditions are constantly changing. but, of course, you have opinions for the present state of things?" something in peter's explanation or face pleased mr. porter. he demurred no more, and, for an hour before lunch, and during that meal, he talked with the utmost freedom. "i'm not easily fooled on men," he told his secretary afterwards, "and you can say what you wish to that stirling without danger of its being used unfairly or to injure one. and he's the kind of man to be won by square dealing." peter had spoken of his own district "i think," he said, "that some good can be done in the way of non-partisan legislation. i've been studying the food supplies of the city, and, if i can, i shall try to get a bill introduced this winter to have official inspections systematized." "that will receive my approval if it is properly drawn. but you'll probably find the health board fighting you. it's a nest of politicians." "if they won't yield, i shall have to antagonize them, but i have had some talks with the men there, in connection with the 'swill-milk' investigations, and i think i can frame a bill that will do what i want, yet which they will not oppose. i shall try to make them help me in the drafting, for they can make it much better through their practical experience." "if you do that, the opposition ought not to be troublesome. what else do you want?" "i've been thinking of a general tenement-house bill, but i don't think i shall try for that this winter. it's a big subject, which needs very careful study, in which a lot of harm may be done by ignorance. there's no doubt that anything which hurts the landlord, hurts the tenant, and if you make the former spend money, the tenant pays for it in the long run. yet health must be protected. i shall try to find out what can be done." "i wish you would get into the legislature yourself, mr. stirling." "i shall not try for office. i want to go on with my profession. but i shall hope to work in politics in the future." peter took another day off, and spent a few minutes of it with the other most promising candidate. he did not see very much of him, for they were interrupted by another caller, and peter had to leave before he could have a chance to continue the interview. "i had a call to-day from that fellow stirling, who's a delegate from the sixth ward," the candidate told a "visiting statesman" later. "i'm afraid he'll give us trouble. he asks too many questions. fortunately dewilliger came to see me, and though i shouldn't have seen him ordinarily, i found his call very opportune as a means of putting an end to stirling's cross-examination." "he's the one doubtful man on the city's delegation," said the statesman. "it happened through a mistake. it will be very unfortunate if we can't cast a solid city vote." peter talked more in the next few days. he gave the "b'ys" his impressions of the two candidates, in a way which made them trust his conclusions. he saw his two fellow delegates, and argued long and earnestly with them. he went to every saloon-keeper in the district, and discussed the change in the liquor law which was likely to be a prominent issue in the campaign, telling them what he had been able to draw from both candidates about the subject. "catlin seems to promise you the most," he told them, "and i don't want to say he isn't trying to help you. but if you get the law passed which he promises to sign, you won't be much better off. in the first place, it will cost you a lot of money, as you know, to pass it; and then it will tempt people to go into the business, so that it will cut your profits that way. then, you may stir up a big public sentiment against you in the next election, and so lay yourselves open to unfriendly legislation. it is success, or trying to get too much, which has beaten every party, sooner or later, in this country. look at slavery. if the southerners had left things as they were under the missouri compromise, they never would have stirred up the popular outbreak that destroyed slavery. now, porter is said to be unfriendly to you, because he wants a bill to limit the number of licenses, and to increase the fee to new saloons. don't you see that is all in your favor, though apparently against you? in the first place, you are established, and the law will be drawn so as to give the old dealer precedence over a new one in granting fresh licenses. this limit will really give the established saloon more trade in the future, by reducing competition. while the increase in fee to new saloons will do the same." "by ----, yer right," said blunkers. "that's too good a name to use that way," said peter, but more as if he were stating a fact than reproving. blunkers laughed good-naturedly. "yer'll be gittin' usen to close up yet, mister stirling. yer too good for us." peter looked at him. "blunkers," he said warmly, "no man is too good not to tell the truth to any one whom he thinks it will help." "shake," said blunkers. then he turned to the men at the tables. "step up, boys," he called. "i sets it up dis time to drink der health of der feller dat don't drink." the boys drank chapter xxi. a political dinner. peter had only a month for work after reaching his own conclusions, before the meeting of the convention, but in that month he worked hard. as the result, a rumor, carrying dismay to the party leaders, became current. "what's this i hear?" said gallagher's former interviewer to that gentleman. "they say schlurger says he intends to vote for porter, and kennedy's getting cold?" "if you'll go through the sixth you'll hear more than that." "what do you mean?" "there was a torchlight last night, of nearly every voter in the ward, and nothing but stirling prevented them from making the three delegates pledge themselves to vote for porter. he said they must go unbound." the interviewer's next remark is best represented by several "blank its," no allusion however being intended to bed-coverings. then he cited the lower regions to know what it all meant. "it means that that chap stirling has got to be fixed, and fixed big. i thought i knew how to wire pull, and manage men, but he's taken hold and just runs it as he wants. it's he makes all the trouble." the interviewer left the court, and five minutes later was in stirling's office. "my name's green," he said. "i'm a delegate to the convention, and one of the committee who has the arranging of the special train and accommodations at saratoga." "i'm glad you came in," said peter. "i bought my ticket yesterday, and the man at headquarters said he'd see that i was assigned a room at the united states." "there'll be no trouble about the arrangements. what i want to see you for, is to ask if you won't dine with me this evening? there's to be several of the delegates and some big men there, to talk over the situation." "i should like to," said peter. the man pulled out a card, and handed it to peter. "six o'clock sharp," he said. then he went to headquarters, and told the result of his two interviews. "now who had better be there?" he asked. after consultation, a dinner of six was arranged. the meal proved to be an interesting one to peter. first, he found that all the guests were well-known party men, whose names and opinions were matters of daily notice in the papers. what was more, they talked convention affairs, and peter learned in the two hours' general conversation more of true "interests" and "influences" and "pulls" and "advantages" than all his reading and talking had hitherto gained him. he learned that in new york the great division of interest was between the city and country members, and that this divided interest played a part in nearly every measure. "now," said one of the best known men at the table, "the men who represent the city, must look out for the city. porter's a fine man, but he has no great backing, and no matter how well he intends by us, he can't do more than agree to such bills as we can get passed. but catlin has the monroe members of the legislature under his thumb, and his brother-in-law runs onandaga. he promises they shall vote for all we want. with that aid, we can carry what new york city needs, in spite of the country members." "would the country members refuse to vote for really good and needed city legislation?" asked peter. "every time, unless we agree to dicker with them on some country job. the country members hold the interest of the biggest city in this country in their hands, and threaten or throttle those interests every time anything is wanted." "and when it comes to taxation," added another, "the country members are always giving the cities the big end to carry." "i had a talk with catlin," said peter. "it seemed to me that he wasn't the right kind of man." "catlin's a timid man, who never likes to commit himself. that's because he always wants to do what his backers tell him. of course when a man does that, he hasn't decided views of his own, and naturally doesn't wish to express what he may want to take back an hour later." "i don't like straw men," said peter. "a man who takes other people's opinions is not a bad governor, mr. stirling. it all depends on whose opinion he takes. if we could find a man who was able to do what the majority wants every time, we could re-elect him for the next fifty years. you must remember that in this country we elect a man to do what we want--not to do what he wants himself." "yes," said peter. "but who is to say what the majority wants?" "aren't we--the party leaders--who are meeting daily the ward leaders, and the big men in the different districts, better able to know what the people want than the man who sits in the governor's room, with a doorkeeper to prevent the people from seeing him?" "you may not choose to do what the people want." "of course. i've helped push things that i knew were unpopular. but this is very unusual, because it's risky. remember, we can only do things when our party is in power, so it is our interest to do what will please the people, if we are to command majorities and remain in office. individually we have got to do what the majority of our party wants done, or we are thrown out, and new men take our places. and it's just the same way with the parties." "well," said peter, "i understand the condition better, and can see what i could not fathom before, why the city delegates want catlin. but my own ward has come out strong for porter. we've come to the conclusion that his views on the license question are those which are best for us, and besides, he's said that he will stand by us in some food and tenement legislation we want." "i know about that change, and want to say, mr. stirling, that few men of your years and experience, were ever able to do as much so quickly. but there are other sides, even to these questions, which you may not have yet considered. any proposed restriction on the license will not merely scare a lot of saloon-keepers, who will only understand that it sounds unfriendly, but it will alienate every brewer and distiller, for their interest is to see saloons multiplied. then food and tenement legislation always stirs up bad feeling in the dealers and owners. if the opposite party would play fair, we could afford to laugh at it, but you see the party out of power can oppose about anything, knowing that a minority is never held responsible, and so by winning over the malcontents which every piece of legislation is sure to make, before long it goes to the polls with a majority, though it has really been opposing the best interests of the whole state. we can't sit still, and do nothing, yet everything we do will alienate some interest." "it's as bad as the doctrine of fore-ordination," laughed another of the party: "you can't if you will, you can if you won't, you'll be damned if you do, you'll be damned if you don't." "you just said," stated peter, "that the man who could do what the majority wants done every time, would be re-elected. doesn't it hold true as to a party?" "no. a party is seldom retained in power for such reasons. if it has a long tenure of office it is generally due to popular distrust of the other party. the natural tendency otherwise is to make office-holding a sort of see-saw. let alone change of opinion in older men, there are enough new voters every four years to reverse majorities in almost every state. of course these young men care little for what either party has done in the past, and being young and ardent, they want to change things. the minority's ready to please them, naturally. reform they call it, but it's quite as often 'deform' when they've done it." peter smiled and said, "then you think my views on license, and food-inspection, and tenement-house regulation are 'deformities'?" "we won't say that, but a good many older and shrewder heads have worked over those questions, and while i don't know what you hope to do, you'll not be the first to want to try a change, mr. stirling." "i hope to do good. i may fail, but it's not right as it is, and i must try to better it." peter spoke seriously, and his voice was very clear. "i'm glad to have had this talk, before the convention meets. you are all experienced men, and i value your opinions." "but don't intend to act on them," said his host good-naturedly. "no. i'm not ready to say that. i've got to think them over." "if you do that, mr. stirling, you'll find we are right. we have not been twenty and thirty years in this business for nothing." "i think you know how to run a party--but poisoned milk was peddled in my ward. i went to law to punish the men who sold it. now i'm going into politics to try and get laws and administration which will prevent such evils. i've told my district what i want. i think it will support me. i know you can help me, and i hope you will. we may disagree on methods, but if we both wish the good of new york, we can't disagree on results." peter stopped, rather amazed himself at the length of his speech. "what do you want us to do?" "you say that you want to remain in control. you say you can only do so by majorities. i want you to give this city such a government that you'll poll every honest vote on our side," said peter warmly. "that's only the generalization of a very young man," said the leader. peter liked him all the better for the snub. "i generalized, because it would make clear the object of my particular endeavors. i want to have the health board help me to draft a food-inspection bill, and i want the legislature to pass it, without letting it be torn to pieces for the benefit of special interests. i don't mind fair amendments, but they must be honest ones." "and if the health board helps you, and the bill is made a law?" peter looked mr. costell in the face, and spoke quietly: "i shall tell my ward that you have done them a great service." two of the men moved uneasily in their seats, as if not comfortable, and a third scowled. "and if we can give you some tenement-house legislation?" "i shall tell my ward that you have done them a great service." peter spoke in the same tone of voice, and still looked mr. costell in the face. "and if we don't do either?" "what i shall do then will depend on whether you refuse for a good reason or for none. in either case i shall tell them the facts." "this is damned----" began one of the dinner-party, but the lifting of mr. costell's hand stopped the speech there. "mr. stirling," said mr. costell, rising as he spoke, "i hope when you come to think it over, that you will vote with us for catlin. but whether you do or not, we want you to work with us. we can help you, and you can help us. when you are ready to begin on your bills, come and see me." "thank you," said peter. "that is just what i want." he said good-night to the company, and left the house. "that fellow is going to be troublesome," said green. "there's no good trying to get anything out of him. better split with him at once," said the guest who had used the expletive. "he can't have any very big hold," said a third. "it's only that trial which has given him a temporary popularity." "wait and see if he goes back on catlin, and if he does, lay for him," remarked green. a pause came, and they all looked at costell, who was smiling a certain deep smile that was almost habitual with him, and which no one had ever yet been able to read. "no," he said slowly. "you might beat him, but he isn't the kind that stays beat. i'll agree to outwit any man in politics, except the man who knows how to fight and to tell the people the truth. i've never yet seen a man beaten in the long run who can do both those, unless he chose to think himself beaten. gentlemen, that stirling is a fighter and a truth-teller, and you can't beat him in his ward. there's no use having him against us, so it's our business to see that we have him with us. we may not be able to get him into line this time, but we must do it in the long run. for he's not the kind that lets go. he's beaten nelson, and he's beaten gallagher, both of whom are old hands. mark my words, in five years he'll run the sixth ward. drop all talk of fighting him. he is in politics to stay, and we must make it worth his while to stay with us." chapter xxii. politics. peter sat up later than was prudent that night, studying his blank wall. yet when he rose to go to bed, he gave his head a puzzled shake. when he had gone through his papers, and drunk his coffee the next morning, he went back to wall-gazing again. he was working over two conundrums not very easy to answer, which were somewhat to this effect: does the best man always make the best official? is the honest judgment of a fellow verging on twenty-four better than the experienced opinion of many far older men? peter began to think life had not such clear and direct "right" and "wrong" roads as he had thought. he had said to himself long ago that it was easy to take the right one, but he had not then discovered that it is often difficult to know which is the right, in order to follow it. he had started in to punish bohlmann, and had compromised. he had disapproved of dennis breaking the law, and had compromised his disapproval. he had said he should not go into saloons, and had ended by going. now he was confronted with the problem whether the interests of his ward would be better served by the nomination of a man of good record, whom peter personally liked, or by that of a colorless man, who would be ruled by the city's leaders. in the one case peter feared no support for his measures from his own party. in the other case he saw aid that was tantamount to success. finally he shook himself. "i believe dennis is right," he said aloud. "there are more 'real' things than 'convictions' in new york politics, and a 'real' thing is much harder to decide about in voting than a 'conviction.'" he went to his bedroom, packed his bag, and took his way to the station. there he found a dense crowd of delegates and "well-wishers," both surrounding and filling the special train which was to carry new york's contribution to the collected party wisdom, about to concentrate at saratoga. peter felt like a stranger in the crowd, but on mingling in it he quickly found himself a marked man. he was seized upon by one of the diners of the evening before, and soon found himself forming part of a group, which constantly changed its components, but continued to talk convention affairs steadily. nor did the starting of the train, with cheers, brass bands, flags, and other enthusing elements, make more than a temporary break. from the time the special started, till it rolled into saratoga, six hours later, there was one long series of political debates and confabs. peter listened much, and learned much, for the talk was very straight and plain. he had chats with costell and green. his two fellow-delegates from "de sixt" sought him and discussed intentions. he liked schlurger, a simple, guileless german, who wanted only to do what his constituents wished him to do, both in convention and assembly. of kennedy he was not so sure. kennedy had sneered a little at peter's talk about the "best man," and about "helping the ward," and had only found that peter's ideas had value after he had been visited by various of the saloon-keepers, seen the vast torchlight meeting, and heard the cheers at peter's arguments. still, peter was by no means sure that kennedy was not a square man, and concluded he was right in not condemning him, when, passing through one of the cars, he overheard the following: "what kind of man is that stirling, who's raised such ---- in the sixth?" "i don't know him, but kennedy told me, before he'd swung round, that he was a darned good sort of a cuss." this was flattery, peter understood, however questionable the form might seem, and he was pleased. very few of us do not enjoy a real compliment. what makes a compliment uncomfortable is either a suspicion that the maker doesn't mean it, or a knowledge that it is not merited. peter went at once to his room on reaching the hotel in saratoga, intending to make up the sleep of which his long "think" the night before had robbed him. but scarcely had the colored gentleman bowed himself out, after the usual "can i git de gentleman a pitcher of ice water" (which translated means: "has de gentleman any superfluous change?") when a knock came at the door. peter opened it, to find a man outside. "is this mr. stirling's room?" inquired the individual. "yes." "can i see him?" "come in." peter moved his bag off one of his chairs, and his hat and overcoat off the other. "mr. stirling," said the stranger as he sat down, "i am senator maguire, and am, as perhaps you know, one of porter's managers." "yes." "we understand that you are friendly to us. now, i needn't say that new york is otherwise a unit in opposing us." "no," said peter. "my fellow-delegates from the sixth, schlurger and kennedy, stand as i do!" "are you sure?" "yes." "the change must have been very sudden. they were elected as catlin men, we were told." "yes. but there's quite a different feeling in the ward now, and they have yielded to it." "that's good news." "we all three come here prepared to do what seems best." the senator's expression lost some of the satisfaction peter's news had put into it. he gave a quick look at peter's face, as if to try and find from it what lay behind the words. he hesitated, as if divided in mind over two courses of action. finally he said: "i needn't tell you that this opposition of practically the whole of the new york city delegation, is the most serious set-back to porter's chance. now, we have talked it over, and it seemed to us that it would be a great card for him if he could be nominated by a city delegate. will you do it?" "i don't know him well enough, do i? doesn't the nominating delegate have to make a speech in his favor?" "yes. but i can give you the material to-night. or if you prefer, we'll give it to you all written for delivery?" "i don't make other men's speeches, mr. maguire." "suit yourself about that. it shall be just as you please." "the difficulty is that i have not decided myself, yet, how i shall vote, and of course such an act is binding." mr. maguire's countenance changed again. "i'm sorry to hear that. i hoped you were for porter. he's far away the best man." "so i think." the senator leaned back in his chair, and tucked his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat. he thought he had fathomed peter, and felt that the rest was plain sailing. "this is not a chap to be tolled. i'll give him the gaff at once," was his mental conclusion. then he asked aloud: "what do you want?" it was a question susceptible of many different constructions, but as mr. maguire asked it, it seemed to him to have but one, and that not very honest. peter hesitated. the temptation was strong to lead the senator on, but he did not like to do it. it seemed to savor of traps, and peter had never liked traps. still--he did want to know if the managers on porter's side would stoop to buy his support by some bargain. as peter hesitated, weighing the pros and cons, maguire spoke again. "what does the other side offer you?" peter spoke quickly. "they haven't offered me anything, but advice. that is, costell said he'd try and help me on some legislation i want--" "special?" interrupted maguire. "no, general. i've talked about it with porter as well" "oh! indeed?" "i'm really anxious to get that. otherwise i want nothing." "whew," said the senator to himself. "that was a narrow squeak. if he hadn't spoken so quickly, i should have shown my hand before the call. i wonder if he got any inkling?" he never dreamed that peter had spoken quickly to save that very disclosure. "i needn't say, mr. stirling, that if you can see your way to nominate porter, we shall not forget it. nor will he. he isn't the kind of man who forgets his friends. many a man in to-morrow's convention would give anything for the privilege we offer you." "well," said peter, "i realize the honor offered me, but i don't see my way to take it. it will please me better to see him nominated by some one who has really stood close to him, than to gain his favor by doing it myself." "think twice, mr. stirling." "if you would rather, i will not give you my answer till to-morrow morning?" "i would," said maguire rising, "try and make it favorable. it's a great chance to do good for yourself and for your side. good-night." peter closed his door, and looked about for a bit of blank wall. but on second thought he sat down on his window-sill, and, filling his pipe, tried to draw conclusions as well as smoke from it. "i wonder," he pondered to himself, "how much of that was maguire, and how much porter? ought i, for the sake of doing my best for my ward, to have let him go on? has an agent any right to refuse what will help is client, even if it comes by setting pitfalls?" rap, rap, rap. "come in," called peter, forgetting he had turned down his light. the door opened and mr. costell came in. "having a quiet smoke?" he asked. "yes. i haven't a cigar to offer you. can you join me in a pipe?" "i haven't come to that yet. suppose you try one of my cigars." costell sat down on the window-ledge by peter. "thank you," said peter. "i like a cigar, but it must be a good one, and that kind i can't afford." he lit the cigar, and leaned back to luxuriate in it. "you'll like that, i'm sure. pretty sight, isn't it?" costell pointed to the broad veranda, three stories below them, gay with brilliant dresses. "yes. it's my first visit here, so it's new to me." "it won't be your last. you'll be attending other conventions than this." "i hope so." "one of my scouts tells me you've had a call from maguire?" "yes." peter hesitated a moment. "he wants me to nominate porter," he continued, as soon as he had decided that plain speaking was fair to maguire. "we shall be very sorry to see you do it." "i don't think i shall. they only want me because it would give the impression that porter has a city backing, and to try to give that amounts to a deception." "can they get schlurger or kennedy?" "schlurger is safe. i don't know about kennedy." "can you find out for us?" "yes. when would you like to know?" "can you see him now? i'll wait here." peter rose, looking at his cigar with a suggestion of regret. but he rubbed out the light, and left the room. at the office, he learned the number of kennedy's room, and went to it. on knocking, the door was opened only a narrow crack. "oh! it's you," said kennedy. "come in." peter entered, and found maguire seated in an easy attitude on a lounge. he noticed that his thumbs were once more tucked into his waistcoat. "mr. kennedy," said peter without seating himself, "there is an attempt being made to get a city delegate to nominate porter. it seems to me that is his particular friends' business." maguire spoke so quickly that kennedy had no chance to reply: "kennedy's promised to nominate him, mr. stirling, if you won't." "do you feel that you are bound to do it?" asked peter. kennedy moved uneasily in his chair. "yes, i suppose i have promised." "will you release mr. kennedy from his promise if he asks it?" peter queried to maguire. "why, mr. stirling, i don't think either he or you ought to ask it." "that was not my question." it was the senator's turn to squirm. he did not want to say no, for fear of angering peter, yet he did not like to surrender the advantage. finally he said: "yes, i'll release him, but mr. kennedy isn't the kind of a man that cries off from a promise. that's women's work." "no," said kennedy stiffening suddenly in backbone, as he saw the outlet opened by maguire, between antagonizing peter, and retracting his consent. "i don't play baby. not me." peter stood thinking for a longer time than the others found comfortable. maguire whistled to prove that he was quite at ease, but he would not have whistled if he had been. "i think, mr. kennedy, that i'll save you from the difficulty by nominating mr. porter myself," said peter finally. "good!" said maguire; and kennedy, reaching down into his hip pocket, produced a version of the holy text not yet included in any bibliography. evidently the atmosphere was easier. "about your speech, mr. stirling?" continued the senator. "i shall say what i think right." something in peter's voice made maguire say: "it will be of the usual kind, of course?" "i don't know," said peter, "i shall tell the facts." "what sort of facts?" "i shall tell how it is that a delegate of the sixth ward nominates porter." "and that is?" "i don't see," said peter, "why i need say it. you know it as well as i do." "i know of many reasons why you should do it." "no," said peter. "there's only one, and that has been created in the last ten minutes. mr. maguire, if you insist on the sixth ward nominating mr. porter, the sixth ward is going to tell why it does so. i'm sorry, for i like porter, but the sixth ward shan't lend itself to a fraud, if i can help it." kennedy had been combining things spiritual and aqueous at his wash-stand. but his interest in the blending seemed suddenly to cease. maguire, too, took his thumbs from their havens of rest, and looked dissatisfied. "look here, mr. stirling," he said, "it's much simpler to leave it to kennedy. you think you're doing what's right, but you'll only do harm to us, and to yourself. if you nominate porter, the city gang won't forgive you, and unless you can say what we want said, we shall be down on you. so you'll break with both sides." "i think that is so. that is why i want some real friend of porter's to do it." maguire laughed rather a forced laugh. "i suppose we've got to satisfy you. we'll have porter nominated by one of our own crowd." "i think that's best. good-evening." peter went to the door. "mr. stirling," called kennedy. "won't you stay and take some whisky and water with us?" "thank you," said peter. "mr. costell's in my room and he must be tired of waiting." he closed the door, and walked away. the couple looked at each other blankly for a moment. "the ---- cuss is playing a double game," maguire gasped. "i don't know what it means!" said kennedy. "mean?" cried maguire. "it can mean only one thing. he's acting under costell's orders." "but why should he give it away to us?" "how the ---- should i know? look here, kennedy, you must do it, after all." "i don't want to." "tut, tut, man, you must." "but my ward?" "come. we'll make it quarantine, as you want. that's six years, and you can ---- your ward." "i'll do it." "that's the talk." they sat and discussed plans and whisky for nearly an hour. then maguire said good-night. "you shall have the speech the first thing in the morning," he said at parting. then as he walked down the long corridor, he muttered, "now then, stirling, look out for the hind heel of the mule." peter found costell still waiting for him. "it took me longer than i thought, for maguire was there." "indeed!" said costell, making room for peter on the window-ledge. peter re-lit his cigar, "maguire promises me that porter shall be nominated by one of his friends." "he had been trying kennedy?" "i didn't ask." costell smiled. "i had no business to ask you that?" "no," peter said frankly. both puffed their cigars for a time in silence. then costell began talking about saratoga. he told peter where the "congress" spring was, and what was worth seeing. finally he rose to go. he held out his hand, and said: "mr. stirling, you've been as true as steel with us, and with the other men. i don't want you to suppose we are not conscious of it. i think you've done us a great service to-night, although it might have been very profitable to you if you had done otherwise. i don't think that you'll lose by it in the long run, but i'm going to thank you now, for myself. good-night." peter had a good night. perhaps it was only because he was sleepy, but a pleasant speech is not a bad night-cap. at least it is better than a mental question-mark as to whether one has done wrong. peter did not know how it was coming out, but he thought he had done right, and need not spend time on a blank wall that evening. chapter xxiii the convention. though peter had not gone to bed so early as he hoped, he was up the next morning, and had tramped his eight miles through and around saratoga, before the place gave many evidences of life. he ended his tramp at the congress spring, and tasted the famous water, with exceeding disgust at the result. as he set down his half-finished tumbler, and turned to leave, he found miss de voe at his elbow, about to take her morning glass. "this is a very pleasant surprise," she said, holding out her hand. "when did you arrive?" "i only came last night." "and how long shall you be here?" "i cannot say. i am attending the convention, and my stay will depend on that." "surely you are not a democrat?" said miss de voe, a shade of horror showing itself in her face, in spite of her good breeding. in those days it was not, to put it mildly, a guarantee of respectability to belong to that party, and miss de voe had the strong prejudices of her social station, all the more because she was absolutely ignorant of political events. peter said he was. "how can you be? when a man can ally himself with the best, why should he choose the worst?" "i think," said peter quietly, "that a pharisee said the same thing, in different words, many hundred years ago." miss de voe caught her breath and flushed. she also became suddenly conscious of the two girls who had come to the spring with her. they had been forgotten in the surprise over peter, but now miss de voe wondered if they had heard his reply, and if they had enough bible lore to enable them to understand the reproof. "i am sure you don't mean that," she said, in the sting of the moment. "i am very sorry," said peter, "if i made an unkind speech. what i meant was that no one has a right to pick out the best for himself. i am sure, from your letter to me, that you think a man should help those not as well off as himself." "oh, but that is very different. of course we should be charitable to those who need our help, but we need not mix in their low politics." "if good laws, and good administration can give the poor good food, and good lodgings, don't you think the best charity is to 'mix' in politics, and try to obtain such results?" "i want you to know my two cousins," miss de voe replied. "dorothy, i wish to present mr. stirling. my cousin, miss ogden, and miss minna ogden." peter saw two very pretty girls, and made a bow to them. "which way are you walking?" asked miss de voe. "i have been tramping merely for exercise," said peter, "and stopped here to try the spring, on my way to the united states." "it is hardly worth while, but if you will get into our carriage, we will drop you there. or if you can spare the time, we will drive to our cottage, and then send you back to the hotel." "thank you," said peter, "but i shall only crowd you, i fear." "no. there is plenty of room." "will the convention be interesting to watch, mr. stirling?" asked one of the girls, as soon as they were seated. "i don't know," peter told her. "it is my first experience at it. there is pretty strong feeling, and that of course makes it interesting to the delegates, but i am not sure that it would be so to others." "will there be speeches, and cheers, and all that sort of thing?" "yes." "cousin anneke, won't you take us? it will be such fun!" "are spectators admitted, mr. stirling?" "i believe so. i heard something about tickets last night. if you care to go, i'll see if i can get you some?" "oh, please," cried both girls. "if you can do so, mr. stirling, we should like to see the interesting part," said miss de voe. "i'll try." "send word back by oliver." the carriage had drawn up at the cottage, and farewells were made. as soon as peter reached the hotel, he went to the new york city delegation room, and saw costell. he easily secured admissions, and pencilling on a card, "at headquarters they tell me that the nominations will begin at the afternoon session, about two o'clock," he sent them back by the carriage. then bearding the terrors of the colored "monarch of all he surveys," who guards the dining-room of every well-ordered saratoga hotel, he satisfied as large an appetite as he remembered in a long time. the morning proceedings in the convention were purely formal. the election of the chairman, the roll-call, the naming of the committees, and other routine matter was gotten through with, but the real interest centred in the undertone of political talk, going on with little regard to the business in hand. after the committees were named, an unknown man came up to peter, and introduced himself by a name which peter at once recognized as that of one of the committee on the platform. "mr. costell thinks you might like to see this, and can perhaps suggest a change," explained mr. talcott, laying several sheets of manuscript on peter's desk and indicating with his finger a certain paragraph. peter read it twice before saying anything. "i think i can better it," he said. "if you can give me time i'm very slow about such things." "all right. get it in shape as quickly as possible, and send it to the committee-room." left alone peter looked round for a blank wall. failing in his search, he put his head into his hands, and tried to shut out the seething, excited mass of men about him. after a time he took a sheet of paper and wrote a paragraph for the platform. it pledged the party to investigate the food and tenement questions, and to pass such remedial legislation as should seem best. it pledged the party to do this, with as little disturbance and interference with present conditions as possible, "but fully recognizing the danger of state interference, we place human life above money profits, and human health above annual incomes, and shall use the law to its utmost to protect both." when it appeared in the platform, there was an addition that charged the failure to obtain legislation "which should have rendered impossible the recent terrible lesson in new york city" to "the obstruction in the last legislature in the interest of the moneyed classes and landlords, by the republican party." that had not been in peter's draft and he was sorry to see it. still, the paragraph had a real ring of honesty and feeling in it. that was what others thought too. "gad, that stirling knows how to sling english," said one of the committee, when the paragraph was read aloud. "he makes it take right hold." many an orator in that fall's campaign read the nineteenth section of the democratic platform aloud, feeling that it was ammunition of the right kind. it is in all the new york papers of september th, of that year. immediately after the morning adjournment, green came up to peter. "we've had a count, and can't carry catlin. so we shan't even put him up. what do you think of milton?" "i don't know him personally, but he has a very good record, i believe." "he isn't what we want, but that's not the question. we must take what we can get." "i suppose you think porter has a chance." "not if we take milton." "between the two i have no choice." an hour later, the convention was called to order by the chairman. a few moments sufficed to complete the unfinished business, and then the chairman's gavel fell, and every one knew without his announcement that the crucial moment had been reached. much to peter's surprise, kennedy was one of the members who was instantly on his feet, and was the one selected for recognition by the chairman. he was still more surprised when kennedy launched at once into a glowing eulogium of porter. peter was sitting next kennedy, and though he sat quietly, a sad look came into the face usually so expressionless. he felt wronged. he felt that he had been an instrument in the deceiving of others. most of all he grieved to think that a delegate of his ward, largely through his own interference, was acting discreditably. peter wanted others to do right, and he felt that that was not what kennedy was doing. the moment kennedy finished, peter rose, as did maguire. the convention was cheering for porter, and it took some time to quiet it to a condition when it was worth while recognizing any one. during this time the chairman leaned forward and talked with green, who sat right below him, for a moment. green in turn spoke to costell, and a little slip of paper was presently handed up to the chairman, who from that moment became absolutely oblivious of the fact that maguire was on his feet. when silence finally came, in spite of maguire's, "mr. chairman," that individual said, "mr. stirling." peter began in a low voice, "in rising, mr. chairman, to second the nomination of mr. porter, i feel that it would be idle in me to praise one so well known to all of us, even if he had not just been the subject of so appreciative a speech from my colleague--" here cries of "louder" interrupted peter, during which interruption green said to costell, "we've been tricked." "i'm not so sure," replied costell, "maguire's on his feet yet, and doesn't look happy. something's happening which has not been slated." when peter resumed, there were no more cries of "louder." his introduction had been a matter of trouble and doubt to him, for he liked porter, and feared he might not show it. but now he merely had something to tell his audience, and that was easy work. so, his voice ringing very clear and distinct, he told them of the original election of the delegates; of the feeling of his ward; of the attempts to obtain a city nomination of porter; of maguire's promise. "gad, he hits from the shoulder," said green. as soon as the trend of his remarks was realized, porter's supporters began to hiss and hoot. peter at once stopped, but the moment silence came he began again, and after a repetition of this a few times, they saw they could neither embarrass nor anger him, so they let him have his say. he brought his speech to an end by saying: "i have already expressed my admiration of mr. porter, and as soon as i had made up my mind to vote for him, i made no secret of that intention. but he should not have been nominated by a city delegate, for he is not the choice of new york city, and any attempt to show that he is, or that he has any true backing there, is only an attempt to deceive. in seconding his nomination therefore, i wish it to be distinctly understood that both his nomination and seconding are personal acts, and in no sense the act of the delegates of the city of new york." there was a mingling of hoots and cheers as peter sat down, though neither was very strong. in truth, the larger part of the delegates were very much in the dark as to the tendency of peter's speech. "was it friendly or unfriendly to porter?" they wondered. "mr. maguire," said the chairman. "mr. chairman, the gentleman who has just sat down is to be complimented on his speech. in my whole life i have never heard so deceptive and blinding a narration. we know of brutus stabbing his friend. but what shall we say of a pretended brutus who caresses while he stabs?" here the porter adherents became absolutely sure of the character of peter's speech, and hissed. "nor is it imperial caesar alone," continued maguire, "against whom he turns his poniard. not content with one foul murder, he turns against caesar's friends. by devilish innuendo, he charges the honorable mr. kennedy and myself with bargaining to deceive the american people. i call on him for proof or retraction." the convention laughed. peter rose and said: "mr. chairman, i gave a truthful account of what actually took place last evening in the united states hotel. i made no charges." "but you left the impression that mr. kennedy and i had made a deal," shrieked maguire. "if the gentleman draws that conclusion from what passed, it is not my fault." the convention laughed. "do you mean to charge such a bargain?" angrily shouted maguire. "will you deny it?" asked peter calmly. "then you do charge it?" here the convention laughed for the third time. green shouted "deny it," and the cry was taken up by many of the delegates. "yes," screamed maguire. "i do deny it" peter turned to kennedy. "do you too, deny it?" "yes," shouted kennedy, loudly. again the convention laughed. "then," said peter, "if i had charged you with a bargain, i should now find it necessary to apologize." the convention roared. maguire screamed something, but it could not be heard. the tenor of his remarks was indicated by his red face and clinched fist. costell smiled his deep smile. "i'm very glad," he said to the man next him, "that we didn't pick stirling up." then milton was nominated and seconded, as were also catlin, and four minor stars. that done, a ballot was taken and the vote stood: porter milton catlin scattering a second ballot showed: porter milton catlin scattering a third ballot gave: porter milton catlin scattering "porter's done for on the next," was whispered round the hall, though where it started, no one knew. evidently his adherents thought so, for one made a motion to adjourn. it was voted down, and once more the roll call started. "i shall vote for milton," peter told schlurger, and the changes in the delegations as the call proceeded, proved that many changes were being made the same way. yet the fourth ballot showed: porter milton catlin scattering the wildest excitement broke out in the porter delegates. "they've beaten us," screamed kennedy, as much to himself as to those about. "they've used milton to break our ranks, meaning catlin all the time." so in truth, it was. milton had been put up to draw off porter's delegates, but the moment they had begun to turn to milton, enough new york city delegates had been transferred to catlin to prevent milton being chosen. amid protests and angry words on all sides another ballot was taken: catlin porter milton before the result was announced. green was at peter's elbow. "will you move to make it unanimous?" he asked. "yes." and peter made the formal motion, which was carried by acclamation. half an hour served to choose the lieutenant-governor and the rest of the ticket, for the bulk of it had already been slated. the platform was adopted, and the convention dissolved. "well," said kennedy angrily to peter, "i guess you've messed it this time. a man can't please both sides, but he needn't get cussed by both." peter went out and walked to his hotel. "i'm afraid i did mess it," he thought, "yet i don't see what else i could have done." chapter xxiv. misunderstandings and understandings. "did you understand what it all meant, cousin anneke?" asked dorothy, as they were coming downstairs. "no. the man who got so angry seemed to think mr. stirling had--" she stopped short. a group of men on the sidewalk were talking, and she paused to hear one say: "to see that young chap stirling handling maguire was an eye-opener." another man laughed, rather a deep, quiet laugh. "maguire understands everything but honesty," he said. "you can always beat him with that." miss de voe would have like to stay and listen, but there were too many men. so the ladies entered the carriage. "at least we know that he said he was trying to tell the truth," she went on, "and you just heard what that man said. i don't know why they all laughed." "he didn't seem to mind a bit." "no. hasn't he a funny half-embarrassed, half-cool manner?" "he wasn't embarrassed after he was fairly speaking. you know he was really fine-looking, when he spoke." "yes," said dorothy. "you said he had a dull, heavy face." "that was the first time i saw him, dorothy. it's a face which varies very much. oliver, drive to the united states. we will take him home to dinner." "oh, good," cried the youngest. "then he will tell us why they laughed." as they drove up to the hotel, peter had just reached the steps. he turned to the carriage, the moment he saw that they wanted him. "we wish to carry you off to a simple country dinner," miss de voe told him. "i am going to take the special to new york, and that leaves in half an hour." "take a later train." "my ticket wouldn't be good on it." most men miss de voe would have snubbed on the spot, but to peter she said: "then get another ticket." "i don't care to do that," said peter. "oh, please, mr. stirling," said minna. "i want to ask you a lot of questions about the convention." "hush, minna," said miss de voe. she was nettled that peter should refuse, and that her niece could stoop to beg of "a criminal lawyer and ward politician," as she put it mentally. but she was determined not to show it "we are sorry. good-evening. home, oliver." so they did not learn from peter why the convention laughed. the subject was brought up at dinner, and dorothy asked the opinion of the voters of the family. "probably he had made a fluke of some kind," one said. "more probably he had out-sharped the other side," suggested a second. "it will be in the papers to-morrow," said the first suggestor. the three women looked in the next day's papers, but the reporters were as much at sea in regard to the stirling-sixth-ward incident, as had been the rank-and-file in the convention. three took their views from maguire, and called it "shameful treason," and the like. two called it "unprincipled and contradictory conduct." one alone said that "mr. stirling seemed to be acting conscientiously, if erratically." just what effect it had had on the candidates none of the papers agreed in. one said it had killed porter. another, that "it was a purely personal matter without influence on the main question." the other papers shaded between these, though two called it "a laughable incident." the opposition press naturally saw in it an entire discrediting of both factions of the democratic party, and absolute proof that the nominee finally selected was unfit for office. unable to sift out the truth, the ladies again appealed to the voters of the family. "oh," said one, "stirling did something tricky and was caught in it." "i don't believe that," said miss de voe. "nor i," said dorothy. "well, if you want to make your political heeler an angel, i have no objection," laughed the enfranchised being. "i don't think a man who made that speech about the children can be a scoundrel," said dorothy. "i don't either," said minna. "that's the way you women reason," responded he of the masculine intellect. "because a man looks out for some sick kittens, ergo, he is a political saint. if you must take up with politicians, do take republicans, for then, at least, you have a small percentage of chance in your favor that they are gentlemen." "don't be a pharisee, lispenard," said miss de voe, utilizing peter's rebuke. "then don't trouble me with political questions. politics are so vulgar in this country that no gentleman keeps up with them." miss de voe and the two girls dropped the "vulgar" subject, but miss de voe said later: "i should like to know what they laughed at?" "do ask him--if he comes to call on you, this winter, cousin anneke." "no. i asked him once and he did not come." miss de voe paused a moment. "i shall not ask him again," she added. "i don't think he intends to be rude," said dorothy. "no," responded miss de voe. "i don't think he knows what he is doing. he is absolutely without our standards, and it is just as well for both that he shouldn't call." woman-like, miss de voe forgot that she had said peter was a gentleman. if peter had found himself a marked man in the trip up, he was doubly so on the return train. he sat most of the time by himself, pondering on what had happened, but he could not be unconscious of the number of people to whom he was pointed out. he was conscious too, that his course had not been understood, and that many of those who looked at him with interest, did so without approbation. he was not buoyed up either, by a sense that he had succeeded in doing the best. he had certainly hurt porter, and had made enemies of maguire and kennedy. except for the fact that he had tried to do right, he could see no compensating balance. naturally the newspapers the next morning did not cheer him, though perhaps he cared less for what they said than he ought. he sent them, good, bad, and indifferent, to his mother, writing her at the same time a long letter, telling her how and why he had taken this course. he wrote also a long letter to porter, explaining his conduct. porter had already been told that peter was largely responsible for his defeat, but after reading peter's letter, he wrote him a very kind reply, thanking him for his support and for his letter. "it is not always easy to do what one wants in politics," he wrote, "but if one tries with high motives, for high things, even defeat loses its bitterness. i shall not be able to help you, in your wished-for reforms as greatly as i hoped, but i am not quite a nonentity in politics even now, and if at any time you think my aid worth the asking, do not hesitate to call on me for it. i shall always be glad to see you at my house for a meal or a night, whether you come on political matters or merely for a chat." peter found his constituents torn with dissensions over his and kennedy's course in the convention. he did not answer in kind the blame and criticism industriously sowed by kennedy; but he dropped into a half-a-dozen saloons in the next few days, and told "the b'ys" a pretty full history of the "behind-the-scenes" part. "i'm afraid i made mistakes," he frankly acknowledged, "yet even now i don't see how i could have done differently. i certainly thought i was doing right." "an' so yez were," shouted dennis. "an' if that dirty beast kennedy shows his dirty face inside these doors, it's a washin' it will get wid the drainin' av the beer-glasses. we wants none av his dirty bargains here." "i don't know that he had made any bargain," said peter. "but we do," shouted one of the men. "it's a bargain he's always makin'." "yes," said dennis. "it's kennedy looks out for himself, an' we'll let him do it next time all by himself." it could not be traced to its origin, but in less than a week the consensus of opinion in the ward was that: "kennedy voted for himself, but stirling for us." the ward, too, was rather proud of the celebrity it had achieved. the papers had not merely paragraphed peter, and the peculiar position of the "district" in the convention, but they had begun now asking questions as to how the ward would behave. "would it support catlin?" "was it true that the ward machine had split, and intended to nominate rival tickets?" "had one faction made a deal with the republicans?" "begobs," said dennis, "it's the leaders an' the papers are just afther discoverin' there is a sixth ward, an' it's misther stirling's made them do it." the chief party leaders had stayed over at saratoga, but peter had a call from costell before the week was out. "the papers gave it to you rather rough," costell said kindly, "but they didn't understand it. we thought you behaved very square." "they tell me i did porter harm." "no. it was maguire did the harm. you simply told about it. of course you get the blame." "my constituents stand by me." "how do they like catlin?" "i think they are entirely satisfied. i'm afraid they never cared much who got it." "i'm told kennedy is growling, and running amuck?" "he's down on catlin and me." "well, if you think best, we'll placate him? but gallagher seemed to think he couldn't do much?" "i don't think he has much of a following. even moriarty, who was his strong card, has gone back on him." "will you make a couple of speeches for us in this ward?" "if you'll let me say what i want?" "you can support us?" "yes." "then we'll leave it to you. only beware of making too many statements. you'll get dates and places from the committee as soon as they are settled. we pay twenty-five dollars a night. if you hit the right key, we may want you in some of the other wards, too." "i shall be glad to talk. it's what i've been doing to small crowds in the saloons." "so i'm told. you'll never get a better place. men listen there, as they never will at a mass-meeting." costell rose. "if you are free next sunday, come up into westchester and take a two o'clock dinner with me. we won't talk politics, but you shall see a nice little woman, who's good enough to make my life happier, and after we've looked over my stables, i'll bring you back to the city behind a gray mare that will pass about anything there is on the road." so peter had a half day in the country and enjoyed it very much. he looked over mrs. costell's flower-garden, in which she spent almost her whole time, and chatted with her about it. he saw the beautiful stables, and their still more beautiful occupants. he liked the couple very much. both were simple and silent people, of little culture, but it seemed to peter that the atmosphere had a gentle, homely tone that was very pleasing. as he got into the light buggy, he said to mrs. costell: "i'll get the seed of that mottled gillyflower from my mother as soon as possible. perhaps you'll let me bring it up myself?" "do," she said. "come again, whether you get the seed or not." after they had started, mr. costell said: "i'm glad you asked that. mrs. costell doesn't take kindly to many of the men who are in politics with me, but she liked you, i could see." peter spoke twice in the next week in small halls in his ward. he had good audiences, and he spoke well, if simply. "there ain't no fireworks in his stuff," said the ward satirist. "he don't unfurl the american flag, nor talk about liberty and the constitution. he don't even speak of us as noble freemen. he talks just as if he thought we was in a saloon. a feller that made that speech about the babies ought to treat us to something moving." that was what many of the ward thought. still they went because they wanted to see if he wouldn't burst out suddenly. they felt that peter had unlimited potentialities in the way of eloquence (for eloquence to them meant the ability to move the emotions) and merely saved his powers. without quite knowing it they found what he had to say interesting. he brought the questions at issue straight back to elementary forms. he showed just how each paragraph in the platform would directly affect, not the state, but the "district." "he's thoroughly good," the party leaders were told. "if he would abuse the other side a little more, and stick in a little tinsel and calcium light he would be great." so he was called upon to speak elsewhere in the city. he worked at one of the polls on election day, and was pleased to find that he was able to prevent a little of the "trading" for which kennedy had arranged. his ward went democratic, as was a foregone conclusion, but by an unusually large majority, and peter found that he and dennis were given the credit for it, both in the ward, and at headquarters. catlin was elected, and the assembly had been won. so peter felt that his three months' work had not been an entire failure. the proceeds of his speeches had added also two hundred and fifty dollars to his savings bank account, and one hundred more to the account of "peter stirling, trustee." chapter xxv. various kinds of society. peter spent christmas with his mother, and found her very much worried over his "salooning." "it's first steps, peter, that do the mischief," she told him. "but, mother, i only go to talk with the men. not to drink." "you'll come to that later. the devil's paths always start straight, my boy, but they end in wickedness. promise me you won't go any more." "i can't do that, mother. i am trying to help the men, and you ought not ask me to stop doing what may aid others." "oh, my boy, my boy!" sobbed the mother. "if you could only understand it, mother, as i have come to, you wouldn't mind. here, the saloon is chiefly a loafing place for the lazy and shiftless, but in new york, it's very different. it's the poor man's club. if you could see the dark, cold, foul-aired tenements where they live, and then the bright, warm, cheerful saloons, that are open to all, you would see that it isn't the drink that draws the men. i even wish the women could come. the bulk of the men are temperate, and only take a glass or two of beer or whisky, to pay for their welcome. they really go for the social part, and sit and talk, or read the papers. of course a man gets drunk, sometimes, but usually it is not a regular customer, and even such cases would be fewer, it we didn't tax whisky so outrageously that the dishonest barkeepers are tempted to doctor their whisky with drugs which drive men frantic if they drink. but most of the men are too sensible, and too poor, to drink so as really to harm themselves." "peter, peter! to think that three years in new york should bring you to talk so! i knew new york was a sink-hole of iniquity, but i thought you were too good a boy to be misled." "mother, new york has less evil in it than most places. here, after the mills shut down, there's no recreation for the men, and so they amuse themselves with viciousness. but in a great place like new york, there are a thousand amusements specially planned for the evening hours. exhibitions, theatres, concerts, libraries, lectures--everything to tempt one away from wrong-doing to fine things. and there wickedness is kept out of sight as it never is here. in new york you must go to it, but in these small places it hunts one out and tempts one." "oh, peter! here, where there's room in church of a sabbath for all the folks, while they say that in new york there isn't enough seats in churches for mor'n a quarter of the people. a missionary was saying only last week that we ought to help raise money to build churches in new york. just think of there being mor'n ten saloons for every church! and that my son should speak for them and spend nights in them!" "i'm sorry it troubles you so. if i felt i had any right to stop, i'd do it." "you haven't drunk in them yet, peter?" "no." "and you'll promise to write me if you do." "i'll promise you i won't drink in them, mother." "thank you, peter." still his mother was terrified at the mere thought, and at her request, her clergyman spoke also to peter. he was easier to deal with, and after a chat with peter, he told mrs. stirling: "i think he is doing no harm, and may do much good. let him do what he thinks best." "it's dreadful though, to have your son's first refusal be about going to saloons," sighed the mother. "from the way he spoke i think his refusal was as hard to him as to you. he's a good boy, and you had better let him judge of what's right." on peter's return to the city, he found an invitation from mrs. bohlmann to come to a holiday festivity of which the germans are so fond. he was too late to go, but he called promptly, to explain why he had not responded. he was very much surprised, on getting out his dress-suit, now donned for the first time in three years, to find how badly it fitted him. "mother is right," he had to acknowledge. "i have grown much thinner." however, the ill-fit did not spoil his evening. he was taken into the family room, and passed a very pleasant hour with the jolly brewer, his friendly wife, and the two "nice girls." they were all delighted with catlin's election, and peter had to tell them about his part in it. they did not let him go when he rose, but took him into the dining-room, where a supper was served at ten. in leaving a box of candy, saved for him from the christmas tree, was given him. "you will come again, mr. stirling?" said mrs. bohlmann, warmly. "thank you," said peter. "i shall be very glad to." "yah," said mr. bohlmann. "you coom choost as ofden as you blease." peter took his dress-suit to a tailor the next day, and ordered it to be taken in. that individual protested loudly on the ground that the coat was so old-fashioned that it would be better to make a new suit. peter told him that he wore evening dress too rarely to make a new suit worth the having, and the tailor yielded rather than lose the job. scarcely had it been put in order, when peter was asked to dine at his clergyman's, and the next day came another invitation, to dine with justice gallagher. peter began to wonder if he had decided wisely in vamping the old suit. he had one of the pleasantest evenings of his life at dr. purple's. it was a dinner of ten, and peter was conscious that a real compliment had been paid him in being included, for the rest of the men were not merely older than himself, but they were the "strong" men of the church. two were trustees. all were prominent in the business world. and it pleased peter to find that he was not treated as the youngster of the party, but had his opinions asked. at one point of the meal the talk drifted to a bethel church then under consideration, and this in turn brought up the tenement-house question. peter had been studying this, both practically and in books, for the last three months. before long, the whole table was listening to what he had to say. when the ladies had withdrawn, there was political talk, in which peter was much more a listener, but it was from preference rather than ignorance. one of the men, a wholesale dealer in provisions, spoke of the new governor's recommendation for food legislation. "the leaders tell me that the legislature will do something about it," peter said. "they'll probably make it worse," said mr. avery. "don't you think it can be bettered?" asked peter. "not by politicians." "i'm studying the subject," peter said. "will you let me come down some day, and talk with you about it?" "yes, by all means. you'd better call about lunch hour, when i'm free, and we can talk without interruption." peter would much have preferred to go on discussing with the men, when they all joined the ladies, but mrs. purple took him off, and placed him between two women. they wanted to hear about "the case," so peter patiently went over that well-worn subject. perhaps he had his pay by being asked to call upon both. more probably the requests were due to what mrs. purple had said of him during the smoking time: "he seems such a nice, solid, sensible fellow. i wish some of you would ask him to call on you. he has no friends, apparently." the dinner at justice gallagher's was a horse of a very different color. the men did not impress him very highly, and the women not at all. there was more to eat and drink, and the talk was fast and lively. peter was very silent. so quiet, that mrs. gallagher told her "take in" that she "guessed that young stirling wasn't used to real fashionable dinners," and peter's partner quite disregarded him for the rattling, breezy talker on her other side. after the dinner peter had a pleasant chat with the justice's seventeen-year-old daughter, who was just from a catholic convent, and the two tried to talk in french. it is wonderful what rubbish is tolerable if only talked in a foreign tongue. "i don't see what you wanted to have that stirling for?" said honorable mrs. justice gallagher, to him who conferred that proud title upon her, after the guests had departed. "you are clever, arn't you?" said gallagher, bitingly. "that's living with you," retorted the h.m.j., who was not easily put down. "then you see that you treat stirling as if he was somebody. he's getting to be a power in the ward, and if you want to remain mrs. justice gallagher and spend eight thousand--and pickings--a year, you see that you keep him friendly." "oh, i'll be friendly, but he's awful dull." "oh, no, mamma," said monica. "he really isn't. he's read a great many more french books than i have." peter lunched with the wholesale provision-dealer as planned. the lunch hour proving insufficient for the discussion, a family dinner, a few days later, served to continue it. the dealer's family were not very enthusiastic about peter. "he knows nothing but grub talk," grumbled the heir apparent, who from the proud altitude of a broker's office, had come to scorn the family trade. "he doesn't know any fashionable people," said one of the girls, who having unfulfilled ambitions concerning that class, was doubly interested and influenced by its standards and idols. "he certainly is not brilliant," remarked the mother. "humph," growled the pater-familias, "that's the way all you women go on. brilliant! fashionable! i don't wonder marriage is a failure when i see what you like in men. that stirling is worth all your dancing men, but just because he holds his tongue when he hasn't a sensible thing to say, you think he's no good." "still he is 'a nobody.'" "he's the fellow who made that big speech in the stump-tail milk case." "not that man?" "exactly. but of course he isn't 'brilliant.'" "i never should have dreamed it." "still," said the heir, "he keeps his eloquence for cows, and not for dinners." "he talked very well at dr. purple's," said the mamma, whose opinion of peter had undergone a change. "and he was invited to call by mrs. dupont and mrs. sizer, which is more than you've ever been," said avery senior to avery junior. "that's because of the prog," growled the son, seeing his opportunity to square accounts quickly. coming out of church the next sunday, peter was laid hold of by the bohlmanns and carried off to a mid-day dinner, at which were a lot of pleasant germans, who made it very jolly with their kindly humor. he did not contribute much to the laughter, but every one seemed to think him an addition to the big table. thus it came to pass that late in january peter dedicated a week of evenings to "society," and nightly donning his dress suit, called dutifully on mrs. dupont, mrs. sizer, mrs. purple, mrs. avery, mrs. costell, mrs. gallagher and mrs. bohlmann. peter was becoming very frivolous. chapter xxvi. an evening call. but peter's social gadding did not end with these bread-and-butter calls. one afternoon in march, he went into the shop of a famous picture-dealer, to look over an exhibition then advertised, and had nearly finished his patient examination of each picture, which always involved quite as much mental gymnastics as aesthetic pleasure to peter, when he heard a pleasant: "how do you do, mr. stirling?" turning, he found miss de voe and a well-dressed man at his elbow. peter's face lighted up in a way which made the lady say to herself: "i wonder why he wouldn't buy another ticket?" aloud she said, "i want you to know another of my cousins. mr. ogden, mr. stirling." "charmed," said mr. ogden genially. any expression which peter had thought of using seemed so absolutely lame, beside this passive participle, that he merely bowed. "i did not know you cared for pictures," said miss de voe. "i see most of the public exhibitions," peter told her. "i try to like them." miss de voe looked puzzled. "don't," said mr. ogden. "i tried once, when i first began. but it's much easier to notice what women say, and answer 'yes' and 'no' at the right points." peter looked puzzled. "nonsense, lispenard," said miss de voe. "he's really one of the best connoisseurs i know, mr. stirling." "there," said lispenard. "you see. only agree with people, and they think you know everything." "i suppose you have seen the pictures, and so won't care to go round with us?" inquired miss de voe. "i've looked at them, but i should like to go over again with you," said peter. then he added, "if i shan't be in the way." "not a bit," said lispenard heartily. "my cousin always wants a listener. it will be a charity to her tongue and my ears." miss de voe merely gave him a very pleasant smile. "i wonder why he wouldn't buy a ticket?" she thought. peter was rather astonished at the way they looked at the pictures. they would pass by a dozen without giving them a second glance, and then stop at one, and chat about it for ten minutes. he found that miss de voe had not exaggerated her cousin's art knowledge. he talked familiarly and brilliantly, though making constant fun of his own opinions, and often jeering at the faults of the picture. miss de voe also talked well, so peter really did supply the ears for the party. he was very much pleased when they both praised a certain picture. "i liked that," he told them, making the first remark (not a question) which he had yet made. "it seemed to me the best here." "unquestionably," said lispenard. "there is poetry and feeling in it." miss de voe said: "that is not the one i should have thought of your liking." "that's womanly," said lispenard, "they are always deciding what a man should like." "no," denied miss de voe. "but i should think with your liking for children, that you would have preferred that piece of brown's, rather than this sad, desolate sand-dune." "i cannot say why i like it, except, that i feel as if it had something to do with my own mood at times." "are you very lonely?" asked miss de voe, in a voice too low for lispenard to hear. "sometimes," said peter, simply. "i wish," said miss de voe, still speaking low, "that the next time you feel so you would come and see me." "i will," said peter. when they parted at the door, peter thanked lispenard: "i've really learned a good deal, thanks to miss de voe and you. i've seen the pictures with eyes that know much more about them than mine do." "well, we'll have to have another turn some day. we're always in search of listeners." "if you come and see me, mr. stirling," said miss de voe, "you shall see my pictures. good-bye." "so that is your democratic heeler?" said lispenard, eyeing peter's retreating figure through the carriage window. "don't call him that, lispenard," said miss de voe, wincing. lispenard laughed, and leaned back into a comfortable attitude. "then that's your protector of sick kittens?" miss de voe made no reply. she was thinking of that dreary wintry stretch of sand and dune. thus it came to pass that a week later, when a north-easter had met a south-wester overhead and both in combination had turned new york streets into a series of funnels, in and through which wind, sleet and snow fought for possession, to the almost absolute dispossession of humanity and horses, that peter ended a long stare at his blank wall by putting on his dress-suit, and plunging into the streets. he had, very foolishly, decided to omit dinner, a couple of hours before, rather than face the storm, and a north-east wind and an empty stomach are enough to set any man staring at nothing, if that dangerous inclination is at all habitual. peter realized this, for the opium eater is always keenly alive to the dangers of the drug. usually he fought the tendency bravely, but this night he felt too tired to fight himself, and preferred to battle with a little thing like a new york storm. so he struggled through the deserted streets until he had reached his objective point in the broad second avenue house. miss de voe was at home, but was "still at dinner." peter vacillated, wondering what the correct thing was under the circumstances. the footman, remembering him of old, and servants in those simple days being still open to impressions, suggested that he wait. peter gladly accepted the idea. but he did not wait, for hardly had the footman left him than that functionary returned, to tell peter that miss de voe would see him in the dining-room. "i asked you to come in here, because i'm sure, after venturing out such a night, you would like an extra cup of coffee," miss de voe explained. "you need not sit at the table. morden, put a chair by the fire." so peter found himself sitting in front of a big wood-fire, drinking a cup of coffee decidedly better in quality than his home-brew. blank walls ceased to have any particular value for the time. in a moment miss de voe joined him at the fire. a small table was moved up, and a plate of fruit, and a cup of coffee placed upon it. "that is all, morden," she said. "it is so nice of you to have come this evening. i was promising myself a very solitary time, and was dawdling over my dinner to kill some of it. isn't it a dreadful night?" "it's blowing hard. two or three times i thought i should have to give it up." "you didn't walk?" "yes. i could have taken a solitary-car that passed, but the horses were so done up that i thought i was better able to walk." miss de voe touched the bell. "another cup of coffee, morden, and bring the cognac," she said. "i am not going to let you please your mother to-night," she told peter. "i am going to make you do what i wish." so she poured a liberal portion of the eau-de-vie into peter's second cup, and he most dutifully drank it. "how funny that he should be so obstinate sometimes, and so obedient at others," thought miss de voe. "i don't generally let men smoke, but i'm going to make an exception to-night in your case," she continued. it was a sore temptation to peter, but he answered quickly, "thank you for the thought, but i won't this evening." "you have smoked after dinner already?" "no. i tried to keep my pipe lighted in the street, but it blew and sleeted too hard." "then you had better." "thank you, no." miss de voe thought her former thought again. "where do you generally dine?" she asked. "i have no regular place. just where i happen to be." "and to-night?" peter was not good at dodging. he was silent for a moment. then he said, "i saw rather a curious thing, as i was walking up. would you like to hear about it?" miss de voe looked at him curiously, but she did not seem particularly interested in what peter had to tell her, in response to her "yes." it concerned an arrest on the streets for drunkenness. "i didn't think the fellow was half as drunk as frozen," peter concluded, "and i told the policeman it was a case for an ambulance rather than a station-house. he didn't agree, so i had to go with them both to the precinct and speak to the superintendent." "that was before your dinner?" asked miss de voe, calmly. it was a very easily answered question, apparently, but peter was silent again. "it was coming up here," he said finally. "what is he trying to keep back?" asked miss de voe mentally. "i suppose some of the down-town places are not quite--but he wouldn't--" then she said out loud: "i wonder if you men do as women do, when they dine alone? just live on slops. now, what did you order to-night? were you an ascetic or a sybarite?" "usually," said peter, "i eat a very simple dinner." "and to-night?" "why do you want to know about to-day?" "because i wish to learn where you dined, and thought i could form some conclusion from your menu." miss de voe laughed, so as to make it appear a joke, but she knew very well that she was misbehaving. "i didn't reply to your question," said peter, "because i would have preferred not. but if you really wish to know, i'll answer it." "yes. i should like to know." miss de voe still smiled. "i haven't dined." "mr. stirling! you are joking?" miss de voe's smile had ended, and she was sitting up very straight in her chair. women will do without eating for an indefinite period, and think nothing of it, but the thought of a hungry man fills them with horror--unless they have the wherewithal to mitigate the consequent appetite. hunger with woman, as regards herself, is "a theory." as regards a man it is "a condition." "no," said peter. miss de voe touched the bell again, but quickly as morden answered it, peter was already speaking. "you are not to trouble yourself on my account, miss de voe. i wish for nothing." "you must have--" peter was rude enough to interrupt with the word "nothing." "but i shall not have a moment's pleasure in your call if i think of you as--" peter interrupted again. "if that is so," he said, rising, "i had better go." "no," cried miss de voe. "oh, won't you please? it's no trouble. i'll not order much." "nothing, thank you," said peter. "just a chop or--" peter held out his hand. "no, no. sit down. of course you are to do as you please. but i should be so happy if--?" and miss de voe looked at peter appealingly. "no. thank you." "nothing, morden." they sat down again. "why didn't you dine?" asked miss de voe. "i didn't care to face the storm." "yet you came out?" "yes. i got blue, and thought it foolish to stay indoors by myself." "i'm very glad you came here. it's a great compliment to find an evening with me put above dinner. you know i had the feeling that you didn't like me." "i'm sorry for that. it's not so." "if not, why did you insist on my twice asking you to call on me?" "i did not want to call on you without being sure that you really wished to have me." "then why wouldn't you stay and dine at saratoga?" "because my ticket wouldn't have been good." "but a new ticket would only cost seven dollars." "in my neighborhood, we don't say 'only seven dollars.'" "but you don't need to think of seven dollars." "i do. i never have spent seven dollars on a dinner in my life." "but you should have, this time, after making seven hundred and fifty dollars in one month. i know men who would give that amount to dine with me." it was a foolish brag, but miss de voe felt that her usual means of inspiring respect were not working,--not even realized. "very likely. but i can't afford such luxuries. i had spent more than usual and had to be careful." "then it was economy?" "yes." "i had no idea my dinner invitations would ever be held in so little respect that a man would decline one to save seven dollars." miss de voe was hurt. "i had given him five hundred dollars," she told herself, "and he ought to have been willing to spend such a small amount of it to please me." then she said; "a great many people economize in foolish ways." "i suppose so," said peter. "i'm sorry if i disappointed you. i really didn't think i ought to spend the money." "never mind," said miss de voe. "were you pleased with the nomination and election of catlin?" "i was pleased at the election, but i should have preferred porter." "i thought you tried to prevent porter's nomination?" "that's what the papers said, but they didn't understand." "i wasn't thinking of the papers. you know i heard your speech in the convention." "a great many people seem to have misunderstood me. i tried to make it clear." "did you intend that the convention should laugh?" "no. that surprised and grieved me very much!" miss de voe gathered from this and from what the papers had said that it must be a mortifying subject to peter, and knew that she ought to discontinue it. but she could not help saying, "why?" "it's difficult to explain, i'm afraid. i had a feeling that a man was trying to do wrong, but i hoped that i was mistaken. it seemed to me that circumstances compelled me to tell the convention all about it, but i was very careful not to hint at my suspicion. yet the moment i told them they laughed." "why?" "because they felt sure that the man had done wrong." "oh!" it was a small exclamation, but the expression miss de voe put into it gave it a big meaning. "then they were laughing at maguire?" "at the time they were. really, though, they were laughing at human weakness. most people seem to find that amusing." "and that is why you were grieved?" "yes." "but why did the papers treat you so badly?" "mr. costell tells me that i told too much truth for people to understand. i ought to have said nothing, or charged a bargain right out, for then they would have understood. a friend of--a fellow i used to know, said i was the best chap for bungling he ever knew, and i'm afraid it's true." "do you know costell? i thought he was such a dishonest politician?" "i know mr. costell. i haven't met the dishonest politician yet." "you mean?" "he hasn't shown me the side the papers talk about." "and when he does?" "i shall be very sorry, for i like him, and i like his wife." then peter told about the little woman who hated politics and loved flowers, and about the cool, able manager of men, who could not restrain himself from putting his arms about the necks of his favorite horses, and who had told about the death of one of his mares with tears in his eyes. "he had his cheek cut open by a kick from one of his horses once, and he speaks of it just as we would speak of some unintentional fault of a child." "has he a great scar on his cheek?" "yes. have you seen him?" "once. just as we were coming out of the convention. he said something about you to a group of men which called my attention to him." miss de voe thought peter would ask her what it was. "would you like to know what he said?" she asked, when peter failed to do so. "i think he would have said it to me, if he wished me to hear it." miss de voe's mind reverted to her criticism of peter. "he is so absolutely without our standards." her chair suddenly ceased to be comfortable. she rose, saying, "let us go to the library. i shall not show you my pictures now. the gallery is too big to be pleasant such a night. you must come again for that. won't you tell me about some of the other men you are meeting in politics?" she asked when they had sat down before another open fire. "it seems as if all the people i know are just alike--i suppose it's because we are all so conventional--and i am very much interested in hearing about other kinds." so peter told about dennis and blunkers, and the "b'ys" in the saloons; about green and his fellow delegates; about the honorable mr., mrs., and miss gallagher, and their dinner companions. he did not satirize in the least. he merely told various incidents and conversations, in a sober, serious way; but miss de voe was quietly amused by much of the narrative and said to herself, "i think he has humor, but is too serious-minded to yield to it." she must have enjoyed his talk for she would not let peter go early, and he was still too ignorant of social usages to know how to get away, whether a woman wished or no. finally he insisted that he must leave when the clock pointed dangerously near eleven. "mr. stirling," said miss de voe, in a doubtful, "won't-you-please" voice, such as few men had ever heard from her, "i want you to let me send you home? it will only take a moment to have the carriage here." "i wouldn't take a horse out in such weather," said peter, in a very settling kind of voice. "he's obstinate," thought miss de voe. "and he makes his obstinacy so dreadfully--dreadfully pronounced!" aloud she said: "you will come again?" "if you will let me." "do. i am very much alone too, as perhaps you know?" miss de voe did not choose to say that her rooms could be filled nightly and that everywhere she was welcome. "no. i really know nothing about you, except what you have told me, and what i have seen." miss de voe laughed merrily at peter's frankness. "i feel as if i knew all about you," she said. "but you have asked questions," replied peter. miss de voe caught her breath again. try as she would, she could not get accustomed to peter. all her social experience failed to bridge the chasm opened by his speech. "what did he mean by that plain statement, spoken in such a matter-of-fact voice?" she asked herself. of course the pause could not continue indefinitely, and she finally said: "i have lived alone ever since my father's death. i have relatives, but prefer to stay here. i am so much more independent. i suppose i shall have to move some day. this part of the city is beginning to change so." miss de voe was merely talking against time, and was not sorry when peter shook hands, and left her alone. "he's very different from most men," she said to the blazing logs. "he is so uncomplimentary and outspoken! how can he succeed in politics? still, after the conventional society man he is--he is--very refreshing. i think i must help him a little socially." chapter xxvii. a dinner. the last remark made by miss de voe to her fire resulted, after a few days, in peter's receiving a formal dinner invitation, which he accepted with a promptness not to be surpassed by the best-bred diner-out. he regretted now his vamping of the old suit. peter understood that he was in for quite another affair than the avery, the gallagher, or even the purple dinner. he did not worry, however, and if in the dressing-room he looked furtively at the coats of the other men, he entirely forgot the subject the moment he started downstairs, and thought no further of it till he came to take off the suit in his own room. when peter entered the drawing-room, he found it well filled with young people, and for a moment a little of the bewildered feeling of four years before came over him. but he found himself chatting with miss de voe, and the feeling left him as quickly as it had come. in a moment he was introduced to a "miss lenox," who began talking in an easy way which gave peter just as much or as little to say as he chose. peter wondered if many girls were as easy to talk to as--as--miss lenox. he took miss de voe in, and found dorothy ogden sitting on his other side. he had barely exchanged greetings with her, when he heard his name spoken from across the table, and looking up, he found miss leroy sitting opposite. "i hope you haven't entirely forgotten me," that girl said, the moment his attention was caught. "not at all," said peter. "nor my dress," laughed miss leroy. "i remember the style, material, and train." "especially the train i am sure." "do explain these mysterious remarks," said dorothy. "mr. stirling and i officiated at a wedding, and i was in such mortal terror lest some usher should step on my gown, that it became a joke." "whose wedding was that?" asked miss de voe. "miss pierce's and watts d'alloi's," said the bridesmaid. "do you know watts d'alloi?" exclaimed miss de voe to peter. "yes." "indeed! when?" "at college." "are you a harvard man?" "yes." "you were mr. d'alloi's chum, weren't you?" said miss leroy. "yes." "watts d'alloi?" again exclaimed miss de voe. "yes." "but he's a mere boy." "he's two years my senior." "you don't mean it?" "yes." "i thought you were over thirty." "most people do." miss de voe said to herself, "i don't know as much about him as i thought i did. he may be very frank, but he doesn't tell all one thinks. now i know where he gets his nice manner. i ought to have recognized the harvard finish." "when did you last hear from the d'allois?" asked miss leroy. "not since they sailed," said peter, wincing internally. "not really?" said the bridesmaid. "surely you've heard of the baby?" "no." lines were coming into peter's face which miss de voe had never before seen. "how strange. the letters must have gone astray. but you have written him?" "i did not know his address." "then you really haven't heard of the little baby--why, it was born two--no, three years ago--and of helen's long ill-health, and of their taking a villa on the riviera, and of how they hope to come home this spring?" "no." "yes. they will sail in june if helen is well enough. i'm to be god-mother." "if you were mr. d'alloi's chum, you must have known ray rivington," said dorothy. "yes. but i've not seen him since we graduated. he went out west." "he has just returned. ranching is not to his taste." "will you, if you see him, say that i'm in new york and should like to run across him?" "i will. he and laurence--my second brother--are old cronies, and he often drops in on us. i want you to know my brothers. they are both here this evening." "i have met the elder one, i suppose." "no. that was a cousin, lispenard ogden. he spoke of meeting you. you would be amused to hear his comment about you." "mr. stirling doesn't like to have speeches repeated to him, dorothy," said miss de voe. "what do you mean?" asked dorothy, looking from one to the other. "he snubbed me the other evening when i tried to tell him what we heard, coming out of the convention last autumn," explained miss de voe, smiling slightly at the thought of treating peter with a dose of his own medicine. peter looked at miss de voe. "i hope you don't mean that?" "how else could i take it?" "you asked me if i wished something, and i merely declined, i think." "oh, no. you reproved me." "i'm very sorry if i did. i'm always blundering." "tell us what lispenard said, dorothy. i'm curious myself." "may i, mr. stirling? "i would rather not," said peter. and dorothy did not tell him, but in the drawing-room she told miss de voe: "he said that except his professor of archaeology at heidelberg, mr. stirling was the nicest old dullard he'd ever met, and that he must be a very good chap to smoke with." "he said that, dorothy?" exclaimed miss de voe, contemptuously. "yes." "how ridiculous," said miss de voe. "lispenard's always trying to hit things off in epigrams, and sometimes he's very foolish." then she turned to miss leroy. "it was very nice, your knowing mr. stirling." "i only met him that once. but he's the kind of man somehow that you remember. it's curious i've never heard of him since then." "you know he's the man who made that splendid speech when the poor children were poisoned summer before last." "i can't believe it!" "it's so. that is the way i came to know him." miss leroy laughed. "and helen said he was a man who needed help in talking!" "was mrs. d'alloi a great friend of his?" "no. she told me that watts had brought him to see them only once. i don't think mr. pierce liked him." "he evidently was very much hurt at watts's not writing him." "yes. i was really sorry i spoke, when i saw how he took it." "watts is a nice boy, but he always was thoughtless." in passing out of the dining-room, dorothy had spoken to a man for a moment, and he at once joined peter. "you know my sister, miss ogden, who's the best representative of us," he said. "now i'll show you the worst. i don't know whether she exploited her brother ogden to you?" "yes. she talked about you and your brother this evening." "trust her to stand by her family. there's more loyalty in her than there was in the army of the potomac. my cousin lispenard says it's wrecking his nervous system to live up to the reputation she makes for him." "i never had a sister, but it must be rather a good thing to live up to." "yes. and to live with. especially other fellows' sisters." "are you ready to part with yours for that purpose?" "no. that's asking too much. by the way, i think we are in the same work. i'm in the office of jarvis, redburn and saltus." "i'm trying it by myself." "you've been very lucky." "yes. i've succeeded much better than i hoped for. but i've had very few clients." "fortunately it doesn't take many. two or three rich steady clients will keep a fellow running. i know a man who's only got one, but he runs him for all he's worth, and gets a pretty good living out of him." "my clients haven't been of that sort." peter smiled a little at the thought of making a steady living out of the blacketts, dooleys or milligans. "it's all a matter of friends." peter had a different theory, but he did not say so. just at that point they were joined by laurence ogden, who was duly introduced, and in a moment the conversation at their end of the table became general. peter listened, enjoying his havana. when they joined the ladies, they found lispenard ogden there, and he intercepted peter. "look here," he said. "a friend of mine has just come back from europe, with a lot of prints. he's a fellow who thinks he has discrimination, and he wants me to come up and look them over to-morrow evening. he hopes to have his own taste approved and flattered. i'm not a bit good at that, with men. won't you go with me, and help me lie?" "of course i should like to." "all right. dine with me at six at the union club." "i'm not going to let you talk to each other," said miss de voe. "lispenard, go and talk with miss mcdougal." "see how quickly lying brings its own punishment," laughed lispenard, walking away. "what does he mean?" asked miss de voe. "the opposite of what he says, i think," said peter. "that is a very good description of lispenard. almost good enough to have been said by himself. if you don't mind, i'll tell him." "no." "do tell me, mr. stirling, how you and watts d'alloi came to room together?" "he asked me." "yes. but what ever made him do that?" "i've often wondered myself." "i can easily understand his asking you, but what first threw you together?" "a college scrape." "were you in a college scrape?" "yes. i was up before the faculty twice." "do tell me what you had done?" "i was charged with stealing the chapel bible, and with painting a front door of one of the professors." "and had you done these things?" "no." the guests began to say good-night, so the dialogue was interrupted. when it came peter's turn to go, miss de voe said: "i hope you will not again refuse my dinner invitations." "i have had a very pleasant evening," said peter. "but i had a pleasanter one, the other night." "good-evening," said miss de voe mechanically. she was really thinking "what a very nice speech. he couldn't have meant anything by his remark about the questions." peter dined the next evening with lispenard, who in the course of the meal turned the conversation to miss de voe. lispenard was curious to learn just what peter knew of her. "she's a great swell, of course," he said incidentally. "i suppose so. i really know nothing about her, but the moment i saw her i felt that she was different from any other woman i had ever met." "but you've found out about her since?" "no. i was tempted to question dr. purple, but i didn't like to ask about a friend." lispenard laughed. "you've got a pretty bad case of conscience, i'm afraid. it's a poor thing to have in new york, too. well, my cousin is one of the richest, best born women in this country, though i say it. you can't do better than cultivate her." "is that what you do?" "no. you have me there. she doesn't approve of me at all. you see, women in this country expect a man to be serious and work. i can't do either. i suppose its my foreign education. she likes my company, and finds my escortage very convenient. but while she thinks i'm a pretty good companion, she is sure i'm a poor sort of a man. if she takes a shine to you, make the most of it. she can give you anything she pleases socially." "i suppose you have anything you please socially?" "pretty much." "and would you advise me to spend time to get it?" "um. i wouldn't give the toss of a copper for it--but i can have it. it's not being able to have it that's the bad thing." "so i have found," said peter gravely. lispenard laughed heartily, as he sipped his "court france." "i wish," he said, "that a lot of people, whose lives are given to nothing else, could have heard you say that, in that tone of voice. you don't spell society with a capital, do you?" "possibly," said peter, "if i had more capital, i should use some on society." "good," said lispenard. "heavens," he said to himself, "he's made a joke! cousin anneke will never believe it." he told her the next day, and his statement proved correct. "i know you made the joke," she said. "he didn't." "and why shouldn't he joke as well as i?" "it doesn't suit him." "why not?" "parlor tricks are all right in a lap-dog, but they only belittle a mastiff." lispenard laughed good-naturedly. he was used to his cousin's hits at his do-nothingness, and rather enjoyed them. "he is a big beast, isn't he? but he's a nice fellow. we had such a good time over le grand's etchings last night. didn't get away till after one. it's really a pleasure to find a man who can smoke and keep quiet, and yet enjoy things strongly. le grand was taken with him too. we just fitted each other." "i'm glad you took him. i'm going to give him some society." "did you ever hear the story of dr. brown?" "no. what is it?" "a certain widow announced to her son that she was to marry dr. brown. 'bully for you, ma,' said the son, 'does dr. brown know it?'" "what do you mean?" lispenard laughed. "does stirling know it? because i advise you to tell him before you decide to do anything with him. he's not easy to drive." "of course he'll be glad to meet nice people." "try him." "what do you mean?" "i mean that peter stirling won't give a raparee for all the society you can give him." "you don't know what you are talking about." but lispenard was right. peter had enjoyed the dinner at miss de voe's and the evening at mr. le grand's. yet each night on reaching his rooms, he had sat long hours in his straight office chair, in the dark. he was thinking of what miss leroy had told him of--of--he was not thinking of "society." chapter xxviii. commissions. peter made his dinner call at miss de voe's, but did not find her at home. he received a very pleasant letter expressing her regret at missing him, and a request to lunch with her two days later, and to go with some friends to an afternoon piano recital, "if you care for music. if not, merely lunch with us." peter replied that he was very sorry, but business called him to albany on that day. "i really regret it," said miss de voe to dorothy. "it is getting so late in the season, that unless he makes his call quickly, i shall hardly be able to give him more than one other chance." peter's business in albany had been sprung on him suddenly. it was neither more nor less than a request sent verbally through costell from governor catlin, to come up and see him. "it's about the food and tenement commission bills," costell told him. "they'll be passed by the senate to-day or to-morrow, and be in catlin's hands." "i hope he'll make good appointments," said peter, anxiously. "i think he will," said costell, smiling quietly. "but i don't believe they will be able to do much. commissions are commonly a way of staving off legislation." peter went up to albany and saw catlin. much to his surprise he found the governor asking his advice about the bills and the personnel of the commissions. but after a few minutes he found that this seeking for aid and support in all matters was chronic, and meant nothing special in his own case. "mr. schlurger tells me, though he introduced the bills, that you drafted both. do you think i had better sign them?" "yes." "mr. costell told me to take your advice. you really think i had better?" "yes." the governor evidently found something solacing in the firm voice in which peter spoke his "yes." he drew two papers towards him. "you really think i had better?" "yes." the governor dipped his pen in the ink, but hesitated. "the amendments haven't hurt them?" he queried. "not much." "but they have been hurt?" "they have been made better in some ways." "really?" "yes." still the governor hesitated, but finally began a big g. having committed himself, he wrote the rest rapidly. he paused for a moment over the second bill, and fingered it nervously. then he signed it quickly. "that's done." he shoved them both away much as if they were dangerous. "i wonder," thought peter, "if he enjoys politics?" "there's been a great deal of trouble about the commissioners," said the governor. "i suppose so," said peter. "even now, i can't decide. the leaders all want different men." "the decision rests with you." "that's the trouble," sighed the governor. "if only they'd agree." "you should make your own choice. you will be held responsible if the appointments are bad." "i know i shall. just look over those lists, and see if you think they'll do?" peter took the slips of paper and read them. "i needn't say i'm pleased to see my name," he said. "i had no idea you would think of me." "that was done by costell," said the governor, hastening to shift the responsibility. "i really don't know any of the rest well enough to express an opinion. personally, i should like to see some scientific men on each commission." "scientific! but we have none in politics." "no? but this isn't politics." "i hoped you'd think these lists right." "i think they are good. and the bills give us the power to take evidence; perhaps we can get the scientific part that way." peter did his best to brace catlin up; and his talk or other pressure seemed to have partially galvanized the backbone of that limp individual, for a week later the papers announced the naming of the two commissions. the lists had been changed, however. that on food consisted of green, a wholesale grocer, and a member of the health board. peter's name had been dropped. that on tenements, of five members, was made up of peter; a very large property-owner in new york, who was a member as well of the assembly; a professional labor agitator; a well-known politician of the better type, and a public contractor. peter, who had been studying some reports of a british royal commission on the same subject, looked grave, thinking that what the trained men in england had failed in doing, he could hardly hope to accomplish with such ill-assorted instruments. the papers were rather down on the lists. "the appointments have destroyed any chance of possible benefit," was their general conclusion, and peter feared they were right. costell laughed when peter spoke of the commissions. "if you want catlin to do anything well, you've got to stand over him till it's done. i wanted you on both commissions, so that you could see how useless they all are, and not blame us politicians for failing in our duty. green promises to get you appointed secretary of the food commission, which is the next best thing, and will give you a good salary for a time." the tenement commission met with little delay, and peter had a chance to examine its motley members. the big landlord was a great swell, who had political ambitions, but was too exclusive, and too much of a dilettante to be a real force. peter took a prejudice against him before meeting him, for he knew just how his election to the assembly had been obtained--even the size of the check--and peter thought buying an election was not a very creditable business. he did not like what he knew of the labor agitator, for such of the latter's utterances and opinions as he had read seemed to be the cheapest kind of demagogism. the politician he had met and liked. of the contractor he knew nothing. the commission organized by electing the politician as chairman. then the naming of a secretary was discussed, each member but peter having a candidate. much to peter's surprise, the landlord, mr. pell, named ray rivington. "i thought he was studying law?" peter said. "he is," said pell. "but he can easily arrange to get off for the few hours we shall meet a week, and the five dollars a day will be a very nice addition to his income. do you know him?" "we were in college together. i thought he was rich." "no. he's of good family, but the rivingtons are growing poorer every year. they try to live on their traditions, and traditions don't pay grocers. i hope you'll help him. he's a very decent fellow." "i shall vote for him," replied peter, marvelling that he should be able to give a lift to the man who, in the harvard days, had seemed so thoroughly the mate of watts and the other rich fellows of the "gang." rivington being the only candidate who had two votes, he was promptly selected. thirty arduous minutes were spent in waiting for the arrival of the fifth member of the commission, and in the election of chairman and secretary. a motion was then made to adjourn, on the ground that the commission could not proceed without the secretary. peter promptly objected. he had been named secretary for this particular meeting, and offered to act until rivington could be notified. "i think," he said, "that we ought to lay out our programme." the labor agitator agreed with him, and, rising, delivered an extempore speech, declaring that "we must not delay. the leeches (here he looked at mr. pell) are sucking the life-blood of the people," etc. the chairman started to call him to order, but peter put his hand on the chairman's arm. "if you stop him," he said in a low voice, "he'll think we are against him, and he'll say so outside." "but it's such foolishness." "and so harmless! while he's talking, look over this." peter produced an outline of action which he had drawn up, and having written it in duplicate, he passed one draft over to mr. pell. they all let the speech go on, peter, mr. pell and the chairman chatting over the plan, while the contractor went to sleep. the agitator tried to continue, but as the inattention became more and more evident, his speech became tamer and tamer. finally he said, "that is my opinion," and sat down. the cessation of the oration waked up the contractor, and peter's outline was read aloud. "i don't move its adoption," said peter. "i merely submit it as a basis." not one of the members had come prepared with knowledge of how to go to work, except the chairman, who had served on other commissions. he said: "i think mr. stirling's scheme shows very careful thought and is admirable. we cannot do better than adopt it." "it is chiefly copied from the german committee of three years ago," peter told them. "but i have tried to modify it to suit the different conditions." mr. pell objected to the proposed frequent sittings. thereupon the agitator praised that feature. the hour of meeting caused discussion. but finally the scheme was adopted, and the date of the first session fixed. peter went downstairs with mr. pell, and the latter offered to drop him at his office. so they drove off together, and talked about the commission. "that kurfeldt is going to be a nuisance," said pell "i can't say yet. he evidently has no idea of what our aim is. perhaps, though, when we really get to work, he'll prove useful." peter had a call the next day from rivington. it was made up of thanks, of college chat, and of inquiry as to duties. peter outlined the preliminary work, drafted the "inquiries" and other printed papers necessary to be sent out before the first meeting, and told him about the procedure at the meetings. "i know i shall get into all kinds of pickles," said ray. "i write such a bad hand that often i can't read it myself. how the deuce am i to take down evidence?" "i shall make notes for my own use, and you will be welcome to them, if they will help you." "thanks, peter. that's like you." the commission began its inquiry, on the date fixed, and met three times a week from that time on. peter did not try to push himself forward, but he was by far the best prepared on the subject, and was able to suggest the best sources of information. he asked good questions, too, of the various witnesses summoned. finally he was the one regular attendant, and therefore was the one appealed to for information elicited at previous meetings. he found the politician his best helper. pell was useful when he attended, which was not very often, and even this intermittent attendance ceased in june. "i'm going to newport," he explained, and did not appear again till late in the fall. the contractor really took no part in the proceedings beyond a fairly frequent attendance, and an occasional fit of attention whenever the inquiry related to building. the labor-agitator proved quite a good man. he had, it is true, no memory, and caused them to waste much time in reading over the minutes of previous meetings. but he was in earnest, and proved to be perfectly reasonable as soon as he found that the commissioners' duties were to inquire and not to make speeches. peter walked home with him several times, and they spent evenings together in peter's rooms, talking over the evidence, and the possibilities. peter met a great many different men in the course of the inquiry; landlords, real-estate agents, architects, engineers, builders, plumbers, health officials, doctors and tenants. in many cases he went to see these persons after they had been before the commission, and talked with them, finding that they were quite willing to give facts in private which they did not care to have put on record. he had been appointed the secretary of the food commission, and spent much time on that work. he was glad to find that he had considerable influence, and that green not merely acted on his suggestions, but encouraged him to make them. the two inquiries were so germane that they helped him reciprocally. no reports were needed till the next meeting of the legislature, in the following january, and so the two commissions took enough evidence to swamp them. poor ray was reduced almost to despair over the mass of "rubbish" as he called it, which he would subsequently have to put in order. between the two tasks, peter's time was well-nigh used up. it was especially drawn upon when the taking of evidence ceased and the drafting of the reports began. ray's notes proved hopeless, so peter copied out his neatly, and let ray have them, rather glad that irrelevant and useless evidence was thus omitted. it was left to peter to draw the report, and when his draft was submitted, it was accompanied by a proposed general tenement-house bill. both report and bill were slightly amended, but not in a way that peter minded. peter drew the food-commission report as well, although it went before the commission as green's. to this, too, a proposed bill was attached, which had undergone the scrutiny of the health board, and had been conformed to their suggestions. in november peter carried both reports to albany, and had a long talk with catlin over them. that official would have preferred no reports, but since they were made, there was nothing to do but to submit them to the legislature. peter did not get much encouragement from him about the chances for the bills. but costell told him that they could be "whipped through. the only danger is of their being amended, so as to spoil them." "well," said peter, "i hope they will be passed. i've done my best, whatever happens." a very satisfactory thing to be able to say of yourself, if you believe in your own truthfulness. chapter xxix. in the meantime. in spite of nine months' hard work on the two commissions, it is not to be supposed that peter's time was thus entirely monopolized. if one spends but seven hours of the twenty-four in sleep, and but two more on meals, there is considerable remaining time, and even so slow a worker as peter found spare hours not merely for society and saloons, but for what else he chose to undertake. socially he had an evening with miss de voe, just before she left the city for the summer; a dinner with mr. pell, who seemed to have taken a liking to peter; a call on lispenard; another on le grand; and a family meal at the rivingtons, where he was made much of in return for his aid to ray. in the saloons he worked hard over the coming primary, and spent evenings as well on doorsteps in the district, talking over objects and candidates. in the same cause, he saw much of costell, green, gallagher, schlurger and many other party men of greater or less note in the city's politics. he had become a recognized quantity in the control of the district, and the various ward factions tried hard to gain his support. when the primary met, the proceedings, if exciting, were never for a moment doubtful, for gallagher, peter, moriarty and blunkers had been able to agree on both programme and candidates. an attempt had been made to "turn down" schlurger, but peter had opposed it, and had carried his point, to the great gratitude of the silent, honest german. what was more important to him, this had all been done without exciting hard feelings. "stirling's a reasonable fellow," gallagher told costell, not knowing how much peter was seeing of the big leader, "and he isn't dead set on carrying his own schemes. we've never had so little talk of mutiny and sulking as we have had this paring. moriarty and blunkers swear by him. it's queer. they've always been on opposite sides till now." when the weather became pleasant, peter took up his "angle"' visitings again, though not with quite the former regularity. yet he rarely let a week pass without having spent a couple of evenings there. the spontaneous welcome accorded him was payment enough for the time, let alone the pleasure and enjoyment he derived from the imps. there was little that could raise peter in their estimation, but they understood very well that he had become a man of vast importance, as it seemed to them. they had sharp little minds and ears, and had caught what the "district" said and thought of peter. "cheese it, the cop, tim," cried an urchin one evening to another, who was about to "play ball." "cheese it yerself. he won't dare tech me," shouted tim, "so long as mister peter's here." that speech alone showed the magnitude of his position in their eyes. he was now not merely, "friends wid de perlice;" he was held in fear by that awesome body! "if i was as big as him," said one, "i'd fire all the peelers." "wouldn't that be dandy!" cried another. he won their hearts still further by something he did in midsummer. blunkers had asked him to attend what brilliant posters throughout that part of the city announced as: ho for the sea-shore! sixth annual clam bake of the patrick n. blunkers's association. when peter asked, he found that it was to consist of a barge party (tickets fifty cents) to a bit of sand not far away from the city, with music, clams, bathing and dancing included in the price of the ticket, and unlimited beer for those who could afford that beverage. "the beer just pays for it," blunkers explained. "i don't give um whisky cause some ---- cusses don't drink like as dey orter." then catching a look in peter's face, he laughed rather shamefacedly. "i forgits," he explained. "yer see i'm so da--" he checked himself--"i swears widout knowin' it." "i shall be very glad to go," said peter. "dat's bully," said blunkers. then he added anxiously: "dere's somethin' else, too, since yer goin'. ginerally some feller makes a speech. yer wouldn't want to do it dis time, would yer?" "what do they talk about?" "just what dey--" blunkers swallowed a word, nearly choking in so doing, and ended "please." "yes. i shall be glad to talk, if you don't mind my taking a dull subject?" "yer just talk what yer want. we'll listen." after peter had thought it over for a day, he went to blunkers's gin palace. "look here," he said. "would it be possible to hire one more barge, and take the children free? i'll pay for the boat, and for the extra food, if they won't be in the way." "i'm damned if yer do," shouted blunkers. "yer don't pay for nothinks, but der childers shall go, or my name ain't blunkers." and go they did, blunkers making no secret of the fact that it was peter's idea. so every child who went, nearly wild with delight, felt that the sail, the sand, the sea, and the big feed, was all owed to peter. it was rather an amusing experience to peter. he found many of his party friends in the district, not excluding such men as gallagher, kennedy and others of the more prominent rank. he made himself very pleasant to those whom he knew, chatting with them on the trip down. he went into the water with the men and boys, and though there were many good swimmers, peter's country and river training made it possible for him to give even the "wharf rats," a point or two in the way of water feats. then came the regulation clam-bake, after which peter talked about the tenement-house question for twenty minutes. the speech was very different from what they expected, and rather disappointed them all. however, he won back their good opinions in closing, for he ended with a very pleasant "thank you," to blunkers, so neatly worded, and containing such a thoroughly apt local joke, that it put all in a good humor, and gave them something to tell their neighbors, on their return home. the advantage of seldom joking is that people remember the joke, and it gets repeated. peter almost got the reputation of a wit on that one joke, merely because it came after a serious harangue, and happened to be quotable. blunkers was so pleased with the end of the speech that he got peter to write it out, and to this day the "thank you" part of the address, in peter's neat handwriting, handsomely framed, is to be seen in blunkers's saloon. peter also did a little writing this summer. he had gone to see three or four of the reporters, whom he had met in "the case," to get them to write up the food and tenement subjects, wishing thereby to stir up public feeling. he was successful to a certain degree, and they not merely wrote articles themselves, but printed three or four which peter wrote. in two cases, he was introduced to "staff" writers, and even wrote an editorial, for which he was paid fifteen dollars. this money was all he received for the time spent, but he was not working for shekels. all the men told him to let them know when he had more "stories" for them, and promised him assistance when the reports should go in to the legislature. peter visited his mother as usual during august. before going, he called on dr. plumb, and after an evening with him, went to two tenements in the district. as the result of these calls, he carried three children with him when he went home. rather pale, thin little waifs. it is a serious matter to charge any one with so grave a crime as changling, but peter laid himself open to it, for when he came back, after two weeks, he returned very different children to the parents. the fact that they did not prosecute for the substitution only proves how little the really poor care for their offspring. but this was not his only summering. he spent four days with the costells, as well as two afternoons later, thoroughly enjoying, not merely the long, silent drives over the country behind the fast horses, but the pottering round the flower-garden with mrs. costell. he had been reading up a little on flowers and gardening, and he was glad to swap his theoretical for her practical knowledge. candor compels the statement that he enjoyed the long hours stretched on the turf, or sitting idly on the veranda, puffing mr. costell's good havanas. twice mr. bohlmann stopped at peter's office of a saturday and took him out to stay over sunday at his villa in one of the oranges. the family all liked peter and did not hesitate to show it. mr. bohlmann told him: "i sbend about dree dousand a year on law und law-babers. misder dummer id does for me, but ven he does nod any longer it do, i gifts id you." on the second visit mrs. bohlmann said: "i tell my good man that with all the law-business he has, he must get a lawyer for a son-in-law." peter had not heard mrs. bohlmann say to her husband the evening before, as they were prinking for dinner: "have you told mr. stirling about your law business?" nor mr. bohlmann's prompt: "yah. i dells him der last dime." yet peter wondered if there were any connection between the two statements. he liked the two girls. they were nice-looking, sweet, sincere women. he knew that mr. bohlmann was ranked as a millionaire already, and was growing richer fast. yet--peter needed no blank walls. during this summer, peter had a little more law practice. a small grocer in one of the tenements came to him about a row with his landlord. peter heard him through, and then said: "i don't see that you have any case; but if you will leave it to me to do as i think best, i'll try if i can do something," and the man agreeing, peter went to see the landlord, a retail tobacconist up-town. "i don't think my client has any legal grounds," he told the landlord, "but he thinks that he has, and the case does seem a little hard. such material repairs could not have been foreseen when the lease was made." the tobacconist was rather obstinate at first. finally he said, "i'll tell you what i'll do. i'll contribute one hundred dollars towards the repairs, if you'll make a tenant named podds in the same building pay his rent; or dispossess him if he doesn't, so that it shan't cost me anything." peter agreed, and went to see the tenant in arrears. he found that the man had a bad rheumatism and consequently was unable to work. the wife was doing what she could, and even the children had been sent on the streets to sell papers, or by other means, to earn what they could. they also owed a doctor and the above-mentioned grocer. peter went back to the landlord and told him the story. "yes," he said, "it's a hard case, i know, but, mr. stirling, i owe a mortgage on the place, and the interest falls due in september. i'm out four months' rent, and really can't afford any more." so peter took thirty-two dollars from his "trustee" fund, and sent it to the tobacconist. "i have deducted eight dollars for collection," he wrote. then he saw his first client, and told him of his landlord's concession. "how much do i owe you?" inquired the grocer. "the podds tell me they owe you sixteen dollars." "yes. i shan't get it." "my fee is twenty-five. mark off their bill and give me the balance." the grocer smiled cheerfully. he had charged the podds roundly for their credit, taking his chance of pay, and now got it paid in an equivalent of cash. he gave the nine dollars with alacrity. peter took it upstairs and gave it to mrs. podds. "if things look up with you later," he said, "you can pay it back. if not, don't trouble about it. ill look in in a couple of weeks to see how things are going." when this somewhat complicated matter was ended, he wrote about it to his mother: "many such cases would bankrupt me. as it is, my fund is dwindling faster than i like to see, though every lessening of it means a lessening of real trouble to some one. i should like to tell miss de voe what good her money has done already, but fear she would not understand why i told her. it has enabled me to do so much that otherwise i could not have afforded. there is only one hundred and seventy-six dollars left. most of it though, is merely loaned and perhaps will be repaid. anyway, i shall have nearly six hundred dollars for my work as secretary of the food commission, and i shall give half of it to this fund." chapter xxx. a "comedy." when the season began again, miss de voe seriously undertook her self-imposed work of introducing peter. he was twice invited to dinner and was twice taken with opera parties to sit in her box, besides receiving a number of less important attentions. peter accepted dutifully all that she offered him. even ordered a new dress-suit of a tailor recommended by lispenard. he was asked by some of the people he met to call, probably on miss de voe's suggestion, and he dutifully called. yet at the end of three months miss de voe shook her head. "he is absolutely a gentleman, and people seem to like him. yet somehow--i don't understand it." "exactly," laughed lispenard. "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." "lispenard," angrily said miss de voe, "mr. stirling is as much better than--" "that's it," said lispenard. "don't think i'm depreciating peter. the trouble is that he is much too good a chap to make into a society or a lady's man." "i believe you are right. i don't think he cares for it at all." "no," said lispenard. "barkis is not willin'. i think he likes you, and simply goes to please you." "do you really think that's it?" lispenard laughed at the earnestness with which the question was asked. "no," he replied. "i was joking. peter cultivates you, because he wants to know your swell friends." either this conversation or miss de voe's own thoughts, led to a change in her course. invitations to formal dinners and to the opera suddenly ceased, and instead, little family dinners, afternoons in galleries, and evenings at concerts took their place. sometimes lispenard went with them, sometimes one of the ogden girls, sometimes they went alone. it was an unusual week when peter's mail did not now bring at least one little note giving him a chance to see miss de voe if he chose. in february came a request for him to call. "i want to talk with you about something," it said. that same evening he was shown into her drawing-rooms. she thanked him with warmth for coming so quickly, and peter saw that only the other visitors prevented her from showing some strong feeling. he had stumbled in on her evening--for at that time people still had evenings--but knowing her wishes, he stayed till they were left alone together. "come into the library," she said. as they passed across the hall she told morden, "i shall not receive any more to-night." the moment they were in the smaller and cosier room, without waiting to sit even, she began: "mr. stirling, i dined at the manfreys yesterday." she spoke in a voice evidently endeavoring not to break. peter looked puzzled. "mr. lapham, the bank president, was there." peter still looked puzzled. "and he told the table about a young lawyer who had very little money, yet who put five hundred dollars--his first fee--into his bank, and had used it to help--" miss de voe broke down, and, leaning against the mantel, buried her face in her handkerchief. "it's curious you should have heard of it," said peter. "he--he didn't mention names, b-bu-but i knew, of course." "i didn't like to speak of it because--well--i've wanted to tell you the good it's done. suppose you sit down." peter brought a chair, and miss de voe took it. "you must think i'm very foolish," she said, wiping her eyes. "it's nothing to cry about." and peter began telling her of some of the things which he had been able to do:--of the surgical brace it had bought; of the lessons in wood-engraving it had given; of the sewing-machine it had helped to pay for; of the arrears in rent it had settled. "you see," he explained, "these people are too self-respecting to go to the big charities, or to rich people. but their troubles are talked over in the saloons and on the doorsteps, so i hear of them, and can learn whether they really deserve help. they'll take it from me, because they feel that i'm one of them." miss de voe was too much shaken by her tears to talk that evening. miss de voe's life and surroundings were not exactly weepy ones, and when tears came they meant much. she said little, till peter rose to go, and then only: "i shall want to talk with you, to see what i can do to help you in your work. please come again soon. i ought not to have brought you here this evening, only to see me cry like a baby. but--i had done you such injustice in my mind about that seven dollars, and then to find that--oh!" miss de voe showed signs of a recurring break-down, but mastered herself. "good-evening." peter gone, miss de voe had another "good" cry--which is a feminine phrase, quite incomprehensible to men--and, going to her room, bathed her eyes. then she sat before her boudoir fire, thinking. finally she rose. in leaving the fire, she remarked aloud to it: "yes. he shall have dorothy, if i can do it." so dorothy became a pretty regular addition to the informal meals, exhibitions and concerts. peter was once more taken to the opera, but dorothy and miss de voe formed with him the party in the box on such nights. miss de voe took him to call on mrs. odgen, and sang his praises to both parents. she even went so far as to say frankly to them what was in her mind. mr. ogden said, "those who know him speak very well of him. i heard 'van' pell praise him highly at newport last summer. said all the politicians thought of him as a rising man." "he seems a nice steady fellow," said the mamma. "i don't suppose he has much practice?" "oh, don't think of the money," said miss de voe. "what is that compared to getting a really fine man whom one can truly love?" "still, money is an essential," said the papa. "yes. but you both know what i intend to do for dorothy and minna. they need not think of money. if he and dorothy only will care for each other!" peter and dorothy did like each other. dorothy was very pretty, and had all the qualities which make a girl a strong magnet to men. peter could not help liking her. as for dorothy, she was like other women. she enjoyed the talking, joking, "good-time" men in society, and chatted and danced with them with relish. but like other women, when she thought of marriage, she did not find these gingerbread ornamentations so attractive. the average woman loves a man, aside from his love for her, for his physical strength, and his stiff truth-telling. the first is attractive to her because she has it not. far be it from man to say why the second attracts. so dorothy liked peter. she admired many qualities in him which she would not have tolerated in other men. it is true that she laughed at him, too, for many things, but it was the laughter of that peculiar nature which implies admiration and approval, rather than the lower feelings. when the spring separation came, miss de voe was really quite hopeful. "i think things have gone very well. now, mr. stirling has promised to spend a week with me at newport. i shall have dorothy there at the same time," she told mrs. ogden. lispenard, who was present, laughed as usual. "so you are tired of your new plaything already?" "what do you mean?" "arn't you marrying him so as to get rid of his calls and his escortage?" "of course not. we shall go on just the same." "bully for you, ma. does dr. brown know it?" miss de voe flushed angrily, and put an end to her call. "what a foolish fellow lispenard is!" she remarked unconsciously to wellington at the carriage door. "beg pardon, mum?" said wellington, blank wonderment filling his face. "home, wellington," said miss de voe crossly. peter took his week at newport on his way back from his regular august visit to his mother. miss de voe had told him casually that dorothy would be there, and dorothy was there. yet he saw wonderfully little of her. it is true that he could have seen more if he had tried, but peter was not used to practice finesse to win minutes and hours with a girl, and did not feel called upon, bluntly, to take such opportunities. his stay was not so pleasant as he had expected. he had thought a week in the same house with miss de voe, dorothy and lispenard, without much regard to other possible guests, could not but be a continual pleasure. but he was conscious that something was amiss with his three friends. nor was peter the only one who felt it. dorothy said to her family when she went home: "i can't imagine what is the matter with cousin anneke. all last spring she was nicer to me than she has ever been before, but from the moment i arrived at newport, and before i could possibly have said or done anything to offend her, she treated me in the snippiest way. after two days i asked her what the matter was, but she insisted there was nothing, and really lost her temper at my suggesting the idea. there was something, i know, for when i said i was coming home sooner than i had at first intended, she didn't try to make me stay." "perhaps," said mrs. ogden, "she was disappointed in something, and so vented her feeling on you." "but she wasn't cross--except when i asked her what the matter was. she was just--just snippy." "was mr. stirling there?" "yes. and a lot of other people. i don't think anybody had a good time, unless it was cousin lispenard. and he wasn't a bit nice. he had some joke to himself, and kept making remarks that nobody could understand, and chuckling over them. i told him once that he was rude, but he said that 'when people went to a play they should laugh at the right points.' that's the nice thing about mr. stirling. you know that what he says is the real truth." "lispenard's always trying to be clever." "yes. what do you suppose he said to me as i came away!" "what?" "he shook my hand, laughing, and said, 'exit villain. it is to be a comedy, not a tragedy.' what could he mean?" lispenard stayed on to see the "comedy," and seemed to enjoy it, if the amused expression on his face when he occasionally gave himself up to meditation was any criterion. peter had been pressed to stay beyond the original week, and had so far yielded as to add three days to his visit. these last three days were much pleasanter than those which had gone before, although dorothy had departed and peter liked dorothy. but he saw much more of miss de voe, and miss de voe was in a much pleasanter mood. they took long drives and walks together, and had long hours of talk in and about the pleasant house and grounds. miss de voe had cut down her social duties for the ten days peter was there, giving far more time for them to kill than usually fell to newporters even in those comparitively simple days. in one of these talks, miss de voe spoke of dorothy. "she is such a nice, sweet girl," she said. "we all hope she'll marry lispenard." "do you think cousins ought to marry?" miss de voe had looked at peter when she made her remark. peter had replied quietly, but his question, as miss de voe understood it, was purely scientific, not personal. miss de voe replied: "i suppose it is not right, but it is so much better than what may happen, that it really seems best. it is so hard for a girl in dorothy's position to marry as we should altogether wish." "why?" asked peter, who did not see that a girl with prospective wealth, fine social position, and personal charm, was not necessarily well situated to get the right kind of a husband. "it is hard to make it clear--but--i'll tell you my own story, so that you can understand. since you don't ask questions, i will take the initiative. that is, unless your not asking them means you are not interested?" miss de voe laughed in the last part of this speech. "i should like to hear it." people, no matter what peter stated, never said "really?" "you are in earnest?" or "you really mean it?" so miss de voe took him at his word. "both my father and mother were rich before they married, and the rise in new york real estate made them in time, much richer. they both belonged to old families. i was the only child--lispenard says old families are so proud of themselves that they don't dare to have large families for fear of making the name common. of course they lavished all their thought, devotion and anxiety on me. i was not spoiled; but i was watched and tended as if i were the most precious thing the world contained. when i grew up, and went into society, i question if i ever was a half-hour out of the sight of one or the other of my parents. i had plenty of society, of course, but it was restricted entirely to our set. none other was good enough for me! my father never had any business, so brought no new element into our household. it was old families, year in and year out! from the moment i entered society i was sought for. i had many suitors. i had been brought up to fear fortune-hunting, and suspected the motives of many men. others did not seem my equals--for i had been taught pride in my birth. those who were fit as regarded family were, many of them, unfit in brains or morals--qualities not conspicuous in old families. perhaps i might have found one to love--if it had not been for the others. i was surrounded wherever i went and if by chance i found a pleasant man to talk to, _téte-à-téte,_ we were interrupted by other men coming up. only a few even of the men whom i met could gain an _entrée_ to our house.--they weren't thought good enough. if a working, serious man had ever been able to see enough of me to love me, he probably would have had very little opportunity to press his suit. but the few men i might have cared for were frightened off by my money, or discouraged by my popularity and exclusiveness. they did not even try. of course i did not understand it then. i gloried in my success and did not see the wrong it was doing me. i was absolutely happy at home, and really had not the slightest inducement to marry--especially among the men i saw the most. i led this life for six years. then my mother's death put me in mourning. when i went back into society, an almost entirely new set of men had appeared. those whom i had known were many of them married--others were gone. society had lost its first charm to me. so my father and i travelled three years. we had barely returned when he died. i did not take up my social duties again till i was thirty-two. then it was as the spinster aunt, as you have known me. now do you understand how hard it is for such a girl as dorothy to marry rightly?" "yes. unless the man is in love. let a man care enough for a woman, and money or position will not frighten him off." "such men are rare. or perhaps it is because i did not attract them. i did not understand men as well then as i do now. of some whom i thought unlovable or dull at that time, i have learned to think better. a woman does not marry to be entertained--or should not." "i think," said peter, "that one marries for love and sympathy." "yes. and if they are given, it does not matter about the rest. even now, thirty-seven though i am, if i could find a true man who could love me as i wish to be loved, i could love him with my whole heart. it would be my happiness not merely to give him social position and wealth, but to make his every hope and wish mine also." all this had been said in the same natural manner in which they both usually spoke. miss de voe had talked without apparent emotion. but when she began the last remark, she had stopped looking at peter, and had gazed off through the window at the green lawn, merely showing him her profile. as a consequence she did not see how pale he suddenly became, nor the look of great suffering that came into his face. she did not see this look pass and his face, and especially his mouth, settle into a rigid determination, even while the eyes remained sad. miss de voe ended the pause by beginning, "don't you"--but peter interrupted her there, by saying: "it is a very sad story to me--because i--i once craved love and sympathy." miss de voe turned and looked at him quickly. she saw the look of suffering on his face, but read it amiss. "you mean?" she questioned. "there was a girl i loved," said peter softly, "who did not love me." "and you love her still?" "i have no right to." "she is married?" "yes." "will you tell me about it?" "i--i would rather not." miss de voe sat quietly for a moment, and then rose. "dear friend," she said, laying her hand on peter's shoulder, "we have both missed the great prize in life. your lot is harder than the one i have told you about. it is very,"--miss de voe paused a moment,--"it is very sad to love--without being loved." and so ended lispenard's comedy. chapter xxxi. conflicts. lispenard went back with peter to the city. he gave his reason on the train: "you see i go back to the city occasionally in the summer, so as to make the country bearable, and then i go back to the country, so as to make the city endurable. i shall be in newport again in a week. when will you come back?" "my summering's over." "indeed. i thought my cousin would want you again!" "she did not say so." "the deuce she didn't. it must be the only thing she didn't say, then, in your long confabs?" peter made no reply, though lispenard looked as well as asked a question. "perhaps," continued lispenard, "she talked too much, and so did not remember to ask you?" still peter said nothing. "are you sure she didn't give you a chance to have more of her society?" lispenard was smiling. "ogden," said peter gently, "you are behaving contemptibly and you know it." the color blazed up into lispenard's face and he rose, saying: "did i understand you aright?" the manner and attitude were both threatening though repressed. "if you tell me that i misunderstood you, i will apologize. if you think the statement insulting, i will withdraw it. i did not speak to insult you; but because i wished you to know how your questions impressed me." "when a man tells another he is contemptible, he cannot expect to escape results. this is no place to have a scene. you may send me your apology when we reach new york--" peter interrupted. "i shall, if you will tell me i wronged you in supposing your questions to be malicious." lispenard paid no attention to the interjection. "otherwise," he finished, "we will consider our relations ended." he walked away. peter wrote lispenard that evening a long letter. he did not apologize in it, but it ended: "there should be no quarrel between us, for we ought to be friends. if alienation has come, it is due to what has occurred to-day, and that shall not cause unkind feelings, if i can help it. an apology is due somewhere. you either asked questions you had no right to ask, or else i misjudged you. i have written you my point of view. you have your own. i leave the matter to your fairness. think it over, and if you still find me in the wrong, and will tell me so, i will apologize." he did not receive a reply. meeting ogden ogden a few days later, he was told that lispenard had gone west for a hunting trip, quite unexpectedly. "he said not to expect him back till he came. he seemed out of sorts at something." in september peter had a letter from miss de voe. merely a few lines saying that she had decided to spend the winter abroad, and was on the point of sailing. "i am too hurried to see my friends, but did not like to go without some good-byes, so i write them." on the whole, as in the case of most comedies, there was little amusement for the actual performers. a great essayist has defined laughter as a "feeling of superiority in the laugher over the object laughed at." if this is correct, it makes all humor despicable. certainly much coarseness, meanness and cruelty are every day tolerated, because of the comic covering with which it is draped. it is not to be supposed that this comedy nor its winter prologue had diverted peter from other things. in spite of miss de voe's demands on his time he had enough left to spend many days in albany when the legislature took up the reports of the commissions. he found strong lobbies against both bills, and had a long struggle with them. he had the help of the newspapers, and he had the help of costell, yet even with this powerful backing, the bills were first badly mangled, and finally were side-tracked. in the actual fight, pell helped him most, and peter began to think that a man might buy an election and yet not be entirely bad. second only to pell, was his whilom enemy, the former district-attorney, now a state senator, who battled himself into peter's reluctant admiration and friendship by his devotion and loyalty to the bills. peter concluded that he had not entirely done the man justice in the past. curiously enough, his chief antagonist was maguire. peter did not give up the fight with this defeat. his work for the bills had revealed to him the real under-currents in the legislative body, and when it adjourned, making further work in albany only a waste of time, he availed himself of the secret knowledge that had come to him, to single out the real forces which stood behind and paid the lobby, and to interview them. he saw the actual principals in the opposition, and spoke with utmost frankness. he told them that the fight would be renewed, on his part, at every session of the legislature till the bills were passed; that he was willing to consider proposed amendments, and would accept any that were honest. he made the fact very clear to them that they would have to pay yearly to keep the bills off the statute book. some laughed at him, others quarrelled. but a few, after listening to him, stated their true objections to the bills, and peter tried to meet them. when the fall elections came, peter endeavored to further his cause in another way. three of the city's assemblymen and one of her senators had voted against the bills. peter now invaded their districts, and talked against them in saloons and elsewhere. it very quickly stirred up hard feeling, which resulted in attempts to down him. but peter's blood warmed up as the fight thickened, and hisses, eggs, or actual attempts to injure him physically did not deter him. the big leaders were appealed to to call him off, but costell declined to interfere. "he wouldn't stop anyway," he told green, "so we should do no good. let them fight it out by themselves." both of which sentences showed that mr. costell understood his business. peter had challenged his opponents to a joint debate, and when that was declined by them, he hired halls for evenings and spoke on the subject. he argued well, with much more feeling than he had shown since his speech in "the case." after the first attempt of this kind, he had no difficulty in filling his halls. the rumor came back to his own district that he was "talkin' foin," and many of his friends there turned out to hear him. the same news went through other wards of the city and drew men from them. people were actually excluded, for want of room, and therefore every one became anxious to hear his speeches. finally, by subscription of a number of people who had become interested, headed by mr. pell, the cooper union was hired, and peter made a really great speech to nearly three thousand people. the papers came to his help too, and stood by him manfully. by their aid, it was made very clear that this was a fight against a selfish lobby. by their aid, it became one of the real questions of the local campaign, and was carried beyond the borders of the city, so as to play a part in the county elections. peter met many of the editors, and between his expert knowledge, acquired on the commissions, and his practical knowledge, learned at albany, proved a valuable man to them. they repaid his help by kind words and praise in their columns, and brought him forward as the chief man in the movement. mrs. stirling concluded that the conspiracy to keep peter in the background had been abandoned. "those york papers couldn't help my peter's getting on," was the way she put it. the results of this fight were even better than he had hoped. one assemblyman gave in and agreed no longer to oppose the bills. another was defeated. the senator had his majority so cut down that he retired from the opposition. the questions too had become so much more discussed and watched, and the blame so fastened upon the lobby that many members from the country no longer dared to oppose legislation on the subject. hence it was that the bills, newly drawn by peter, to reduce opposition as far as possible, when introduced by schlurger soon after the opening of the legislature, went through with a rush, not even ayes and nays being taken. aided by mr. costell, peter secured their prompt signing by catlin, his long fight had ended in victory. the "sixt" was wild with joy over the triumph. whether it was because it was a tenement ward, or because peter had talked there so much about it, or because his success was felt to redound to their credit, the voters got up a display of fireworks on the night when the news of the signing of the bills reached new york. when peter returned to the city, he was called down to a hall one evening, to witness a torchlight procession and receive resolutions "engrossed and framed" from his admiring friends. blunkers was chairman and made a plain speech which set the boys cheering by its combination of strong feeling and lack of grammar. then justice gallagher made a fine-sounding, big-worded presentation. in the enthusiasm of the moment, dennis broke the programme by rising and giving vent to a wild burst of feeling, telling his audience all that they owed to peter, and though they knew already what he told them, they cheered and cheered the strong, natural eloquence. "yer was out a order," said blunkers, at the end of the speech. "yez loi!" said dennis, jumping on his feet again. "it's never out av order to praise misther stirling." the crowd applauded his sentiment. chapter xxxii. the end of the conflict. peter had had some rough experiences two or three times in his fall campaign, and dennis, who had insisted on escorting him, took him to task about his "physical culture." "it's thirty pounds yez are too heavy, sir," he told peter. "an' it's too little intirely yez afther knowin' av hittin'." peter asked his advice, bought indian clubs, dumb-bells, and boxing-gloves, and under dennis's tutelage began to learn the art of self-defence. he was rather surprised, at the end of two months, to find how much flesh he had taken off, how much more easily he moved, how much more he was eating, and how much more he was able to do, both mentally and physically. "it seems as if somebody had oiled my body and brain," he told dennis. dennis let him into another thing, by persuading him to join the militia regiment most patronized by the "sixth," and in which dennis was already a sergeant. peter received a warm welcome from the regiment, for dennis, who was extremely popular, had heralded his fame, and peter's physical strength and friendly way did the rest. ogden ogden laughed at him for joining a "mick" regiment, and wanted to put peter into the seventh. peter only said that he thought his place was where he was. society did not see much of peter this winter. he called on his friends dutifully, but his long visits to albany, his evenings with dennis, and his drill nights, interfered badly with his acceptance of the invitations sent him. he had, too, made many friends in his commission work and politics, so that he had relatively less time to give to his older ones. the absence of miss de voe and lispenard somewhat reduced his social obligations it is true, but the demands on his time were multiplying fast. one of these demands was actual law work. the first real case to come to him was from the contractor who had served on the tenement-commission. he was also employed by the health board as special counsel in a number of prosecutions, to enforce clauses of his food bill. the papers said it was because of his familiarity with the subject, but peter knew it was the influence of green, who had become a member of that board. then he began to get cases from the "district," and though there was not much money in each case, before long the number of them made a very respectable total. the growth of his practice was well proven by a suggestion from dummer that they should join forces. "mr. bohlmann wants to give you some of his work, and it's easier to go into partnership than to divide his practice." peter knew that dummer had a very lucrative business of a certain kind, but he declined the offer. "i have decided never to take a case which has not right on its side." "a lawyer is just as much bound to try a case as a physician is bound to take a patient." "that is what lawyers say outside, but they know better." "well, have your scruples. we'll make the firm cases only such as you choose. i'll manage the others." "i should like to," said peter. "i'm very grateful for the offer--but we could hardly do that successfully. if the firm was good for anything, we should be known as belonging to it, and the public could not well discriminate." so that chance of success was passed. but every now and then bohlmann sent him something to do, and dummer helped him to a joint case occasionally. so, though friends grew steadily in numbers, society saw less and less of peter. those who cared to study his tastes came to recognize that to force formal entertaining on him was no kindness, and left it to peter to drop in when he chose, making him welcome when he came. he was pleased to get a letter from lispenard during the winter, from japan. it was long, but only the first paragraph need be quoted, for the rest related merely to his travels: "the breezes of the pacific have blown away all my bad temper," he wrote, "and i want to say that i was wrong, and regret my original fault, as well as what it later led me into. you are quite right. we must continue friends." peter wrote a reply, which led to a regular correspondence. he sent miss de voe, also, a line of christmas greetings, and received a long letter from her at nice, which told him something of watts and helen: "she is now well again, but having been six years in europe, she and her husband have become wedded to the life. i question if they ever return. i spoke of you, and they both inquired with great warmth about you." peter replied, sending his "remembrance to mr. and mrs. d'alloi in case you again meet them." from that time on miss de voe and he corresponded, she telling him of her italian, greek and egyptian wanderings, and he writing of his doings, especially in regard to a certain savings bank fund standing in the name of "peter stirling, trustee" to which miss de voe had, the winter before, arranged to contribute a thousand dollars yearly. as his practice increased he began to indulge himself a little. through the instrumentality of mr. pell, he was put first into one and later into a second of the new york clubs, and his dinners became far less simple in consequence. he used these comforters of men, indeed, almost wholly for dining, and, though by no means a club-man in other senses, it was still a tendency to the luxurious. to counteract this danger he asked mr. costell to pick him up a saddle-horse, whereupon that friend promptly presented him with one. he went regularly now to a good tailor, which conduct ought to have ruined him with the "b'ys," but it didn't. he still smoked a pipe occasionally in the saloons or on the doorsteps of the district, yet candor compels us to add that he now had in his room a box of cigars labelled "habana." these were creature pleasures, however, which he only allowed himself on rare occasions. and most of these luxuries did not appear till his practice had broadened beyond the point already noted. broaden it did. in time many city cases were thrown in his way. as he became more and more a factor in politics, the judges began to send him very profitable referee cases. presently a great local corporation, with many damage suits, asked him to accept its work on a yearly salary. "of course we shall want you to look out for us at albany," it was added. "i'll do what i can to prevent unfair legislation. that must be all, though. as for the practice, you must let me settle every case where i think the right is with the plaintiff." this caused demur at first, but eventually he was employed, and it was found that money was saved in the long run, for peter was very successful in getting people to settle out of court. then the savings bank, for which peter had done his best (not merely as recorded, but at other times), turned over its law business to him, giving him many real estate transactions to look into, besides papers to draw. "he brings us a good many depositors," mr. lapham told his trustees, "and is getting to be a large depositor himself." peter began to find help necessary, and took a partner. he did this at the suggestion of ogden ogden, who had concluded his clerkship, and who said to peter: "i have a lot of friends who promise me their work. i don't know how much it will be, but i should like to try it with you. of course, yours is the bigger practice, but we can arrange that." so after considerable discussion, the sign on peter's door became "stirling and ogden," and the firm blossomed out with an office boy--one of peter's original "angle" friends, now six years older than when peter and he had first met. ogden's friends did materialize, and brought good paying cases. as the city, referee, corporation and bank work increased, their joint practice needed more help, and ray rivington was, on ogden's request, taken in. "he doesn't get on with his law studies, though he pretends to work over them hard. in fact he'll never be a good lawyer. he hasn't a legal mind. but he'll bring cases, for he's very popular in society, and he'll do all the palavering and running round very well. he's just the fellow to please people." this was what ogden urged, adding, "i might as well tell you that i'm interested for another reason, too. he and dorothy will marry, if he can ever get to the marrying point. this, of course, is to be between us." "i'll be very glad to have him, both for his own sake, and for what you've just told me," said peter. thus it was that the firm again changed its name, becoming "stirling, ogden and rivington," and actually spread into two other rooms, peter's original little "ten by twelve" being left to the possession of the office boy. that functionary gazed long hours at the map of italy on the blank wall, but it did not trouble him. he only whistled and sang street songs at it. as for peter, he was too busy to need blank walls. he had fought two great opponents. the world and himself. he had conquered them both. chapter xxxiii. a renewal. if the american people had anglicized themselves as thoroughly into liking three-volume stories, as they have in other things, it would be a pleasure to trace the next ten years of peter's life; for his growing reputation makes this period a far easier matter to chronicle than the more obscure beginnings already recorded. if his own life did not supply enough material we could multiply our characters, as did dickens, or journey sideways, into little essays, as did thackeray. his life and his biographer's pen might fail to give interest to such devices, but the plea is now for "realism," which most writers take to mean microscopical examination of minutia. if the physical and psychical emotions of a heroine as she drinks a glass of water can properly be elaborated so as to fill two printed pages, peter's life could be extended endlessly. there were big cases, political fights, globe trottings, and new friends, all of which have unlimited potentialities for numerous chapters. but americans are peculiar people, and do not buy a pound of sugar any the quicker because its bulk has been raised by a skilful admixture of moisture and sand. so it seems best partly to take the advice of the bellman, in the "hunting of the snark," to skip sundry years. in resuming, it is to find peter at his desk, reading a letter. he has a very curious look on his face, due to the letter, the contents of which are as follows: march . dear old chum-- here is the wretched old sixpence, just as bad as ever--if not worse--come back after all these years. and as of yore, the sixpence is in a dreadful pickle, and appeals to the old chum, who always used to pull him out of his scrapes, to do it once more. please come and see me as quickly as possible, for every moment is important. you see i feel sure that i do not appeal in vain. "changeless as the pyramids" ought to be your motto. helen and our dear little girl will be delighted to see you, as will yours affectionately, watts. peter opened a drawer and put the letter into it. then he examined his diary calendar. after this he went to a door, and, opening it, said: "i am going uptown for the afternoon. if mr. murtha comes, mr. ogden will see him.". peter went down and took a cab, giving the driver a number in grammercy park. the footman hesitated on peter's inquiry. "mr. d'alloi is in, sir, but is having his afternoon nap, and we have orders he's not to be disturbed." "take him my card. he will see me." the footman showed peter into the drawing-room, and disappeared. peter heard low voices for a moment, then the curtains of the back room were quickly parted, and with hands extended to meet him, helen appeared. "this is nice of you--and so unexpected!" peter took the hand, but said nothing. they sat down, and mrs. d'alloi continued: "watts is asleep, and i have given word that he is not to be disturbed. i want to see you for a moment myself. you have plenty of time?" "yes." "that's very nice. i don't want you to be formal with us. do say that you can stay to dinner?" "i would, if i were not already engaged." "then we'll merely postpone it. it's very good of you to come to see us. i've tried to get watts to look you up, but he is so lazy! it's just as well since you've found us out. only you should have asked for both of us." "i came on business," said peter. mrs. d'alloi laughed. "watts is the poorest man in the world for that, but he'll do anything he can to help you, i know. he has the warmest feeling for you." peter gathered from this that mrs. d'alloi did not know of the "scrape," whatever it was, and with a lawyer's caution, he did not attempt to disabuse her of the impression that he had called about his own affairs. "how you have changed!" mrs. d'alloi continued. "if i had not known who it was from the card, i am not sure that i should have recognized you." it was just what peter had been saying to himself of mrs. d'alloi. was it her long ill-health, or was it the mere lapse of years, which had wrought such changes in her? except for the eyes, everything had altered. the cheeks had lost their roundness and color; the hair had thinned noticeably; lines of years and pain had taken away the sweet expression that formerly had counted for so much; the pretty roundness of the figure was gone, and what charm it now had was due to the modiste's skill. peter felt puzzled. was this the woman for whom he had so suffered? was it this memory that had kept him, at thirty-eight, still a bachelor? like many another man, he found that he had been loving an ideal--a creation of his own mind. he had, on a boyish fancy, built a dream of a woman with every beauty and attraction, and had been loving it for many years, to the exclusion of all other womankind. now he saw the original of his dream, with the freshness and glamour gone, not merely from the dream, but from his own eyes. peter had met many pretty girls, and many sweet ones since that week at the pierces. he had gained a very different point of view of women from that callow time. peter was not blunderer enough to tell mrs. d'alloi that he too, saw a change. his years had brought tact, if they had not made him less straightforward. so he merely said, "you think so?" "ever so much. you've really grown slender, in spite of your broad shoulders--and your face is so--so different." there was no doubt about it. for his height and breadth of shoulder, peter was now by no means heavy. his face, too, had undergone a great change. as the roundness had left it, the eyes and the forehead had both become more prominent features, and both were good. the square, firm jaw still remained, but the heaviness of the cheek and nose had melted into lines which gave only strength and character, and destroyed the dulness which people used to comment upon. the face would never be called handsome, in the sense that regular features are supposed to give beauty, but it was strong and speaking, with lines of thought and feeling. "you know," laughed mrs. d'alloi, "you have actually become good-looking, and i never dreamed that was possible!" "how long have you been here?" "a month. we are staying with papa, till the house in fifty-seventh street can be put in order. it has been closed since mrs. d'alloi's death. but don't let's talk houses. tell me about yourself." "there is little to tell. i have worked at my profession, with success." "but i see your name in politics. and i've met many people in europe who have said you were getting very famous." "i spend a good deal of time in politics. i cannot say whether i have made myself famous, or infamous. it seems to depend on which paper i read." "yes, i saw a paper on the steamer, that--" mrs. d'alloi hesitated, remembering that it had charged peter with about every known sin of which man is capable. then she continued, "but i knew it was wrong." yet there was quite as much of question as of assertion in her remark. in truth, mrs. d'alloi was by no means sure that peter was all that was desirable, for any charge made against a politician in this country has a peculiar vitality and persistence. she had been told that peter was an open supporter of saloons, and that new york politics battened on all forms of vice. so a favorite son could hardly have retained the purity that women take as a standard of measurement. "don't you find ward politics very hard?" she asked, dropping an experimental plummet, to see what depths of iniquity there might be. "i haven't yet." "but that kind of politics must be very disagreeable to gentlemen. the men must have such dirty hands!" "it's not the dirty hands which make american politics disagreeable. it's the dirty consciences." "are--are politics so corrupt and immoral?" "politics are what the people make them." "really?" "i suppose your life has not been of a kind to make you very familiar with it all. tell me what these long years have brought you?" "perfect happiness! oh, mr. stirling--may i call you peter?--thank you. peter, i have the finest, noblest husband that ever lived! he is everything that is good and kind!" mrs. d'alloi's face lighted up with happiness and tenderness. "and your children?" "we have only one. the sweetest, loveliest child you can imagine." "fie, fie, rosebud," cried a voice from the doorway. "you shouldn't speak of yourself so, even if it is the truth. leave that to me. how are you, peter, old fellow? i'd apologize for keeping you waiting, but if you've had helen, there's no occasion. isn't it boileau who said that: 'the best thing about many a man is his wife'?" mrs. d'alloi beamed, but said, "it isn't so, peter. he's much better than i." watts laughed. "you'll have to excuse this, old man. will happen sometimes, even in the properest of families, if one marries an angel." "there, you see," said mrs. d'alloi. "he just spoils me, peter." "and she thrives on it, doesn't she, peter?" said watts. "isn't she prettier even than she was in the old days?" mrs. d'alloi colored with pleasure, even while saying: "now, watts dear, i won't swallow such palpable flattery. there's one kiss for it--peter won't mind--and now i know you two want to talk old times, so i'll leave you together. good-bye, peter--or rather _au revoir_--for you must be a regular visitor now. watts, arrange with peter to dine with us some day this week." mrs. d'alloi disappeared through the doorway. peter's pulse did not change a beat. chapter xxxiv. help. the moment she was gone, watts held out his hand, saying: "here, old man, let us shake hands again. it's almost like going back to college days to see my old chum. come to the snuggery, where we shan't be interrupted." they went through two rooms, to one fitted up as a smoking-room and office. "it's papa-in-law's workshop. he can't drop his work at the bank, so he brings it home and goes on here. sit down. here, take a cigar. now, are you comfortable?" "yes." "_maintenant_, i suppose you want to know why i wrote you to come so quickly?" "yes." "well, the truth of it is, i'm in an awful mess. yesterday i was so desperate i thought i should blow my brains out. i went round to the club to see if i couldn't forget or drown my trouble, just as sick as a man could be. fellows talking. first thing i heard was your name. 'just won a great case.' 'one of the best lawyers in new york.' thinks i to myself, 'that's a special providence.' peter always was the fellow to pull me through my college scrapes. i'll write him.' did it, and played billiards for the rest of the evening, secure in the belief that you would come to my help, just as you used to." "tell me what it is?" "even that isn't easy, chum. it's a devilish hard thing to tell even to you." "is it money trou--?" "no, no!" watts interrupted. "it isn't that. the truth is i've a great deal more money than is good for me, and apparently always shall have. i wish it were only that!" "how can i help you?" began peter. "i knew you would," cried watts, joyfully. "just the same old reliable you always were. here. draw up nearer. that's it. now then, here goes. i shan't mind if you are shocked at first. be as hard on me as you like." "well?" "well, to make a long story short, i'm entangled with a woman, and there's the devil to pay. now you'll pull me through, old man, won't you?" "no." "don't say that, peter! you must help me. you're my only hope. "i do not care to mix myself in such a business," said peter, very quietly. "i would rather know nothing about it." peter rose. "don't desert me," cried watts, springing to his feet, and putting his hand on peter's shoulder, so as to prevent his progress to the door. "don't. she's going to expose me. think of the disgrace! my god, peter, think--" "take your hand off my shoulder." "but peter, think--" "the time to think was before--not now, watts. i will not concern myself in this." "but, old man. i can't face it. it will kill helen!" peter had already thrown aside the arm, and had taken a step towards the doorway. he stopped and turned. "she does not know?" "not a suspicion. and nothing but absolute proof will make her believe it. she worships me. oh, peter, save her! save leonore--if you won't save me!" "can they be saved?" "that's what i want to know. here--sit down, please! i'll tell you all about it." peter hesitated a moment, and then sat down. "it began in paris twelve years ago. such affairs have a way of beginning in paris, old man. it's in the atmosphere. she--" "stop. i will ask questions. there's no good going over the whole story." peter tried to speak calmly, and to keep his voice and face from showing what he felt. he paused a moment, and then said: "she threatens to expose you. why?" "well, after three years i tired of it and tried to end it. then she used it to blackmail me for ten years, till, in desperation, i came to america, to see if i couldn't escape her." "and she followed you?" "yes. she was always tracking me in europe, and making my life a hell on earth, and now she's followed me here." "if it's merely a question of money, i don't see what you want of me." "she says she doesn't want money now--but revenge. she's perfectly furious over my coming off without telling her--always had an awful temper--and--well, you know an infuriated woman is capable of anything. the spaniard was right who said it was easier to take care of a peck of fleas than one woman, eh, chum?" "so she threatens to tell your wife?" "no. she says she's going to summon me into court." "on what grounds?" "that's the worst part of it. you see, chum, there's a child, and she says she's going to apply for a proper support for it. proper support! heavens! the money i've paid her would support ten children. it's only temper." peter said, "watts, watts," in a sad voice. "pretty bad, isn't it? if it wasn't for the child i could--" peter interrupted. "has she any proofs of paternity besides--?" watts interrupted in turn. "yes. confound it! i was fool enough to write letters during my infatuation. talleyrand was right when he said only fools and women wrote letters." "how could you?" "that's what i've asked myself a hundred times. oh, i'm sorry enough. i've sworn never to put pen to paper again. _jamais!_" "i did not mean the letters. but your vow." "my vow?" "your marriage vow." "oh, yes. i know. but you know, chum, before you promise to love one woman for all time you should have seen them all." "and that display ten minutes ago was all mockery?" "no, no! really, peter, i'm awfully fond of the little woman. really i am. and you know daudet says a man can love two women at the same time." "and if so, how about his honor?" peter was trying to repress his emotion, but it would jerk out questions. "yes, i know. i've said that to myself over and over again. why, look here." watts pulled a small revolver from his hip pocket. "this will show you how close to the desperation point i have come. i've carried that for two days, so that if worse comes to worse--well. phut!--_voila tout_." peter rose, speaking in a voice ringing with scorn. "you would escape your sin, to leave it with added disgrace for your wife and daughter to bear! put up your pistol, watts d'alloi. if i am to help you, i want to help a man--not a skulker. what do you want me to do?" "that's what i wish to know. what can i do?" "you have offered her money?" "yes. i told her that--" "never mind details," interrupted peter, "was it enough to put further offers out of the question?" "yes. she won't hear of money. she wants revenge." "give me her name and address." "celestine--" the rest was interrupted by a knock at the door. "well?" said watts. the door was opened, and a footman entered. "if you please, mr. d'alloi, there's a frenchwoman at the door who wants to see you. she won't give me her name, but says you'll know who it is." "say i won't see her. that i'm busy." "she told me to say that if you were engaged, she'd see mrs. d'alloi." "my god!" said watts, under his breath. "ask the woman to come in here," said peter, quietly, but in a way which made the man leave the room without waiting to see if watts demurred. a complete silence followed. then came the rustle of skirts, and a woman entered the room. peter, who stood aside, motioned to the footman to go, and closed the door himself, turning the key. the woman came to the middle of the room. "so, monsieur d'alloi," she said in french, speaking very low and distinctly, "you thought it best not to order your groom to turn me out, as you did that last day in paris, when you supposed your flight to america left you free to do as you pleased? but you did not escape me. here i am." watts sat down in an easy-chair, and striking a match, lighted a cigarette. "that, celestine," he said in french, "is what in english we call a self-evident proposition." celestine's foot began to tap the floor, "you needn't pretend you expected i would follow you. you thought you could drop me, like an old slipper." watts blew a whiff of tobacco from his mouth. "it was a remark of ricard's, i believe, 'that in woman, one should always expect the unexpected.'" "_mon dieu_!" shrieked celestine. "if i--if i could kill you--you--" she was interrupted by peter's bringing a chair to her and saying in french, "will you not sit down, please?" she turned in surprise, for she had been too wrought up to notice that peter was in the room. she stared at him and then sat down. "that's right," said watts. "take it easy. no occasion to get excited." "ah!" screamed celestine, springing to her feet, "your name shall be in all the papers. you shall--" peter again interrupted. "madame, will you allow me to say something?" he spoke gently and deferentially. celestine looked at him again, saying rapidly: "why should i listen to you? what are you to me? i don't even know you. my mind's made up. i tell you--" the woman was lashing herself into a fury, and peter interrupted her again: "pardon me. we are strangers. if i ask anything of you for myself, i should expect a refusal. but i ask it for humanity, to which we all owe help. only hear what i have to say. i do not claim it as a right, but as a favor." celestine sat down. "i listen," she said. she turned her chair from watts and faced peter, as he stood at the study table. peter paused a moment, and then said: "after what i have seen, i feel sure you wish only to revenge yourself on mr. d'alloi?" "yes." "now let me show you what you will do. for the last two days mr. d'alloi has carried a pistol in his pocket, and if you disgrace him he will probably shoot himself." "bon!" "but where is your revenge? he will be beyond your reach, and you will only have a human life upon your conscience ever after." "i shall not grieve!" "nor is that all. in revenging yourself on him, you do one of the cruelest acts possible. a wife, who trusts and believes in him, will have her faith and love shattered. his daughter--a young girl, with all her life before her--must ever after despise her father and blush at her name. do not punish the weak and innocent for the sin of the guilty!" peter spoke with an earnestness almost terrible. tears came into his eyes as he made his appeal, and his two auditors both rose to their feet, under the impulse of his voice even more than of his words. so earnest was he, and so spell-bound were the others, that they failed to hear the door from the dining-room move, or notice the entrance of mrs. d'alloi as peter ended his plea. a moment's silence followed peter's outburst of feeling. then the frenchwoman cried: "truly, truly. but what will you do for me and my child? haven't we been ill-treated? don't you owe us help, too? justice? don't we deserve tenderness and protection?" "yes," said peter. "but you wish revenge. ask for justice, ask for help, and i will do what is within my power to aid you." "watts," cried mrs. d'alloi, coming forward, "of what child are you talking? whose child? who is this woman?" watts jumped as if he had been shot. celestine even retreated before the terrible voice and face with which mrs. d'alloi asked her questions. a sad, weary look came into peter's eyes. no one answered mrs. d'alloi. "answer me," she cried "my dear little woman. don't get excited. it's all right." watts managed to say this much. but he did not look his last remark. "answer me, i say. who is this woman? speak!" "it's all right, really, it's all right. here. peter will tell you it's all right." "peter," cried mrs. d'alloi. "of whose child were you speaking?" peter was still standing by the desk. he looked sad and broken, as he said: "this is the mother, mrs. d'alloi." "yes? yes?" peter raised his eyes to helen's and looked at her. then he said quietly: "and watts--will tell you that--i am its father." chapter xxxv. running away. the dramatic pause which followed peter's statement was first broken by mrs. d'alloi, who threw her arms about watt's neck, and cried: "oh! my husband. forgive me, forgive me for the suspicion!" peter turned to celestine. "madame," he said. "we are not wanted here." he unlocked the door into the hall, and stood aside while she passed out, which she did quietly. another moment found the two on the sidewalk. "i will walk with you to your hotel, if you will permit me?" peter said to her. "certainly," celestine replied. nothing more was said in the walk of ten blocks. when they reached the hotel entrance, peter asked: "can you see me for a few moments?" "yes. come to my private parlor." they took the elevator, and were but a moment in reaching that apartment. peter spoke the moment the door was closed. "madame," he said, "you saw that scene. spare his wife and child? he is not worth your anger." "ah, ciel!" cried celestine, emotionally. "do you think so lowly of me, that you can imagine i would destroy your sacrifice? your romantic, your dramatic, _mon dieu!_ your noble sacrifice? non, non. celestine lacour could never do so. she will suffer cruelty, penury, insults, before she behaves so shamefully, so perfidiously." peter did not entirely sympathize with the frenchwoman's admiration for the dramatic element, but he was too good a lawyer not to accept an admission, no matter upon what grounds. he held out his hand promptly. "madame," he said, "accept my thanks and admiration for your generous conduct." celestine took it and shook it warmly. "of course," said peter. "mr. d'alloi owes you an ample income." "ah!" cried celestine, shrugging her shoulders. "do not talk of him--i leave it to you to make him do what is right." "and you will return to france?" "yes, yes. if you say so?" celestine looked at peter in a manner known only to the latin races. just then a side door was thrown open, and a boy of about twelve years of age dashed into the room, followed by a french poodle. "little villain!" cried celestine. "how dare you approach without knocking? go. go. quickly." "pardon, madame," said the child. "i thought you still absent." "is that the child?" asked peter. "yes," said celestine. "does he know?" "nothing. i do not tell him even that i am his mother." "then you are not prepared to give him a mother's care and tenderness?" "never. i love him not. he is too like his father. and i cannot have it known that i am the mother of a child of twelve. it would not be believed, even." celestine took a look at herself in the tall mirror. "then i suppose you would like some arrangement about him?" "yes." peter stayed for nearly an hour with the woman. he stayed so long, that for one of the few times in his life he was late at a dinner engagement. but when he had left celestine, every detail had been settled. peter did not have an expression of pleasure on his face as he rode down-town, nor was he very good company at the dinner which he attended that evening. the next day did not find him in any better mood. he went down-town, and called on an insurance company and talked for a while with the president. then he called at a steamship office. after that he spent twenty minutes with the head of one of the large schools for boys in the city. then he returned to his office. "a mr. d'alloi is waiting for you in your private office, sir," he was told. "he said that he was an old friend and insisted on going in there." peter passed into his office. watts cried: "my dear boy, how can i ever--" he was holding out his hand, but peter failed to take it, and interrupted him. "i have arranged it all with madame lacour," peter said coldly. "she sails on la bretagne on thursday. you are to buy an annuity for three thousand dollars a year. in addition, you are to buy an annuity for the boy till he is twenty-five, of one thousand dollars a year, payable to me as his guardian. this will cost you between forty and fifty thousand dollars. i will notify you of the amount when the insurance company sends it to me. in return for your check, i shall send you the letters and other things you sent madame lacour, or burn them, as you direct. except for this the affair is ended. i need not detain you further." "oh, i say, chum. don't take it this way," cried watts. "do you think--?" "i end it as suits me," said peter. "good-day." "but, at least you must let me pay you a fee for your work?" peter turned on watts quickly, but checked the movement and the words on his tongue. he only reiterated. "good-day." "well, if you will have it so." watts went to the door, but hesitated. "just as you please. if, later, you change your mind, send me word. i shan't cherish any feeling for this. i want to be friends." "good-day," said peter. watts passed out, closing the door. peter sat down at his desk, doing nothing, for nearly an hour. how long he would have sat will never be known, if his brown study had not been ended by rivington's entrance. "the appeals have just handed down their decision in the henley case. we win." "i thought we should," said peter mechanically. "why, peter! what's the matter with you? you look as seedy as--" "as i feel," said peter. "i'm going to stop work and take a ride, to see if i can't knock some of my dulness out of me." within an hour he was at the riding club. "hello," said the stable man. "twice in one day! you're not often here at this hour, sir. which horse will you have?" "give me whichever has the most life in him." "it's mutineer has the devil in him always, sir. though it's not yourself need fear any horse. only look out for the ice." peter rode into the park in ten minutes. he met lispenard at the first turn. "hello! it's not often you are here at this hour." lispenard reined his horse up alongside. "no," said peter. "i've been through a very revolt--a very disagreeable experience, and i've come up here to get some fresh air. i don't want to be sociable." "that's right. truthful as ever. but one word before we separate. keppel has just received two proofs of haden's last job. he asks awful prices for them, but you ought to see them." "thanks." and the two friends separated as only true friends can separate. peter rode on, buried in his own thoughts. the park was rather empty, for dark comes on early in march, and dusk was already in the air. he shook himself presently, and set mutineer at a sharp canter round the larger circle of the bridle path. but before they had half swung the circle, he was deep in thought again, and mutineer was taking his own pace. peter deserved to get a stumble and a broken neck or leg, but he didn't. he was saved from it by an incident which never won any credit for its good results to peter, however much credit it gained him. peter was so deeply engrossed in his own thoughts that he did not hear the clutter of a horse's feet behind him, just as he struck the long stretch of the comparatively straight path along the reservoir. but mutineer did, and pricked up his ears. mutineer could not talk articulately, but all true lovers of horses understand their language. mutineer's cogitations, transmuted into human speech, were something to this effect: "hello! what's that horse trying to do? he can't for a moment expect to pass me!" but the next moment a roan mare actually did pass him, going at a swift gallop. mutineer laid his ears back, "the impudence!" he said. "does that little whiffet of a roan mare think she's going to show me her heels? i'll teach her!" it is a curious fact that both the men and horses who are most seldom passed by their kind, object to it most when it happens. peter suddenly came back to affairs earthly to find mutineer just settling into a gait not permitted by park regulations. he drew rein, and mutineer, knowing that the fun was up, danced round the path in his bad temper. "really," he said to himself, "if i wasn't so fond of you, i'd give you and that mare, an awful lesson. hello! not another? this is too much!" the last remarks had relation to more clattering of hoofs. in a moment a groom was in view, going also at a gallop. "hout of the way," cried the groom, to peter, for mutineer was waltzing round the path in a way that suggested "no thoroughfare." "hi'm after that runaway." peter looked after the first horse, already a hundred feet away. he said nothing to groom nor horse, but mutineer understood the sudden change in the reins, even before he felt that maddening prick of the spurs. there was a moment's wild grinding of horse's feet on the slippery road and then mutineer had settled to his long, tremendous stride. "now, i'll show you," he remarked, "but if only he wouldn't hold me so damned tight." we must forgive mutineer for swearing. he lived so much with the stablemen, that, gentleman though he was, evil communications could not be entirely resisted. peter was riding "cool." he knew he could run the mare down, but he noticed that the woman, who formed the mount, was sitting straight, and he could tell from the position of her elbows that she was still pulling on her reins, if ineffectually. he thought it best therefore to let the mare wind herself before he forced himself up, lest he should only make the runaway horse the wilder. so after a hundred yards' run, he drew mutineer down to the mare's pace, about thirty feet behind her. they ran thus for another hundred yards. then suddenly peter saw the woman drop her reins, and catch at the saddle. his quick eye told him in a moment what had happened. the saddle-girth had broken, or the saddle was turning. he dug his spurs into mutineer, so that the horse, who had never had such treatment, thought that he had been touched by two branding irons. he gave a furious shake of his ears, and really showed the blood of his racing kentucky forebears. in fifteen seconds the horse was running even with the mare. peter had intended merely to catch the reins of the runaway, trusting to his strength to do what a woman's could not. but when he came up alongside, he saw that the saddle had turned so far that the rider could not keep her seat ten seconds longer. so he dropped his reins, bent over, and putting his arms about the woman lifted her off the precarious seat, and put her in front of him. he held her there with one arm, and reached for his reins. but mutineer had tossed them over his head. "mutineer!" said peter, with an inflection of voice decidedly commanding. "i covered a hundred yards to your seventy," mutineer told the roan mare. "on a mile track i could go round you twice, without getting out of breath. i could beat you now, even with double mount easily. but my peter has dropped the reins and that puts me on my honor. good-bye." mutineer checked his great racing stride, broke to a canter; dropped to a trot; altered that to a walk, and stopped. peter had been rather astonished at the weight he had lifted. peter had never lifted a woman before. his chief experience in the weight of human-kind had been in wrestling matches at the armory, and only the largest and most muscular men in the regiment cared to try a bout with him. of course peter knew as a fact that women were lighter than men, but after bracing himself, much as he would have done to try the cross-buttock with two hundred pounds of bone and brawn, he marvelled much at the ease with which he transferred the rider. "she can't weigh over eighty pounds," he thought. which was foolish, for the woman actually weighed one hundred and eighteen, as peter afterwards learned. the woman also surprised peter in another way. scarcely had she been placed in front of him, than she put her arms about his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. she was not crying, but she was drawing her breath in great gasps in a manner which scared peter terribly. peter had never had a woman cling to him in that way, and frightened as he was, he made three very interesting discoveries: . that a man's shoulder seems planned by nature as a resting place for a woman's head. . that a man's arm about a woman's waist is a very pleasant position for the arm. . that a pair of woman's arms round a man's neck, with the clasped hands, even if gloved, just resting on the back of his neck, is very satisfying. peter could not see much of the woman. his arm told him that she was decidedly slender, and he could just catch sight of a small ear and a cheek, whose roundness proved the youth of the person. otherwise he could only see a head of very pretty brown hair, the smooth dressing of which could not entirely conceal its longing to curl. when mutineer stopped, peter did not quite know what to do. of course it was his duty to hold the woman till she recovered herself. that was a plain duty--and pleasant. peter said to himself that he really was sorry for her, and thought his sensations were merely the satisfaction of a father in aiding his daughter. we must forgive his foolishness, for peter had never been a father, and so did not know the parental feeling. it had taken mutineer twenty seconds to come to a stand, and for ten seconds after, no change in the condition occurred. then suddenly the woman stopped her gasps. peter, who was looking down at her, saw the pale cheek redden. the next moment, the arms were taken from his neck and the woman was sitting up straight in front of him. he got a downward look at the face, and he thought it was the most charming he had ever seen. the girl kept her eyes lowered, while she said firmly, though with traces of breathlessness and tremulo in her voice, "please help me down." peter was out of his saddle in a moment, and lifted the girl down. she staggered slightly on reaching the ground, so that peter said: "you had better lean on me." "no," said the girl, still looking down, "i will lean against the horse." she rested against mutineer, who looked around to see who was taking this insulting liberty with a kentucky gentleman. having looked at her he said: "you're quite welcome, you pretty dear!" peter thought he would like to be a horse, but then it occurred to him that equines could not have had what he had just had, so he became reconciled to his lot. the girl went on flushing, even after she was safely leaning against mutineer. there was another ten seconds' pause, and then she said, still with downcast eyes, "i was so frightened, that i did not know what i was doing." "you behaved very well," said peter, in the most comforting voice he could command. "you held your horse splendidly." "i wasn't a bit frightened, till the saddle began to turn." the girl still kept her eyes on the ground, and still blushed. she was undergoing almost the keenest mortification possible for a woman. she had for a moment been horrified by the thought that she had behaved in this way to a groom. but a stranger--a gentleman--was worse! she had not looked at peter's face, but his irreproachable riding-rig had been noticed. "if it had only been a policeman," she thought. "what can i say to him?" peter saw the mortification without quite understanding it. he knew, however, it was his duty to ease it, and took the best way by giving her something else to think about. "as soon as you feel able to walk, you had better take my arm. we can get a cab at the d street entrance, probably. if you don't feel able to walk, sit down on that stone, and i'll bring a cab. it oughtn't to take me ten minutes." "you are very good," said the girl, raising her eyes, and taking a look at peter's face for the first time. a thrill went through peter. the girl had slate-colored eyes!! chapter xxxvi. a dream. something in peter's face seemed to reassure the girl, for though she looked down after the glance, she ceased leaning against the horse, and said, "i behaved very foolishly, of course. now i will do whatever you think best." before peter had recovered enough from his thrill to put what he thought into speech, a policeman came riding towards them, leading the roan mare. "any harm done?" he called. "none, fortunately. where can we get a cab? or can you bring one here?" "i'm afraid there'll be none nearer than fifty-ninth street. they leave the other entrances before it's as dark as this." "never mind the cab," said the girl. "if you'll help me to mount, i'll ride home." "that's the pluck!" said the policeman. "do you think you had better?" asked peter. "yes. i'm not a bit afraid. if you'll just tighten the girth." it seemed to peter he had never encountered such a marvellously fascinating combination as was indicated by the clinging position of a minute ago and the erect one of the present moment. he tightened the girth with a pull that made the roan mare wonder if a steam-winch had hold of the end, and then had the pleasure of the little foot being placed in his hand for a moment, as he lifted the girl into the saddle. "i shall ride with you," he said, mounting instantly. "beg pardon," said the policeman. "i must take your names. we are required to report all such things to headquarters." "why, williams, don't you know me?" asked peter. williams looked at peter, now for the first time on a level with him. "i beg your pardon, mr. stirling. it was so dark, and you are so seldom here afternoons that i didn't know you." "tell the chief that this needn't go on record, nor be given to the reporters." "very well, mr. stirling." "i beg your pardon," said the girl in a frank yet shy way, "but will you tell me your first name?" peter was rather astonished, but he said "peter." "oh!" cried the girl, looking peter in the face. "i understand it now. i didn't think i could behave so to a stranger! i must have felt it was you." she was smiling joyfully, and she did not drop her eyes from his. on the contrary she held out her hand to him. of course peter took it. he did not stop to ask if it was right or wrong to hold a young girl's hand. if it was wrong, it was certainly a very small one, judging from the size of the hand. "i was so mortified! but if it's you it's all right." peter thought this mood of the girl was both delightful and complimentary, but he failed to understand anything of it, except its general friendliness. his manner may have suggested this, for suddenly the girl said: "but of course, you do not know who i am? how foolish of me! i am leonore d'alloi." it was peter's turn to gasp. "not--?" he began and then stopped. "yes," said the girl joyfully, as if peter's "not" had had something delightful in it. "but--she's a child." "i'll be eighteen next week," said leonore, with all the readiness of that number of years to proclaim its age. peter concluded that he must accept the fact. watts could have a child that old. having reached this conclusion, he said, "i ought to have known you by your likeness to your mother." which was an unintentional lie. her mother's eyes she had, as well as the long lashes; and she had her mother's pretty figure, though she was taller. but otherwise she was far more like watts. her curly hair, her curvy mouth, the dimple, and the contour of the face were his. leonore d'alloi was a far greater beauty than her mother had ever been. but to peter, it was merely a renewal of his dream. just at this point the groom rode up. "beg pardon, miss d'alloi," he said, touching his cap. "my 'orse went down on a bit of hice." "you are not hurt, belden?" said miss d'alloi. peter thought the anxious tone heavenly. he rather wished he had broken something himself. "no. nor the 'orse." "then it's all right. mr. stirling, we need not interrupt your ride. belden will see me home." belden see her home! peter would see him do it! that was what peter thought. he said, "i shall ride with you, of course." so they started their horses, the groom dropping behind. "do you want to try it again?" asked mutineer of the roan. "no," said the mare. "you are too big and strong." leonore was just saying: "i could hear the pound of a horse's feet behind me, but i thought it was the groom, and knew he could never overtake fly-away. so when i felt the saddle begin to slip, i thought i was--was going to be dragged--as i once saw a woman in england--oh!--and then suddenly i saw a horse's head, and then i felt some one take hold of me so firmly that i didn't have to hold myself at all, and i knew i was safe. oh, how nice it is to be big and strong!" peter thought so too. so it is the world over. peter and mutineer felt happy and proud in their strength, and leonore and fly-away glorified them for it. yet in spite of this, as peter looked down at the curly head, from his own and mutineers altitude, he felt no superiority, and knew that the slightest wish expressed by that small mouth, would be as strong with him as if a european army obeyed its commands. "what a tremendous horse you have?" said leonore. "isn't he?" assented peter. "he's got a bad temper, i'm sorry to say, but i'm very fond of him. he was given me by my regiment, and was the choice of a very dear friend now dead." "who was that?" "no one you know. a mr. costell." "oh, yes i do. i've heard all about him." "what do you know of mr. costell?" "what miss de voe told me." "miss de voe?" "yes. we saw her both times in europe. once at nice, and once in--in --at maggiore. the first time, i was only six, but she used to tell me stories about you and the little children in the angle. the last time she told me all she could remember about you. we used to drift about the lake moonlight nights, and talk about you." "what made that worth doing to you?" "oh from the very beginning, that i can remember, papa was always talking about 'dear old peter'"--the talker said the last three words in such a tone, shot such a look up at peter, half laughing and half timid, that in combination they nearly made peter reel in his saddle--"and you seemed almost the only one of his friends he did speak of, so i became very curious about you as a little girl, and then miss de voe made me more interested, so that i began questioning americans, because i was really anxious to learn things concerning you. nearly every one did know something, so i found out a great deal about you." peter was realizing for the first time in his life, how champagne made one feel. "tell me whom you found who knew anything about me?" "oh, nearly everybody knew something. that is, every one we've met in the last five years. before that, there was miss de voe, and grandpapa, of course, when he came over in --" "but," interrupted peter, "i don't think i had met him once before that time, except at the shrubberies." "no, he hadn't seen you. but he knew a lot about you, from mr. lapharn and mr. avery, and some other men who had met you." "who else?" "miss leroy, mamma's bridesmaid, who spent two weeks at our villa near florence, and dr. purple, your clergyman, who was in the same house with us at ober-ammergau, and--and--oh the best were mr. and mrs. rivington. they were in jersey, having their honeymoon. they told me more than all the rest put together." "i feel quite safe in their hands. dorothy and i formed a mutual admiration society a good many years ago." "she and mr. rivington couldn't say enough good of you." "you must make allowance for the fact that they were on their wedding journey, and probably saw everything rose-colored." "that was it. dorothy told me about your giving mr. rivington a full partnership, in order that mr. ogden should give his consent." peter laughed. "ray swore that he wouldn't tell. and dorothy has always appeared ignorant. and yet she knew it on her wedding trip." "she couldn't help it. she said she must tell some one, she was so happy. so she told mamma and me. she showed us your photograph. papa and mamma said it was like you, but i don't think it is." again leonore looked up at him. leonore, when she glanced at a man, had the same frank, fearless gaze that her mother had of yore. but she did not look as often nor as long, and did not seem so wrapped up in the man's remarks when she looked. we are afraid even at seventeen that leonore had discovered that she had very fetching eyes, and did not intend to cheapen them, by showing them too much. during the whole of this dialogue, peter had had only "come-and-go" glimpses of those eyes. he wanted to see more of them. he longed to lean over and turn the face up and really look down into them. still, he could see the curly hair, and the little ear, and the round of the cheek, and the long lashes. for the moment peter did not agree with mr. weller that "life isn't all beer and skittles." "i've been so anxious to meet you. i've begged papa ever since we landed to take me to see you. and he's promised me, over and over again, to do it, but something always interfered. you see, i felt very strange and--and queer, not knowing people of my own country, and i felt that i really knew you, and wouldn't have to begin new as i do with other people. i do so dread next winter when i'm to go into society. i don't know what i shall do, i'll not know any one." "you'll know me." "but you don't go into society." "oh, yes, i do. sometimes, that is. i shall probably go more next winter. i've shut myself up too much." this was a discovery of peter's made in the last ten seconds. "how nice that will be! and will you promise to give me a great deal of attention?" "you'll probably want very little. i don't dance." peter suddenly became conscious that mr. weller was right. "but you can learn. please. i do so love valsing." peter almost reeled again at the thought of waltzing with leonore. was it possible life had such richness in it? then he said with a bitter note in his voice very unusual to him: "i'm afraid i'm too old to learn." "not a bit," said leonore. "you don't look any older than lots of men i've seen valsing. young men i mean. and i've seen men seventy years old dancing in europe." whether peter could have kept his seat much longer is to be questioned. but fortunately for him, the horses here came to a stop in front of a stable. "why," said leonore, "here we are already! what a short ride it has been." peter thought so too, and groaned over the end of it. but then he suddenly remembered that leonore was to be lifted from her horse. he became cold with the thought that she might jump before he could get to her, and he was off his horse and by her side with the quickness of a military training. he put his hands up, and for a moment had--well, peter could usually express himself but he could not put that moment into words. and it was not merely that leonore had been in his arms for a moment, but that he had got a good look up into her eyes. "i wish you would take my horse round to the riding club," he told the groom. "i wish to see miss d'alloi home." "thank you very much, but my maid is here in the brougham, so i need not trouble you. good-bye, and thank you. oh, thank you so much!" she stood very close to peter, and looked up into his eyes with her own. "there's no one i would rather have had save me." she stepped into the brougham, and peter closed the door. he mounted his horse again, and straightening himself up, rode away. "hi thought," remarked the groom to the stableman, "that 'e didn't know 'ow to sit 'is 'orse, but 'e's all right, arter all. 'e rides like ha 'orse guards capting, w'en 'e don't 'ave a girl to bother 'im." would that girl bother him? chapter xxxvii. "friends." at first blush, judging from peter's behavior, the girl was not going to bother him. peter left his horse at the stable, and taking a hansom, went to his club. there he spent a calm half hour over the evening papers. his dinner was eaten with equal coolness. not till he had reached his study did he vary his ordinary daily routine. then, instead of working or reading, he rolled a comfortable chair up to the fire, put on a fresh log or two, opened a new box of bock's, and lighting one, settled back in the chair. how many hours he sat and how many cigars he smoked are not recorded, lest the statement should make people skeptical of the narrative. of course peter knew that life had not lost its troubles. he was not fooling himself as to what lay before him. he was not callous to the sufferings already endured. but he put them, past, and to come, from him for one evening, and sat smoking lazily with a dreamy look on his face. he had lately been studying the subject of asiatic cholera, but he did not seem to be thinking of that. he had just been through what he called a "revolting experience," but it is doubtful if he was thinking of that. whatever his thoughts were, they put a very different look on his face than that which it used to wear while he studied blank walls. when peter sat down, rather later than usual at his office desk the next morning, he took a sheet of paper, and wrote, "dear sir," upon it. then he tore it up. he took another and wrote, "my dear mr. d'alloi." he tore that up. another he began, "dear watts." a moment later it was in the paper basket. "my dear friend," served to bring a similar fate to the fourth. then peter rose and strolled about his office aimlessly. finally he went out into a gallery running along the various rooms, and, opening a door, put his head in. "you hypocritical scoundrel," he said. "you swore to me that you would never tell a living soul." "well?" came a very guilty voice back. "and dorothy's known all this time." dead silence. "and you've both been as innocent as--as you were guilty." "look here, peter, i can't make you understand, because you've--you've never been on a honeymoon. really, old fellow, i was so happy over your generosity in giving me a full share, when i didn't bring a tenth of the business, and so happy over dorothy, that if i hadn't told her, i should have simply--bust. she swore she'd never tell. and now she's told you!" "no, but she told some one else." "never!" "yes." "then she's broken her word. she--" "the pot called the kettle black." "but to tell one's own wife is different. i thought she could keep a secret." "how can you expect a person to keep a secret when you can't keep it yourself?" peter and ray were both laughing. ray said to himself, "peter has some awfully knotty point on hand, and is resting the brain tissue for a moment." ray had noticed, when peter interrupted him during office hours, on matters not relating to business, that he had a big or complex question in hand. peter closed the door and went back to his room. then he took a fifth sheet of paper, and wrote: "watts: a day's thought has brought a change of feeling on my part. neither can be the better for alienation or unkind thoughts. i regret already my attitude of yesterday. let us cancel all that has happened since our college days, and put aside as if it had never occurred. "peter" just as he had finished this, his door opened softly. 'peter did not hear it, but took the letter up and read it slowly. "boo!" peter did not jump at the boo. he looked up very calmly, but the moment he looked up, jump he did. he jumped so that he was shaking hands before the impetus was lost. "this is the nicest kind of a surprise," he said. "bother you, you phlegmatic old cow," cried a merry voice. "here we have spent ten minutes palavering your boy, in order to make him let us surprise you, and then when we spring it on you, you don't budge. wasn't it shabby treatment, dot?" "you've disappointed us awfully, mr. stirling." peter was shaking hands more deliberately with leonore than he had with watts. he had been rather clever in shaking hands with him first, so that he need not hurry himself over the second. so he had a very nice moment--all too short--while leonore's hand lay in his. he said, in order to prolong the moment, without making it too marked, "it will take something more frightful than you, miss d'alloi, to make me jump." then peter was sorry he had said it, for leonore dropped her eyes. "now, old man, give an account of yourself." watts was speaking jauntily, but not quite as easily as he usually did. "here leonore and i waited all last evening, and you never came. so she insisted that we come this morning." "i don't understand?" peter was looking at leonore as if she had made the remark. leonore was calmly examining peter's room. "why, even a stranger would have called last night to inquire about dot's health, after such an accident. but for you not to do it, was criminal. if you have aught to say why sentence should not now be passed on you, speak now or forever--no--that's the wedding ceremony, isn't it? not criminal sentence--though, on second thought, there's not much difference." "did you expect me, miss d'alloi?" miss d'alloi was looking at a shelf of law books with her back to peter, and was pretending great interest in them. she did not turn, but said "yes." "i wish i had known that," said peter, with the sincerest regret in his voice. miss d'alloi's interest in legal literature suddenly ceased. she turned and peter had a momentary glimpse of those wonderful eyes. either his words or tone had evidently pleased miss d'alloi. the corners of her mouth were curving upwards. she made a deep courtesy to him and said: "you will be glad to know, mr. stirling, that miss d'alloi has suffered no serious shock from her runaway, and passed a good night. it seemed to miss d'alloi that the least return she could make for mr. stirling's kindness, was to save him the trouble of coming to inquire about miss d'alloi's health, and so leave mr. stirling more time to his grimy old law books." "there, sir, i hope you are properly crushed for your wrong-doing," cried watts. "i'm not going to apologize for not coming," said peter, "for that is my loss; but i can say that i'm sorry." "that's quite enough," said leonore. "i thought perhaps you didn't want to be friends. and as i like to have such things right out, i made papa bring me down this morning so that i could see for myself." she spoke with a frankness that seemed to peter heavenly, even while he grew cold at the thought that she should for a moment question his desire to be friends. "of course you and peter will be friends," said watts. "but mamma told me last night--after we went upstairs, that she was sure mr. stirling would never call." "never, dot?" cried watts. "yes. and when i asked her why, she wouldn't tell me at first, but at last she said it was because he was so unsociable. i shan't be friends with any one who won't come to see me." leonore was apparently looking at the floor, but from under her lashes she was looking at something else. whatever peter may have felt, he looked perfectly cool. too cool, leonore thought. "i'm not going to make any vows or protestations of friendship," he said, "i won't even pledge myself to come and see you, miss d'alloi. remember, friendship comes from the word free. if we are to be friends, we must each leave the other to act freely." "well," said leonore, "that is, i suppose, a polite way of saying that you don't intend to come. now i want to know why you won't?" "the reasons will take too long to explain to you now, so i'll defer the telling till the first time i call on you." peter was smiling down at her. miss d'alloi looked up at peter, to see what meaning his face gave his last remark. then she held out her two hands. "of course we are to be the best of friends," she said. peter got a really good look down into those eyes as they shook hands. the moment this matter had been settled, leonore's manner changed. "so this is the office of the great peter stirling?" she said, with the nicest tone of interest in her voice, as it seemed to peter. "it doesn't look it," said watts. "by george, with the business people say your firm does, you ought to do better than this. it's worse even than our old harvard quarters, and those were puritanical enough." "there is a method in its plainness. if you want style, go into ogden's and rivington's rooms." "why do you have the plain office, mr. stirling?" "i have a lot of plain people to deal with, and so i try to keep my room simple, to put them at their ease. i've never heard of my losing a client yet, because my room is as it is, while i should have frightened away some if i had gone in for the same magnificence as my partners." "but i say, chum, i should think that is the sort you would want to frighten away. there can't be any money in their business?" "we weren't talking of money. we were talking of people. i am very glad to say, that with my success, there has been no change in my relations with my ward. they all come to me here, and feel perfectly at home, whether they come as clients, as co-workers, or merely as friends." "ho, ho," laughed watts. "you wily old fox! see the four bare walls. the one shelf of law books. the one cheap cabinet of drawers. the four simple chairs, and the plain desk. behold the great politician! the man of the people." peter made no reply. but leonore said to him, "i'm glad you help the poor people still, mr. stirling," and gave peter another glimpse of those eyes. peter didn't mind after that. "look here, dot," said watts. "you mustn't call chum mr. stirling. that won't do. call him--um--call him uncle peter." "i won't," said leonore, delighting peter thereby. "let me see. what shall i call you?" she asked of peter. "honey," laughed watts. "what shall i call you?" miss d'alloi put her head on one side, and looked at peter out of the corners of her eyes. "you must decide that, miss d'alloi." "i suppose i must. i--think--i--shall--call--you--peter." she spoke hesitatingly till she said his name, but that went very smoothly. peter on the spot fell in love with the five letters as she pronounced them. "plain peter?" inquired watts. "now what will you call me?" "miss d'alloi," said peter. "no. you--are--to--call--me--call--me--" "miss d'alloi," re-affirmed peter. "then i will call you mr. stirling, peter." "no, you won't." "why?" "because you said you'd call me peter." "but not if you won't--" "you made no condition at the time of promise. shall i show you the law?" "no. and i shall not call you peter, any more, peter." "then i shall prosecute you." "but i should win the case, for i should hire a friend of mine to defend me. a man named peter." leonore sat down in peter's chair. "i'm going to write him at once about it." she took one of his printed letter sheets and his pen, and, putting the tip of the holder to her lips (peter has that pen still), thought for a moment. then she wrote: dear peter: i am threatened with a prosecution. will you defend me? address your reply to "dear leonore." leonore d'alloi. "now" she said to peter, "you must write me a letter in reply. then you can have this note." leonore rose with the missive in her hand. "i never answer letters till i've received them." peter took hold of the slender wrist, and possessed himself of the paper. then he sat down at his desk and wrote on another sheet: dear miss d'alloi: i will defend you faithfully and always. peter stirling "that isn't what i said," remarked miss d'alloi. "but i suppose it will have to do." "you forget one important thing." "what is that?" "my retaining fee." "oh, dear," sighed leonore. "my allowance is nearly gone. don't you ever do work for very, very poor people, for nothing?" "not if their poverty is pretence." "oh, but mine isn't. really. see. here is my purse. look for yourself. that's all i shall have till the first of the month." she gave peter her purse. he was still sitting at his desk, and he very deliberately proceeded to empty the contents out on his blotter. he handled each article. there was a crisp ten-dollar bill, evidently the last of those given by the bank at the beginning of the month. there were two one-dollar bills. there was a fifty-cent piece, two quarters and a dime. a gold german twenty-mark piece, about eight inches of narrow crimson ribbon, and a glove button, completed the contents. peter returned the american money and the glove button to the purse and handed it back to miss d'alloi. "you've forgotten the ribbon and the gold piece," said leonore. "you were never more mistaken in your life," replied peter, with anything but legal guardedness concerning unprovable statements. he folded up the ribbon neatly and put it, with the coin, in his waistcoat pocket. "oh," said leonore, "i can't let you have that that's my luck-piece." "is it?" peter expressed much surprise blended with satisfaction in his tone. "yes. you don't want to take my good luck." "i will think it over, and write you a legal opinion later. "please!" miss d'alloi pleaded. "that is just what i have succeeded in doing--for myself." "but i want my luck-piece. i found it in a crack of the rocks crossing the ghemi. and i must have the ribbon. i need it to match for a gown it goes with." miss d'alloi put true anxiety into her voice, whatever she really felt. "i shall be glad to help you match it," said peter, "and any time you send me word, i will go shopping with you. as for your luck, i shall keep that for the present." "now i know," said leonore crossly, "why lawyers have such a bad reputation. they are perfect thieves!" she looked at peter with the corners of her mouth drawn down. he gazed at her with a very grave look on his face. they eyed each other steadily for a moment, and then the corners of leonore's mouth suddenly curled upwards. she tried hard for a moment to keep serious. then she gave up and laughed. then they both laughed. many people will only see an amusing side to the dialogue here so carefully recorded. if so, look back to the time when everything that he or she said was worth listening to. or if there has never been a he or a she, imitate peter, and wait. it is worth waiting for. chapter xxxviii. the hermitage. it is not to be supposed from this last reflection of ours, that leonore was not heart-whole. leonore had merely had a few true friends, owing to her roving life, and at seventeen a girl craves friends. when, therefore, the return to america was determined upon, she had at once decided that peter and she would be the closest of friends. that she would tell him all her confidences, and take all her troubles to him. miss de voe and dorothy had told her about peter, and from their descriptions, as well as from her father's reminiscences, leonore had concluded that peter was just the friend she had wanted for so long. that leonore held her eyes down, and tried to charm yet tantalize her intended friend, was because leonore could not help it, being only seventeen and a girl. if leonore had felt anything but a friendly interest and liking, blended with much curiosity, in peter, she never would have gone to see him in his office, and would never have talked and laughed so frankly with him. as for peter, he did not put his feelings into good docketed shape. he did not attempt to label them at all. he had had a delicious half-hour yesterday. he had decided, the evening before, that he must see those slate-colored eyes again, if he had to go round the world in pursuit of them. how he should do it, he had not even thought out, till the next morning. he had understood very clearly that the owner of those slate-colored eyes was really an unknown quantity to him. he had understood, too, that the chances were very much against his caring to pursue those eyes after he knew them better. but he was adamant that he must see those eyes again, and prove for himself whether they were but an _ignis fatuus_, or the radiant stars that providence had cast for the horoscope of peter stirling. he was studying those eyes, with their concomitants, at the present time. he was studying them very coolly, to judge from his appearance and conduct. yet he was enjoying the study in a way that he had never enjoyed the study of somebody "on torts." somebody "on torts," never looked like that. somebody "on torts," never had luck-pieces, and silk ribbons. somebody "on torts," never wrote letters and touched the end of pens to its lips. somebody "on torts," never courtesied, nor looked out from under its eyelashes, nor called him peter. while this investigation had been progressing, watts had looked at the shelf of law books, had looked out of the window, had whistled, and had yawned. finally, in sheer _ennui_ he had thrown open a door, and looked to see what lay beyond. "ha, ha!" he cried. "all is discovered. see! here sits peter stirling, the ward politician, enthroned in jeffersonian simplicity. but here, behind the arras, sits peter stirling, the counsellor of banks and railroads, in the midst of all the gorgeousness of the golden east." watts passed into the room beyond. "what does he mean, peter?" "he has gone into my study. would you like--" he was interrupted by watts calling, "come in here, dot, and see how the unsociable old hermit bestows himself." so leonore and peter followed watts's lead. the room into which they went was rather a curious one. it was at least twenty-five feet square, having four windows, two looking out on broadway, and two on the side street. it had one other door besides that by which they had entered. here the ordinary quality ended. except for the six openings already noted and a large fireplace, the walls were shelved from floor to ceiling (which was not a low one), with dusky oak shelving. the ceiling was panelled in dark oak, and the floor was covered with a smooth surface of the same wood. yet though the shelves were filled with books, few could be seen, for on every upright of the shelving, were several frames of oak, hinged as one sees them in public galleries occasionally, and these frames contained etchings, engravings, and paintings. some were folded back against the shelves. others stood out at right angles to them and showed that the frames were double ones, both sides containing something. four easy-chairs, three less easy chairs, and a large table desk, likewise of dusky oak were the sole other fittings of the room, if we except two large polar bear skins. "oh," cried leonore looking about, "i'm so glad to see this. people have told me so much about your rooms. and no two of them ever agreed." "no," said peter. "it seems a continual bone of contention with my friends. they scold me because i shelved it to the ceiling, because i put in one-colored wood, because i framed my pictures and engravings this way, and because i haven't gone in for rugs, and bric-à-brac, and the usual furnishings. at times i have really wondered, from their determination to change things, whether it was for them to live in, or for my use?" "it is unusual," said leonore, reluctantly, and evidently selecting a word that should not offend peter. "you ought to be hung for treating fine pictures so," said watts. "i had to give them those broad flat mats, because the books gave no background." "it's--it's--" leonore hesitated. "it's not so startling, after a moment." "you see they had to hang this way, or go unhung. i hadn't wall space for both pictures and books. and by giving a few frames a turn, occasionally, i can always have fresh pictures to look at." "look here, dot, here's a genuine rembrandt's 'three crosses,'" called watts. "i didn't know, old man, that you were such a connoisseur." "i'm not," said peter. "i'm fond of such things, but i never should have had taste or time to gather these." "then how did you get them?" "a friend of mine--a man of exquisite taste--gathered them. he lost his money, and i bought them of him." "that was mr. le grand?" asked leonore, ceasing her study of the "three crosses." "yes." "mrs. rivington told me about it." "it must have been devilish hard for him to part with such a collection," said watts. "he hasn't really parted with them. he comes down here constantly, and has a good time over them. it was partly his scheme to arrange them this way." "and are the paintings his, too, peter?" peter could have hugged her for the way she said peter. "no," he managed to remark. "i bought some of them, and miss de voe and lispenard ogden the others. people tell me i spoil them by the flat framing, and the plain, broad gold mats. but it doesn't spoil them to me. i think the mixture of gold mats and white mats breaks the monotony. and the variation just neutralizes the monotone which the rest of the room has. but of course that is my personal equation." "then this room is the real taste of the 'plain man,' eh?" inquired watts. "really, papa, it is plain. just as simple as can be." "simple! yes, sweet simplicity! three-thousand-dollar-etching simplicity! millet simplicity! oh, yes. peter's a simple old dog." "no, but the woodwork and the furniture. isn't this an enticing chair? i must try it." and leonore almost dissolved from view in its depths. peter has that chair still. he would probably knock the man down who offered to buy it. it occurred to peter that since leonore was so extremely near the ground, and was leaning back so far, that she could hardly help but be looking up. so he went and stood in front of the fireplace, and looked down at her. he pretended that his hands were cold. watts perhaps was right. peter was not as simple as people thought. it seemed to peter that he had never had so much to see, all at once, in his life. there were the occasional glimpses of the eyes (for leonore, in spite of her position, did manage to cover the larger part of them) not one of which must be missed. then there was her mouth. that would have been very restful to the eye; if it hadn't been for the distracting chin below it. then there were the little feet, just sticking out from underneath the tailor-made gown, making peter think of herrick's famous lines. finally there were those two hands! leonore was very deliberately taking off her gloves. peter had not seen those hands ungloved yet, and waited almost breathlessly for the unveiling. he decided that he must watch and shake hands at parting before leonore put those gloves on again. "i say," said watts, "how did you ever manage to get such a place here?" "i was a tenant for a good many years of the insurance company that owns the building, and when it came to rebuild, it had the architect fit this floor for me just as i wished it. so i put our law-offices in front and arranged my other rooms along the side street. would you like to see them?" peter asked this last question very obviously of leonore. "very much." so they passed through the other door, to a little square hall, lighted by a skylight, with a stairway going up to the roof. "i took the upper floor, so as to get good air and the view of the city and the bay, which is very fine," peter said. "and i have a staircase to the roof, so that in good weather i can go up there." "i wondered what the great firm was doing up ten stories," said watts. "ogden and rivington have been very good in yielding to my idiosyncracies. this is my mealing closet." it was a room nine feet square, panelled, ceiled and floored in mahogany, and the table and six chairs were made of the same material. "so this is what the papers call the 'stirling political incubator?' it doesn't look like a place for hatching dark plots," said watts. "sometimes i have a little dinner here. never more than six, however, for it's too small." "i say, dot, doesn't this have a jolly cosy feeling? couldn't one sit here blowy nights, with the candles lit, eating nuts and telling stories? it makes me think of the expression, 'snug as a bug.'" "miss leroy told me, peter, what a reputation your dinners had, and how every one was anxious to be invited just once," said leonore. "but not a second time, old man. you caught dot's inference, i hope? once is quite enough." "peter, will you invite me some day?" "would he?" peter longed to tell her that the place and everything it contained, including its owner--then peter said to himself, "you really don't know anything about her. stop your foolishness." still peter knew that--that foolishness was nice. he said, "people only care for my dinners because they are few and far between, and their being way down here in the city, after business hours, makes them something to talk about. society wants badly something to talk about most of the time. of course, my friends are invited." peter looked down at leonore, and she understood, without, his saying so, that she was to be a future guest. "how do you manage about the prog, chum?" "mr. le grand had a man--a maryland darky--whom he turned over to me. he looks after me generally, but his true forte is cooking. for oysters and fish and game i can't find his equal. and, as i never attempt very elaborate dinners, he cooks and serves for a party of six in very good shape. we are not much in haste down here after six, because it's so still and quiet. the hurry's gone up-town to the social slaves. suppose you stay and try his skill at lunch to-day? my partners generally are with me, and jenifer always has something good for them." "by all means," said watts. but leonore said: "no. we mustn't make a nuisance of ourselves the first time we come." peter and watts tried to persuade her, but she was not persuadable. leonore had no intention, no matter how good a time it meant, of lunching sola with four men. "i think we must be going," she said. "you mustn't go without seeing the rest of my quarters," said peter, hoping to prolong the visit. leonore was complaisant to that extent. so they went into the pantry, and leonore proceeded, apparently, to show her absolute ignorance of food matters under the pretext that she was displaying great housekeeping knowledge. she told peter that he ought to keep his champagne on ice. "that champagne will spoil if it isn't kept on ice." she complained because some bottles of burgundy had dust on them. "that's not merely untidy," she said, "but it's bad for the wine. it ought to be stood on end, so that the sediment can settle." she criticised the fact that a brace of canvas-backs were on ice. "all your game should be hung," she said. she put her finger or her eyes into every drawer and cupboard, and found nothing to praise. she was absolutely grave over it, but before long peter saw the joke and entered into it. it was wonderful how good some of the things that she touched tasted later. then they went into peter's sleeping-room, leonore said it was very ordinary, but promptly found two things to interest her. "do you take care of your window flowers?" "no, mrs. costell comes down to lunch with me once a week, and potters with them. she keeps all the windows full of flowers--perhaps you have noticed them in the other rooms, as well?" "yes. i liked them, but i didn't think they could be yours. they grow too well for a man." "it seems as if mrs. costell had only to look at a plant, and it breaks out blossoming," peter replied. "what a nice speech," said leonore. "it's on a nice subject," peter told her. "when you have that, it's very easy to make a nice speech." "i want to meet mrs. costell. i've heard all about her." the second point of interest concerned the contents of what had evidently been planned as an umbrella-stand. "why do you have three swords?" she asked, taking the handsomest from its resting place. "so that i can kill more people." "why, dot, you ought to know that an officer wants a service sword and a dress-sword." "but these are all dress-swords. i'm afraid you are very proud of your majorship." peter only smiled a reply down at her. "yes," said leonore, "i have found out your weakness at last. you like gold lace and fixings." still peter only smiled. "this sword is presented to captain peter stirling in recognition of his gallant conduct at hornellsville, july , ," leonore read on the scabbard. "what did you do at hornellsville?" "various things." "but what did you do to get the sword?" "my duty!" "tell me?" "i thought you knew all about me." "i don't know this." peter only smiled at her. "tell me. if you don't, somebody else will. please." "why, dot, these are all presentation swords." "yes," said peter; "and so gorgeous that i don't dare use them. i keep the swords i wear at the armory." "are you going to tell me what you did to get them?" "that one was given me by my company when i was made captain. that was subscribed for by some friends. the one you have was given me by a railroad." "for what?" "for doing my duty." "come, papa. we'll go home." peter surrendered. "there were some substitutes for strikers in freight cars that were fitted up with bunks. the strikers fastened the doors on them, and pushed them into a car-shed." "and what did you do?" "we rolled the cars back." "i don't think that was much. nothing to give a sword for. now, have you anything more to show us?" "no. i have a spare room, and jenifer has a kitchen and sleeping place beyond, but they are not worth showing." they went out into the little square hall, and so into the study. leonore began unfolding her gloves. "i've had a very nice time," she said. "i think i shall come again very often, i like down-town new york." leonore was making her first trip to it, so that she spoke from vast knowledge. "i can't tell you how pleasant it has been to me. it isn't often that such sunshine gets in here," said peter. "then you do prefer sunshine to grimy old law books?" inquired leonore, smiling demurely. "some sunshine," said peter, meaningly. "wherever there has been sunshine there ought to be lots of flowers. i have a good mind--yes, i will--leave you these violets," leonore took a little bunch that she had worn near her throat and put them and her hand in peter's. and she hadn't put her glove on yet! then she put her gloves on, and peter shook hands. then he remembered that he ought to see them to the elevator, so he took them out--and shook hands again. after that he concluded it was his duty to see them to the carriage--and he shook hands again. peter was not an experienced hand, but he was doing very well. chapter xxxix. the dude. just as peter came back to his office, his lunch was announced. "what makes you look so happy?" asked ray. "being so," said peter, calmly. "what a funny old chap he is?" ray remarked to ogden, as they went back to work. "he brought me his opinion, just after lunch, in the hall-seelye case. i suppose he had been grubbing all the morning over those awful figures, and a tougher or dryer job, you couldn't make. yet he came in to lunch looking as if he was walking on air." when peter returned to his office, he would have preferred to stop work and think for a bit. he wanted to hold those violets, and smell them now and then. he wished to read that letter over again. he longed to have a look at that bit of ribbon and gold. but he resisted temptation. he said: "peter stirling, go to work." so all the treasures were put in a drawer of his study table, and peter sat down at his office desk. first, after tearing up his note to watts, he wrote another, as follows: watts: you can understand why i did not call last night, or bind myself as to the future. i shall hope to receive an invitation to call from mrs. d'alloi. how, i must leave to you; but you owe me this much, and it is the only payment i ask of you. otherwise let us bury all that has occurred since our college days, forever. peter. then he ground at the law till six, when he swung his clubs and dumb-bells for ten minutes; took a shower; dressed himself, and dined. then he went into his study, and opened a drawer. did he find therein a box of cigars, or a bunch of violets, gold-piece, ribbon and sheet of paper? one thing is certain. peter passed another evening without reading or working. and two such idle evenings could not be shown in another week of his life for the last twenty years. the next day peter was considerably nearer earth. not that he didn't think those eyes just as lovely, and had he been thrown within their radius, he would probably have been as strongly influenced as ever. but he was not thrown within their influence, and so his strong nature and common sense reasserted themselves. he took his coffee, his early morning ride, and then his work, in their due order. after dinner, that evening, he only smoked one cigar. when he had done that, he remarked to himself--apropos of the cigars, presumably--"peter, keep to your work. don't burn yourself again." then his face grew very firm, and he read a frivolous book entitled: "neun atiologische und prophylactische satze ... uber die choleræpidemien in ostindien," till nearly one o'clock. the following day was sunday. peter went to church, and in the afternoon rode out to westchester to pass the evening there with mrs. costell. peter thought his balance was quite recovered. other men have said the same thing. the fact that they said so, proved that they were by no means sure of themselves. this was shown very markedly on monday in peter's case, for after lunch he did not work as steadily as he had done in the morning hours. he was restless. twice he pressed his lips, and started in to work very, very hard--and did it for a time. then the restlessness would come on again. presently he took to looking at his watch. then he would snap it to, and go to work again, with a great determination in his face, only to look at the watch again before long. finally he touched his bell. "jenifer," he said, "i wish you would rub off my spurs, and clean up my riding trousers." "for lohd, sar, i done dat dis day yesserday." "never mind, then," said peter. "tell curzon to ring me up a hansom." when peter rode into the park he did not vacillate. he put his horse at a sharp canter, and started round the path. but he had not ridden far when he suddenly checked his horse, and reined him up with a couple of riders. "i've been looking for you," he said frankly. peter had not ceased to be straightforward. "hello! this is nice," said watts. "don't you think it's about time?" said leonore. leonore had her own opinion of what friendship consisted. she was not angry with peter--not at all. but she did not look at him. peter had drawn his horse up to the side on which leonore was riding. "that is just what i thought," he said deliberately, "and that's why i'm here now." "how long ago did that occur to you, please?" said leonore, with dignity. "about the time it occurred to me that you might ride here regularly afternoons." "don't you?" leonore was mollifying. "no. i like the early morning, when there are fewer people." "you unsociable old hermit," exclaimed watts. "but now?" asked leonore. when leonore said those two words peter had not yet had a sight of those eyes. and he was getting desperately anxious to see them. so he replied: "now i shall ride in the afternoons." he was rewarded by a look. the sweetest kind of a look. "now, that is very nice, peter," said leonore. "if we see each other every day in the park, we can tell each other everything that we are doing or thinking about. so we will be very good friends for sure." leonore spoke and looked as if this was the pleasantest of possibilities, and peter was certain it was. "i say, peter," said watts. "what a tremendous dude we have come out. i wanted to joke you on it the first time i saw you, but this afternoon it's positively appalling. i would have taken my bible oath that it was the last thing old peter would become. just look at him, dot. doesn't he fill you with 'wonder, awe and praise?'" leonore looked at peter a little shyly, but she said frankly: "i've wondered about that, peter. people told me you were a man absolutely without style." peter smiled. "do you remember what friar bacon's brass head said?" "time is: time was: time will never be again?" asked leonore. "that fits my lack of style, i think." "pell and ogden, and the rest of them, have made you what i never could, dig at you as i would. so you've yielded to the demands of your toney friends?" "of course i tried to dress correctly for my up-town friends, when i was with them. but it was not they who made me careful, though they helped me to find a good tailor, when i decided that i must dress better." "then it was the big law practice, eh? must keep up appearances?" "i fancy my dressing would no more affect my practice, than does the furnishing of my office." "then who is she? out with it, you sly dog." "of course i shan't tell you that" "peter, will you tell me?" asked leonore. peter smiled into the frank eyes. "who she is?" "no. why you dress so nicely. please?" "you'll laugh when i tell you it is my ward." "oh, nonsense," laughed watts. "that's too thin. come off that roof. unless you're guardian of some bewitching girl?" "your ward, peter?" "yes. i don't know whether i can make you understand it. i didn't at first. you see i became associated with the ward, in people's minds, after i had been in politics for a few years. so i was sometimes put in positions to a certain extent representative of it. i never thought much how i dressed, and it seems that sometimes at public meetings, and parades, and that sort of thing, i wasn't dressed quite as well as the other men. so when the people of my ward, who were present, were asked to point me out to strangers, they were mortified about the way i looked. it seemed to reflect on the ward. the first inkling i had of it was after one of these parades, in which, without thinking, i had worn a soft hat. i was the only man who did not wear a silk one, and my ward felt very badly about it. so they made up a purse, and came to me to ask me to buy a new suit and silk hat and gloves. of course that set me asking questions, and though they didn't want to hurt my feelings, i wormed enough out of them to learn how they felt. since then i've spent a good deal of money on tailors, and dress very carefully." "good for 'de sixt'! hurrah for the unwashed democracy, where one man's as good as another! so a 'mick' ward wants its great man to put on all the frills? i tell you, chum, we may talk about equality, but the lower classes can't but admire and worship the tinsel and flummery of aristocracy." "you are mistaken. they may like to see brilliant sights. soldiers, ball-rooms or the like, and who does not? beauty is aesthetic, not aristocratic. but they judge people less by their dress or money than is usually supposed. far less than the people up-town do. they wanted me to dress better, because it was appropriate. but let a man in the ward try to dress beyond his station, and he'd be jeered out of it, or the ward, if nothing worse happened." "oh, of course they'd hoot at their own kind," said watts. "the hardest thing to forgive in this world is your equal's success. but they wouldn't say anything to one of us." "if you, or pell, or ogden should go into blunkers's place in my ward, this evening, dressed as you are, or better, you probably would be told to get out. i don't believe you could get a drink. and you would stand a chance of pretty rough usage. last week i went right from a dinner to blunkers's to say a word to him. i was in evening dress, newcastle, and crush hat--even a bunch of lilies of the valley--yet every man there was willing to shake hands and have me sit down and stay. blunkers couldn't have been dressed so, because it didn't belong to him. for the same reason, you would have no business in blunkers's place, because you don't belong there. but the men know i dressed for a reason, and came to the saloon for a reason. i wasn't putting on airs. i wasn't intruding my wealth on them." "look here, chum, will you take me into blunkers's place some night, and let me hear you powwow the 'b'ys?' i should like to see how you do it." "yes," peter said deliberately, "if some night you'll let me bring blunkers up to watch one of your formal dinners. he would enjoy the sight, i'm sure." leonore cocked her little nose up in the air, and laughed merrily. "oh, but that's very different," said watts. "it's just as different as the two men with the toothache," said peter. "they both met at the dentist's, who it seems had only time to pull one tooth. the question arose as to which it should be. 'i'm so brave,' said one, 'that i can wait till to-morrow.' 'i'm such a coward,' said the other, 'that i don't dare have it done to-day.'" "haven't you ever taken people to those places, peter?" asked leonore. "no. i've always refused. it's a society fad now to have what are called 'slumming parties,' and of course i've been asked to help. it makes my blood tingle when i hear them talk over the 'fun' as they call it. they get detectives to protect them, and then go through the tenements--the homes of the poor--and pry into their privacy and poverty, just out of curiosity. then they go home and over a chafing dish of lobster or terrapin, and champagne, they laugh at the funny things they saw. if the poor could get detectives, and look in on the luxury and comfort of the rich, they wouldn't see much fun in it, and there's less fun in a down-town tenement than there is in a fifth avenue palace. i heard a girl tell the other night about breaking in on a wake by chance. 'weren't we lucky?' she said. 'it was so funny to see the poor people weeping and drinking whisky at the same time. isn't it heartless?' yet the dead--perhaps the bread-winner of the family, fallen in the struggle--perhaps the last little comer, not strong enough to fight this earth's battle--must have lain there in plain view of that girl. who was the most heartless? the family and friends who had gathered over that body, according to their customs, or the party who looked in on them and laughed?" peter had forgotten where he was, or to whom he was talking. leonore had listened breathlessly. but the moment he ceased speaking, she bowed her head and began to sob. peter came down from his indignant tirade like a flash. "miss d'alloi," he cried, "forgive me. i forgot. don't cry so." peter was pleading in an anxious voice. he felt as if he had committed murder. "there, there, dot. don't cry. it's nothing to cry about." miss d'alloi was crying and endeavoring at the same time to solve the most intricate puzzle ever yet propounded by man or woman--that is, to find a woman's pocket. she complicated things even more by trying to talk. "i--i--know i'm ver--ver--very fooooooolish," she managed to get out, however much she failed in a similar result with her pocket-handkerchief. "since i caused the tears, you must let me stop them," said peter. he had produced his own handkerchief, and was made happy by seeing leonore bury her face in it, and re-appear not quite so woe-begone. "i--only--didn't--know--you--could--talk--like--like that," explained leonore. "let this be a lesson for you," said watts. "don't come any more of your jury-pathos on my little girl." "papa! you--i--peter, i'm so glad you told me--i'll never go to one." watts laughed. "now i know why you charm all the women whom i hear talking about you. i tell you, when you rear your head up like that, and your eyes blaze so, and you put that husk in your voice, i don't wonder you fetch them. by george, you were really splendid to look at." that was the reason why leonore had not cried till peter had finished his speech. we don't charge women with crying whenever they wish, but we are sure that they never cry when they have anything better to do. chapter xl. opinions. when the ride was ended, leonore was sent home in the carriage, watts saying he would go with peter to his club. as soon as they were in the cab, he said: "i wanted to see you about your letter." "well?" "everything's going as well as can be expected. of course the little woman's scandalized over your supposed iniquity, but i'm working the heavy sentimental 'saved-our-little-girl's life' business for all it's worth. i had her crying last night on my shoulder over it, and no woman can do that and be obstinate long. she'll come round before a great while." peter winced. he almost felt like calling watts off from the endeavor. but he thought of leonore. he must see her--just to prove to himself that she was not for him, be it understood--and how could he see enough of her to do that--for peter recognized that it would take a good deal of that charming face and figure and manner to pall on him--if he was excluded from her home? so he justified the continuance of the attempt by saying to himself: "she only excludes me because of something of which i am guiltless, and i've saved her from far greater suffering than my presence can ever give her. i have earned the privilege if ever man earned it" most people can prove to themselves what they wish to prove. the successful orator is always the man who imposes his frame of mind on his audience. we call it "saying what the people want said." but many of the greatest speakers first suggest an idea to their listeners, and when they say it in plain english, a moment later, the audience say, mentally, "that's just what we thought a moment ago," and are convinced that the speaker is right. peter remained silent, and watts continued: "we get into our own house to-morrow, and give leonore a birthday dinner tuesday week as a combined house-warming and celebration. save that day, for i'm determined you shall be asked. only the invitation may come a little late. you won't mind that?" "no. but don't send me too many of these formal things. i keep out of them as much as i can. i'm not a society man and probably won't fit in with your friends." "i should know you were not _de societé_ by that single speech. if there's one thing easy to talk to, or fit in with, it's a society man or woman. it's their business to be chatty and pleasant, and they would be polite and entertaining to a kangaroo, if they found one next them at dinner. that's what society is for. we are the yolk of the egg, which holds and blends all the discordant, untrained elements. the oil, vinegar, salt, and mustard we don't add much flavor to life, but people wouldn't mix without us." "i know," said peter, "if you want to talk petty personalities and trivialities, that it's easy enough to get through endless hours of time. but i have other things to do." "exactly. but we have a purpose, too. you mustn't think society is all frivolity. it's one of the hardest working professions." "and the most brainless." "no. don't you see, that society is like any other kind of work, and that the people who will centre their whole life on it must be the leaders of it? to you, the spending hours over a new _entrée_, or over a cotillion figure, seems rubbish, but it's the exact equivalent of your spending hours over who shall be nominated for a certain office. because you are willing to do that, you are one of the 'big four.' because we are willing to do our task, we differentiate into the 'four hundred.' you mustn't think society doesn't grind up brain-tissue. but we use so much in running it, that we don't have enough for other subjects, and so you think we are stupid. i remember a woman once saying she didn't like conversazioni, 'because they are really brain-parties, and there is never enough to go round, and give a second help,' any way, how can you expect society to talk anything but society, when men like yourself stay away from it." "i don't ask you to talk anything else. but let me keep out of it." "'he's not the man for galway'," hummed watts. "he prefers talking to 'heelers,' and 'b'ys,' and 'toughs,' and other clever, intellectual men." "i like to talk to any one who is working with a purpose in life." "i say, peter, what do those fellows really say of us?" "i can best describe it by something miss de voe once said. we were at a dinner together, where there was a chicago man who became irritated at one or two bits of ignorance displayed by some of the other guests over the size and prominence of his abiding place. finally he said: 'why, look here, you people are so ignorant of my city, that you don't even know how to pronounce its name.' he turned to miss de voe and said, 'we say chicawgo. now, how do you pronounce it in new york?' miss de voe put on that quiet, crushing manner she has when a man displeases her, and said, 'we never pronounce it in new york.'" "good for our dutch-huguenot stock! i tell you, peter, blood does tell." "it wasn't a speech i should care to make, because it did no good, and could only mortify. but it does describe the position of the lower wards of new york towards society. i've been working in them for nearly sixteen years, and i've never even heard the subject mentioned." "but i thought the anarchists and socialists were always taking a whack at us?" "they cry out against over-rich men--not against society. don't confuse the constituents with the compound. citric acid is a deadly poison, but weakened down with water and sugar, it is only lemonade. they growl at the poison, not at the water and sugar. before there can be hate, there must be strength." the next day peter turned up in the park about four, and had a ride--with watts. the day after that, he was there a little earlier, and had a ride--with the groom. the day following he had another ride--with the groom. peter thought they were very wonderful rides. some one told him a great many interesting things. about some one's european life, some one's thoughts, some one's hopes, and some one's feelings. some one really wanted a friend to pour it all out to, and peter listened well, and encouraged well. "he doesn't laugh at me, as papa does," some one told herself, "and so it's much easier to tell him. and he shows that he really is interested. oh, i always said he and i should be good friends, and we are going to be." this put some one in a very nice frame of mind, and peter thought he had never met such a wonderful combination of frankness, of confluence, and yet of a certain girlish shyness and timidity. some one would tell him something, and then appeal to him, if he didn't think that was so? peter generally thought it was. some one did not drop her little touch of coquetry, for that was ingrain, as it is in most pretty girls. but it was the most harmless kind of coquetry imaginable. someone was not thinking at all of winning men's hearts. that might come later. at present all she wanted was that they should think her pretty, and delightful, so that--that they should want to be friend. when peter joined watts and leonore, however, on the fourth day, there was a noticeable change in leonore's manner to him. he did not get any welcome except a formal "good-afternoon," and for ten minutes watts and he had to sustain the conversation by firing remarks at each other past a very silent intermediary. peter had no idea what was wrong, but when he found that she did not mollify at the end of that time, he said to her; "what is the matter?" "matter with what?" asked leonore, calmly. "with you." "nothing." "i shan't take that for an answer. remember, we have sworn to be friends." "friends come to see each other." peter felt relieved; and smiled, "they do," he said, "when they can." "no, they don't, sometimes," said leonore severely. then she unbent a little. "why haven't you been to see us? you've had a full week." "yes," said peter, "i have had a very full week." "are you going to call on us, mr. stirling?" "to whom are you talking?" "to you." "my name's peter." "that depends. are you going to call on us?" "that is my hope and wish." leonore unbent a little more. "if you are," she said, "i wish you would do it soon, because mamma said to-day she thought of asking you to my birthday dinner next tuesday, but i said you oughtn't to be asked till you had called." "did you know that bribery is unlawful?" "are you going to call?" "of course i am." "that's better. when?" "what evening are you to be at home?" "to-morrow," said leonore, beginning to curl up the corners of her mouth. "well," said peter, "i wish you had said this evening, because that's nearer, but to-morrow isn't so far away." "that's right. now we'll be friends again." "i hope so." "are you willing to be good friends--not make believe, or half friends, but--real friends?" "absolutely." "don't you think friends should tell each other everything?" "yes." peter was quite willing, even anxious, that leonore should tell him everything. "you are quite sure?" "yes." "then," said leonore, "tell me about the way you got that sword." watts laughed. "she's been asking every one she's met about that. do tell her, just for my sake." "i've told you already." "not the way i want it. i know you didn't try to make it interesting. some of the people remembered there was something very fine, but i haven't found anybody yet who could really tell it to me. please tell about it nicely, peter." leonore was looking at peter with the most pleading of looks. "it was during the great railroad strike. the erie had brought some men up from new york to fill the strikers' places. the new hands were lodged in freight cars, when off work, for it wasn't safe for them to pass outside the guard lines of soldiers. some of the strikers applied for work, and were reinstated. they only did it to get inside our lines. at night, when the substitutes in the cars were fast asleep, tired out with the double work they had done, the strikers locked the car-doors. they pulled the two cars into a shed full of freight, broke open a petroleum tank, and with it wet the cars and some others loaded with jute. they set fire to the cars and barricaded the shed doors. of course we didn't know till the flames burst through the roof of the shed, when by the light, one of the superintendents found the bunk cars gone. the fire-department was useless, for the strikers two days before, had cut all the hose. so we were ordered up to get the cars out. some strikers had concealed themselves in buildings where they could overlook the shed, and while we were working at the door, they kept firing on us. we were in the light of the blazing shed, and they were in the dark, which gave them a big advantage over us, and we couldn't spare the time to attend to them. we tore up some rails and with them smashed in the door. the men in the cars were screaming, so we knew which to take, and fortunately they were the nearest to the door. we took our muskets--for the frames of the cars were blazing, and the metal part too hot to touch--and fixing bayonets, drove them into the woodwork and so pushed the cars out. when we were outside, we used the rails again, to smash an opening in the ends of the cars which were burning the least. we got the men out unharmed, but pretty badly frightened." "and were you not hurt?" "we had eight wounded and a good many badly burned." "and you?" "i had my share of the burn." "i wish you would tell me what you did--not what the others did." peter would have told her anything while she looked like that at him. "i was in command at that point. i merely directed things, except taking up the rails. i happened to know how to get a rail up quickly, without waiting to unscrew the bolts. i had read it, years before, in a book on railroad construction. i didn't think that paragraph would ever help me to save forty lives--for five minutes' delay would have been fatal. the inside of the shed was one sheet of flame. after we broke the door down, i only stood and superintended the moving of the cars. the men did the real work." "but you said the inside of the shed was a sheet of flame." "yes. the railroad had to give us all fresh uniforms. so we made new toggery out of that night's work. i've heard people say militia are no good. if they could have stood by me that night, and seen my company working over those blazing cars, in that mass of burning freight, with the roof liable to fall any minute, and the strikers firing every time a man showed himself, i think they would have altered their opinion." "oh," said leonore, her eyes flashing with enthusiasm. "how splendid it is to be a man, and be able to do real things! i wish i had known about it in europe." "why?" "because the officers were always laughing about our army. i used to get perfectly wild at them, but i couldn't say anything in reply. if i could only have told them about that." "hear the little frenchwoman talk," said watts. "i'm not french." "yes you are, dot." "i'm all american. i haven't a feeling that isn't all american. doesn't that make me an american, peter, no matter where i was born?" "i think you are an american under the law." "am i really?" said leonore, incredulously. "yes. you were born of american parents, and you will be living in this country when you become of age. that constitutes nationality." "oh, how lovely! i knew i was an american, really, but papa was always teasing me and saying i was a foreigner. i hate foreigners." "confound you, chum, you've spoiled one of my best jokes! it's been such fun to see dot bristle when i teased her. she's the hottest little patriot that ever lived." "i think miss d'alloi's nationality is akin to that of a case of which i once heard," said peter, smiling. "a man was bragging about the number of famous men who were born in his native town. he mentioned a well-known personage, among others, and one of his auditors said: 'i didn't know he was born there,' 'oh, yes, he was,' replied the man. 'he was born there, but during the temporary absence of his parents!'" "peter, how much does a written opinion cost?" asked leonore, eagerly. "it has a range about equal to the woman's statement that a certain object was as long as a piece of string." "but your opinions?" "i have given an opinion for nothing. the other day i gave one to a syndicate, and charged eight thousand dollars." "oh, dear!" said leonore. "i wonder if i can afford to get your opinion on my being an american? i should like to frame it and hang it in my room. would it be expensive?" "it is usual with lawyers," said peter gravely, "to find out how much a client has, and then make the bill for a little less. how much do you have?" "i really haven't any now. i shall have two hundred dollars on the first. but then i owe some bills." "you forget your grandmamma's money, dot." "oh! of course. i shall be rich, peter, i come into the income of my property on tuesday. i forget how much it is, but i'm sure i can afford to have an opinion." "why, dot, we must get those papers out, and you must find some one to put the trust in legal shape, and take care of it for you," said watts. "i suppose," said leonore to peter, "if you have one lawyer to do all your work, that he does each thing cheaper, doesn't he?" "yes. because he divides what his client has, on several jobs, instead of on one," peter told her. "then i think i'll have you do it all. we'll come down and see you about it. but write out that opinion at once, so that i can prove that i'm an american." "very well. but there's a safer way, even, of making sure that you're an american." "what is that?" said leonore, eagerly. "marry one," said peter. "oh, yes," said leonore, "i've always intended to do that, but not for a great many years." chapter xli. calls. peter dressed himself the next evening with particular care, even for him. as peter dressed, he was rather down on life. he had been kept from his ride that afternoon by taking evidence in a referee case. "i really needed the exercise badly," he said. he had tried to work his dissatisfaction off on his clubs and dumb-bells, but whatever they had done for his blood and tissue, they had not eased his frame of mind. dinner made him a little pleasanter, for few men can remain cross over a proper meal. still, he did not look happy, when, on rising from his coffee, he glanced at his watch and found that it was but ten minutes past eight. he vacillated for a moment, and then getting into his outside trappings, he went out and turned eastward, down the first side street. he walked four blocks, and then threw open the swing door of a brilliantly lighted place, stepping at once into a blaze of light and warmth which was most attractive after the keen march wind blowing outside. he nodded to the three barkeepers. "is dennis inside?" he asked. "yes, misther stirling. the regulars are all there." peter passed through the room, and went into another without knocking. in it were some twenty men, sitting for the most part in attitudes denoting ease. two, at a small table in the corner, were playing dominoes. three others, in another corner, were amusing themselves with "high, low, jack." two were reading papers. the rest were collected round the centre table, most of them smoking. some beer mugs and tumblers were standing about, but not more than a third of the twenty were drinking anything. the moment peter entered, one of the men jumped to his feet. "b'ys," he cried, "here's misther stirling. begobs, sir, it's fine to see yez. it's very scarce yez been lately." he had shaken hands, and then put a chair in place for peter. the cards, papers, and dominoes had been abandoned the moment dennis announced peter's advent, and when peter had finished shaking the hands held out to him, and had seated himself, the men were all gathered round the big table. peter laid his hat on the table, threw back his newcastle and lit a cigar. "i've been very short of time, dennis. but i had my choice this evening before going uptown, of smoking a cigar in my own quarters, or here. so i came over to talk with you all about denton." "an' what's he been doin'?" inquired dennis. "i saw him to-day about the hummel franchise that comes up in the board next tuesday. he won't vote for it, he says. i told him i thought it was in the interest of the city to multiply means of transit, and asked him why he refused. he replied that he thought the hummel gang had been offering money, and that he would vote against bribers." "he didn't have the face to say that?" shouted one of the listeners. "yes." "oi never!" said dennis. "an' he workin' night an' day to get the board to vote the rival road." "i don't think there's much doubt that money is being spent by both sides," said peter. "i fear no bill could ever pass without it. but the hummel crowd are really responsible people, who offer the city a good percentage. the other men are merely trying to get the franchise, to sell it out at a profit to hummel. i don't like the methods of either, but there's a road needed, and there'll be a road voted, so it's simply a choice between the two. i shouldn't mind if denton voted against both schemes, but to say he'll vote against hummel for that reason, and yet vote for the other franchise shows that he's not square. i didn't say so to him, because i wanted to talk it over with the ward a little first to see if they stood with me." "that we do, sir," said dennis, with a sureness which was cool, if nothing more. fortunately for the boldness of the speaker, no one dissented, and two or three couples nodded heads or pipes at each other. peter looked at his watch. "then i can put the screws on him safely, you think?" "yes," cried several. peter rose. "dennis, will you see blunkers and driscoll this evening, or some time to-morrow, and ask if they think so too? and if they don't, tell them to drop in on me, when they have leisure." "begobs, sir, oi'll see them inside av ten minutes. an' if they don't agree widus, shure, oi'll make them." "thank you. good-night." "good-night, mr. stirling," came a chorus, and peter passed into the street by the much maligned side-door. dennis turned to the group with his face shining with enthusiasm. "did yez see him, b'ys? there was style for yez. isn't he somethin' for the ward to be proud av?" peter turned to broadway, and fell into a long rapid stride. in spite of the cold he threw open his coat, and carried his outer covering on his arm. peter had no intention of going into an up-town drawing-room with any suggestion of "sixt" ward tobacco. so he walked till he reached madison square, when, after a glance at his watch, he jumped into a cab. it was a quarter-past nine when the footman opened the door of the fifty-seventh street house, in reply to peter's ring. yet he was told that, "the ladies are still at dinner." peter turned and went down the stoop. he walked to the avenue, and stopped at a house not far off. "is mrs. pell at home?" he asked, and procured entrance for both his pasteboard and himself. "welcome, little stranger," was his greeting. "and it is so nice that you came this evening. here is van, on from washington for two days." "i was going to look you up, and see what 'we, the people' were talking about, so that i could enlighten our legislators when i go back," said a man of forty. "i wrote pope a long letter to-day, which i asked him to show you," said peter. "things are in a bad shape, and getting worse." "but, peter," queried the woman, "if you are the leader, why do you let them get so?" "so as to remain the leader," said peter, smiling quietly. "now that's what comes of ward politics," cried mrs. pell, "you are beginning to make irish bulls." "no," replied peter, "i am serious, and because people don't understand what i mean, they don't understand american politics." "but you say in effect that the way you retain your leadership, is by not leading. that's absurd!" "no. contradiction though it may seem the way to lose authority, is to exercise it too much. christ enunciated the great truth of democratic government, when he said, 'he that would be the greatest among you, shall be the servant of all'" "i hope you won't carry your theory so far as to let them nominate maguire?" said mr. pell, anxiously. "now, please don't begin on politics," said the woman. "here is van, whom i haven't seen for nine weeks, and here is peter whom i haven't seen for time out of mind, and just as i think i have a red-letter evening before me, you begin your everlasting politics." "i merely stopped in to shake hands," said peter. "i have a call to make elsewhere, and can stay but twenty minutes. for that time we choose you speaker, and you can make us do as it pleases you." twenty minutes later peter passed into the d'alloi drawing-room. he shook mrs. d'alloi's hand steadily, which was more than she did with his. then he was made happy for a moment, with that of leonore. then he was introduced to a madame mellerie, whom he placed at once as the half-governess, half-companion, who had charge of leonore's education; a mr. maxwell, and a marquis de somebody. they were both good-looking young fellows; and greeted peter in a friendly way. but peter did not like them. he liked them less when mrs. d'alloi told him to sit in a given place, and then put madame mellerie down by him. peter had not called to see madame mellerie. but he made a virtue of necessity, and he was too instinctively courteous not to treat the frenchwoman with the same touch of deference his manner towards women always had. after they had been chatting for a little on french literature, it occurred to peter that her opinion of him might have some influence with leonore, so he decided that he would try and please her. but this thought turned his mind to leonore, and speaking of her to her governess, he at once became so interested in the facts she began to pour out to him, that he forgot entirely about his diplomatic scheme. this arrangement continued half an hour, when a dislocation of the _statu quo_ was made by the departure of mr. maxwell. when the exit was completed, mrs. d'alloi turned to place her puppets properly again. but she found a decided bar to her intentions. peter had formed his own conclusions as to why he had been set to entertain madame mellerie, not merely from the fact itself, but from the manner in which it had been done, and most of all, from the way mrs. d'alloi had managed to stand between leonore and himself, as if protecting the former, till she had been able to force her arrangements. so with the first stir peter had risen, and when the little bustle had ceased he was already standing by leonore, talking to her. mrs. d'alloi did not look happy, but for the moment she was helpless. peter had had to skirt the group to get to leonore, and so had stood behind her during the farewells. she apparently had not noticed his advent, but the moment she had done the daughter-of-the-house duty, she turned to him, and said: "i wondered if you would go away without seeing me. i was so afraid you were one of the men who just say, 'how d'ye do' and 'good-bye,' and think they've paid a call." "i called to see you to-night, and i should not have gone till i had seen you. i'm rather a persistent man in some things." "yes," said leonore, bobbing her head in a very knowing manner, "miss de voe told me." "mr. stirling," said mrs. d'alloi, "can't you tell us the meaning of the latin motto on this seal?" mrs. d'alloi held a letter towards him, but did not stir from her position across the room. peter understood the device. he was to be drawn off, and made to sit by mrs. d'alloi, not because she wanted to see him, but because she did not want him to talk to leonore. peter had no intention of being dragooned. so he said: "madame mellerie has been telling me what a good latin scholar miss d'alloi is. i certainly shan't display my ignorance, till she has looked at it." then he carried the envelope over to leonore, and in handing it to her, moved a chair for her, not neglecting one for himself. mrs. d'alloi looked discouraged, the more when peter and leonore put their heads close together, to examine the envelope. "'_in bonam partem_,'" read leonore. "that's easy, mamma. it's--why, she isn't listening!" "you can tell her later. i have something to talk to you about." "what is that?" "your dinner in my quarters. whom would you like to have there?" "will you really give me a dinner?" "yes." "and let me have just whom i want?" "yes." "oh, lovely! let me see. mamma and papa, of course." "that's four. now you can have two more." "peter. would you mind--i mean----" leonore hesitated a moment and then said in an apologetic tone--"would you like to invite madame? i've been telling her about your rooms--and you--and i think it would please her so." "that makes five," said peter. "oh, goody!" said leonore, "i mean," she said, correcting herself, "that that is very kind of you." "and now the sixth?" "that must be a man of course," said leonore, wrinkling up her forehead in the intensity of puzzlement. "and i know so few men." she looked out into space, and peter had a moment's fear lest she should see the marquis, and name him. "there's one friend of yours i'm very anxious to meet. i wonder if you would be willing to ask him?" "who is that?" "mr. moriarty." "no, i can't ask him, i don't want to cheapen him by making a show of him." "oh! i haven't that feeling about him. i----" "i think you would understand him and see the fine qualities. but do you think others would?" peter mentioned no names, but leonore understood. "no," she said. "you are quite right." "you shall meet him some day," said peter, "if you wish, but when we can have only people who won't embarrass or laugh at him." "really, i don't know whom to select." "perhaps you would like to meet le grand?" "very much. he is just the man." "then we'll consider that settled. are you free for the ninth?" "yes. i'm not going out this spring, and mamma and papa haven't really begun yet, and it's so late in the season that i'm sure we are free." "then i will ice the canvas-backs and champagne and dust off the burgundy for that day, if your mamma accedes." "peter, i wanted to ask you the other day about that. i thought you didn't drink wine." "i don't. but i give my friends a glass, when they are good enough to come to me. i live my own life, to please myself, but for that very reason, i want others to live their lives to please themselves. trying to live other people's lives for them, is a pretty dog-in-the-manger business." just then mrs. d'alloi joined them. "were you able to translate it?" she asked, sitting down by them. "yes, indeed," said leonore. "it means 'towards the right side,' or as a motto it might be translated, 'for the right side.'" mrs. d'alloi had clearly, to use a western expression, come determined to "settle down and grow up with the country." so peter broached the subject of the dinner, and when she hesitated, leonore called watts into the group. he threw the casting ballot in favor of the dinner, and so it was agreed upon. peter was asked to come to leonore's birthday festival, "if you don't mind such short notice," and he didn't mind, apparently. then the conversation wandered at will till peter rose. in doing so, he turned to leonore, and said: "i looked the question of nationality up to-day, and found i was right. i've written out a legal opinion in my best hand, and will deliver it to you, on receiving my fee." "how much is that?" said leonore, eagerly. "that you come and get it." chapter xlii. down-town new york. peter had not been working long the next morning when he was told that "the honorable terence denton wishes to see you," "very well," he said, and that worthy was ushered in. "good-morning, denton. i'm glad to see you. i was going down to the hall to-day to say something, but you've saved me the trouble." "i know you was. so i thought i'd get ahead of you," said denton, with a surly tone and manner. "sit down," said peter. peter had learned that, with a certain class of individuals, a distance and a seat have a very dampening effect on anger. it is curious, man's instinctive desire to stand up to and be near the object for which anger is felt. "you've been talking against me in the ward, and makin' them down on me." "no, i didn't talk against you. i've spoken with some of the people about the way you think of voting on the franchises." "yes. i wasn't round, but a friend heard dennis and blunkers a-going over it last night. and it's you did it." "yes. but you know me well enough to be sure, after my talk with you yesterday, that i wouldn't stop there." "so you try to set the pack on me." "no. i try to see how the ward wants its alderman to vote on the franchises." "look a-here. what are you so set on the hummel crowd for?" "i'm not." "is it because hummel's a big contractor and gives you lots of law business?" "no," said peter, smiling. "and you don't think it is, either." "has they offered you some stock cheap?" "come, come, denton. you know the _tu quoque_ do here." denton shifted in his seat uneasily, not knowing what reply to make. those two little latin words had such unlimited powers of concealment in them. he did not know whether _tu quoque_ meant something about votes, an insulting charge, or merely a reply, and feared to make himself ridiculous by his response to them. he was not the first man who has been hampered and floored by his own ignorance. he concluded he must make an entire change of subject to be safe. so he said, "i ain't goin' to be no boss's puppy dog." "no," said peter, finding it difficult not to smile, "you are not that kind of a man." "i takes my orders from no one." "denton, no one wants you to vote by order. we elected you alderman to do what was best for the ward and city, as it seems to you. you are responsible for your votes to us, and no other man can be. i don't care who orders you or advises you; in the end, you must vote yourself, and you yourself will be held to account by us." "yes. but if i don't vote as you wants, you'll sour the boys on me." "i shall tell them what i think. you can do the same. it's a fair game between us." "no, it ain't. you're rich and you can talk more." "you know my money has nothing to do with it. you know i don't try to deceive the men in talking to them. if they trust what i tell them, it's because it's reasonable, and because i haven't tricked them before." "well, are you goin' to drive me out?" "i hope not. i think you've made a good alderman, denton, and you'll find i've said so." "but now?" "if you vote for that franchise, i shall certainly tell the ward that i think you've done wrong. then the ward will do as they please." "as you please, you mean." "no. you've been long enough in politics to know that unless i can make the ward think as i do, i couldn't do anything. what would you care for my opinion, if you didn't know that the votes are back of it?" just then the door swung open, and dennis came in. "tim said yez was alone wid denton, sir, so oi came right in. it's a good-mornin', sir. how are yez, terence?" "you are just the man i want, dennis. tell denton how the ward feels about the franchises." "shure. it's one man they is. an' if denton will step down to my place this night, he'll find out how they think." "they never would have felt so, if mister stirling hadn't talked to them. not one in twenty knew the question was up." "that's because they are most of them too hard working to keep track of all the things. come, denton; i don't attempt to say how you shall vote. i only tell you how it seems to me. go round the ward, and talk with others. then you can tell whether i can give you trouble in the future or not. i don't want to fight you. we've been good friends in the past, and we can do more by pulling in double harness than by kicking, i don't know a man i would rather see at the hall." peter held out his hand, and denton took it. "all right, mister stirling. i'll do my best to stay friends," he said, and went out. peter turned and smiled at dennis. "they can't find out that it's not i, but the ward. so every time there's trouble they lay it against me, and it's hard to keep them friendly. and i hate quarrels and surliness." "it's yezself can do it, though. shure, denton was in a great state av mind this mornin', they was tellin' me, but he's all right now, an' will vote right, or my name isn't dennis moriarty." "yes. he doesn't know it yet, but he'll vote square on tuesday." just then tim brought in the cards of watts and leonore, and strangely enough, peter said they were to be shown in at once. in they came, and after the greetings, peter said: "miss d'alloi, this is my dear friend, dennis moriarty. dennis, miss d'alloi has wanted to know you because she's heard of your being such a friend to me." "shure," said dennis, taking the little hand so eagerly offered him, "oim thinkin' we're both lucky to be in the thoughts at all, at all, av such a sweet young lady." "oh, mr. moriarty, you've kissed the blarney stone." "begobs," responded dennis, "it needs no blarney stone to say that. it's afther sayin' itself." "peter, have you that opinion?" "yes." peter handed her out a beautifully written sheet of script, all in due form, and given an appearance of vast learning, by red ink marginal references to such solid works as "wheaton," "story," and "cranch's" and "wallace's" reports. peter had taken it practically from a "digest," but many apparently learned opinions come from the same source. and the whole was given value by the last two lines, which read, "respectfully submitted, peter stirling." peter's name had value at the bottom of a legal opinion, or a check, if nowhere else. "look, mr. moriarty," cried leonore, too full of happiness over this decision of her nationality not to wish for some one with whom to share it, "i've always thought i was french--though i didn't feel so a bit--and now mr. stirling has made me an american, and i'm so happy. i hate foreigners." watts laughed. "why, dot. you mustn't say that to mr. moriarty. he's a foreigner himself." "oh, i forgot. i didn't think that----" poor leonore stopped there, horrified at what she had said. "no," said peter, "dennis is not a foreigner. he's one of the most ardent americans i know. as far as my experience goes, to make one of dennis's bulls, the hottest american we have to-day, is the irish-american." "oh, come," said watts. "you know every irishman pins his loyalty to the 'owld counthry.'" "shure," said dennis, "an' if they do, what then? sometimes a man finds a full-grown woman, fine, an' sweet, an' strong, an' helpful to him, an' he comes to love her big like. but does that make him forget his old weak mother, who's had a hard life av it, yet has done her best by him? begobs! if he forgot her, he wouldn't be the man to make a good husband. oi don't say oi'm a good american, for its small oi feel besides misther stirling. but oi love her, an' if she ever wants the arm, or the blood, or the life, av dennis moriarty, she's only got to say so." "well," said watts, "this is very interesting, both as a point of view and as oratory; but it isn't business. peter, we came down this morning to take whatever legal steps are necessary to put dot in possession of her grandmother's money, of which i have been trustee. here is a lot of papers about it. i suppose everything is there relating to it." "papa seemed to think it would be very wise to ask you to take care of it, and pay me the income, i can't have the principal till i'm twenty-five." "you must tie it up some way, peter, or dot will make ducks and drakes of it. she has about as much idea of the value of money as she has of the value of foreigners. when we had our villa at florence, she supported the entire pauper population of the city." peter had declined heretofore the care of trust funds. but it struck him that this was really a chance--from a business standpoint, entirely! it is true, the amount was only ninety two thousand, and, as a trust company would handle that sum of money for four hundred and odd dollars, he was bound to do the same; and this would certainly not pay him for his time. "sometimes, however," said peter to himself, "these, trusteeships have very handsome picking's, aside from the half per cent." peter did not say that the "pickings," as they framed themselves in his mind, were sundry calls on him at his office, and a justifiable reason at all times for calling on leonore; to say nothing of letters and other unearned increment. so peter was not obstinate this time. "it's such a simple matter that i can have the papers drawn while you wait, if you've half an hour to spare." peter did this, thinking it would keep them longer, but later it occurred to him it would have been better to find some other reason, and leave the papers, because then leonore would have had to come again soon. peter was not quite as cool and far-seeing as he was normally. he regretted his error the more when they all took his suggestion that they go into his study. peter rang for his head clerk, and explained what was needed with great rapidity, and then left the latter and went into the study. "i wonder what he's in such a hurry for?" said the clerk, retiring with the papers. when peter entered the library he found leonore and watts reposing in chairs, and dennis standing in front of them, speaking. this was what dennis was saying: "'schatter, boys, an' find me a sledge.' shure, we thought it was demented he was, but he was the only cool man, an' orders were orders. dooley, he found one, an' then the captain went to the rails an' gave it a swing, an' struck the bolts crosswise like, so that the heads flew off, like they was shootin' stars. then he struck the rails sideways, so as to loosen them from the ties. then says he: 'half a dozen av yez take off yez belts an' strap these rails together!' even then we didn't understand, but we did it all this time the dirty spal--oi ask yez pardon, miss--all this time the strikers were pluggin' at us, an' bullets flyin' like fun. 'drop your muskets,' says the captain, when we had done; 'fall in along those rails. pick them up, and double-quick for the shed door,' says he, just as if he was on parade. then we saw what he was afther, and double-quick we went. begobs, that door went down as if it was paper. he was the first in. 'stand back,' says he, 'till oi see what's needed.' yez should have seen him walk into that sheet av flame, an' stand theer, quiet-like, thinkin', an' it so hot that we at the door were coverin' our faces to save them from scorchin'. then he says: 'get your muskets!' we went, an' moike says to me: 'it's no good. no man can touch them cars. he's goin' to attind to the strikers,' but not he. he came out, an' he says: 'b'ys, it's hot in there, but, if you don't mind a bit av a burn, we can get the poor fellows out. will yez try?' 'yes!' we shouted. so he explained how we could push cars widout touchin' them. 'fall in,' says he. 'fix bayonets. first file to the right av the cars, second rank to the left. forward, march!' an' we went into that hell, an' rolled them cars out just as if we was marchin' down broadway, wid flags, an' music, an' women clappin' hands." "but weren't you dreadfully burnt?" "oh, miss, yez should have seen us! we was blacker thin the divil himsilf. hardly one av us but didn't have the hair burnt off the part his cap didn't cover; an', as for eyelashes, an' mustaches, an' blisters, no one thought av them the next day. shure, the whole company was in bed, except them as couldn't lie easy." "and mr. stirling?" "shure, don't yez know about him?" "no." "why, he was dreadful burnt, an' the doctors thought it would be blind he'd be; but he went to paris, an' they did somethin' to him there that saved him. oh, miss, the boys were nearly crazy wid fear av losin' him. they'd rather be afther losin' the regimental cat." peter had been tempted to interrupt two or three times, but it was so absorbing to watch leonore's face, and its changing expression, as, unconscious of his presence, she listened to dennis, that peter had not the heart to do it. but now watts spoke up. "do you hear that, peter? there's value for you! you're better than the cat." so the scenes were shifted, and they all sat and chatted till dennis left. then the necessary papers were brought in and looked over at peter's study-table, and miss d'alloi took another of his pens. peter hoped she'd stop and think a little, again, but she didn't. just as she had begun an l she hesitated, however. "why," she said, "this paper calls me 'leonore d'alloi, spinster!' i'm not going to sign that." "that is merely the legal term," peter explained. leonore pouted for some time over it, but finally signed. "i shan't be a spinster, anyway, even if the paper does say so," she said. peter agreed with her. "see what a great blot i've made on your clean blotter," said leonore, who had rested the pen-point there. "i'm very sorry." then she wrote on the blotter, "leonore d'alloi. her very untidy mark." "that was what madame mellerie always made me write on my exercises." then they said "good-bye." "i like down-town new york better and better," said leonore. so did peter. chapter xliii. a birthday evening. peter went into ray's office on monday. "i want your advice," he said. "i'm going to a birthday dinner to-morrow. a girl for whom i'm trustee. now, how handsome a present may i send her?" "h'm. how well do you know her?" "we are good friends." "just about what you please, i should say, if you know her well, and make money out of her?" "that is, jewelry?" "ye--es." "thanks." peter turned. "who is she, peter? i thought you never did anything so small as that. nothing, or four figures, has always seemed your rule?" "this had extenuating circumstances," smiled peter. so when peter shook hands, the next evening, with the very swagger young lady who stood beside her mother, receiving, he was told: "it's perfectly lovely! look." and the little wrist was held up to him. "and so were the flowers. i couldn't carry a tenth of them, so i decided to only take papa's. but i put yours up in my room, and shall keep them there." then peter had to give place to another, just as he had decided that he would have one of the flowers from the bunch she was carrying, or--he left the awful consequences of failure blank. peter stood for a moment unconscious of the other people, looking at the pretty rounded figure in the dainty evening dress of french open-work embroidery. "i didn't think she could be lovelier than she was in her street and riding dresses but she is made for evening dress," was his thought. he knew this observation wasn't right, however, so he glanced round the room, and then walked up to a couple. "there, i told mr. beekman that i was trying to magnetize you, and though your back was turned, you came to me at once." "er--really, quite wonderful, you know," said mr. beekman. "i positively sharn't dare to be left alone with you, miss de voe." "you needn't fear me. i shall never try to magnetize you, mr. beekman," said miss de voe. "i was so pleased," she continued, turning to peter, "to see you take that deliberate survey of the room, and then come over here." peter smiled. "i go out so little now, that i have turned selfish. i don't go to entertain people. i go to be entertained. tell me what you have been doing?" but as peter spoke, there was a little stir, and peter had to say "excuse me." he crossed the room, and said, "i am to have the pleasure, mrs. grinnell," and a moment later the two were walking towards the dining-room. miss de voe gave her arm to beekman calmly, but her eyes followed peter. they both could have made a better arrangement. most dinner guests can. it was a large dinner, and so was served in the ball-room. the sixty people gathered were divided into little groups, and seated at small tables holding six or eight. peter knew all but one at his table, to the extent of having had previous meetings. they were all fashionables, and the talk took the usual literary-artistic-musical turn customary with that set. "men, not principles" is the way society words the old cry, or perhaps "personalities, not generalities" is a better form. so peter ate his dinner quietly, the conversation being general enough not to force him to do more than respond, when appealed to. he was, it is true, appealed to frequently. peter had the reputation, as many quiet men have, of being brainy. furthermore he knew the right kind of people, was known to enjoy a large income, was an eligible bachelor, and was "interesting and unusual." so society no longer rolled its juggernaut over him regardlessly, as of yore. a man who was close friends with half a dozen exclusives of the exclusives, was a man not to be disregarded, simply because he didn't talk. society people applied much the same test as did the little "angle" children, only in place of "he's frinds wid der perlice," they substituted "he's very intimate with miss de voe, and the ogdens and the pells." peter had dimly hoped that he would find himself seated at leonore's table--he had too much self depreciation to think for a moment that he would take her in--but hers was a young table, he saw, and he would not have minded so much if it hadn't been for that marquis. peter began to have a very low opinion of foreigners. then he remembered that leonore had the same prejudice, so he became more reconciled to the fact that the marquis was sitting next her. and when leonore sent him a look and a smile, and held up the wrist, so as to show the pearl bracelet, peter suddenly thought what a delicious _rissole_ he was eating. as the dinner waned, one of the footmen brought him a card, on which watts had written: "they want me to say a few words of welcome and of dot. will you respond?" peter read the note and then wrote below it: "dear miss d'alloi: you see the above. may i pay you a compliment? only one? or will it embarrass you?" when the card came back a new line said: "dear peter: i am not afraid of your compliment, and am very curious to hear it." peter said, "tell mr. d'alloi that i will with pleasure." then he tucked the card in his pocket. that card was not going to be wasted. so presently the glasses were filled up, even peter saying, "you may give me a glass," and watts was on his feet. he gave "our friends" a pleasant welcome, and after apologizing for their absence, said that at least, "like the little wife in the children's play, 'we too have not been idle,' for we bring you a new friend and introduce her to you to-night." then peter rose, and told the host: "your friends have been grieved at your long withdrawal from them, as the happy faces and welcome we tender you this evening, show. we feared that the fascination of european art, with its beauty and ease and finish, had come to over-weigh the love of american nature, despite its life and strength and freshness; that we had lost you for all time. but to-night we can hardly regret even this long interlude, if to that circumstance we owe the happiest and most charming combination of american nature and european art--miss d'alloi." then there was applause, and a drinking of miss d'alloi's health, and the ladies passed out of the room--to enjoy themselves, be it understood, leaving the men in the gloomy, quarrelsome frame of mind it always does. peter apparently became much abstracted over his cigar, but the abstraction was not perhaps very deep, for he was on his feet the moment watts rose, and was the first to cross the hall into the drawing-room. he took a quick glance round the room, and then crossed to a sofa. dorothy and--and some one else were sitting on it. "speaking of angels," said dorothy. "i wasn't speaking of you," said peter. "only thinking." "there," said leonore. "now if mrs. grinnell had only heard that." peter looked a question, so leonore continued: "we were talking about you. i don't understand you. you are so different from what i had been told to think you. every one said you were very silent and very uncomplimentary, and never joked, but you are not a bit as they said, and i thought you had probably changed, just as you had about the clothes. but mrs. grinnell says she never heard you make a joke or a compliment in her life, and that at the knickerbocker they call you 'peter, the silent.' you are a great puzzle." dorothy laughed. "here we four women--mrs. grinnell, and mrs. winthrop and leonore and myself--have been quarrelling over you, and each insisting you are something different. i believe you are not a bit firm and stable, as people say you are, but a perfect chameleon, changing your tint according to the color of the tree you are on. leonore was the worst, though! she says that you talk and joke a great deal. we could have stood anything but that!" "i am sorry my conversation and humor are held in such low estimation." "there," said leonore, "see. didn't i tell you he joked? and, peter, do you dislike women?" "unquestionably," said peter. "please tell me. i told them of your speech about the sunshine, and mrs. winthrop says that she knows you didn't mean it. that you are a woman-hater and despise all women, and like to get off by yourself." "that's the reason i joined you and dorothy," said peter. "do you hate women?" persisted leonore. "a man is not bound to incriminate himself," replied peter, smiling. "then that's the reason why you don't like society, and why you are so untalkative to women. i don't like men who think badly of women. now, i want to know why you don't like them?" "supposing," said peter, "you were asked to sit down to a game of whist, without knowing anything of the game. do you think you could like it?" "no. of course not!" "well, that is my situation toward women. they have never liked me, nor treated me as they do other men. and so, when i am put with a small-talk woman, i feel all at sea, and, try as i may, i can't please her. they are never friendly with me as they are with other men." "rubbish!" said dorothy. "it's what you do, not what she does, that makes the trouble. you look at a woman with those grave eyes and that stern jaw of yours, and we all feel that we are fools on the spot, and really become so. i never stopped being afraid of you till i found out that in reality you were afraid of me. you know you are. you are afraid of all women." "he isn't a bit afraid of women," affirmed leonore. just then mr. beekman came up. "er--mrs. rivington. you know this is--er--a sort of house-warming, and they tell me we are to go over the house, don't you know, if we wish. may i harve the pleasure?" dorothy conferred the boon. peter looked down at leonore with a laugh in his eyes. "er--miss d'alloi," he said, with the broadest of accents, "you know this,--er--is a sort of a house-warming and--" he only imitated so far and then they both laughed. leonore rose. "with pleasure. i only wish mrs. grinnell had heard you. i didn't know you could mimic?" "i oughtn't. it's a small business. but i am so happy that i couldn't resist the temptation." leonore asked, "what makes you so happy?" "my new friend," said peter. leonore went on up the stairs without saying anything. at the top, however, she said, enthusiastically: "you do say the nicest things! what room would you like to see first?" "yours," said peter. so they went into the little bedroom, and boudoir, and looked over them. of course peter found a tremendous number of things of interest. there were her pictures, most of them her own purchases in europe; and her books and what she thought of them; and her thousand little knick-knacks of one kind and another. peter wasn't at all in a hurry to see the rest of the house. "these are the photographs of my real friends," said leonore, "except yours. i want you to give me one to complete my rack." "i haven't had a photograph taken in eight years, and am afraid i have none left." "then you must sit." "very well. but it must be an exchange." peter almost trembled at his boldness, and at the thought of a possible granting. "do you want mine?" "very much." "i have dozens," said leonore, going over to her desk, and pulling open a drawer. "i'm very fond of being taken. you may have your choice." "that's very difficult," said peter, looking at the different varieties. "each has something the rest haven't. you don't want to be generous, and let me have these four?" "oh, you greedy!" said leonore, laughing. "yes, if you'll do something i'm going to ask you." peter pocketed the four. "that is a bargain," he said, with a brashness simply disgraceful in a good business man. "now, what is it?" "miss de voe told me long ago about your savings-bank fund for helping the poor people. now that i have come into my money, i want to do what she does. give a thousand dollars a year to it--and then you are to tell me just what you do with it." "of course i'm bound to take it, if you insist. but it won't do any good. even miss de voe has stopped giving now, and i haven't added anything to it for over five years." "why is that?" "you see, i began by loaning the fund to people who were in trouble, or who could be boosted a little by help, and for three or four years, i found the money went pretty fast. but by that time people began to pay it back, with interest often, and there has hardly been a case when it hasn't been repaid. so what with miss de voe's contributions, and the return of the money, i really have more than i can properly use already. there's only about eight thousand loaned at present, and nearly five thousand in bank." "i'm so sorry!" said leonore. "but couldn't you give some of the money, so that it wouldn't come back?" "that does more harm than good. it's like giving opium to kill temporary pain. it stops the pain for the moment, but only to weaken the system so as to make the person less able to bear pain in the future. that's the trouble with most of our charity. it weakens quite as much as it helps." "i have thought about this for five years as something i should do. i'm so grieved." and leonore looked her words. peter could not stand that look. "i've been thinking of sending a thousand dollars of the fund, that i didn't think there was much chance of using, to a fresh air fund and the day nursery. if you wish i'll send two thousand instead and then take your thousand? then i can use that for whatever i have a chance." "that will do nicely. but i thought you didn't think regular charities did much good?" "some don't. but it's different with children. they don't feel the stigma and are not humiliated or made indolent by help. we can't do too much to help them. the future of this country depends on its poor children. if they are to do right, they must be saved from ill-health, and ignorance, and vice; and the first step is to give them good food and air, so that they shall have strong little bodies. a sound man, physically, may not be a strong man in other ways, but he stands a much better chance." "oh, it's very interesting," said leonore. "tell me some more about the poor people." "what shall i tell you?" said peter. "how to help them." "i'll speak about something i have had in mind for a long time, trying to find some way to do it. i think the finest opportunity for benevolence, not already attempted, would be a company to lend money to the poor, just as i have attempted, on a small scale, in my ward. you see there are thousands of perfectly honest people who are living on day wages, and many of them can lay up little or no money. then comes sickness, or loss of employment, or a fire which burns up all their furniture and clothes, or some other mischance, and they can turn only to pawnbrokers and usurers, with their fearful charges; or charity, with its shame. then there are hundreds of people whom a loan of a little money would help wonderfully. this boy can get a place if he had a respectable suit of clothes. another can obtain work by learning a trade, but can't live while he learns it. a woman can support herself if she can buy a sewing-machine, but hasn't the money to buy it. another can get a job at something, but is required to make a deposit to the value of the goods intrusted to her. now, if all these people could go to some company, and tell their story, and get their notes discounted, according to their reputation, just as the merchant does at his bank, don't you see what a help it would be?" "how much would it take, peter?" "one cannot say, because, till it is tested, there would be no way of knowing how much would be asked for. but a hundred thousand dollars would do to start with." "why, that's only a hundred people giving a thousand each," cried leonore eagerly. "peter, i'll give a thousand, and i'll make mamma and papa give a thousand, and i'll speak to my friends and--" "money isn't the difficult part," said peter, longing to a fearful degree to take leonore in his arms. "if it were only money, i could do it myself--or if i did not choose to do it alone, miss de voe and pell would help me." "what is it, then?" "it's finding the right man to run such a company. i can't give the time, for i can do more good in other directions. it needs a good business man, yet one who must have many other qualities which rarely go with a business training. he must understand the poor, because he must look into every case, to see if it is a safe risk--or rather if the past life of the applicant indicates that he is entitled to help. now if your grandfather, who is such an able banker, were to go into my ward, and ask about the standing of a man in it, he wouldn't get any real information. but if i ask, every one will tell me what he thinks. the man in control of such a bank must be able to draw out the truth. unless the management was just what it ought to be, it would be bankrupt in a few months, or else would not lend to one quarter of the people who deserve help. yet from my own experience, i know, that money can be loaned to these people, so that the legal interest more than pays for the occasional loss, and that most of these losses are due to inability, more than to dishonesty." "i wish we could go on talking," sighed leonore. "but the people are beginning to go downstairs. i suppose i must go, so as to say good-bye. i only wish i could help you in charity." "you have given _me_ a great charity this evening," said peter. "you mean the photographs," smiled leonore. "no." "what else?" "you have shown me the warmest and most loving of hearts," said peter, "and that is the best charity in the world." on the way down they met lispenard coming up. "i've just said good-night to your mother. i would have spoken to you while we were in your room, but you were so engrossed that miss winthrop and i thought we had better not interrupt." "i didn't see you," said leonore. "indeed!" said lispenard, with immense wonderment. "i can't believe that. you know you were cutting us." then he turned to peter. "you old scamp, you," he whispered, "you are worse than the standard oil." "i sent for you some time ago, leonore," said her mother, disapprovingly. "the guests have been going and you were not here." "i'm sorry, mamma. i was showing peter the house." "good-night," said that individual. "i dread formal dinners usually, but this one has been the pleasantest of my life." "that's very nice. and thank you, peter, for the bracelet, and the flowers, and the compliment. they were all lovely. would you like a rose?" would he? he said nothing, but he looked enough to get it. "can't we put you down?" said a man at the door. "it's not so far from washington square to your place, that your company won't repay us." "thank you," said peter, "but i have a hansom here." yet peter did not ride. he dismissed cabby, and walked down the avenue. peter was not going to compress his happiness inside a carriage that evening. he needed the whole atmosphere to contain it. as he strode along he said: "it isn't her beauty and grace alone"--(it never is with a man, oh, no!)--"but her truth and frankness and friendliness. and then she doesn't care for money, and she isn't eaten up with ambition. she is absolutely untouched by the world yet. then she is natural, yet reserved, with other men. she's not husband-hunting, like so many of them. and she's loving, not merely of those about her, but of everything." musicians will take a simple theme and on it build unlimited variations. this was what peter proceeded to do. from fifty-seventh street to peter's rooms was a matter of four miles. peter had not half finished his thematic treatment of leonore when he reached his quarters. he sat down before his fire, however, and went on, not with hope of exhausting all possible variations, but merely for his own pleasure. finally, however, he rose and put photographs, rose, and card away. "i've not allowed myself to yield to it," he said (which was a whopper) "till i was sure she was what i could always love. now i shall do my best to make her love me." chapter xliv. a good day. the next day it was raining torrents, but despite this, and to the utter neglect of his law business, peter drove up-town immediately after lunch, to the house in fifty-seventh street. he asked for watts, but while he was waiting for the return of the servant, he heard a light foot-step, and turning, he found leonore fussing over some flowers. at the same moment she became conscious of his presence. "good-day," said peter. "it isn't a good day at all," said leonore, in a disconsolate voice, holding out her hand nevertheless. "why not?" "it's a horrid day, and i'm in disgrace." "for what?" "for misbehaving last night. both mamma and madame say i did very wrong. i never thought i couldn't be real friends with you." the little lips were trembling slightly. peter felt a great temptation to say something strong. "why can't the women let such an innocent child alone?" he thought to himself. aloud he said, "if any wrong was done, which i don't think, it was my fault. can i do anything?" "i don't believe so," said leonore, with a slight unsteadiness in her voice. "they say that men will always monopolize a girl if she will allow it, and that a really well-mannered one won't permit it for a moment." peter longed to take her in his arms and lay the little downcast head against his shoulder, but he had to be content with saying: "i am so sorry they blame you. if i could only save you from it." he evidently said it in a comforting voice, for the head was raised a trifle. "you see," said leonore, "i've always been very particular with men, but with you it seemed different. yet they both say i stayed too long upstairs, and were dreadfully shocked about the photographs. they said i ought to treat you like other men. don't you think you are different?" yes. peter thought he was very different. "mr. d'alloi will see you in the library," announced the footman at this point. peter turned to go, but in leaving he said: "is there any pleasure or service i can do, to make up for the trouble i've caused you?" leonore put her head on one side, and looked a little less grief-stricken. "may i save that up?" she asked. "yes." a moment later peter was shaking hands with watts. "this is nice of you. quite like old times. will you smoke?" "no. but please yourself. i've something to talk about." "fire away." "watts, i want to try and win the love of your little girl." "dear old man," cried watts, "there isn't any one in god's earth whom i would rather see her choose, or to whom i would sooner trust her." "thank you, watts," said peter, gratefully. "watts is weak, but he is a good fellow," was his mental remark. peter entirely forgot his opinion of two weeks ago. it is marvellous what a change a different point of view makes in most people. "but if i give you my little dot, you must promise me one thing." "what is that?" "that you will never tell her? ah! peter, if you knew how i love the little woman, and how she loves me. from no other man can she learn what will alter that love. don't make my consent bring us both suffering?" "watts, i give my word she shall never know the truth from me." "god bless you, peter. true as ever. then that is settled. you shall have a clear field and every chance." "i fear not. there's something more. mrs. d'alloi won't pardon that incident--nor do i blame her. i can't force my presence here if she does not give her consent. it would be too cruel, even if i could hope to succeed in spite of her. i want to see her this morning. you can tell better than i whether you had best speak to her first, or whether i shall tell her." "h'm. that is a corker, isn't it? don't you think you had better let things drift?" "no. i'm not going to try and win a girl's love behind the mother's back. remember, watts, the mother is the only one to whom a girl can go at such a time. we mustn't try to take advantage of either." "well, i'll speak to her, and do my best. then i'll send her to you. help yourself to the tobacco if you get tired of waiting _tout seul_." watts went upstairs and knocked at a door. "yes," said a voice. watts put his head in. "is my rosebud so busy that she can't spare her lover a few moments?" "watts, you know i live for you." watts dropped down on the lounge. "come here, then, like a loving little wife, and let me say my little say." no woman nearing forty can resist a little tenderness in her husband, and mrs. d'alloi snuggled up to watts in the pleasantest frame of mind. watts leaned over and kissed her cheek. then mrs. d'alloi snuggled some more. "now, i want to talk with you seriously, dear," he said. "who do you think is downstairs?" "who?" "dear old peter. and what do you think he's come for!" "what?" "dot." "for what?" "he wants our consent, dear, to pay his addresses to leonore." "oh, watts!" mrs. d'alloi ceased to snuggle, and turned a horrified face to her husband. "i've thought she attracted him, but he's such an impassive, cool old chap, that i wasn't sure." "that's what i've been so afraid of. i've worried so over it." "you dear, foolish little woman. what was there to worry over?" "watts! you won't give your consent?" "of course we will. why, what more do you want? money, reputation, brains, health." (that was the order in which peter's advantages ranged themselves in watts's mind). "i don't see what more you can ask, short of a title, and titles not only never have all those qualities combined, but they are really getting decidedly _nouveau richey_ and not respectable enough for a huguenot family, who've lived two hundred and fifty years in new york. what a greedy mamma she is for her little girl." "oh, watts! but think!" "it's hard work, dear, with your eyes to look at. but i will, if you'll tell me what to think about." "my husband! you cannot have forgotten? oh, no! it is too horrible for you to have forgotten that day." "you heavenly little puritan! so you are going to refuse peter as a son-in-law, because he--ah--he's not a catholic monk. why, rosebud, if you are going to apply that rule to all dot's lovers, you had better post a sign: 'wanted, a husband. p.s. no man need apply.'" "watts! don't talk so." "dear little woman. i'm only trying to show you that we can't do better than trust our little girl to peter." "with that stain! oh, watts, give him our pure, innocent, spotless child!" "oh, well. if you want a spotless wedding, let her marry the church. she'll never find one elsewhere, my darling." "watts! how can you talk so? and with yourself as an example. oh, husband! i want our child--our only child--to marry a man as noble and true as her father. surely there must be others like you?" "yes. i think there are a great many men as good as i, rosebud! but i'm no better than i should be, and it's nothing but your love that makes you think i am." "i won't hear you say such things of yourself. you know you are the best and purest man that ever lived. you know you are." "if there's any good in me, it's because i married you." "watts, you couldn't be bad if you tried." and mrs. d'alloi put her arms round watts's neck and kissed him. watts fondled her for a moment in true lover's fashion. then he said, "dear little wife, a pure woman can never quite know what this world is. i love dot next to you, and would not give her to a man whom i believe would not be true to her, or make her happy. i know every circumstance of peter's connection with that woman, and he is as blameless as man ever was. such as it was, it was ended years ago, and can never give him more trouble. he is a strong man, and will be true to dot. she might get a man who would make her life one long torture. she may be won by a man who only cares for her money, and will not even give her the husks of love. but peter loves her, and has outgrown his mistakes. and don't forget that but for him we might now have nothing but some horribly mangled remains to remember of our little darling. dear, i love dot twenty times more than i love peter. for her sake, and yours, i am trying to do my best for her." so presently mrs. d'alloi came into the library, where peter sat. she held out her hand to him, but peter said: "let me say something first. mrs. d'alloi, i would not have had that occurrence happen in your home or presence if i had been able to prevent it. it grieves me more than i can tell you. i am not a roué. in spite of appearances i have lived a clean life. i shall never live any other in the future. i--i love leonore. love her very dearly. and if you will give her to me, should i win her, i pledge you my word that i will give her the love, and tenderness, and truth which she deserves. now, will you give me your hand?" "he is speaking the truth," thought mrs. d'alloi, as peter spoke. she held out her hand. "i will trust her to you if she chooses you." half an hour later, peter went back to the drawing-room, to find leonore reposing in an exceedingly undignified position before the fire on a big tiger-skin, and stroking a persian cat, who, in delight at this enviable treatment, purred and dug its claws into the rug. peter stood for a time watching the pretty tableau, wishing he was a cat. "yes, tawney-eye," said leonore, in heartrending tones, "it isn't a good day at all." "i'm going to quarrel with you on that," said peter. "it's a glorious day." leonore rose from the skin. "tawney-eye and i don't think so." "but you will. in the first place i've explained about the monopoly and the photographs to your mamma, and she says she did not understand it, and that no one is to blame. secondly, she says i'm to stay to dinner and am to monopolize you till then. thirdly, she says we may be just as good friends as we please. fourthly, she has asked me to come and stay for a week at grey-court this summer. now, what kind of a day is it?" "simply glorious! isn't it, tawney-eye?" and the young lady again forgot her "papas, proprieties, potatoes, prunes and prisms," and dropping down on the rug, buried her face in the cat's long silky hair. then she reappeared long enough to say: "you are such a comforting person! i'm so glad you were born." chapter xlv. the boss. after this statement, so satisfying to both, leonore recovered her dignity enough to rise, and say, "now, i want to pay you for your niceness. what do you wish to do?" "suppose we do what pleases you." "no. i want to please you." "that _is_ the way to please me," said peter emphatically. just then a clock struck four. "i know," said leonore. "come to the tea-table, and we'll have afternoon tea together. it's the day of all others for afternoon tea." "i just said it was a glorious day." "oh? yes. it's a nice day. but it's dark and cold and rainy all the same." "but that makes it all the better. we shan't be interrupted." "do you know," said leonore, "that miss de voe told me once that you were a man who found good in everything, and i see what she meant." "i can't hold a candle to dennis. he says its 'a foine day' so that you feel that it really is. i never saw him in my life, when it wasn't 'a foine day.' i tell him he carries his sunshine round in his heart." "you are so different," said leonore, "from what every one said. i never knew a man pay such nice compliments. that's the seventh i've heard you make." "you know i'm a politician, and want to become popular." "oh, peter! will you let me ask you something?" "anything," said peter, rashly, though speaking the absolute truth. peter just then was willing to promise anything. perhaps it was the warm cup of tea; perhaps it was the blazing logs; perhaps it was the shade of the lamp, which cast such a pleasant rosy tint over everything; perhaps it was the comfortable chair; perhaps it was that charming face; perhaps it was what mr. mantalini called the "demd total." "you see," said leonore, shaking her head in a puzzled way, "i've begun to read the papers--the political part, i mean--and there are so many things i don't understand which i want to ask you to explain." "that is very nice," said peter, "because there are a great many things of which i want to tell you." "goody!" said leonore, forgetting again she was now bound to conduct herself as befit a society girl. "and you'll not laugh at me if i ask foolish questions?" "no." "then what do the papers mean by calling you a boss?" "that i am supposed to have sufficient political power to dictate to a certain extent." "but don't they speak of a boss as something not nice?" asked leonore, a little timidly, as if afraid of hurting peter's feelings. "usually it is used as a stigma," said peter, smiling. "at least by the kind of papers you probably read." "but you are not a bad boss, are you?" said leonore, very earnestly. "some of the papers say so." "that's what surprised me. of course i knew they were wrong, but are bosses bad, and are you a boss?" "you are asking me one of the biggest questions in american politics. i probably can't answer it, but i'll try to show you why i can't. are there not friends whose advice or wish would influence you?" "yes. like you," said leonore, giving peter a glimpse of her eyes. "really," thought peter, "if she does that often, i can't talk abstract politics." then he rallied and said: "well, that is the condition of men as well, and it is that condition, which creates the so-called boss. in every community there are men who influence more or less the rest. it may be that one can only influence half a dozen other intimates. another may exert power over fifty. a third may sway a thousand. one may do it by mere physical superiority. another by a friendly manner. a third by being better informed. a fourth by a deception or bribery. a fifth by honesty. each has something that dominates the weaker men about him. take my ward. burton is a prize-fighter, and physically a splendid man. so he has his little court. driscoll is a humorist, and can talk, and he has his admirers. sloftky is popular with the jews, because he is of their race. burrows is a policeman, who is liked by the whole ward, because of his kindness and good-nature. so i could go on telling you of men who are a little more marked than the rest, who have power to influence the opinions of men about them, and therefore have power to influence votes. that is the first step in the ladder." "but isn't mr. moriarty one?" "he comes in the next grade. each of the men i have mentioned can usually affect an average of twenty-five votes. but now we get to another rung of the ladder. here we have dennis, and such men as blunkers, denton, kennedy, schlurger and others. they not merely have their own set of followers, but they have more or less power to dominate the little bosses of whom i have already spoken. take dennis for instance. he has fifty adherents who stick to him absolutely, two hundred and fifty who listen to him with interest, and a dozen of the smaller bosses, who pass his opinions to their followers. so he can thus have some effect on about five hundred votes. of course it takes more force and popularity to do this and in this way we have a better grade of men." "yes. i like mr. moriarty, and can understand why others do. he is so ugly, and so honest, and so jolly. he's lovely." "then we get another grade. usually men of a good deal of brain force, though not of necessity well educated. they influence all below them by being better informed, and by being more far-seeing. such men as gallagher and dummer. they, too, are usually in politics for a living, and so can take the trouble to work for ends for which the men with other work have no time. they don't need the great personal popularity of those i have just mentioned, but they need far more skill and brain. now you can see, that these last, in order to carry out their intentions, must meet and try to arrange to pull together, for otherwise they can do nothing. naturally, in a dozen or twenty men, there will be grades, and very often a single man will be able to dominate them all, just as the smaller bosses dominate the smaller men. and this man the papers call a boss of a ward. then when these various ward bosses endeavor to unite for general purposes, the strongest man will sway them, and he is boss of the city." "and that is what you are?" "yes. by that i mean that nothing is attempted in the ward or city without consultation with me. but of course i am more dependent on the voters than they are on me, for if they choose to do differently from what i advise, they have the power, while i am helpless." "you mean the smaller bosses?" "not so much them as the actual voters. a few times i have shot right over the heads of the bosses and appealed directly to the voters." "then you can make them do what you want?" "within limits, yes. as i told you, i am absolutely dependent on the voters. if they should defeat what i want three times running, every one would laugh at me, and my power would be gone. so you see that a boss is only a boss so long as he can influence votes." "but they haven't defeated you?" "no, not yet." "but if the voters took their opinions from the other bosses how did you do anything?" "there comes in the problem of practical politics. the question of who can affect the voters most. take my own ward. suppose that i want something done so much that i insist. and suppose that some of the other leaders are equally determined that it shan't be done. the ward splits on the question and each faction tries to gain control in the primary. when i have had to interfere, i go right down among the voters and tell them why and what i want to do. then the men i have had to antagonize do the same, and the voters decide between us. it then is a question as to which side can win the majority of the voters. because i have been very successful in this, i am the so-called boss. that is, i can make the voters feel that i am right." "how?" "for many reasons. first, i have always tried to tell the voters the truth, and never have been afraid to acknowledge i was wrong, when i found i had made a mistake, so people trust what i say. then, unlike most of the leaders in politics, i am not trying to get myself office or profit, and so the men feel that i am disinterested. then i try to be friendly with the whole ward, so that if i have to do what they don't like, their personal feeling for me will do what my arguments never could. with these simple, strong-feeling, and unreasoning folk, one can get ten times the influence by a warm handshake and word that one can by a logical argument. we are so used to believing what we read, if it seems reasonable, that it is hard for us to understand that men who spell out editorials with difficulty, and who have not been trained to reason from facts, are not swayed by what to us seems an obvious argument. but, on the contrary, if a man they trust, puts it in plain language to them, they see it at once. i might write a careful editorial, and ask my ward to read it, and unless they knew i wrote it, they probably wouldn't be convinced in the least. but let me go into the saloons, and tell the men just the same thing, and there isn't a man who wouldn't be influenced by it." "you are so popular in the ward?" asked leonore. "i think so, i find kind words and welcome everywhere. but then i have tried very hard to be popular. i have endeavored to make a friend of every man in it with whom one could be friendly, because i wished to be as powerful as possible, so that the men would side with me whenever i put my foot down on something wrong." "do you ever tell the ward how they are to vote?" "i tell them my views. but never how to vote. once i came very near it, though." "how was that?" "i was laid up for eight months by my eyes, part of the time in paris. the primary in the meantime had put up a pretty poor man for an office. a fellow who had been sentenced for murder, but had been pardoned by political influence. when i was able to take a hand, i felt that i could do better by interfering, so i came out for the republican candidate, who was a really fine fellow. i tried to see and talk to every man in the ward, and on election day i asked a good many men, as a personal favor, to vote for the republican, and my friends asked others. even dennis moriarty worked and voted for what he calls a 'dirty republican,' though he said 'he never thought he'd soil his hands wid one av their ballots.' that is the nearest i ever came to telling them how to vote." "and did they do as you asked?" "the only republican the ward has chosen since was elected in that year. it was a great surprise to every one--even to myself--for the ward is democratic by about four thousand majority. but i couldn't do that sort of thing often, for the men wouldn't stand it. in other words, i can only do what i want myself, by doing enough else that the men wish. that is, the more i can do to please the men, the more they yield their opinions to mine." "then the bosses really can't do what they want?" "no. or at least not for long. that is a newspaper fallacy. a relic of the old idea that great things are done by one-man power. if you will go over the men who are said to control--the bosses, as they are called--in this city, you will find that they all have worked their way into influence slowly, and have been many years kept in power, though they could be turned out in a single fight. yet this power is obtained only by the wish of a majority, for the day they lose the consent of a majority of the voters that day their power ends. we are really more dependent than the representatives, for they are elected for a certain time, while our tenure can be ended at any moment. why am i a power in my ward? because i am supposed to represent a given number of votes, which are influenced by my opinions. it would be perfectly immaterial to my importance how i influenced those votes, so long as i could control them. but because i can influence them, the other leaders don't dare to antagonize me, and so i can have my way up to a certain point. and because i can control the ward i have made it a great power in city politics." "how did you do that?" "by keeping down the factional feeling. you see there are always more men struggling for power or office, than can have it, and so there cannot but be bad blood between the contestants. for instance, when i first became interested in politics, moriarty and blunkers were quite as anxious to down each other as to down the republicans. now they are sworn friends, made so in this case, by mere personal liking for me. some have been quieted in this way. others by being held in check. still others by different means. each man has to be studied and understood, and the particular course taken which seems best in his particular case. but i succeeded even with some who were pretty bitter antagonists at first, and from being one of the most uncertain wards in the city, the sixth has been known at headquarters for the last five years as 'old reliability' from the big majority it always polls. so at headquarters i am looked up to and consulted. now do you understand why and what a boss is?" "yes, peter. except why bosses are bad." "don't you see that it depends on what kind of men they are, and what kind of voters are back of them. a good man, with honest votes back of him, is a good boss, and _vice versa_." "then i know you are a good boss. it's a great pity that all the bosses can't be good?" "i have not found them so bad. they are quite as honest, unselfish, and reasonable as the average of mankind. now and then there is a bad man, as there is likely to be anywhere. but in my whole political career, i have never known a man who could control a thousand votes for five years, who was not a better man, all in all, than the voters whom he influenced. more one cannot expect. the people are not quick, but they find out a knave or a demagogue if you give them time." "it's the old saying; 'you can fool all of the people, some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time,'" laughed a voice. peter took his eyes off leonore's face, where they had been resting restfully, and glanced up. watts had entered the room. "go on," said watts. "don't let me interrupt your political disquisitions; i have only come in for a cup of tea." "miss d'alloi and i were merely discussing bosses," said peter. "miss d'alloi, when women get the ballot, as i hope they will, i trust you will be a good boss, for i am sure you will influence a great many votes." "oh!" said leonore, laughing, "i shan't be a boss at all. you'll be my boss, i think, and i'll always vote for you." peter thought the day even more glorious than he had before. chapter xlvi. the better element. the evening after this glorious day, peter came in from his ride, but instead of going at once to his room, he passed down a little passage, and stood in a doorway. "is everything going right, jenifer?" he queried. "yissah!" "the flowers came from thorley's?" "yissah!" "and the candies and ices from maillard?" "yissah!" "and you've _frappé_ the champagne?" "yissah?" "jenifer, don't put quite so much onion juice as usual in the queen isabella dressing. ladies don't like it as much as men." "yissah!" "and you stood the burgundy in the sun?" "yissah! wha foh yo' think i doan do as i ginl'y do?" jenifer was combining into a stuffing bread crumbs, chopped broiled oysters, onions, and many other mysterious ingredients, and was becoming irritated at such evident doubt of his abilities. peter ought to have been satisfied, but he only looked worried. he glanced round the little closet that served as a kitchen, in search of possible sources for slips, but did not see them. all he was able to say was, "that broth smells very nice, jenifer." "yissah. dar ain't nuffin in dat sup buh a quart a thick cream, and de squeezin's of a hunerd clams, sah. dat sup will make de angels sorry dey died. dey'll just tink you'se dreful unkine not to offer dem a secon' help. buh doan yo' do it, sah, foh when dey gits to dem prayhens, dey'll be pow'ful glad yo' didn't." to himself, jenifer remarked: "who he gwine hab dis day? he neber so anxious befoh, not even when de presidint an guv'nor pohter dey dun dine hyah." peter went to his room and, after a due course of clubbing and tubbing, dressed himself with the utmost care. truth compels the confession that he looked in his glass for some minutes. not, however, apparently with much pleasure, for an anxious look came into his face, and he remarked aloud, as he turned away, "i don't look so old, but i once heard watts say that i should never take a prize for my looks, and he was right. i wonder if she cares for handsome men?" peter forgot his worry in the opening of a box in the dining-room and the taking out of the flowers. he placed the bunches at the different places, raising one of the bouquets of violets to his lips, before he laid it down. then he took the cut flowers, and smilax, and spread them loosely in the centre of the little table, which otherwise had nothing on it, except the furnishings placed at each seat. after that he again kissed a bunch of violets. history doesn't state whether it was the same bunch. peter must have been very fond of flowers! "peter," called a voice. "is that you, le grand? go right into my room." "i've done that already. you see i feel at home. how are you?" he continued, as peter joined him in the study. "as always." "i thought i would run in early, so as to have a bit of you before the rest. peter, here's a letter from muller. he's got that 'descent' in its first state, in the most brilliant condition. you had better get it, and trash your present impression. it has always looked cheap beside the rest." "very well. will you attend to it?" just then came the sound of voices and the rustle of draperies in the little hall. "hello! ladies?" said le grand. "this is to be one of what lispenard calls your 'often, frequently, only once' affairs, is it?" "i'm afraid we are early," said mrs. d'alloi. "we did not know how much time to allow." "no. such old friends cannot come too soon." "and as it is, i'm really starved," said another personage, shaking hands with peter as if she had not seen him for a twelve-month instead of parting with him but two hours before. "what an appetite riding in the park does give one! especially when afterwards you drive, and drive, and drive, over new york stones." "ah," cried madame. "_c'est tres bien_!" "isn't it jolly?" responded leonore. "but it is not american. it is parisian." "oh, no, it isn't! it's all american. isn't it, peter?" but peter was telling jenifer to hasten the serving of dinner. so leonore had to fight her country's battles by herself. "what's all this to-day's papers are saying, peter?" asked watts, as soon as they were seated. "that's rather a large subject even for a slow dinner." "i mean about the row in the democratic organization over the nomination for governor?" "the papers seem to know more about it than i do," said peter calmly. le grand laughed. "miss de voe, ogden, rivington--all of us, have tried to get peter, first and last, to talk politics, but not a fact do we get. they say it's his ability to hold his tongue which made costell trust him and push him, and that that was the reason he was chosen to fill costells place." "_i_ don't fill his place," said peter. "no one can do that. i merely succeeded him. and miss d'alloi will tell you that the papers calling me 'taciturnity junior' is a libel. am i not a talker, miss d'alloi?" "_i_ really can't find out," responded leonore, with a puzzled look. "people say you are not." "i didn't think you would fail me after the other night." "ah," said madame. "the quiet men are the great men. look at the french." "oh, madame!" exclaimed leonore. "you are joking" cried mrs. d'alloi. "that's delicious," laughed watts. "whew," said le grand, under his breath. "ah! why do you cry out? mr. stirling, am i not right?" madame appealed to the one face on which no amusement or skepticism was shown. "i think it is rather dangerous to ascribe any particular trait to any nationality. it is usually misleading. but most men who think much, talk little, and the french have many thinkers" "i always liked von moltke, just for it being said of him that he could be silent in seven languages," said le grand. "yes," said leonore. "it's so restful. we crossed on the steamer with a french marquis who can speak six languages, and can't say one thing worth listening to in any." peter thought the soup all jenifer had cracked it up to be. "peter," said leonore, turning to him, "mr. le grand said that you never will talk politics with anybody. that doesn't include me, of course?" "no," said peter promptly. "i thought it didn't," said leonore, her eyes dancing with pleasure, however, at the reply. "we had mr. pell to lunch to-day and i spoke to him as to what you said about the bosses, and he told me that bosses could never be really good, unless the better element were allowed to vote, and not the saloon-keepers and roughs. i could see he was right, at once." "from his point of view. or rather the view of his class." "don't you think so?" "no." "why not?" "broadly speaking, all persons of sound mind are entitled to vote on the men and the laws which are to govern them. aside from this, every ounce of brain or experience you can add to the ballot, makes it more certain. suppose you say that half the people are too ignorant to vote sensibly. don't you see that there is an even chance, at least, that they'll vote rightly, and if the wrong half carries the election, it is because more intelligent people have voted wrongly, have not voted, or have not taken the trouble to try and show the people the right way, but have left them to the mercies of the demagogue. if we grant that every man who takes care of himself has some brain, and some experience, his vote is of some value, even if not a high one. suppose we have an eagle, and a thousand pennies. are we any better off by tossing away the coppers, because each is worth so little. that is why i have always advocated giving the franchise to women. if we can add ten million voters to an election, we have added just so much knowledge to it, and made it just so much the harder to mislead or buy enough votes to change results." "you evidently believe," said watts, "in the saying, 'everybody knows more than anybody?'" peter had forgotten all about his company in his interest over--over the franchise. so he started slightly at this question, and looked up from--from his subject. "yes," said le grand. "we've been listening and longing to ask questions. when we see such a fit of loquacity, we want to seize the opportunity." "no," said leonore, "i haven't finished. tell me. can't you make the men do what you want, so as to have them choose only the best men?" "if i had the actual power i would not," said peter. "why?" "because i would not dare to become responsible for so much, and because a government of the 'best' men is not an american government." "why not?" "that is the aristocratic idea. that the better element, so called, shall compel the masses to be good, whether they wish it or no. just as one makes a child behave without regard to its own desires. with grown men, such a system only results in widening the distance between the classes and masses, making the latter more dependent and unthinking. whereas, if we make every man vote he must think a little for himself, because different people advise him contrarily, and thus we bring him nearer to the more educated. he even educates himself by his own mistakes; for every bad man elected, and every bad law passed, make him suffer the results, and he can only blame himself. of course we don't get as good a government or laws, but then we have other offsetting advantages." "what are those?" "we get men and laws which are the wish of the majority. such are almost self-supporting and self-administering. it is not a mere combination of words, printing-ink, and white paper which makes a law. it is the popular sentiment back of it which enforces it, and unless a law is the wish of a majority of the people who are to be governed by it, it is either a dead letter, or must be enforced by elaborate police systems, supported oftentimes with great armies. even then it does not succeed, if the people choose to resist. look at the attempt to govern ireland by force, in the face of popular sentiment. then, too, we get a stability almost unknown in governments which do not conform to the people. this country has altered its system of government less than any other great country in the last hundred years. and there is less socialistic legislation and propaganda here than anywhere else. that is, less discontent." "but, peter, if the american people are as sensible as you think, how do you account for the kind of men who exercise control?" said le grand. "by better men not trying." "but we have reform movements all the time, led by good men. why aren't these men elected?" "who are as absolutely inexperienced and blind as to the way to influence votes, as well can be. look at it, as a contest, without regard to the merit of the cause. on one side we have bosses, who know and understand the men in their wards, have usually made themselves popular, are in politics for a living, have made it a life-study, and by dear experience have learned that they must surrender their own opinions in order to produce harmony and a solid vote. the reformer, on the contrary, is usually a man who has other occupations, and, if i may say so, has usually met with only partial success in them. by that i mean that the really successful merchant, or banker, or professional man cannot take time to work in politics, and so only the less successful try. each reformer, too, is sure that he himself is right, and as his bread and butter is not in the issue, he quarrels to his heart's content with his associates, so that they rarely can unite all their force. most of the reform movements in this city have been attempted in a way that is simply laughable. what should we say if a hundred busy men were to get together to-morrow, and decide that they would open a great bank, to fight the clearing-house banks of new york? yet this, in effect, is what the reformers have done over and over again in politics. they say to the men who have been kept in power for years by the people, 'you are scoundrels. the people who elected you are ignorant we know how to do it better. now we'll turn you out.' in short, they tell the majority they are fools, but ask their votes. the average reformer endorses thoroughly the theory 'that every man is as good as another, and a little better.' and he himself always is the better man. the people won't stand that. the 'holier than thou' will defeat a man quicker in this country than will any rascality he may have done." "but don't you think the reformer is right in principle?" "in nine cases out of ten. but politics does not consist in being right. it's in making other people think you are. men don't like to be told that they are ignorant and wrong, and this assumption is the basis of most of the so-called educational campaigns. to give impetus to a new movement takes immense experience, shrewdness, tact, and many other qualities. the people are obstructive--that is conservative--in most things, and need plenty of time." "unless _you_ tell them what they are to do," laughed watts. "then they know quick enough." "well, that has taken them fifteen years to learn. don't you see how absurd it is to suppose that the people are going to take the opinions of the better element off-hand? at the end of a three months' campaign? men have come into my ward and spoken to empty halls; they've flooded it with campaign literature, which has served to light fires; their papers have argued, and nobody read them. but the ward knows me. there's hardly a voter who doesn't. they've tested me. most of them like me. i've lived among them for years. i've gone on their summer excursions. i've talked with them all over the district. i have helped them in their troubles. i have said a kind word over their dead. i'm godfather to many. with others i've stood shoulder to shoulder when the bullets were flying. why, the voters who were children when i first came here, with whom i use to sit in the angle, are almost numerous enough now to carry an election as i advise. do you suppose, because speakers, unknown to them, say i'm wrong, and because the three-cent papers, which they never see, abuse me, that they are going to turn from me unless i make them? that is the true secret of the failure of reformers. a logical argument is all right in a court of appeals, but when it comes to swaying five thousand votes, give me five thousand loving hearts rather than five thousand logical reasons." "yet you have carried reforms." "i have tried, but always in a practical way. that is, by not antagonizing the popular men in politics, but by becoming one of them and making them help me. i have gained political power by recognizing that i could only have my own way by making it suit the voters. you see there are a great many methods of doing about the same thing. and the boss who does the most things that the people want, can do the most things that the people don't want. every time i have surrendered my own wishes, and done about what the people desire, i have added to my power, and so have been able to do something that the people or politicians do not care about or did not like." "and as a result you are called all sorts of names." "yes. the papers call me a boss. if the voters didn't agree with me, they would call me a reformer." "but, peter," said le grand, "would you not like to see such a type of man as george william curtis in office?" "mr. curtis probably stood for the noblest political ideas this country has ever produced. but he held a beacon only to a small class. a man who writes from an easy-chair, will only sway easy-chair people. and easy-chair people never carried an election in this country, and never will. this country cannot have a government of the best. it will always be a government of the average. mr. curtis was only a leader to his own grade, just as tim sullivan is the leader of his. mr. curtis, in his editorials, spoke the feelings of one element in america. sullivan, in germania hall, voices another. each is representative, the one of five per cent. of new york; the other of ninety-five per cent. if the american people have decided one thing, it is that they will not be taken care of, nor coercively ruled, by their better element, or minorities." "yet you will acknowledge that curtis ought to rule, rather than sullivan?" "not if our government is to be representative. i need not say that i wish such a type as mr. curtis was representative." "i suppose if he had tried to be a boss he would have failed?" "i think so. for it requires as unusual a combination of qualities to be a successful boss, as to be a successful merchant or banker. yet one cannot tell. i myself have never been able to say what elements make a boss, except that he must be in sympathy with the men whom he tries to guide, and that he must be meeting them. mr. curtis had a broad, loving nature and sympathies, and if the people had discovered them, they would have liked him. but the reserve which comes with culture makes one largely conceal one's true feelings. super-refinement puts a man out of sympathy with much that is basic in humanity, and it needs a great love, or a great sacrifice of feeling, to condone it. it is hard work for what watts calls a tough, and such a man, to understand and admire one another." "but don't you think," said mrs. d'alloi, "that the people of our class are better and finer?" "the expression 'noblesse oblige' shows that," said madame. "my experience has led me to think otherwise," said peter. "of course there is a difference of standards, of ideals, and of education, in people, and therefore there are differences in conduct. but for their knowledge of what is right and wrong, i do not think the so-called better classes, which should, in truth, be called the prosperous classes, live up to their own standards of right any more than do the poor." "oh, i say, draw it mild. at least exclude the criminal classes," cried watts. "they know better." "we all know better. but we don't live up to our knowledge. i crossed on one of the big atlantic liners lately, with five hundred other saloon passengers. they were naturally people of intelligence, and presumably of easy circumstances. yet at least half of those people were plotting to rob our government of money by contriving plans to avoid paying duties truly owed. to do this all of them had to break our laws, and in most cases had, in addition, to lie deliberately. many of them were planning to accomplish this theft by the bribery of the custom-house inspectors, thus not merely making thieves of themselves, but bribing other men to do wrong. in this city i can show you blocks so densely inhabited that they are election districts in themselves. blocks in which twenty people live and sleep in a single room, year after year; where the birth of a little life into the world means that all must eat less and be less warm; where man and woman, old and young, must shiver in winter, and stifle in summer; where there is not room to bury the people who live in the block within the ground on which they dwell. but i cannot find you, in the poorest and vilest parts of this city, any block where the percentage of liars and thieves and bribe-givers is as large as was that among the first-class passengers of that floating palace. each condition of society has its own mis-doings, and i believe varies little in the percentage of wrong-doers to the whole." "to hear peter talk you would think the whole of us ought to be sentenced to life terms," laughed watts. "i believe it's only an attempt on his part to increase the practice of lawyers." "do you really think people are so bad, peter?" asked leonore, sadly. "no. i have not, ten times in my life, met a man whom i should now call bad. i have met men whom i thought so, but when i knew them better i found the good in them more than balancing the evil. our mistake is in supposing that some men are 'good' and others 'bad,' and that a sharp line can be drawn between them. the truth is, that every man has both qualities in him and in very few does the evil overbalance the good. i marvel at the goodness i find in humanity, when i see the temptation and opportunity there is to do wrong." "some men are really depraved, though," said mrs. d'alloi. "yes," said madame. "think of those strikers!" peter felt a thrill of pleasure pass through him, but he did not show it. "let me tell you something in connection with that. a high light in place of a dark shadow. there was an attempt to convict some of the strikers, but it failed, for want of positive evidence. the moral proof, however, against a fellow named connelly was so strong that there could be no doubt that he was guilty. two years later that man started out in charge of a long express, up a seven-mile grade, where one of our railroads crosses the alleghanies. by the lay of the land every inch of that seven miles of track can be seen throughout its entire length, and when he had pulled half way up, he saw a section of a freight train coming down the grade at a tremendous speed. a coupling had broken, and this part of the train was without a man to put on the brakes. to go on was death. to stand still was the same. no speed which he could give his train by backing would enable it to escape those uncontrolled cars. he sent his fireman back to the first car, with orders to uncouple the engine. he whistled 'on brakes' to his train, so that it should be held on the grade safely. and he, and the engine alone, went on up that grade, and met that flying mass of freight. he saved two hundred people's lives. yet that man, two years before, had tried to burn alive forty of his fellow-men. was that man good or bad?" "really, chum, if you ask it as a conundrum, i give it up. but there are thoroughly and wholly good things in this world, and one of them is this stuffing. would it be possible for a fellow to have a second help?" peter smiled. "jenifer always makes the portions according to what is to follow, and i don't believe he'll think you had better. jenifer, can mr. d'alloi have some more stuffing?" "yissah," said jenifer, grinning the true darkey grin, "if de gentmun want't sell his ap'tite foh a mess ob potash." "never mind," said watts. "i'm not a dyspeptic, and so don't need potash. but you might wrap the rest up in a piece of newspaper, and i'll take it home." "peter, you must have met a great many men in politics whom you knew to be dishonest?" said mrs. d'alloi. "no. i have known few men whom i could call dishonest. but then i make a great distinction between the doer of a dishonest act and a dishonest man." "that is what the english call 'a fine-spun' distinction, i think," said madame. "i hope not. a dishonest man i hold to be one who works steadily and persistently with bad means and motives. but there are many men whose lives tell far more for good than for evil in the whole, yet who are not above doing wrong at moments or under certain circumstances. this man will lie under given conditions of temptations. another will bribe, if the inducement is strong enough. a third will merely trick. almost every man has a weak spot somewhere. yet why let this one weakness--a partial moral obliquity or imperfection--make us cast him aside as useless and evil. as soon say that man physically is spoiled, because he is near-sighted, lame or stupid. if we had our choice between a new, bright, keen tool, or a worn, dull one, of poor material, we should not hesitate which to use. but if we only have the latter, how foolish to refuse to employ it as we may, because we know there are in the world a few better ones." "is not condoning a man's sins, by failing to blame him, direct encouragement to them?" said mrs. d'alloi. "one need not condone the sin. my rule has been, in politics, or elsewhere, to fight dishonesty wherever i found it. but i try to fight the act, not the man. and if i find the evil doer beyond hope of correction, i do not antagonize the doer of it. more can be done by amity and forbearance than by embittering and alienating. man is not bettered by being told that he is bad. i had an alderman in here three or four days ago who was up to mischief. i could have called him a scoundrel, without telling him untruth. but i didn't. i told him what i thought was right, in a friendly way, and succeeded in straightening him out, so that he dropped his intention, yet went away my friend. if i had quarrelled with him, we should have parted company, he would have done the wrong, i should have fought him when election time came--and defeated him. but he, and probably fifty of his adherents in the ward would have become my bitter enemies, and opposed everything i tried in the future. if i quarrelled with enough such men, i should in time entirely lose my influence in the ward, or have it generally lessened. but by dealing as a friend with him, i actually prevented his doing what he intended, and we shall continue to work together. of course a man can be so bad that this course is impossible, but they are as few in politics as they are elsewhere." "taciturnity stirling in his great circus feat of riding a whole ward at once," said watts. "i don't claim that i'm right," said peter. "i once thought very differently. i started out very hotly as a reformer when i began life. but i have learned that humanity is not reformed with a club, and that if most people gave the energy they spend in reforming the world, or their friends, to reforming themselves, there would be no need of reformers." "the old english saying that 'people who can't mind their own business invariably mind some one's else,' seems applicable," said watts. "but is it not very humiliating to you to have to be friends with such men?" said mrs. d'alloi. "you know mr. drewitt?" asked peter. "yes," said all but madame. "do you take pleasure in knowing him?" "of course," said watts. "he's very amusing and a regular parlor pet." "that is the reason i took him. for ten years that man was notoriously one of the worst influences in new york state politics. at albany, in the interest of a great corporation, he was responsible for every job and bit of lobbying done in its behalf. i don't mean to say that he really bribed men himself, for he had lieutenants for the actual dirty work, but every dollar spent passed through his hands, and he knew for what purpose it was used. at the end of that time, so well had he done his work, that he was made president of the corporation. because of that position, and because he is clever, new york society swallowed him and has ever since delighted to fête him. i find it no harder to shake hands and associate with the men he bribed, than you do to shake hands and associate with the man who gave the bribe." "even supposing the great breweries, and railroads, and other interests to be chiefly responsible for bribery, that makes it all the more necessary to elect men above the possibility of being bribed," said le grand. "why not do as they do in parliament? elect only men of such high character and wealth, that money has no temptation for them." "the rich man is no better than the poor man, except that in place of being bribed by other men's money, he allows his own money to bribe him. look at the course of the house of lords on the corn-laws. the slave-holders' course on secession. the millionaire silver senators' course on silver. the one was willing to make every poor man in england pay a half more for his bread than need be, in order that land might rent for higher prices. the slave-owner was willing to destroy his own country, rather than see justice done. the last are willing to force a great commercial panic, ruining hundreds and throwing thousands out of employment, if they can only get a few cents more per ounce for their silver. were they voting honestly in the interest of their fellow-men? or were their votes bribed?" mrs. d'alloi rose, saying, "peter. we came early and we must go early. i'm afraid we've disgraced ourselves both ways." peter went down with them to their carriage. he said to leonore in the descent, "i'm afraid the politics were rather dull to you. i lectured because i wanted to make some things clear to you." "why?" questioned leonore. "because, in the next few months you'll see a great deal about bosses in the papers, and i don't want you to think so badly of us as many do." "i shan't think badly of you, peter," said leonore, in the nicest tone. "thank you," said peter. "and if you see things said of me that trouble you, will you ask me about them?" "yes. but i thought you wouldn't talk politics?" "i will talk with you, because, you know, friends must tell each other everything." when leonore had settled back in the carriage for the long drive, she cogitated: "mr. le grand said that he and miss de voe, and mr. ogden had all tried to get peter to talk about politics, but that he never would. yet, he's known them for years, and is great friends with them. it's very puzzling!" probably leonore was thinking of american politics. chapter xlvii. the blue-peter. leonore's puzzle went on increasing in complexity, but there is a limit to all intricacy, and after a time leonore began to get an inkling of the secret. she first noticed that peter seemed to spend an undue amount of time with her. he not merely turned up in the park daily, but they were constantly meeting elsewhere. leonore went to a gallery. there was peter! she went to a concert. ditto, peter! she visited the flower-show. so did peter! she came out of church. behold peter! in each case with nothing better to do than to see her home. at first leonore merely thought these meetings were coincidences, but their frequency soon ended this theory, and then leonore noticed that peter had a habit of questioning her about her plans beforehand, and of evidently shaping his accordingly. nor was this all. peter seemed to be constantly trying to get her to spend time with him. though the real summer was fast coming, he had another dinner. he had a box at the theatre. he borrowed a drag from mr. pell, and took them all up for a lunch at mrs. costell's in westchester. then nothing would do but to have another drive, ending in a dinner at the country club. flowers, too, seemed as frequent as their meetings. peter had always smiled inwardly at bribing a girl's love with flowers and bon-bons, but he had now discovered that flowers are just the thing to send a girl, if you love her, and that there is no bribing about it. so none could be too beautiful and costly for his purse. then leonore wanted a dog--a mastiff. the legal practice of the great firm and the politics of the city nearly stopped till the finest of its kind had been obtained for her. another incriminating fact came to her through dorothy. "i had a great surprise to-day," she told leonore. "one that fills me with delight, and that will please you." "what is that?" "peter asked me at dinner, if we weren't to have anneke's house at newport for the summer, and when i said 'yes,' he told me that if i would save a room for him, he would come down friday nights and stay over sunday, right through the summer. he has been a simply impossible man hitherto to entice into a visit. ray and i felt like giving three cheers." "he seemed glad enough to be invited to visit grey-court," thought leonore. but even without all this, peter carried the answer to the puzzle about with him in his own person. leonore could not but feel the difference in the way he treated, and talked, and looked at her, as compared to all about her. it is true he was no more demonstrative, than with others; his face held its quiet, passive look, and he spoke in much the usual, quiet, even tone of voice. yet leonore was at first dimly conscious, and later certain, that there was a shade of eagerness in his manner, a tenderness in his voice, and a look in his eye, when he was with her, that was there in the presence of no one else. so leonore ceased to puzzle over the problem at a given point, having found the answer. but the solving did not bring her much apparent pleasure. "oh, dear!" she remarked to herself. "i thought we were going to be such good friends! that we could tell each other everything. and now he's gone and spoiled it. probably, too, he'll be bothering me later, and then he'll be disappointed, and cross, and we shan't be good friends any more. oh, dear! why do men have to behave so? why can't they just be friends?" it is a question which many women have asked. the query indicates a degree of modesty which should make the average masculine blush at his own self-love. the best answer to the problem we can recommend to the average woman is a careful and long study of a mirror. as a result of this cogitation leonore decided that she would nip peter's troublesomeness in the bud, that she would put up a sign, "trespassing forbidden;" by which he might take warning. many women have done the same thing to would-be lovers, and have saved the lovers much trouble and needless expense. but leonore, after planning out a dialogue in her room, rather messed it when she came to put it into actual public performance. few girls of eighteen are cool over a love-affair. and so it occurred thusly: leonore said to peter one day, when he had dropped in for a cup of afternoon tea after his ride with her: "if i ask you a question, i wonder if you will tell me what you think, without misunderstanding why i tell you something?" "i will try." "well," said leonore, "there is a very nice englishman whom i knew in london, who has followed me over here, and is troubling me. he's dreadfully poor, and papa says he thinks he is after my money. do you think that can be so?" so far the public performance could not have gone better if it had been rehearsed. but at this point, the whole programme went to pieces. peter's cup of tea fell to the floor with a crash, and he was leaning back in his chair, with a look of suffering on his face. "peter," cried leonore, "what is it?" "excuse me," said peter, rallying a little. "ever since an operation on my eyes they sometimes misbehave themselves. it's neuralgia of the optic nerve. sometimes it pains me badly. don't mind me. it will be all right in a minute if i'm quiet." "can't i do anything?" "no. i have an eye-wash which i used to carry with me, but it is so long since i have had a return of my trouble that i have stopped carrying it." "what causes it?" "usually a shock. it's purely nervous." "but there was no shock now, was there?" said leonore, feeling so guilty that she felt it necessary to pretend innocence. peter pulled himself together instantly and, leaning over, began deliberately to gather up the fragments of the cup. then he laid the pieces on the tea-table and said: "i was dreadfully frightened when i felt the cup slipping. it was very stupid in me. will you try to forgive me for breaking one of your pretty set?" "that's nothing," said leonore. to herself that young lady remarked, "oh, dear! it's much worse than i thought. i shan't dare say it to him, after all" but she did, for peter helped her, by going back to her original question, saying bravely: "i don't know enough about mr. max ---- the englishman, to speak of him, but i think i would not suspect men of that, even if they are poor." "why not?" "because it would be much easier, to most men, to love you than to love your money." "you think so?" "yes." "i'm so glad. i felt so worried over it. not about this case, for i don't care for him, a bit. but i wondered if i had to suspect every man who came near me." peter's eyes ceased to burn, and his second cup of tea, which a moment before was well-nigh choking him, suddenly became nectar for the gods. then at last leonore made the remark towards which she had been working. at twenty-five leonore would have been able to say it without so dangerous a preamble. "i don't want to be bothered by men, and wish they would let me alone," she said. "i haven't the slightest intention of marrying for at least five years, and shall say no to whomever asks me before then,"' five years! peter sipped his tea quietly, but with a hopeless feeling. he would like to claim that bit of womanhood as his own that moment, and she could talk of five years! it was the clearest possible indication to peter that leonore was heart-whole. "no one, who is in love," he thought, "could possibly talk of five years, or five months even." when peter got back to his chambers that afternoon, he was as near being despairing as he had been since--since--a long time ago. even the obvious fact, that, if leonore was not in love with him, she was also not in love with any one else, did not cheer him. there is a flag in the navy known as the blue-peter. that evening, peter could have supplied our whole marine, with considerable bunting to spare. but even worse was in store for him on the morrow. when he joined leonore in the park that day, she proved to him that woman has as much absolute brutality as the lowest of prize-fighters. women get the reputation of being less brutal, because of their dread of blood-letting. yet when it comes to torturing the opposite sex in its feelings, they are brutes compared with their sufferers. "do you know," said leonore, "that this is almost our last ride together?" "don't jerk the reins needlessly, peter," said mutineer, crossly. "i hope not," said peter. "we have changed our plans. instead of going to newport next week, i have at last persuaded papa to travel a little, so that i can see something of my own country, and not be so shamefully ignorant. we are going to washington on saturday, and from there to california, and then through the yellowstone, and back by niagara. we shan't be in newport till the middle of august" peter did not die at once. he caught at a life-preserver of a most delightful description. "that will be a very enjoyable trip," he said. "i should like to go myself." "there is no one i would rather have than you," said leonore, laying her little hand softly on the wound she had herself just made, in a way which women have. then she stabbed again. "but we think it pleasanter to have it just a party of four." "how long shall you be in washington?" asked peter, catching wildly at a straw this time. "for a week. why?" "the president has been wanting to see me, and i thought i might run down next week," '"dear me," thought leonore. "how very persistent he is!" "where will you put up?" said peter. "we haven't decided. where shall you stay?" she had the brutality to ask. "the president wants me with him, but i may go to a hotel. it leaves one so much freer." peter was a lawyer, and saw no need of committing himself. "if i am there when you are, i can perhaps help you enjoy yourself. i think i can get you a lunch at the white house, and, as i know most of the officials, i have an open sesame to some other nice things." poor peter! he was trying to tempt leonore to tolerate his company by offering attractions in connection therewith. a chromo with the pound of tea. and this from the man who had thought flowers and bon-bons bribery! "why does the president want to see you?" "to talk politics." "about the governorship?" "yes. though we don't say so." "is it true, peter, that you can decide who it is to be as the papers say?" "no, i would give twenty-five thousand dollars to-day if i could name the democratic nominee." "why?" "would you mind my not telling you?" "yes. i want to know. and you are to tell me," said her majesty, calmly. "i will tell you, though it is a secret, if you will tell me a secret of yours which i want to know." "no," said leonore. "i don't think that's necessary. you are to tell me without making me promise anything." leonore might deprecate a man's falling in love with her, but she had no objection to the power and perquisites it involved. "then i shan't tell you," said peter, making a tremendous rally. leonore looked out from under her lashes to see just how much of peter's sudden firmness was real and how much pretence. then she became unconscious of his presence. peter said something. silence. peter said something else. silence. "are you really so anxious to know?" he asked, surrendering without terms. he had a glorious look at those glorious eyes. "yes," said the dearest of all mouths. "the great panic," said peter, "has led to the formation of a so-called labor party, and, from present indications, they are going to nominate a bad man. now, there is a great attempt on foot to get the democratic convention to endorse whomever the labor party nominates." "who will that be?'" "a stephen maguire." "and you don't want him?" "no. i have never crossed his path without finding him engaged in something discreditable. but he's truckled himself into a kind of popularity and power, and, having always been 'a democrat,' he hopes to get the party to endorse him." "can't you order the convention not to do it?" peter smiled down into the eyes. "we don't order men in this country with any success." "but can't you prevent them?" "i hope so. but it looks now as if i should have to do it in a way very disagreeable to myself." "how?" "this is a great secret, you understand?" "yes," said leonore, all interest and eagerness. "i can keep a secret splendidly." "you are sure?" asked peter. "sure." "so can i," said peter. leonore perfectly bristled with indignation. "i won't be treated so," she said. "are you going to tell me?" she put on her severest manner. "no," said peter. "he is obstinate," thought leonore to herself. then aloud she said: "then i shan't be friends any more?" "that is very nice," said peter, soberly. "what?" said leonore, looking at him in surprise. "i have come to the conclusion," said peter, "that there is no use in our trying to be friends. so we had better give up at once. don't you think so?" "what a pretty horse miss winthrop has?" said leonore. and she never obtained an answer to her question, nor answered peter's. chapter xlviii. a mutineer. after peter's return from washington, there was a settled gloom about him positively appalling. he could not be wooed, on any plea, by his closest friends, to journey up-town into the social world. he failed entirely to avail himself of the room in the rivington's newport villa, though dorothy wrote appealingly, and cited his own words to him. even to his partners he became almost silent, except on law matters. jenifer found that no delicacy, however rare or however well cooked and served, seemed to be noticed any more than if it was mess-pork. the only moments that this atmosphere seemed to yield at all was when peter took a very miscellaneous collection of rubbish out of a little sachet, meant for handkerchiefs, which he now carried in his breast-pocket, and touched the various articles to his lips. then for a time he would look a little less suicidal. but it was astonishing the amount of work he did, the amount of reading he got through, the amount of politics he bossed, and the cigars he smoked, between the first of june, and the middle of august the party-leaders had come to the conclusion that peter did not intend to take a hand in this campaign, but, after his return from washington, they decided otherwise. "the president must have asked him to interfere," was their whispered conclusion, "but it's too late now. it's all cut and dried." peter found, as this remark suggested, that his two months' devotion to the dearest of eyes and sweetest of lips, had had serious results. as with mutineer once, he had dropped his bridle, but there was no use in uttering, as he had, then, the trisyllable which had reduced the horse to order. he had a very different kind of a creature with which to deal, than a kentucky gentleman of lengthy lineage, a creature called sometimes a "tiger." yet curiously enough, the same firm voice, and the same firm manner, and a "mutineer," though this time a man instead of a horse, was effective here. all new york knew that something had been done, and wanted to know what, there was not a newspaper in the city that would have refused to give five thousand dollars for an authentic stenographic report of what actually was said in a space of time not longer than three hours in all. indeed, so intensely were people interested, that several papers felt called upon to fabricate and print most absurd versions of what did occur, all the accounts reaching conclusions as absolutely different as the press portraits of celebrities. from three of them it is a temptation to quote the display headlines or "scare-heads," which ushered these reports to the world. the first read: "the bosses at war!" * * * * * "hot words and looks." * * * * * "but they'll crawl later." "there's beauty in the bellow of the blast, there's grandeur in the growling of the gale; but there's eloquence-appalling, when stirling is aroaring, and the tiger's getting modest with his tail" that was a republican account. the second was: "maguire on top!" * * * * * "the old man is friendly. a peace-making dinner at the manhattan club. friends in council. labor and democracy shoulder to shoulder. a united front to the enemy." the third, printed in an insignificant little penny paper, never read and almost unknown by reading people, yet which had more city advertising than all the other papers put together, and a circulation to match the largest, announced: "taciturnity junior's" * * * * * "once more at the bat!" * * * * * "no more nonsense." * * * * * "he puts maguire out on third base." * * * * * "now play ball!" and unintelligible as this latter sounds, it was near enough the truth to suggest inspiration. but there is no need to reprint the article that followed, for now it is possible, for the first time, to tell what actually occurred; and this contribution should alone permit this work to rank, as no doubt it is otherwise fully qualified to, in the dullest class of all books, that of the historical novel. the facts are, that peter alighted from a hansom one evening, in the middle of july, and went into the manhattan club. he exchanged greetings with a number of men in the halls, and with more who came in while he was reading the evening papers. a man came up to him while he still read, and said: "well, stirling. reading about your own iniquity?" "no," said peter, rising and shaking hands. "i gave up reading about that ten years ago. life is too short." "pelton and webber were checking their respectability in the coat-room, as i came up. i suppose they are in the café." peter said nothing, but turned, and the two entered that room. peter shook hands with three men who were there, and they all drew up round one of the little tables. a good many men who saw that group, nudged each other, and whispered remarks. "a reporter from the _sun_ is in the strangers' room. mr. stirling, and asks to see you," said a servant. "i cannot see him," said peter, quietly. "but say to him that i may possibly have something to tell him about eleven o'clock." the four men at the table exchanged glances. "i can't imagine a newspaper getting an interview out of you, stirling," laughed one of them a little nervously. peter smiled. "very few of us are absolutely consistent. i can't imagine any of you, for instance, making a political mistake but perhaps you may some day." a pause of a curious kind came after this, which was only interrupted by the arrival of three more men. they all shook hands, and peter rang a bell. "what shall it be?" he asked. there was a moment's hesitation, and then one said. "order for us. you're host. just what you like." peter smiled. "thomas," he said, "bring us eight apollinaris cocktails." the men all laughed, and thomas said, "beg pardon, mr. stirling?" in a bewildered way. thomas had served the club many years, but he had never heard of that cocktail. "well, thomas," said peter, "if you don't have that in stock, make it seven blackthorns." then presently eight men packed themselves into the elevator, and a moment later were sitting in one of the private dining-rooms. for an hour and a half they chatted over the meal, very much as if it were nothing more than a social dinner. but the moment the servant had passed the cigars and light, and had withdrawn, the chat suddenly ceased, and a silence came for a moment then a man said: "it's a pity it can't please all, but the majority's got to rule." "yes," promptly said another, "this is really a maguire ratification meeting." "there's nothing else to do," affirmed a third. but a fourth said: "then what are we here for?" no one seemed to find an answer. after a moment's silence, the original speaker said: "it's the only way we can be sure of winning." "he gives us every pledge," echoed the second. "and we've agreed, anyways, so we are bound," continued the first speaker. peter took his cigar out of his mouth. "who are bound?" he asked, quietly. "why, the organization is--the party," said number two, with a "deny-it-if-you-dare" in his voice. "i don't see how we can back out now, stirling," said number one. "who wants to?" said another. "the labor party promises to support us on our local nominations, and maguire is not merely a democrat, but he gives us every pledge." "there's no good of talking of anything else anyhow," said number one, "for there will be a clean majority for maguire in the convention." "and no other candidate can poll fifty votes on the first ballot," said number two. then they all looked at peter, and became silent. peter puffed his cigar thoughtfully. "what do you say?" said number one. peter merely shook his head. "but i tell you it's done," cried one of the men, a little excitedly. "it's too late to backslide! we want to please you, stirling, but we can't this time. we must do what's right for the party." "i'm not letting my own feeling decide it," said peter. "i'm thinking of the party. for every vote the labor people give maguire, the support of that party will lose us a democratic vote." "but we can't win with a triangular fight. the republicans will simply walk over the course." if peter had been a hot-headed reformer, he would have said: "better that than that such a scoundrel shall win." but peter was a politician, and so saw no need of saying the unpleasantest thing that occurred to him, even if he felt it. instead, he said: "the labor party will get as many votes from the republicans as from us, and, for every vote the labor party takes from us, we shall get a republican vote, if we put up the right kind of a man." "nonsense," cried number one. "how do you figure that?" asked another. "in these panic times, the nomination of such a man as maguire, with his truckling to the lowest passions and his socialistic speeches, will frighten conservative men enough to make them break party lines, and unite on the most certain candidate. that will be ours." "but why risk it, when, with maguire, it's certain?" peter wanted to say: "maguire shall not be endorsed, and that ends it." instead, he said: "we can win with our own man, and don't need to trade with or endorse the labor party. we can elect maguire by the aid of the worst votes in this city, or we can elect our own man by the aid of the best. the one weakens our party in the future; the other strengthens it." "you think that possible?" asked the man who had sought information as to what they "were here for." "yes. the labor party makes a stir, but it wouldn't give us the oyster and be content with the shells if it really felt strong. see what it offers us. all the local and state ticket except six assemblymen, two senators, and a governor, tied hand and foot to us, whose proudest claim for years has been that he's a democrat." "but all this leaves out of sight the fact that the thing's done," said number one. peter puffed his cigar. "yes. it's too late. the polls are closed," said another. peter stopped puffing. "the convention hasn't met," he remarked, quietly. that remark, however, seemed to have a sting in it, for number two cried: "come. we've decided. now, put up or shut up. no more beating about the bush." peter puffed his cigar. "tell us what you intend, stirling," said number one. "we are committed beyond retreat. come in with us, or stay outside the breastworks." "perhaps," said peter, "since you've taken your own position, without consulting me, you will allow me the same privilege." "go to--where you please," said number six, crossly. peter puffed his cigar. "well, what do you intend to do?" asked number one. peter knocked the ash off his cigar. "you consider yourselves pledged to support maguire?" "yes. we are pledged," said four voices in unison. "so am i," said peter. "how?" "to oppose him," said peter. "but i tell you the majority of the convention is for him," said number one. "don't you believe me?" "yes." "then what good will your opposition do?" "it will defeat maguire." "no power on earth can do that." peter puffed his cigar. "you can't beat him in the convention, stirling. the delegates pledged to him, and those we can give him elect him on the first ballot." "how about november fourth?" asked peter. number one sprang to his feet. "you don't mean?" he cried. "never!" said number three. peter puffed his cigar. "come, stirling, say what you intend!" "i intend," said peter, "if the democratic convention endorses stephen maguire, to speak against him in every ward of this city, and ask every man in it, whom i can influence, to vote for the republican candidate." dead silence reigned. peter puffed his cigar. "you'll go back on the party?" finally said one, in awe-struck tones. "you'll be a traitor?" cried another. "i'd have believed anything but that you would be a dashed mugwump!" groaned the third. peter puffed his cigar. "say you are fooling?" begged number seven. "no," said peter, "nor am i more a traitor to my party than you. you insist on supporting the labor candidate and i shall support the republican candidate. we are both breaking our party." "we'll win," said number one. peter puffed his cigar. "i'm not so sure," said the gentleman of the previous questions. "how many votes can you hurt us, stirling?" "i don't know," peter looked very contented. "you can't expect to beat us single?" peter smiled quietly. "i haven't had time to see many men. but--i'm not single. bohlmann says the brewers will back me, hummel says he'll be guided by me, and the president won't interfere." "you might as well give up," continued the previous questioner. "the sixth is a sure thirty-five hundred to the bad, and between stirling's friends, and the hummel crowd, and bohlmann's people, you'll lose twenty-five thousand in the rest of the city, besides the democrats you'll frighten off by the labor party. you can't put it less than thirty-five thousand, to say nothing of the hole in the campaign fund." the beauty about a practical politician is that votes count for more than his own wishes. number one said: "well, that's ended. you've smashed our slate. what have you got in its place?" "porter?" suggested peter. "no," said three voices. "we can't stand any more of him," said number one. "he's an honest, square man," said peter. "can't help that. one dose of a man who's got as little gumption as he, is all we can stand. he may have education, but i'll be hanged if he has intellect. why don't you ask us to choose a college professor, and have done with it." "come, stirling," said the previous questioner, "the thing's been messed so that we've got to go into convention with just the right man to rally the delegates. there's only one man we can do it with, and you know it." peter rose, and dropped his cigar-stump into the ash-receiver. "i don't see anything else," he said, gloomily. "do any of you?" a moment's silence, and then number one said: "no." "well," said peter, "i'll take the nomination if necessary, but keep it back for a time, till we see if something better can't be hit upon." "no danger," said number one, holding out his hand, gleefully. "there's more ways of killing a pig than choking it with butter," said number three, laughing and doing the same. "it's a pity costell isn't here," added the previous questioner. "after you're not yielding to him, he'd never believe we had forced you to take it." and that was what actually took place at that very-much-talked-about dinner. peter went downstairs with a very serious look on his face. at the door, the keeper of it said: "there are six reporters in the strangers' room, mr. stirling, who wish to see you." a man who had just come in said: "i'm sorry for you, peter." peter smiled quietly. "tell them our wishes are not mutual." then he turned to the newcomer. "it's all right," he said, "so far as the party is concerned, hummel. but i'm to foot the bill to do it." "the devil! you don't mean--?" peter nodded his head. "i'll give twenty-five thousand to the fund," said hummel, gleefully. "see if i don't." "excuse me, mr. stirling," said a man who had just come in. "certainly," said peter promptly, "but i must ask the same favor of you, as i am going down town at once." peter had the brutality to pass out of the front door instantly, leaving the reporter with a disappointed look on his face. "if he only would have said something?" groaned the reporter to himself. "anything that could be spun into a column. he needn't have told me what he didn't care to tell, yet he could have helped me to pay my month's rent as easily as could be." as for peter, he fell into a long stride, and his face nearly equalled his stride in length. after he reached his quarters he sat and smoked, with the same serious look. he did not look cross. he did not have the gloom in his face which had been so fixed an expression for the last month. but he looked as a man might look who knew he had but a few hours to live, yet to whom death had no terror. "i am giving up," peter thought, "everything that has been my true life till now. my profession, my friends, my chance to help others, my books, and my quiet. i shall be misunderstood, reviled and hated. everything i do will be distorted for partisan purposes. friends will misjudge. enemies will become the more bitter. i give up fifty thousand dollars a year in order to become a slave, with toadies, trappers, lobbyists and favor-seekers as my daily quota of humanity. i even sacrifice the larger part of my power." so ran peter's thoughts, and they were the thoughts of a man who had not worked seventeen years in politics for nothing. he saw alienation of friends, income, peace, and independence, and the only return a mere title, which to him meant a loss, rather than a gain of power. yet this was one of the dozen prizes thought the best worth striving for in our politics. is it a wonder that our government and office-holding is left to the foreign element? that the native american should prefer any other work, rather than run the gauntlet of public opinion and press, with loss of income and peace, that he may hold some difficult office for a brief term? but finally peter rose. "perhaps she'll like it," he said aloud, and presumably, since no woman is allowed a voice in american politics, he was thinking of miss columbia. then he looked at some photographs, a scrap of ribbon, a gold coin (peter clearly was becoming a money worshipper), three letters, a card, a small piece of blotting-paper, a handkerchief (which leonore and peter had spent nearly ten minutes in trying to find one day), a glove, and some dried rose-leaves and violets. yet this was the man who had grappled an angry tiger but two hours before and had brought it to lick his hand. he went to bed very happy. chapter xlix. clouds. but a month later he was far happier, for one morning towards the end of august, his mail brought him a letter from watts, announcing that they had been four days installed in their newport home, and that peter would now be welcome any time. "i have purposely not filled grey-court this summer, so that you should have every chance. between you and me and the post, i think there have been moments when mademoiselle missed 'her friend' far more than she confessed." "dat's stronory," thought jenifer. "he dun eat mo' dis yar hot mo'nin' dan he dun in two mumfs." then jenifer was sent out with a telegram, which merely said: "may i come to-day by shore line limited? p.s." "when you get back, jenifer," said peter, "you may pack my trunk and your own. we may start for newport at two." evidently peter did not intend to run any risks of missing the train, in case the answer should be favorable. peter passed into his office, and set to work to put the loose ends in such shape that nothing should go wrong during his absence. he had not worked long, when one of the boys told him that: "mr. cassius curlew wants to see you, mr. stirling." peter stopped his writing, looking up quickly: "did he say on what business?" "no." "ask him, please." and peter went on writing till the boy returned. "he says it's about the convention." "tell him he must be more specific." the boy returned in a moment with a folded scrap of paper. "he said that would tell you, mr. stirling." peter unfolded the scrap, and read upon it: "a message from maguire." "show him in." peter touched a little knob on his desk on which was stamped "chief clerk." a moment later a man opened a door. "samuels," said peter, "i wish you would stay here for a moment. i want you to listen to what's said." the next moment a man crossed the threshold of another door. "good-morning, mr. stirling," he said. "mr. curlew," said peter, without rising and with a cold inclination of his head. "i have a message for you, mr. stirling," said the man, pulling a chair into a position that suited him, and sitting, "but it's private." peter said nothing, but began to write. "do you understand? i want a word with you private," said the man after a pause. "mr. samuels is my confidential clerk. you can speak with perfect freedom before him." peter spoke without raising his eyes from his writing. "but i don't want any one round. it's just between you and me." "when i got your message," said peter, still writing, "i sent for mr. samuels. if you have anything to say, say it now. otherwise leave it unsaid." "well, then," said the man, "your party's been tricking us, and we won't stand it." peter wrote diligently. "and we know who's back of it. it was all pie down to that dinner of yours." "is that maguire's message?" asked peter, though with no cessation of his labors. "nop," said the man. "that's the introduction. now, we know what it means. you needn't deny it. you're squinting at the governorship yourself. and you've made the rest go back on maguire, and work for you on the quiet. oh, we know what's going on." "tell me when you begin on the message," said peter, still writing. "maguire's sent me to you, to tell you to back water. to stop bucking." "tell mr. maguire i have received his message." "oh, that isn't all, and don't you forget it! maguire's in this for fur and feathers, and if you go before the convention as a candidate, we'll fill the air with them." "is that part of the message?" asked peter. "by that we mean that half an hour after you accept the nomination, we'll have a force of detectives at work on your past life, and we'll hunt down and expose every discreditable thing you've ever done." peter rose, and the man did the same instantly, putting one of his hands on his hip-pocket. but even before he did it, peter had begun speaking, in a quiet, self-contained voice: "that sounds so like mr. maguire, that i think we have the message at last. go to him, and say that i have received his message. that i know him, and i know his methods. that i understand his hopes of driving me, as he has some, from his path, by threats of private scandal. that, judging others by himself, he believes no man's life can bear probing. tell him that he has misjudged for once. tell him that he has himself decided me in my determination to accept the nomination. that rather than see him the nominee of the democratic party, i will take it myself. tell him to set on his blood-hounds. they are welcome to all they can unearth in my life." peter turned towards his door, intending to leave the room, for he was not quite sure that he could sustain this altitude, if he saw more of the man. but as his hand was on the knob, curlew spoke again. "one moment," he called. "we've got something more to say to you. we have proof already." peter turned, with an amused look on his face. "i was wondering," he said, "if maguire really expected to drive me with such vague threats." "no siree," said curlew with a self-assured manner, but at the same time putting peter's desk between the clerk and himself, so that his flank could not be turned. "we've got some evidence that won't be sweet reading for you, and we're going to print it, if you take the nomination." "tell mr. maguire he had better put his evidence in print at once. that i shall take the nomination." "and disgrace one of your best friends?" asked curlew. peter started slightly, and looked sharply at the man. "ho, ho," said curlew. "that bites, eh? well, it will bite worse before it's through with." peter stood silent for a moment, but his hands trembled slightly, and any one who understood anatomy could have recognized that every muscle in his body was at full tension. but all he said was: "well?" "it's about that trip of yours on the 'majestic.'" peter looked bewildered. "we've got sworn affidavits of two stewards," curlew continued, "about yours and some one else's goings on. i guess mr. and mrs. rivington won't thank you for having them printed." instantly came a cry of fright, and the crack of a revolver, which brought peter's partners and the clerks crowding into the room. it was to find curlew lying back on the desk, held there by peter with one hand, while his other, clasping the heavy glass inkstand, was swung aloft. there was a look on peter's face that did not become it. an insurance company would not have considered curlew's life at that moment a fair risk. but when peter's arm descended it did so gently, put the inkstand back on the desk, and taking a pocket-handkerchief wiped a splash of ink from the hand that had a moment before been throttling curlew. that worthy struggled up from his back-breaking attitude and the few parts of his face not drenched with ink, were very white, while his hands trembled more than had peter's a moment before. "peter!" cried ogden. "what is it?" "i lost my temper for a moment," said peter. "but who fired that shot?" peter turned to the clerks. "leave the room," he said, "all of you. and keep this to yourselves. i don't think the other floors could have heard anything through the fire-proof brick, but if any one comes, refer them to me." as the office cleared, peter turned to his partners and said: "mr. curlew came here with a message which he thought needed the protection of a revolver. he judged rightly, it seems." "are you hit?" "i felt something strike." peter put his hand to his side. he unbuttoned his coat and felt again. then he pulled out a little sachet from his breast-pocket, and as e did so, a flattened bullet dropped to the floor. peter looked into the sachet anxiously. the bullet had only gone through the lower corner of the four photographs and the glove! peter laughed happily. "i had a gold coin in my pocket, and the bullet struck that. who says that a luck-piece is nothing but a superstition?" "but, peter, shan't we call the police?" demanded ogden, still looking stunned. curlew moved towards the door. "one moment," said peter, and curlew stopped. "ray," peter continued, "i am faced with a terrible question. i want your advice?" "what, peter?" "a man is trying to force me to stand aside and permit a political wrong. to do this, he threatens to publish lying affidavits of worthless scoundrels, to prove a shameful intimacy between a married woman and me." "bosh," laughed ray. "he can publish a thousand and no one would believe them of you." "he knows that. but he knows, too, that no matter how untrue, it would connect her name with a subject shameful to the purest woman that ever lived. he knows that the scavengers of gossip will repeat it, and gloat over it. that the filthy society papers will harp on it for years. that in the heat of a political contest, the partisans will be only too glad to believe it and repeat it. that no criminal prosecution, no court vindication, will ever quite kill the story as regards her. and so he hopes that, rather than entail this on a woman whom i love, and on her husband and family, i will refuse a nomination. i know of such a case in massachusetts, where, rather than expose a woman to such a danger, the man withdrew. what should i do?" "do? fight him. tell him to do his worst." peter put his hand on ray's shoulder. "even if--if--it is one dear to us both?" "peter!" "yes. do you remember your being called home in our spanish trip, unexpectedly? you left me to bring miss de voe, and--well. they've bribed, or forged affidavits of two of the stewards of the 'majestic.'" ray tried to spring forward towards curlew. but peter's hand still rested on his shoulder, and held him back, "i started to kill him," peter said quietly, "but i remembered he was nothing but the miserable go-between." "my god, peter! what can i say?" "ray! the stepping aside is nothing to me. it was an office which i was ready to take, but only as a sacrifice and a duty. it is to prevent wrong that i interfered. so do not think it means a loss to me to retire." "peter, do what you intended to do. we must not compromise with wrong even for her sake." the two shook hands, "i do not think they will ever use it, ray," said peter. "but i may be mistaken, and cannot involve you in the possibility, without your consent." "of course they'll use it," cried ogden. "scoundrels who could think of such a thing, will use it without hesitation." "no," said peter. "a man who uses a coward's weapons, is a coward at heart. we can prevent it, i think." then he turned to curlew. "tell mr. maguire about this interview. tell him that i spared you, because you are not the principal. but tell him from me, that if a word is breathed against mrs. rivington, i swear that i'll search for him till i find him, and when i find him i'll kill him with as little compunction as i would a rattlesnake." peter turned and going to his dressing-room, washed away the ink from his hands. curlew shuffled out of the room, and, black as he was, went straight to the labor headquarters and told his story. "and he'll do it too, mr. maguire," he said. "you should have seen his look as he said it, and as he stood over me. i feel it yet." "do you think he means it?" said ray to ogden, when they were back in ray's room. "i wouldn't think so if i hadn't seen his face as he stood over that skunk. but if ever a man looked murder he did at that moment. and quiet old peter of all men!" "we must talk to him. do tell him that--" "do you dare do it?" "but you--?" "i don't. unless he speaks i shall--" "ray and ogden," said a quiet voice, "i wish you would write out what you have just seen and heard. it may be needed in the future." "peter, let me speak," cried ray. "you mustn't do what you said. think of such an end to your life. no matter what that scoundrel does, don't end your life on a gallows. it--" peter held up his hand. "you don't know the american people, ray. if maguire uses that lying story, i can kill him, and there isn't a jury in the country which, when the truth was told, wouldn't acquit me. maguire knows it, too. we have heard the last of that threat, i'm sure." peter went back to his office. "i don't wonder," he thought, as he stood looking at the ink-stains on his desk and floor, "that people think politics nothing but trickery and scoundrelism. yet such vile weapons and slanders would not be used if there were not people vile and mean enough at heart to let such things influence them. the fault is not in politics. it is in humanity." chapter l. sunshine. but just as peter was about to continue this rather unsatisfactory train of thought, his eye caught sight of a flattened bullet lying on the floor. he picked it up, with a smile. "i knew she was my good luck," he said. then he took out the sachet again, and kissed the dented and bent coin. then he examined the photographs. "not even the dress is cut through," he said gleefully, looking at the full length. "it couldn't have hit in a better place." when he came to the glove, however, he grieved a little over it. even this ceased to trouble him the next moment, for a telegram was laid on his desk. it merely said, "come by all means. w.c.d'a." yet that was enough to make peter drop thoughts, work, and everything for a time. he sat at his desk, gazing at a blank wall, and thinking of a pair of slate-colored eyes. but his expression bore no resemblance to the one formerly assumed when that particular practice had been habitual. nor was this expression the only difference in this day, to mark the change from peter past to peter present. for instead of manoeuvring to make watts sit on the back seat, when he was met by the trap late that afternoon, at newport, he took possession of that seat in the coolest possible manner, leaving the one by the driver to watts. nor did peter look away from the girl on that back seat. quite the contrary. it did not seem to him that a thousand eyes would have been any too much. peter's three months of gloom vanished, and became merely a contrast to heighten his present joy. a sort of "shadow-box." he had had the nicest kind of welcome from his "friend." if the manner had not been quite so absolutely frank as of yore, yet there was no doubt as to her pleasure in seeing peter. "it's very nice to see you again," she had said while shaking hands. "i hoped you would come quickly." peter was too happy to say anything in reply. he merely took possession of that vacant seat, and rested his eyes in silence till watts, after climbing into place, asked him how the journey to newport had been. "lovelier than ever," said peter, abstractedly. "i didn't think it was possible." "eh?" said watts, turning with surprise on his face. but leonore did not look surprised. she only looked the other way, and the corners of her mouth were curving upwards. "the journey?" queried watts. "you mean newport, don't you?" said leonore helpfully, when peter said nothing. leonore was looking out from under her lashes--at things in general, of course. peter said nothing. peter was not going to lie about what he had meant, and leonore liked him all the better for not using the deceiving loophole she had opened. watts said, "oh, of course. it improves every year. but wasn't the journey hot, old man?" "i didn't notice," said peter. "didn't notice! and this one of the hottest days of the year." "i had something else to think about," explained peter. "politics?" asked watts. "oh, peter," said leonore, "we've been so interested in all the talk. it was just as maddening as could be, how hard it was to get new york papers way out west. i'm awfully in the dark about some things. i've asked a lot of people here about it, but nobody seems to know anything. or if they do, they laugh at me. i met congressman pell yesterday at the tennis tournament, and thought he would tell me all about it. but he was horrid! his whole manner said: 'i can't waste real talk on a girl.' i told him i was a great friend of yours, and that you would tell me when you came, but he only laughed and said, he had no doubt you would, for you were famous for your indiscretion. i hate men who laugh at women the moment they try to talk as men do." "i think," said peter, "we'll have to turn pell down. a congressman who laughs at one of my friends won't do." "i really wish you would. that would teach him," said leonore, vindictively. "a man who laughs at women can't be a good congressman." "i tell you what we'll do," said peter. "i don't want to retire him, because--because i like his mother. but i will tell you something for you to tell him, that will astonish him very much, and make him want to know who told you, and so you can tease him endlessly." "oh, peter!" said leonore. "you are the nicest man." "what's that?" asked watts. "it's a great secret," said peter. "i shall only tell it to miss d'alloi, so that if it leaks beyond pell, i shall know whom to blame for it." "goody!" cried leonore, giving a little bounce for joy. "is it about that famous dinner?" inquired watts. "no." "peter, i'm so curious about that. will you tell me what you did?" "i ate a dinner," said peter smiling. "now don't be like mr. pell," said leonore, reprovingly, "or i'll take back what i just said." "did you roar, and did the tiger put its tail between its legs?" asked watts. "that is the last thing our friends, the enemies, have found," said peter. "you will tell me about it, won't you, peter?" said leonore, ingratiatingly. "have you a mount for me, watts, for to-morrow? mutineer comes by boat to-night, but won't be here till noon." "yes. i've one chap up to your weight, i think." "i don't like dodgers," said leonore, the corners of her mouth drawn down. "i was not dodging," said peter. "i only was asking a preliminary question. if you will get up, before breakfast, and ride with me, i will tell you everything that actually occurred at that dinner. you will be the only person, i think, who wasn't there, who knows." it was shameful and open bribery, but bosses are shameful and open in their doings, so peter was only living up to his rôle. the temptation was too strong to be resisted, leonore said, "of coarse i will," and the corners of her mouth reversed their position. but she said to herself: "i shall have to snub you in something else to make up for it." peter was in for a bad quarter of an hour somewhere. leonore had decided just how she was going to treat peter. to begin with, she intended to accentuate that "five years" in various ways. then she would be very frank and friendly, just as long as he, too, would keep within those limits, but if peter even verged on anything more, she intended to leave him to himself, just long enough to show him that such remarks as his "not caring to be friends," brought instant and dire punishment. "and i shan't let him speak," leonore decided, "no matter if he wants to. for if he does, i'll have to say 'no,' and then he'll go back to new york and sulk, and perhaps never come near me again, since he's so obstinate, while i want to stay friends." many such campaigns have been planned by the party of the first part. but the trouble is that, usually, the party of the second part also has a plan, which entirely disconcerts the first. as the darkey remarked: "yissah. my dog he wud a beat, if it hadn't bin foh de udder dog." peter found as much contrast in his evening, as compared with his morning, as there was in his own years. after dinner. leonore said: "i always play billiards with papa. will you play too?" "i don't know how," said peter. "then it's time you learned. i'll take you on my side, because papa always beats me. i'll teach you." so there was the jolliest of hours spent in this way, all of them laughing at peter's shots, and at leonore's attempts to show him how. "every woman ought to play billiards," peter thought, when it was ended. "it's the most graceful sight i've seen in years." leonore said, "you get the ideas very nicely, but you hit much too hard. you can't hit a ball too softly. you pound it as if you were trying to smash it." "it's something i really must learn," said peter, who had refused over and over again in the past. "i'll teach you, while you are here," said leonore. peter did not refuse this time. nor did he refuse another lesson. when they had drifted into the drawing-room, leonore asked: "have you been learning how to valse?" peter smiled at so good an american using so european a word, but said seriously, "no. i've been too busy." "that's a shame," said leonore, "because there are to be two dances this week, and mamma has written to get you cards." "is it very hard?" asked peter. "no," said leonore. "it's as easy as breathing, and much nicer." "couldn't you teach me that, also?" "easily. mamma, will you play a valse? now see." leonore drew her skirts back with one hand, so as to show the little feet, and said: "one, two, three, so. one, two, three, so. now do that." peter had hoped that the way to learn dancing was to take the girl in one's arms. but he recognized that this would follow. so he set to work manfully to imitate that dainty little glide. it seemed easy as she did it. but it was not so easy when he tried it. "oh, you clumsy," said leonore laughing. "see. one, two, three, so. one, two, three, so." peter forgot to notice the step, in his admiration of the little feet and the pretty figure. "well," said leonore after a pause, "are you going to do that?" so peter tried again, and again, and again. peter would have done it all night, with absolute contentment, so long as leonore, after every failure, would show him the right way in her own person. finally she said, "now take my hands. no. way apart, so that i can see your feet. now. we'll try it together. one, two, change. one, two, change." peter thought this much better, and was ready to go on till strength failed. but after a time, leonore said, "now. we'll try it the true way. take my hand so and put your arm so. that's the way. only never hold a girl too close. we hate it. yes. that's it. now, mamma. again. one, two, three. one, two, three." this was heavenly, peter thought, and could have wept over the shortness, as it seemed to him, of this part of the lesson. but it ended, and leonore said: "if you'll practice that in your room, with a bolster, you'll get on very fast." "i always make haste slowly," said peter, not taking to the bolster idea at all kindly. "probably you can find time to-morrow for another lesson, and i'll learn much quicker with you." "i'll see." "and will you give me some waltzes at the dances?" "i'll tell you what i'll do," said leonore. "you shall have the dances the other men don't ask of me. but you don't dance well enough, in case i can get a better partner. i love valsing too much to waste one with a poor dancer." a moment before peter thought waltzing the most exquisite pleasure the world contained. but he suddenly changed his mind, and concluded it was odious. "nevertheless," he decided, "i will learn how." chapter li. the course of true love. peter had his ride the next morning, and had a very interested listener to his account of that dinner. the listener, speaking from vast political knowledge, told him at the end. "you did just right. i thoroughly approve of you." "that takes a great worry off my mind," said peter soberly. "i was afraid, since we were to be such friends, and you wanted my help in the whirligig this winter, that you might not like my possibly having to live in albany." "can't you live in new york?" said leonore, looking horrified. "no." "then i don't like it at all," said leonore. "it's no good having friends if they don't live near one." "that's what i think," said peter. "i suppose i couldn't tempt you to come and keep house for me?" "now i must snub him," thought leonore. "no," she said, "it will be bad enough to do that five years from now, for the man i love." she looked out from under her eyelashes to see if her blow had been fatal, and concluded from the glumness in peter's face, that she really had been too cruel. so she added: "but you may give me a ball, and we'll all come up and stay a week with you." peter relaxed a little, but he said dolefully, "i don't know what i shall do. i shall be in such need of your advice in politics and housekeeping." "well," said leonore, "if you really find that you can't get on without help, we'll make it two weeks. but you must get up toboggan parties, and other nice things." "i wonder what the papers will say," thought peter, "if a governor gives toboggan parties?" after the late breakfast, peter was taken down to see the tournament. he thought he would not mind it, since he was allowed to sit next leonore. but he did. first he wished that she wouldn't pay so much attention to the score. then that the men who fluttered round her would have had the good taste to keep away. it enraged peter to see how perfectly willing she was to talk and chat about things of which he knew nothing, and how more than willing the men were. and then she laughed at what they said! "that's fifteen-love, isn't it?" leonore asked him presently. "he doesn't look over fifteen," actually growled peter. "i don't know whether he's in love or not. i suppose he thinks he is. boys fifteen years old always do." leonore forgot the score, even, in her surprise. "why," she said, "you growl just like bêtise (the mastiff). now i know what the papers mean when they say you roar." "well," said peter, "it makes me cross to see a lot of boys doing nothing but hit a small ball, and a lot more looking at them and thinking that it's worth doing." which was a misstatement. it was not that which made peter mad. "haven't you ever played tennis?" "never. i don't even know how to score." "dear me," said leonore, "you're dreadfully illiterate." "i know it," growled peter, "i don't belong here, and have no business to come. i'm a ward boss, and my place is in saloons. don't hesitate to say it." all this was very foolish, but it was real to peter for the moment, and he looked straight ahead with lines on his face which leonore had never seen before. he ought to have been ordered to go off by himself till he should be in better mood. instead leonore turned from the tennis, and said: "please don't talk that way, peter. you know i don't think that." leonore had understood the misery which lay back of the growl. "poor fellow," she thought, "i must cheer him up." so she stopped looking at the tennis. "see," she said, "there are miss winthrop and mr. pell. do take me over to them and let me spring my surprise. you talk to miss winthrop." "why, peter!" said pell. "when did you come?" "last night. how do you do, miss winthrop?" then for two minutes peter talked, or rather listened, to that young lady, though sighing internally. then, _laus deo!_ up came the poor little chap, whom peter had libelled in age and affections, only ten minutes before, and set peter free. he turned to see how leonore's petard was progressing, to find her and pell deep in tennis. but just as he was going to expose his ignorance on that game, leonore said: "mr. pell, what do you think of the political outlook?" pell sighed internally, "you can read it in the papers," he said. "no. i want your opinion. especially about the great departure the democratic convention is going to make." "you mean in endorsing maguire?" leonore began to visibly swell in importance. "of course not," she said, contemptuously. "every one knows that that was decided against at the manhattan dinner. i mean the unusual resolution about the next senator." pell ceased to sigh. "i don't know what you mean?" he said. "not really?" said leonore incredulously, her nose cocking a little more airily. "i thought of course you would know about it. i'm so surprised!" pell looked at her half quizzingly, and half questioningly. "what is the resolution?" "naming a candidate for the vacancy for the senate." "nonsense," said pell, laughing. "the convention has nothing to do with the senators. the legislature elects them." he thought, "why can't women, if they will talk politics, at least learn the abc." "yes," said leonore, "but this is a new idea. the senate has behaved so badly, that the party leaders think it will be better to make it a more popular body by having the new york convention nominate a man, and then they intend to make the legislature elect him. if the other states will only follow new york's lead, it may make the senate respectable and open to public opinion." pell sniffed obviously. "in what fool paper did you read that?" "i didn't read it," said leonore, her eyes dancing with delight. "the papers are always behind the times. but i didn't think that you would be, since you are to be named in the resolution." pell looked at her blankly. "what do you mean?" "didn't you know that the convention will pass a resolution, naming you for next senator?" said leonore, with both wonder and pity in her face and voice. "who told you that?" said pell, with an amount of interest blended with doubt that was a decided contrast to a moment ago. "that's telling," said leonore. "you know, mr. pell, that one mustn't tell people who are outside the party councils everything." "i believe you are trying to stuff me," said pell, "if it is so, or anything like it, you wouldn't know." "oh," said leonore, tantalizingly, "i could tell you a great deal more than that. but of course you don't care to talk politics with a girl." pell weakened. "tell me who told you about it?" "i think we must go home to lunch," said leonore, turning to peter, who had enjoyed leonore's triumph almost as much as she had. "peter," said pell, "have you heard what miss d'alloi has been saying?" "part of it." "where can she have picked it up? "i met miss d'alloi at a lunch at the white house, last june," said peter seriously, "and she, and the president, and i, talked politics. politically, miss d'alloi is rather a knowing person. i hope you haven't been saying anything indiscreet, miss d'alloi?" "i'm afraid i have," laughed leonore, triumphantly, adding, "but i won't tell anything more." pell looked after them as they went towards the carriage. "how extraordinary!" he said. "she couldn't have it from peter. he tells nothing. where the deuce did she get it, and is it so?" then he said: "senator van brunt pell," with a roll on all the r's. "that sounds well. i wonder if there's anything in it?" "i think," said leonore to peter, triumphantly "that he would like to have talked politics. but he'll get nothing but torture from me if he tries." it began to dawn on peter that leonore did not, despite her frank manner, mean all she said. he turned to her, and asked: "are you really in earnest in saying that you'll refuse every man who asks you to marry him within five years?" leonore's triumph scattered to the four winds. "what an awfully impudent question," she thought, "after my saying it so often. what shall i answer?" she looked peter in the eye with severity. "i shan't refuse," she said, "because i shan't even let him speak. if any man dares to attempt it, i'll tell him frankly i don't care to listen." "she really means it," sighed peter internally. "why is it, that the best girls don't care to marry?" peter became very cross, and, what is worse, looked it. nor was leonore much better, "there," she said, "i knew just how it would be. he's getting sulky already. he isn't nice any more. the best thing will be to let him speak, for then he'll go back to new york, and won't bother me." the corners of her mouth drew away down, and life became very gray. so "the best of friends" rode home from the casino, without so much as looking at each other, much less speaking. clearly peter was right. there was no good in trying to be friends any longer. precedent or habit, however, was too strong to sustain this condition long. first leonore had to be helped out of the carriage. this was rather pleasant, for she had to give peter her hand, and so life became less unworth living to peter. then the footman at the door gave peter two telegraphic envelopes of the bulkiest kind, and leonore too began to take an interest in life again. "what are they about?" she asked. "the convention. i came off so suddenly that some details were left unarranged." "read them out loud," she said calmly, as peter broke the first open. peter smiled at her, and said: "if i do, will you give me another waltzing lesson after lunch?" "don't bargain," said leonore, disapprovingly. "very well," said peter, putting the telegrams in his pocket, and turning towards the stairs. leonore let him go up to the first landing. but as soon as she became convinced that he was really going to his room, she said, "peter." peter turned and looked down at the pretty figure at the foot of the stairs. he came down again. when he had reached the bottom he said, "well?" leonore was half angry, and half laughing. "you ought to want to read them to me," she said, "since we are such friends." "i do," said peter, "and you ought to want to teach me to waltz, since we are such friends." "but i don't like the spirit," said leonore. peter laughed. "nor i," he said. "still, i'll prove i'm the better, by reading them to you." "now i will teach him," said leonore to herself. peter unfolded the many sheets. "this is very secret, of course," he said. "yes." leonore looked round the hall as if she was a conspirator. "come to the window-seat upstairs," she whispered, and led the way. when they had ensconced themselves there, and drawn the curtains, she said, "now." "you had better sit nearer me," said peter, "so that i can whisper it." "no," said leonore. "no one can hear us." she thought, "i'd snub you for that, if i wasn't afraid you wouldn't read it." "you understand that you are not to repeat this to anyone." peter was smiling over something. leonore said, "yes," half crossly and half eagerly. so peter read: "use hudson knowledge counties past not belief local twenty imbecility certified of yet till yesterday noon whose malta could accurately it at seventeen. potomac give throw haymarket estimated moselle thirty-three to into fortify through jurist arrived down right--" "i won't be treated so!" interrupted leonore, indignantly. "what do you mean," said peter, still smiling. "i'm reading it to you, as you asked." "no you are not. you are just making up." "no," said peter. "it's all here." "let me see it." leonore shifted her seat so as to overlook peter. "that's only two pages," said peter, holding them so that leonore had to sit very close to him to see. "there are eighteen more." leonore looked at them. "was it written by a lunatic?" she asked. "no." peter looked at the end. "it's from green. remember. you are not to repeat it to any one." "luncheon is served, miss d'alloi," said a footman. "bother luncheon," thought peter. "please tell me what it means?" said leonore, rising. "i can't do that, till i get the key and decipher it." "oh!" cried leonore, clapping her hands in delight. "it's a cipher. how tremendously interesting! we'll go at it right after lunch and decipher it together, won't we?" "after the dancing lesson, you mean, don't you?" suggested peter. "how did you know i was going to do it?" asked leonore. "you told me." "never! i didn't say a word." "you looked several," said peter. leonore regarded him very seriously. "you are not 'peter simple' a bit," she said. "i don't like deep men." she turned and went to her room. "i really must be careful," she told the enviable sponge as it passed over her face, "he's a man who needs very special treatment. i ought to send him right back to new york. but i do so want to know about the politics. no. i'll keep friends till the campaign's finished. then he'll have to live in albany, and that will make it all right. let me see. he said the governor served three years. that isn't five, but perhaps he'll have become sensible before then." as for peter, he actually whistled during his ablutions, which was something he had not done for many years. he could not quite say why, but it represented his mood better than did his earlier growl. chapter lii. a guardian angel. peter had as glorious an afternoon as he had had a bad morning. first he danced a little. then the two sat at the big desk in the deserted library and worked together over those very complex dispatches till they had them translated. then they had to discuss their import. finally they had to draft answers and translate them into cipher. all this with their heads very close together, and an utter forgetfulness on the part of a certain personage that snubbing rather than politics was her "plan of campaign." but leonore began to feel that she was a political power herself, and so forgot her other schemes. when they had the answering dispatches fairly transcribed, she looked up at peter and said: "i think we've done that very well," in the most approving voice. "do you think they'll do as we tell them?" peter looked down into that dearest of faces, gazing at him so frankly and with such interest, so very near his, and wondered what deed was noble or great enough to win a kiss from those lips. several times that afternoon, it had seemed to him that he could not keep himself from leaning over and taking one. he even went so far now as to speculate on exactly what leonore would do if he did. fortunately his face was not given to expressing his thoughts. leonore never dreamed how narrow an escape she had. "if only she wouldn't be so friendly and confiding," groaned peter, even while absolutely happy in her mood. "i can't do it, when she trusts me so." "well," said leonore, "perhaps when you've done staring at me, you'll answer my question." "i think they'll do as we tell them," smiled peter. "but we'll get word to-morrow about dutchess and steuben. then we shall know better how the land lies, and can talk plainer." "will there be more ciphers, to-morrow?" "yes." to himself peter said, "i must write green and the rest to telegraph me every day." "now we'll have a cup of tea," said leonore. "i like politics." "then you would like albany," said peter, putting a chair for her by the little tea-table. "i wouldn't live in albany for the whole world," said leonore, resuming her old self with horrible rapidity. but just then she burnt her finger with the match with which she was lighting the lamp, and her cruelty vanished in a wail. "oh!" she cried. "how it hurts." "let me see," said peter sympathetically. the little hand was held up. "it does hurt," said leonore, who saw that there was a painful absence of all signs of injury, and feared peter would laugh at such a burn after those he had suffered. but peter treated it very seriously. "i'm sure it does," he said, taking possession of the hand. "and i know how it hurts." he leaned over and kissed the little thumb. then he didn't care a scrap whether leonore liked albany or not. "i won't snub you this time," said leonore to herself, "because you didn't laugh at me for it." peter's evening was not so happy. leonore told him as they rose from dinner that she was going to a dance. "we have permission to take you. do you care to go?" "yes. if you'll give me some dances." "i've told you once that i'll only give you the ones not taken by better dancers. if you choose to stay round i'll take you for those." "do you ever have a dance over?" asked peter, marvelling at such a possibility. "i've only been to one dance. i didn't have at that." "well," said peter, growling a little, "i'll go." "oh," said leonore, calmly, "don't put yourself out on my account." "i'm not," growled peter. "i'm doing it to please myself." then he laughed, so leonore laughed too. after a game of billiards they all went to the dance. as they entered the hall, peter heard his name called in a peculiar voice behind. he turned and saw dorothy. dorothy merely said, "peter!" again. but peter understood that explanations were in order. he made no attempt to dodge. "dorothy," he said softly, giving a glance at leonore, to see that she was out of hearing, "when you spent that summer with miss de voe, did ray come down every week?" "yes." "would he have come if you had been travelling out west?" "oh, peter," cried dorothy, below her breath, "i'm so glad it's come at last!" we hope our readers can grasp the continuity of dorothy's mental processes, for her verbal ones were rather inconsequent. "she's lovely," continued the verbal process. "and i'm sure i can help you." "i need it," groaned peter. "she doesn't care in the least for me, and i can't get her to. and she says she isn't going to marry for--" "nonsense!" interrupted dorothy, contemptuously, and sailed into the ladies' dressing-room. peter gazed after her. "i wonder what's nonsense?" he thought. dorothy set about her self-imposed task with all the ardor for matchmaking, possessed by a perfectly happy married woman. but dorothy evidently intended that leonore should not marry peter, if one can judge from the tenor of her remarks to leonore in the dressing-room. peter liked dorothy, and would probably not have believed her capable of treachery, but it is left to masculine mind to draw any other inference from the dialogue which took place between the two, as they prinked before a cheval glass. "i'm so glad to have peter here for this particular evening," said dorothy. "why?" asked leonore, calmly, in the most uninterested of tones. "because miss biddle is to be here. for two years i've been trying to bring those two together, so that they might make a match of it. they are made for each other." leonore tucked a rebellious curl in behind the drawn-back lock. then she said, "what a pretty pin you have." "isn't it? ray gave it to me," said dorothy, giving leonore all the line she wanted. "i've never met miss biddle," said leonore. "she's a great beauty, and rich. and then she has that nice philadelphia manner. peter can't abide the young-girl manner. he hates giggling and talking girls. it's funny too, because, though he doesn't dance or talk, they like him. but miss biddle is an older girl, and can talk on subjects which please him. she is very much interested in politics and philanthropy." "i thought," said leonore, fluffing the lace on her gown, "that peter never talked politics." "he doesn't," said dorothy. "but she has studied political economy. he's willing to talk abstract subjects. she's just the girl for a statesman's wife. beauty, tact, very clever, and yet very discreet. i'm doubly glad they'll meet here, for she has given up dancing, so she can entertain peter, who would otherwise have a dull time of it." "if she wants to," said leonore. "oh," said dorothy, "i'm not a bit afraid about that. peter's the kind of man with whom every woman's ready to fall in love. why, my dear, he's had chance after chance, if he had only cared to try. but, of course, he doesn't care for such women as you and me, who can't enter into his thoughts or sympathize with his ambitions. to him we are nothing but dancing, dressing, prattling flutter-birds." then dorothy put her head on one side, and seemed far more interested in the effect of her own frock than in peter's fate. "he talks politics to me," leonore could not help saying. leonore did not like dorothy's last speech. "oh, peter's such a gentleman that he always talks seriously even to us; but it's only his politeness. i've seen him talk to girls like you, and he is delightfully courteous, and one would think he liked it. but, from little things ray has told me, i know he looks down on society girls." "are you ready, leonore?" inquired mrs. d'alloi. leonore was very ready. watts and peter were ready also; had been ready during the whole of this dialogue. watts was cross; peter wasn't. peter would willingly have waited an hour longer, impatient only for the moment of meeting, not to get downstairs. that is the difference between a husband and a lover. "peter," said leonore, the moment they were on the stairs, "do you ever tell other girls political secrets?" dorothy was coming just behind, and she poked peter in the back with her fan. then, when peter turned, she said with her lips as plainly as one can without speaking: "say yes." peter looked surprised. then he turned to leonore and said, "no. you are the only person, man or woman, with whom i like to talk politics." "oh!" shrieked dorothy to herself. "you great, big, foolish old stupid! just as i had fixed it so nicely!" what dorothy meant is quite inscrutable. peter had told the truth. but, after the greetings were over, dorothy helped peter greatly. she said to him, "give me your arm, peter. there is a girl here whom i want you to meet." "peter's going to dance this valse with me," said leonore. and peter had two minutes of bliss, amateur though he was. then leonore said cruelly, "that's enough; you do it very badly!" when peter had seated her by her mother, he said: "excuse me for a moment. i want to speak to dorothy." "i knew you would be philandering after the young married women. men of your age always do," said leonore, with an absolutely incomprehensible cruelty. so peter did not speak to dorothy. he sat down by leonore and talked, till a scoundrelly, wretched, villainous, dastardly, low-born, but very good-looking fellow carried off his treasure. then he wended his way to dorothy. "why did you tell me to say 'yes'?" he asked. dorothy sighed. "i thought you couldn't have understood me," she said; "but you are even worse than i supposed. never mind, it's done now. peter, will you do me a great favor?" "i should like to," said peter. "miss biddle, of philadelphia, is here. she doesn't know many of the men, and she doesn't dance. now, if i introduce you, won't you try to make her have a good time?" "certainly," said peter, gloomily. "and don't go and desert her, just because another man comes up. it makes a girl think you are in a hurry to get away, and miss biddle is very sensitive. i know you don't want to hurt her feelings." all this had been said as they crossed the room. then: "miss biddle, let me introduce mr. stirling." peter sat down to his duty. "i mustn't look at leonore," he thought, "or i shan't be attentive." so he turned his face away from the room heroically. as for dorothy, she walked away with a smile of contentment. "there, miss," she remarked, "we'll see if you can trample on dear old peter!" "who's that girl to whom mr. stirling is talking?" asked leonore of her partner. "ah, that's the rich miss biddle, of philadelphia," replied the scoundrel, in very gentleman-like accents for one of his class. "they say she's never been able to find a man good enough for her, and so she's keeping herself on ice till she dies, in hopes that she'll find one in heaven. she's a great catch." "she's decidedly good-looking," said leonore. "think so? some people do. i don't. i don't like blondes." when leonore had progressed as far as her fourth partner, she asked: "what sort of a girl is that miss biddle?" "she's really stunning," she was told. "fellows are all wild about her. but she has an awfully snubbing way." "is she clever?" "is she? that's the trouble. she won't have anything to do with a man unless he's clever. look at her to-night! she got her big fish right off, and she's driven away every man who's come near her ever since. she's the kind of a girl that, if she decides on anything, she does it." "who's her big fish?" said leonore, as if she had not noticed. "that big fellow, who is so awfully exclusive--stirling. he doesn't think any people good enough for him but the pells, and miss de voe, and the ogdens. what they can see in him i can't imagine. i sat opposite him once at dinner, this spring, at the william pells, and he only said three things in the whole meal. and he was sitting next that clever miss winthrop." after the fifth dance, dorothy came up to leonore. "it's going beautifully," she said; "do you see how peter has turned his back to the room? and i heard a man say that miss biddle was freezing to every man who tried to interrupt them. i must arrange some affairs this week so that they shall have chances to see each other. you will help me?" "i'm very much engaged for this week," said leonore. "what a pity! never mind; i'll get peter. let me see. she rides beautifully. did peter bring his horses?" "one," said leonore, with a suggestion of reluctance in stating the fact. "i'll go and arrange it at once," said dorothy, thinking that peter might be getting desperate. "mamma," said leonore, "how old mrs. rivington has grown!" "i haven't noticed it, dear," said her mother. dorothy went up to the pair and said: "peter, won't you show miss biddle the conservatories! you know," she explained, "they are very beautiful." peter rose dutifully, but with a very passive look on his face. "and, peter," said dorothy, dolefully, "will you take me in to supper? i haven't found a man who's had the grace to ask me." "yes." "we'll sit at the same table," said dorothy to miss biddle. when peter got into the carriage that evening he was very blue. "i had only one waltz," he told himself, "and did not really see anything else of her the whole evening." "is that miss biddle as clever as people say she is?" asked mrs. d'alloi. "she is a very unusual woman," said peter, "i rarely have known a better informed one." peter's tone of voice carried the inference that he hated unusual and informed women, and as this is the case with most men, his voice presumably reflected his true thoughts. "i should say so," said watts. "at our little table she said the brightest things, and told the best stories. that's a girl as is a girl. i tried to see her afterwards, but found that peter was taking an italian lesson of her." "what do you mean?" asked mrs. d'alloi. "i have a chap who breakfasts with me three times a week, to talk italian, which i am trying to learn," said peter, "and dorothy told mrs. biddle, so she offered to talk in it. she has a beautiful accent and it was very good of her to offer, for i knew very little as yet, and don't think she could have enjoyed it." "what do you want with italian?" asked mrs. d'alloi. "to catch the italian vote," said peter. "oh, you sly-boots," said watts. then he turned. "what makes my dot so silent?" he asked. "oh," said leonore in weary tones, "i've danced too much and i'm very, very tired." "well," said watts, "see that you sleep late." "i shall be all right to-morrow," said leonore, "and i'm going to have an early horseback ride." "peter and i will go too," said watts. "i'm sorry," said peter. "i'm to ride with dorothy and miss biddle." "ha, ha," said watts. "more italian lessons, eh?" two people looked very cross that evening when they got to their rooms. leonore sighed to her maid: "oh, marie, i am so tired! don't let me be disturbed till it's nearly lunch." and peter groaned to nobody in particular, "an evening and a ride gone! i tried to make dorothy understand. it's too bad of her to be so dense." so clearly dorothy was to blame. yet the cause of all this trouble fell asleep peacefully, remarking to herself, just before she drifted into dreamland, "every man in love ought to have a guardian, and i'll be peter's." chapter liii. interference. when peter returned from his ride the next day, he found leonore reading the papers in the big hall. she gave him a very frigid "good-morning," yet instantly relaxed a little in telling him there was another long telegram for him on the mantel. she said nothing of his reading the despatch to her, but opened a new sheet of paper, and began to read its columns with much apparent interest. that particular page was devoted to the current prices of "cotton;" "coffee;" "flour;" "molasses;" "beans;" "butter;" "hogs;" "naval stores;" "ocean freights," and a large number of equally kindred and interesting subjects. peter took the telegram, but did not read it. instead he looked down at all of his pretty "friend" not sedulously hidden by the paper; he recognized that his friend had a distinctly "not-at-home" look, but after a moment's hesitation he remarked, "you don't expect me to read this alone?" silence. "because," continued peter, "it's an answer to those we wrote and sent yesterday, and i shan't dare reply it without your advice." silence. peter coolly put his hand on the paper and pushed it down till he could see leonore's face. when he had done that he found her fairly beaming. she tried to put on a serious look quickly, and looked up at him with it on. but peter said, "i caught you," and laughed. then leonore laughed. then they filled in the space before lunch by translating and answering the telegram. as soon as that meal was over, peter said, "now will you teach me waltzing again?" "no." "why not?" "i'm not going to spend time teaching a man to dance, who doesn't dance." "i was nearly wild to dance last night," said peter. "then why didn't you?" "dorothy asked me to do something." "i don't think much of men who let women control them." "i wanted to please dorothy" said peter, "i was as well off talking to one girl as to another. since you don't like my dancing, i supposed you would hardly choose to dance again with me, or ropes wouldn't have held me." "i can talk italian too," said leonore, with no apparent connection. "will you talk it with me?" said peter eagerly. "you see, there are a good many italians in the district, now, who by their ignorance and their not speaking english, are getting into trouble all the time. i want to learn, so as to help them, without calling in an interpreter." peter was learning to put his requests on grounds other than his own wishes. "yes," said leonore very sweetly, "and i'll give you another lesson in dancing. how did you enjoy your ride?" "i like dorothy," said peter, "and i like miss biddle. but i didn't get the ride i wanted." he got a very nice look from those slate-colored eyes. they set a music-box going, and peter's instruction began. when it was over, leonore said: "you've improved wonderfully." "well enough to dance with you?" "yes," said leonore. "i'll take pity on you unless you'd rather talk to some other girl." peter only smiled quietly. "peter," said leonore, later, as he was sipping his tea, "do you think i'm nothing but a foolish society flutterbird?" "do you want to know what i think of you?" asked peter, eagerly. "no," said leonore hastily. "but do you think of me as nothing but a society girl?" "yes," said peter, truth speaking in voice and face. the corners of leonore's mouth descended to a woeful degree. "i think you are a society girl," continued peter, "because you are the nicest kind of society." leonore fairly filled the room with her smile. then she said, "peter, will you do me a favor?" "yes." "will you tell dorothy that i have helped you translate cipher telegrams and write the replies?" peter was rather astonished, but said, "yes." but he did it very badly, leonore thought, for meeting dorothy the next day at a lawn party, after the mere greetings, he said: "dorothy, miss d'alloi has been helping me translate and write cipher telegrams." dorothy looked startled at the announcement for a moment. then she gave a glance at leonore, who was standing by peter, visibly holding herself in a very triumphant attitude. then she burst out into the merriest of laughs, and kept laughing. "what is it?" asked peter. "such a joke," gasped dorothy, "but i can't tell you." as for leonore, her triumphant manner had fled, and her cheeks were very red. and when some one spoke to dorothy, and took her attention, leonore said to peter very crossly: "you are so clumsy! of course i didn't mean that way." peter sighed internally. "i am stupid, i suppose," he said to himself. "i tried to do just what she asked, but she's displeased, and i suppose she won't be nice for the rest of the day. if it was only law or politics! but women!" but leonore didn't abuse him. she was very kind to him, despite her displeasure. "if dorothy would only let me alone," thought peter, "i should have a glorious time. why can't she let me stay with her when she's in such a nice mood. and why does she insist on my being attentive to her. i don't care for her. it seems as if she was determined to break up my enjoyment, just as i get her to myself." peter mixed his "hers" and "shes" too thoroughly in this sentence to make its import clear. his thoughts are merely reported verbatim, as the easiest way. it certainly indicates that, as with most troubles, there was a woman in it. peter said much this same thing to himself quite often during the following week, and always with a groan. dorothy was continually putting her finger in. yet it was in the main a happy time to peter. his friend treated him very nicely for the most part, if very variably. peter never knew in what mood he should find her. sometimes he felt that leonore considered him as the dirt under her little feet. then again, she could not be too sweet to him. there was an evening--a dinner--at which he sat between miss biddle and leonore when, it seemed to peter, leonore said and looked such nice things, that the millennium had come. yet the next morning, she told him that: "it was a very dull dinner. i talked to nobody but you." fortunately for peter, the d'allois were almost as new an advent in newport, so leonore was not yet in the running. but by the time peter's first week had sped, he found that men were putting their fingers in, as well as dorothy. morning, noon, and night they gathered. then lunches, teas, drives, yachts and innumerable other affairs also plunged their fingers in. peter did not yield to the superior numbers, he went wherever leonore went. but the other men went also, and understood the ropes far better. he fought on, but a sickening feeling began to creep over him of impending failure. it was soon not merely how leonore treated him; it was the impossibility of getting her to treat him at all. even though he was in the same house, it seemed as if there was always some one else calling or mealing, or taking tea, or playing tennis or playing billiards, or merely dropping in. and then leonore took fewer and fewer meals at home, and spent fewer and fewer hours there. one day peter had to translate those despatches all by himself! when he had a cup of tea now, even with three or four men about, he considered himself lucky. he understood at last what miss de voe had meant when she had spoken of the difficulty of seeing enough of a popular girl either to love her or to tell her of it. they prayed for rain in church on sunday, on account of the drought, and peter said "amen" with fervor. anything to end such fluttering. at the end of two weeks, peter said sadly that he must be going. "rubbish," said watts. "you are to stay for a month." "i hope you'll stay," said mrs. d'alloi. peter waited a moment for some one else to speak. some one else didn't. "i think i must," he said. "it isn't a matter of my own wishes, but i'm needed in syracuse." peter spoke as if syracuse was the ultimate of human misery. "is it necessary for you to be there?" asked leonore. "not absolutely, but i had better go." later in the day leonore said, "i've decided you are not to go to syracuse. i shall want you here to explain what they do to me." and that cool, insulting speech filled peter with happiness. "i've decided to stay another week," he told mrs. d'alloi. nor could all the appeals over the telegraph move him, though that day and the next the wires to newport from new york and syracuse were kept hot, the despatches came so continuously. two days after this decision, peter and leonore went to a cotillion. leonore informed him that: "mamma makes me leave after supper, because she doesn't like me to stay late, so i miss the nice part." "how many waltzes are you going to give me?" asked peter, with an eye to his one ball-room accomplishment. "i'll give you the first," said leonore, "and then if you'll sit near me, i'll give you a look every time i see a man coming whom i don't like, and if you are quick and ask me first, i'll give it to you." peter became absolutely happy. "how glad i am," he thought, "that i didn't go to syracuse! what a shame it is there are other dances than waltzes." but after peter had had two waltzes, he overheard his aged friend of fifteen years say something to a girl that raised him many degrees in his mind. "that's a very brainy fellow," said peter admiringly. "that never occurred to me!" so he waited till he saw leonore seated, and then joined her. "won't you sit out this dance with me?" he asked. leonore looked surprised. "he's getting very clever," she thought, never dreaming that peter's cleverness, like so many other people's nowadays, consisted in a pertinent use of quotations. parrot cleverness, we might term it. leonore listened to the air which the musicians were beginning, and finding it the lancers, or dreariest of dances, she made peter happy by assenting. "suppose we go out on the veranda," said peter, still quoting. "now of what are you going to talk?" said leonore, when they were ensconced on a big wicker divan, in the soft half light of the chinese lanterns. "i want to tell you of something that seems to me about a hundred years ago," said peter. "but it concerns myself, and i don't want to bore you." "try, and if i don't like it i'll stop you," said leonore, opening up a line of retreat worthy of a german army. "i don't know what you'll think about it," said peter, faltering a little. "i suppose i can hardly make you understand it, as it is to me. but i want you to know, because--well--it's only fair." leonore looked at peter with a very tender look in her eyes. he could not see it, because leonore sat so that her face was in shadow. but she could see his expression, and when he hesitated, with that drawn look on his face, leonore said softly: "you mean--about--mamma?" peter started. "yes! you know?" "yes," said leonore gently. "and that was why i trusted you, without ever having met you, and why i wanted to be friends." peter sighed a sigh of relief. "i've been so afraid of it," he said. "she told you?" "yes. that is, miss de voe told me first of your having been disappointed, so i asked mamma if she knew the girl, and then mamma told me. i'm glad you spoke of it, for i've wanted to ask you something." "what?" "if that was why you wouldn't call at first on us?" "no." "then why did mamma say you wouldn't call?" when peter made no reply, leonore continued, "i knew--that is i felt, there was something wrong. what was it?" "i can't tell you." "yes," said leonore, very positively. peter hesitated. "she thought badly of me about something, till i apologized to her." "and now?" "now she invites me to grey-court." "then it wasn't anything?" "she had misjudged me." "now, tell me what it was." "miss d'alloi, i know you do not mean it," said peter, "but you are paining me greatly. there is nothing in my whole life so bitter to me as what you ask me to tell." "oh, peter," said leonore, "i beg your pardon. i was very thoughtless!" "and you don't think the worse of me, because i loved your mother, and because i can't tell you?" said peter, in a dangerous tone. "no," said leonore, but she rose. "now we'll go back to the dancing." "one moment," begged peter. but leonore was already in the full light blazing from the room. "are you coming?" she said. "may i have this waltz?" said peter, trying to get half a loaf. "no," said leonore, "it's promised to mr. rutgers." just then mine host came up and said. "i congratulate you, mr. stirling." peter wanted to kick him, but he didn't. "i congratulate you," said another man. "on what?" peter saw no cause for congratulation, only for sorrow. "oh, peter," said dorothy, sailing up at this junction, "how nice! and such a surprise!" "why, haven't you heard?" said mine host. "oh," cried leonore, "is it about the convention?" "yes," said a man. "manners is in from the club and tells us that a despatch says your name was sprung on the convention at nine, and that you were chosen by acclamation without a single ballot being taken. every one's thunderstruck." "oh, no," said a small voice, fairly bristling with importance, "i knew all about it." every one laughed at this, except dorothy. dorothy had a suspicion that it was true. but she didn't say so. she sniffed visibly, and said, "nonsense. as if peter would tell you secrets. come, peter, i want to take you over and let miss biddle congratulate you." "peter has just asked me for this waltz," said leonore. "oh, mr. rutgers, i'm so sorry, i'm going to dance this with mr. stirling." and then peter felt he was to be congratulated. "i shan't marry him myself," thought leonore, "but i won't have my friends married off right under my nose, and you can try all you want, mrs. rivington." so peter's guardianship was apparently bearing fruit. yet man to this day holds woman to be the weaker vessel! chapter liv. obstinacy. the next morning peter found that his prayer for a rainy day had been answered, and came down to breakfast in the pleasantest of humors. "see how joyful his future excellency looks already," said watts, promptly recalling peter to the serious part of life. and fortunately too, for from that moment, the time which he had hoped to have alone (if _two_ ever can be alone), began to be pilfered from him. hardly were they seated at breakfast when pell dropped in to congratulate him, and from that moment, despite the rain, every friend in newport seemed to feel it a bounden duty to do the same, and to stay the longer because of the rain. peter wished he had set the time for the convention two days earlier or two days later. "i hope you won't ask any of these people to luncheon," peter said in an aside to mrs. d'alloi. "why?" he was asked. peter looked puzzled, and finally said weakly, "i--i have a good deal to do." and then as proper punishment for his misdemeanor, the footman announced dorothy and miss biddle, ray and ogden. dorothy sailed into the room with the announcement: "we've all come to luncheon if we are asked." "oh, peter," said ray, when they were seated at the table. "have you seen this morning's 'voice of labor?' no? good gracious, they've raked up that old verse in watts's class-song and print it as proof that you were a drunkard in your college days. here it is. set to music and headed 'saloon pete.'" "look here, ray, we must write to the 'voice' and tell them the truth," said watts. "never write to the paper that tells the lie," said peter, laughing. "always write to the one that doesn't. then it will go for the other paper. but i wouldn't take the trouble in this case. the opposition would merely say that: 'of course mr. stirling's intimate friends are bound to give such a construction to the song, and the attempt does them credit.'" "but why don't you deny it, peter?" asked leonore anxiously. "it's awful to think of people saying you are a drunkard!" "if i denied the untruths told of me i should have my hands full. nobody believes such things, except the people who are ready to believe them. they wouldn't believe otherwise, no matter what i said. if you think a man is a scoundrel, you are not going to believe his word." "but, peter," said mrs. d'alloi, "you ought to deny them for the future. after you and your friends are dead, people will go back to the newspapers, and see what they said about you, and then will misjudge you." "i am not afraid of that. i shall hardly be of enough account to figure in history, or if i become so, such attacks will not hurt me. why, washington was charged by the papers of his day, with being a murderer, a traitor, and a tyrant. and lincoln was vilified to an extent which seems impossible now. the greater the man, the greater the abuse." "why do the papers call you 'pete'?" asked leonore, anxiously. "i rather like peter, but pete is dreadful!" "to prove that i am unfit to be governor." "are you serious?" asked miss biddle. "yes. from their point of view, the dropping of the 'r' ought to convince voters that i am nothing but a tough and heeler." "but it won't!" declared leonore, speaking from vast experience. "i don't think it will. though if they keep at it, and really convince the voters who can be convinced by such arguments, that i am what they call me, they'll elect me." "how?" asked mrs. d'alloi. "because intelligent people are not led astray but outraged by such arguments, and ignorant people, who can be made to believe all that is said of me, by such means, will think i am just the man for whom they want to vote." "how is it possible that the papers can treat you so?" said watts. "the editors know you?" "oh, yes. i have met nearly every man connected with the new york press." "they must know better?" "yes. but for partisan purposes they must say what they do." "then they are deliberately lying to deceive the people?" asked miss biddle. "it's rather a puzzling matter in ethics," said peter. "i don't think that the newspaper fraternity have any lower standard of morals, than men in other professions. in the main they stand for everything that is admirable, so long as it's non-partisan, and some of the men who to-day are now writing me down, have aided me in the past more than i can say, and are at this moment my personal friends." "how dishonest!" "i cannot quite call it that. when the greatest and most honorable statesmen of europe and america will lie and cheat each other to their utmost extent, under cover of the term 'diplomacy,' and get rewarded and praised by their respective countries for their knavery, provided it is successful, i think 'dishonest' is a strong word for a merely partisan press. certain it is, that the partisan press would end to-morrow, but for the narrowness and meanness of readers." "which they cause," said ogden. "just as much," said peter, "as the saloon makes a drunkard, food causes hunger, and books make readers." "but, at least, you must acknowledge they've got you, when they say you are the saloon-keepers' friend," laughed watts. "yes. i am that--but only for votes, you understand." "mr. stirling, why do you like saloons?" asked miss biddle. "i don't like saloons. my wish is to see the day come, when such a gross form of physical enjoyment as tippling shall cease entirely. but till that day comes, till humanity has taught itself and raised itself, i want to see fair play." "what do you mean?" "the rich man can lay in a stock of wine, or go to a hotel or club, and get what he wants at any time and all times. it is not fair, because a man's pockets are filled with nickels instead of eagles, that he shall not have the same right. for that reason, i have always spoken for the saloon, and even for sunday openings. you know what i think myself of that day. you know what i think of wine. but if i claim the right to spend sunday in my way and not to drink, i must concede an equal right to others to do as they please. if a man wants to drink at any time, what right have i to say he shall not?" "but the poor man goes and makes a beast of himself," said watts. "there is as much champagne drunkenness as whisky drunkenness, in proportion to the number of drinkers of each. but a man who drinks champagne, is sent home in a cab, and is put to bed, while the man who can't afford that kind of drink, and is made mad by poisoned and doctored whisky, doctored and poisoned because of our heavy tax on it, must take his chance of arrest. that is the shameful thing about all our so-called temperance legislation. it's based on an unfair interference with personal liberty, and always discriminates in favor of the man with money. if the rich man has his club, let the poor man have his saloon." "how much better, though," said mrs. d'alloi, "to stop the sale of wine everywhere." "that is neither possible nor right. you can't strengthen humanity by tying its hands. it must be left free to become strong. i have thought much about the problem, and i see only one fair and practical means of bettering our present condition. but boss as the papers say i am, i am not strong enough to force it." "what is that, peter?" asked dorothy. "so long as a man drinks in such a way as not to interfere with another person's liberty we have no right to check him. but the moment he does, the public has a right to protect itself and his family, by restraining him, as it does thieves, or murderers, or wife-beaters. my idea is, that a license, something perhaps like our dog-license, shall be given to every one who applies for it. that before a man can have a drink, this license must be shown. then if a man is before the police court a second time, for drunkenness, or if his family petition for it, his license shall be cancelled, and a heavy fine incurred by any one who gives or sells that man a drink thereafter." "oh," laughed watts, "you are heavenly! just imagine a host saying to his dinner-party, 'friends, before this wine is passed, will you please show me your drink licenses.'" "you may laugh, watts," said peter, "but such a request would have saved many a young fellow from ruin, and society from an occasional terrible occurrence which even my little social experience has shown me. and it would soon be so much a matter of course, that it would be no more than showing your ticket, to prove yourself entitled to a ride. it solves the problem of drunkenness. and that is all we can hope to do, till humanity is--" then peter, who had been looking at leonore, smiled. "is what?" asked leonore. "the rest is in cipher," said peter, but if he had finished his sentence, it would have been, "half as perfect as you are." after this last relay of callers had departed, it began to pour so nobly that peter became hopeful once more. he wandered about, making a room-to-room canvass, in search of happiness, and to his surprise saw happiness descending the broad stair incased in an english shooting-cap, and a mackintosh. "you are not going out in such weather?" demanded peter. "yes. i've had no exercise to-day, and i'm going for a walk." "it's pouring torrents," expostulated peter. "i know it." "but you'll get wet through." "i hope so. i like to walk in the rain." peter put his hand on the front door-handle, to which this conversation had carried them, "you mustn't go out," he said. "i'm going," said leonore, made all the more eager now that it was forbidden. "please don't," said peter weakening. "let me pass," said leonore decisively. "does your father know?" "of course not." "then you should ask him. it's no weather for you to walk in." "i shan't ask him." "then i shall," and peter went hurriedly to the library. "watts," he said, "it's raining torrents and leonore insists on going to walk. please say she is not to go." "all right," said watts, not looking up from his book. that was enough. peter sped back to the hall. it was empty. he put his head into the two rooms. empty. he looked out of the front door. there in the distance, was that prettiest of figures, distinguishable even when buried in a mackintosh. peter caught up a cap from the hall rack, and set out in pursuit. leonore was walking rapidly, but it did not take peter many seconds to come up with her. "your father says you are not to go out." "i can't help it, since i am out," said leonore, sensibly. "but you should come back at once." "i don't care to," said leonore. "aren't you going to obey him?" "he never would have cared if you hadn't interfered. it's your orders, not his. so i intend to have my walk." "you are to come back," said peter. leonore stopped and faced him. "this is getting interesting," she thought. "we'll see who can be the most obstinate." aloud she said, "who says so?" "i do." "and i say i shan't." peter felt his helplessness. "please come back." leonore laughed internally. "i don't choose to." "then i shall have to make you." "how?" asked leonore. that was a conundrum, indeed. if it had been a knotty law point, peter would have been less nonplussed by it. leonore felt her advantage, and used it shamefully. she knew that peter was helpless, and she said, "how?" again, laughing at him. peter groped blindly. "i shall make you," he said again, for lack of anything better. "perhaps," said leonore, helping him out, though with a most insulting laugh in her voice and face, "you will get a string and lead me?" peter looked the picture of helplessness. "or you might run over to the goelets', and borrow their baby's perambulator," continued that segment of the spanish inquisition. if ever an irritating, aggravating, crazing, exasperating, provoking fretting enraging, "i dare you," was uttered, it was in leonore's manner as she said this. peter looked about hopelessly. "please hurry up and say how," leonore continued, "for i want to get down to the cliff walk. it's very wet here on the grass. perhaps you will carry me back? you evidently think me a baby in arms." "he's such fun to tease," was her thought, "and you can say just what you please without being afraid of his doing anything ungentlemanly." many a woman dares to torture a man for just the same reason. she was quite right as to peter. he had recognized that he was powerless; that he could not use force. he looked the picture of utter indecision. but as leonore spoke, a sudden change came over his face and figure. "leonore had said it was wet on the grass! leonore would wet her feet! leonore would take cold! leonore would have pneumonia! leonore would die!" it was a shameful chain of argument for a light of the bar, logic unworthy of a school-boy. but it was fearfully real to peter for the moment, and he said to himself: "i must do it, even if she never forgives me." then the indecision left his face, and he took a step forward. leonore caught her breath with a gasp. the "dare-you" look, suddenly changed to a very frightened one, and turning, she sped across the lawn, at her utmost speed. she had read something in peter's face, and felt that she must fly, however ignominious such retreat might be. peter followed, but though he could have caught her in ten seconds, he did not. as on a former occasion, he thought: "i'll let her get out of breath. then she will not be so angry. at least she won't be able to talk. how gracefully she runs!" presently, as soon as leonore became convinced that peter did not intend to catch her, she slowed down to a walk. peter at once joined her. "now," he said, "will you come back?" leonore was trying to conceal her panting. she was not going to acknowledge that she was out of breath since peter wasn't. so she made no reply. "you are walking in the wrong direction," said peter, laying his hand on her arm. then, since she made no reply, his hand encircled the arm, and he stopped. leonore took two more steps. then she too, curiously enough, halted. "stop holding me," she said, not entirely without betraying her breathlessness. "you are to come back," said peter. he got an awful look from those eyes. they were perfectly blazing with indignation. "stop holding me," she repeated. it was a fearful moment to peter. but he said, with an appeal in his voice, "you know i suffer in offending you. i did not believe that i could touch you without your consent. but your health is dearer to me than your anger is terrible. you must come home." so leonore, realizing that helplessness in a man exists only by his own volition, turned, and began walking towards the now distant house. peter at once released her arm, and walked beside her. not a glimpse did he get of those dear eyes. leonore was looking directly before her, and a grenadier could not have held himself straighter. if insulted dignity was to be acted in pantomime, the actor could have obtained some valuable points from that walk. peter walked along, feeling semi-criminal, yet semi-happy. he had saved leonore from an early grave, and that was worth while doing. then, too, he could look at her, and that was worth while doing. the run had made leonore's cheeks blaze, as peter's touch had made her eyes. the rain had condensed in little diamonds on her stray curls, and on those long lashes. it seemed to peter that he had never seen her lovelier. the longing to take her in his arms was so strong, that he almost wished she had refused to return. but then peter knew that she was deeply offended, and that unless he could make his peace, he was out of favor for a day at least. that meant a very terrible thing to him. a whole day of neglect; a whole day with no glimpse of these eyes; a whole day without a smile from those lips! peter had too much sense to say anything at once. he did not speak till they were back in the hall. leonore had planned to go straight to her room, but peter was rather clever, since she preceded him, in getting to the foot of the staircase so rapidly that he was there first. this secured him his moment for speech. he said simply: "miss d'alloi, i ask your forgiveness for offending you." leonore had her choice of standing silent, of pushing passed peter, or of speaking. if she had done the first, or the second, her position was absolutely impregnable. but a woman's instinct is to seek defence or attack in words rather than actions. so she said: "you had no right, and you were very rude." she did not look at peter. "it pained me far more than it could pain you." leonore liked peter's tone of voice, but she saw that her position was weakening. she said, "let me by, please." peter with reluctance gave her just room to pass. he felt that he had not said half of what he wished, but he did not dare to offend again. as it turned out, it was the best thing he could do, for the moment leonore had passed him, she exclaimed, "why! your coat's wringing wet." "that's nothing," said peter, turning to the voice. he found those big dark eyes at last looking at him, and looking at him without anger. leonore had stopped on the step above him. "that shows how foolish you were to go out in the rain," said leonore. "yes," said peter, venturing on the smallest smiles. leonore promptly explained the charge in peter's "yes." "it's very different," he was told. "i put on tips and a mackintosh. you didn't put on anything. and it was pouring torrents." "but i'm tough," said peter, "a wetting won't hurt me." "so am i," said leonore. "i've tramped for hours in the orkneys, and sweden and norway, when it was raining. but then i was dressed for it. go and put on dry clothes at once." that was what peter had intended to do, but he saw his advantage. "it isn't worth while," he said. "i never heard of such obstinacy," said leonore. "i pity your wife, if you ever get one. she'll have an awful time of it." peter did not like that view at all. but he did not forego at once his hope of getting some compensation out of leonore's wish. so he said: "it's too much trouble to change my clothes, but a cup of your tea may keep me from taking cold." it was nearly five, o'clock, and peter was longing for that customary half-hour at the tea-table. leonore said in the kindness of her heart, "when you've changed your clothes, i'll make you a cup." then she went upstairs. when she had reached the second floor, she turned, and leaning over the balustrade of the gallery, said, "peter." "yes," said peter, surveying her from below, and thinking how lovely she was. leonore was smiling saucily. she said in triumph: "i had my way. i did get my walk." then she went to her room, her head having a very victorious carriage. peter went to his room, smiling. "it's a good lawyer," he told his mirror, "who compromises just enough to make both sides think they've won." peter changed his clothes with the utmost despatch, and hurried downstairs to the tea-table. she was not there! peter waited nearly five minutes quietly, with a patience almost colossal. then he began to get restless. he wandered about the room for another two minutes. then he became woe-begone. "i thought she had forgiven me," he remarked. "what?" said the loveliest of visions from the doorway. most women would have told one that the beauty lay in the parisian tea-gown. peter knew better. still, he was almost willing to forgive leonore the delay caused by the donning of it, the result was so eminently satisfactory. "and it will take her as long to make tea as usual, anyway," he thought. "hadn't i better put some rum into it to-day?" he was asked, presently. "you may put anything in it, except the sugar tongs," said peter, taking possession of that article. "but then i can't put any sugar in." "fingers were made before forks," suggested peter. "you don't want to give me anything bitter, do you?" "you deserve it," said leonore, but she took the lumps in her fingers, and dropped them in the cup. "i can't wait five years!" thought peter, "i can't wait five months--weeks--days--hours--minutes--sec----" watts saved peter from himself by coming in here. "hello! here you are. how cosy you look. i tried to find you both a few minutes ago, but thought you must have gone to walk after all. here, peter. here's a special delivery letter, for which i receipted a while ago. give me a cup, dot." peter said, "excuse me," and, after a glance at the envelope, opened the letter with a sinking sensation. he read it quickly, and then reached over and rang the bell. when the footman came, peter rose and said something in a low voice to him. then he came back to his tea. "nothing wrong, i hope," asked watts. "yes. at least i am called back to new york," said peter gloomily. "bother," said watts. "when?" "i shall leave by the night express." "nonsense. if it was so important as that, they'd have wired you." "it isn't a matter which could be telegraphed." "what is it, peter?" said leonore, putting her finger in. "it's confidential." so leonore did not ask again. but when the tea was finished, and all had started upstairs, leonore said, "peter," on the landing. when peter stopped, she whispered, "why are you going to new york?" "i can't tell you," said peter. "yes, you can, now that papa isn't here." "no." "yes. i know it's politics, and you are to tell me." "it isn't politics." "then what is it?" "you really want to know?" "of course." "it's something really confidential." leonore gave peter one look of insulted dignity, and went upstairs to her room. "he's different," she said. "he isn't a bit afraid of displeasing me any more. i don't know what to do with him." peter found jenifer waiting. "only pack the grip," he said. "i hope to come back in a few days." but he looked very glum, and the glumness stuck to him even after he had dressed and had descended to dinner. "i am leaving my traps," he told mrs. d'alloi. "for i hope to be back next week." "next week!" cried watts. "what has been sprung on you that will take you that long?" "it doesn't depend on me, unfortunately," said peter, "or i wouldn't go." when the carriage was announced later, peter shook hands with watts and mrs. d'alloi, and then held out his hand to leonore. "good-bye," he said. "are you going to tell me why you are going?" said that young lady, with her hands behind her, in the prettiest of poses. "no." "then i shan't say good-bye." "i cannot tell you," said peter, quietly; "please say good-bye." "no." that refusal caused peter gloom all the way to the station. but if leonore could have looked into the future she would have seen in her refusal the bitterest sorrow she had ever known. chapter lv. oaths. as soon as peter was on the express he went into the smoking cabin of the sleeping-car, and lighting a cigar, took out a letter and read it over again. while he was still reading it, a voice exclaimed: "good! here's peter. so you are in it too?" ogden continued, as ray and he took seats by peter. "i always did despise anarchists and nihilists," sighed ray, "since i was trapped into reading some of those maudlin russian novels, with their eighth-century ideas grafted on nineteenth-century conditions. baby brains stimulated with whisky." ogden turned to peter. "how serious is it likely to be, colonel?" "i haven't any idea," replied peter, "the staff is of the opposite party now, and i only have a formal notification to hold my regiment in readiness. if it's nothing but this socialist and anarchist talk, there is no real danger in it." "why not?" "this country can never be in danger from discontent with our government, for it's what the majority want it to be, or if not, it is made so at the next election. that is the beauty of a democracy. the majority always supports the government. we fight our revolutions with ballots, not with bullets." "yet most says that blood must be shed." "i suppose," said peter, "that he has just reached the stage of intelligence which doctors had attained when they bled people to make them strong." "what can you do with such a fellow's talk? you can't argue with him," said ogden. "talk!" muttered ray, "don't dignify it with that word. gibberish!" "no?" said peter, "it's too earnest to deserve that name. the man can't express himself, but way down underneath all the absurd talk of 'natural monopolies,' and of 'the oppression of the money-power,' there lies a germ of truth, without which none of their theories would have a corporal's guard of honest believers. we have been working towards that truth in an unsystematic way for centuries, but we are a long way from it, and till we solve how to realize it, we shall have ineffectual discontent." "but that makes the whole thing only the more arrant nonsense," grumbled ray. "it's foolish enough in all conscience sake, if they had a chance of success, but when they haven't any, why the deuce do they want to drag us poor beggars back from newport?" "why did rome insist on burning while nero fiddled?" queried peter smiling. "we should hear nothing of socialism and anarchy if newport and the like had no existence." "i believe at heart you're a socialist yourself," cried ray. "no danger," laughed ogden; "his bank account is too large. no man with peter's money is ever a socialist" "you forget," said ray, "that peter is always an exception to the rule." "no," said peter. "i disagree with socialists entirely both in aims and methods, but i sympathize with them, for i see the fearful problems which they think their theories will solve, and though i know how mistaken they are, i cannot blame them, when i see how seriously and honestly they believe in, and how unselfishly they work for, their ideas. don't blame the socialists, for they are quite as conscientious as were the abolitionists. blame it to the lack of scientific education, which leaves these people to believe that theories containing a half truth are so wholly true that they mean the regeneration and salvation of society." "i suppose you are right," sighed ray, "for you've thought of it, and i haven't. i don't want to, either. i thank the lord i'm not as serious as you, graveyard. but if you want to air your theory, i'll lend you my ears, for friendship's sake. i don't promise to remember." peter puffed his cigar for a moment "i sometimes conclude," he said, "that the people who are most in need of education, are the college-bred men. they seem to think they've done all the work and study of their life in their four years, and so can dissipate mentally ever after." but peter smiled as he said this and continued, more seriously: "society and personal freedom are only possible in conjunction, when law or public opinion interferes to the degree of repressing all individual acts that interfere with the freedom of others; thus securing the greatest individual freedom to all. so far as physical force is concerned, we have pretty well realized this condition. because a man is strong he can no longer take advantage of the weak. but strength is not limited to muscle. to protect the weak mind from the strong mind is an equal duty, and a far more difficult task. so far we have only partially succeeded. in this difficulty lies the whole problem. socialism, so far as it attempts to repress individualism, and reduce mankind to an evenness opposed to all natural laws, is suicidal of the best in favor of mediocrity. but so far as it attempts to protect that mediocrity and weakness from the superior minds of the best, it is only in line with the laws which protect us from murder and robbery. you can't expect men of the most variety, however, to draw such distinctions." "i do wish they would settle it, without troubling me," groaned ray. "lispenard's right. a man's a fool who votes, or serves on a jury, or joins a regiment. what's the good of being a good citizen, when the other fellow won't be? i'm sick of being good for nothing." "have you just discovered that?" laughed ogden. "you're progressing." "no," said ray, "i am good for one thing. like a good many other men i furnish the raw material on which the dearest of women may lavish her affection. heigh-ho! i wish i was before the fire with her now. it's rather rough to have visits to one's wife cut short in this way." peter rose. "i am going to get some sleep, for we don't know what's before us, and may not have much after to-night. but, ray, there's a harder thing than leaving one's wife at such a time." "what's that, peter?" asked ray, looking at peter with surprise. "to know that there is no one to whom your going or return really matters." peter passed out of the cabin. "by george!" said ray, "if it wasn't peter, i'd have sworn there was salt water in his eyes." "anneke has always insisted that he was lonely. i wonder if she's right?" ogden queried. "if he is, why the deuce does he get off in those solitary quarters of his?" "ray," said ogden, "i have a sovereign contempt for a man who answers one question with another." peter reached the city at six the next morning, and, despite the hour, began his work at once. he made a number of calls in the district, holding whispered dialogues with men; who, as soon as peter was gone, hurried about and held similar conversations with other men; who promptly went and did the same to still others. while they were doing this, peter drove uptown, and went into dickel's riding academy. as he passed through the office, a man came out. "ah, mr. stirling. good-morning." "good-morning, mr. byrnes," said peter. "how serious is it likely to be?" "we can't say yet. but the force has all it can do now to handle the anarchists and unemployed, and if this strike takes place we shall need you." peter passed into another room where were eight men. "good-morning, colonel," said one. "you are prompt." "what is the trouble?" "the central has decided to make a general reduction. they put it in force at noon to-day, and are so certain that the men will go out, that they've six hundred new hands ready somewhere to put right in." "byrnes tells me he has all he can do." "yes. we've obtained the governor's consent to embody eight regiments. it isn't only the strike that's serious, but this parade of the unemployed to-morrow, and the meeting which the anarchists have called in the city hall. byrnes reports a very ugly feeling, and buying of arms." "it's rather rough on you, stirling," spoke up a man, "to have it come while you are a nominee." peter smiled, and passed into the room beyond. "good-morning, general canfield," he said. "i have taken the necessary steps to embody my regiment. are there any further orders?" "if we need you, we shall put you at the central station," the officer replied; "so, if you do not know the lay of the land, you had better familiarize yourself at once." "general canfield," said peter, "my regiment has probably more sympathizers with the strikers than has any other in the city. it could not be put in a worse place." "are you objecting to orders?" said the man, in a sharp decisive voice. "no," replied peter. "i am stating a fact, in hopes that it may prevent trouble." the man and peter looked each other in the eye. "you have your orders," said the man, but he didn't look pleased or proud. peter turned and left the room, looking very grave. he look his cab and went to his quarters. he ate a hurried breakfast, and then went down into the streets. they seemed peaceably active as he walked through them. a small boy was calling an extra, but it was in reference to the arrival of a much-expected racing-yacht. there was nothing to show that a great business depression rested with crushing weight on the city, and especially on the poor; that anarchy was lifting its head, and from hungering for bread was coming to hunger for blood and blaze; that capital and labor were preparing to lock arms in a struggle which perhaps meant death and destruction. the armory door was opened only wide enough to let a man squeeze through, and was guarded by a keeper. peter passed in, however, without question, and heard a hum of voices which showed that if anarchy was gathering, so too was order. peter called his officers together, and gave a few orders. then he turned and whispered for a moment with dennis. "they don't put us there, sir!" exclaimed dennis. "yes." "are they mad?" "they've given us the worst job, not merely as a job, but especially for the regiment. perhaps they won't mind if things do go wrong." "yez mean?" "what will people say of me on november fourth, if my regiment flunks on september thirtieth?" "arrah musha dillah!" cried dennis. "an' is that it?" "i'm afraid so. will the men stand by me?" "oi'll make them. yez see," shouted dennis, "oi'll tell the b'ys they are tryin' to put yez in a hole, an' they'll stan' by yez, no matter what yez are told to do." as quickly as possible peter put on his fatigue uniform. when he came out, it was to find that the rank and file had done the same, and were now standing in groups about the floor. a moment later they were lined up. peter stepped forward and said in a clear, ringing voice: "before the roll is called i wish to say a word. we may receive orders any moment to take possession of the buildings and switches at the central station, to protect the property and operators of that road. this will be hard to some of you, who believe the strikers are right. but we have nothing to do with that. we have taken our oath to preserve order and law, and we are interested in having it done, far more than is the capitalist, for he can buy protection, whether laws are enforced or not, while the laboring man cannot. but if any man here is not prepared to support the state in its duty to protect the life and property of all, by an enforcement of the laws, i wish to know it now." peter stood a moment waiting, and then said, "thank you, men." the roll-call was made, and peter sent off a line to headquarters, stating that his regiment, with only eighteen reported "missing" was mustered and ready for further orders. then the regiment broke ranks, and waited. just as two o'clock struck a despatch was handed peter. a moment later came the rap of the drum, and the men rose from the floor and fell in. a few sharp, quick words were passed from mouth to mouth. guns rose to the shoulders with a click and a movement almost mechanical. the regiment swung from a long straight line into companies, the door rolled open, and without a sound, except the monotonous pound of the regular tread, the regiment passed into the street. at the corner they turned sharply, and marched up a side street, so narrow that the ranks had to break their lines to get within the curbs. so without sound of drum or music they passed through street after street. a regiment is thrilling when it parades to music: it is more so when it marches in silence. presently it passed into a long tunnel, where the footfall echoed in a startling way. but as it neared the other end, a more startling sound could be heard. it was a low murmur, as of many voices, and of voices that were not pleasant. peter's wisdom in availing himself of the protection and secrecy of the tunnel as an approach became obvious. a moment later, as the regiment debouched from the tunnel's mouth, the scene broke upon them. a vast crowd filled fourth avenue and forty-second street. filled even the cut of the entrance to the tunnel. an angry crowd, judging from the sounds. a sharp order passed down the ranks, and the many broad lines melted into a long-thin one again, even as the regiment went forward. it was greeted with yells, and bottles and bricks were hurled from above it, but the appearance of the regiment had taken the men too much by surprise for them to do more. the head entered the mob, and seemed to disappear. more and more of the regiment was swallowed up. finally, except to those who could trace the bright glint of the rifle-barrels, it seemed to have been submerged. then even the rifles disappeared. the regiment had passed through the crowd, and was within the station. peter breathed a sigh of relief. to march up fifth avenue, with empty guns, in a parade, between ten thousand admiring spectators is one thing. to march between ten thousand angry strikers and their sympathizers, with ball cartridges in the rifles, is quite another. it is all the difference between smoking a cigar after dinner, and smoking one in a powder magazine. the regiment's task had only just begun, however. peter had orders to clear the streets about the station. after a consultation with the police captain, the companies were told off, and filing out of the various doors, they began work. peter had planned his debouchments so as to split the mob into sections, knowing that each fragment pushed back rendered the remainder less formidable. first a sally was made from the terminal station, and after two lines of troops had been thrown across forty-second street, the second was ordered to advance. thus a great tongue of the mob, which stretched towards third avenue, was pressed back, almost to that street, and held there, without a quarter of the mob knowing that anything was being done. then a similar operation was repeated on forty-third street and forty-fourth street, and possession was taken of madison avenue. another wedge was driven into the mob and a section pushed along forty-second, nearly to fifth avenue. then what was left of the mob was pushed back from the front of the building down park avenue. again peter breathed more freely. "i think the worst is done," he told his officers. "fortunately the crowd did not expect us, and was not prepared to resist. if you can once split a mob, so that it has no centre, and can't get together again, except by going round the block, you've taken the heart out of it" as he said this a soldier came up, and saluting, said: "captain moriarty orders me to inform you that a committee of the strikers ask to see you, colonel." peter followed the messenger. he found a couple of sentries marking a line. on one side of this line sat or reclined company d. and eight policemen. on the other stood a group of a dozen men, and back of them, the crowd. peter passed the sentry line, and went up to the group. three were the committee. the rest were the ubiquitous reporters. from the newspaper report of one of the latter we quote the rest: "you wish to see me?" asked colonel stirling. "yes, colonel," said chief potter. "we are here to remonstrate with you." "we've done nothing yet," said doggett, "and till we had, the troops oughtn't to have been called in." "and now people say that the scabs are to be given a regimental escort to the depot, and will go to work at eight." "we've been quiet till now," growled a man in the crowd surlily, "but we won't stand the militia protecting the scabs and rats." "are you going to fight for the capitalist?" ask kurfeldt, when colonel stirling stood silent. "i am fighting no man's battle, kurfeldt," replied colonel stirling. "i am obeying orders." the committee began to look anxious. "you're no friend of the poor man, and you needn't pose any more," shouted one of the crowd. "shut your mouth," said kurfeldt to the crowd. "colonel stirling," he continued, "we know you're our friend. but you can't stay so if you fight labor. take your choice. be the rich man's servant, or our friend." "i know neither rich man nor poor man in this," colonel stirling said. "i know only the law." "you'll let the scabs go on?" "i know no such class. if i find any man doing what the law allows him to do, i shall not interfere. but i shall preserve order." "will you order your men to fire on us?" "if you break the laws." "do it at your peril," cried potter angrily. "for every shot your regiment fires, you'll lose a thousand votes on election day." colonel stirling turned on him, his face blazing with scorn. "votes," he cried. "do you think i would weigh votes at such a time? there is no sacrifice i would not make, rather than give the order that ends a human life; and you think that paper ballots can influence my action? votes compared to men's lives!" "oh," cried doggett, "don't come the heavy nobility racket on us. we are here for business. votes is votes, and you needn't pretend you don't think so." colonel stirling was silent for a moment. then he said calmly: "i am here to do my duty, not to win votes. there are not votes enough in this country to make me do more or less." "hear him talk," jeered one of the crowd, "and he touting round the saloons to get votes." the crowd jeered and hissed unpleasantly. "come, colonel," said kurfeldt, "we know you're after votes this year, and know too much to drive them away. you ain't goin' to lose fifty thousand votes, helpin' scabs to take the bread away from us, only to see you and your party licked." "no," shouted a man in the crowd. "you don't dare monkey with votes!" colonel stirling turned and faced the crowd. "do you want to know how much i care for votes," he called, his head reared in the air. "speak up loud, sonny," shouted a man far back in the mass, "we all want to hear." colonel stirling's voice rang quite clear enough, "votes be damned!" he said, and turning on his heel, strode back past the sentries. and the strikers knew the fate of their attempt to keep out the scabs. colonel stirling's "damn" had damned the strike as well as the votes. dead silence fell on the committee and crowd. even company d. looked astounded. finally, however, one of the committee said, "there's no good wasting time here." then a reporter said to a confrère, "what a stunning headline that will make?" then the captain of company d. got his mouth closed enough to exclaim, "oi always thought he could swear if he tried hard. begobs, b'ys, it's proud av him we should be this day. didn't he swear strong an' fine like? howly hivens! it's a delight to hear damn said like that." for some reason that "swear-word" pleased new york and the country generally, showing that even an oath has its purpose in this world, so long as it is properly used. dean swift said a lie "was too good to be lavished about." so it is of profanity. the crowd understood peter's remark as they would have understood nothing else. they understood that besides those rifles and bayonets there was something else not to be trifled with. so in this case, it was not wasted. and mr. bohlmann, christian though he was, as he read his paper that evening cried, "och! dod beder stirling he always does say chust der righd ding!" chapter lvi. cui bono? of the further doings of that day it seems hardly necessary to write, for the papers recorded it with a fulness impossible here. the gathering crowds. the reinforcement of the militia. the clearing and holding of forty-second street to the river. the arrival of the three barge-loads of "scabs." their march through that street to the station safely, though at every cross street greeted with a storm of stones and other missiles. the struggle of the mob at the station to force back the troops so as to get at the "rats." the impact of the "thin line" and that dense seething mass of enraged, crazed men. the yielding of the troops from mere pressure. the order to the second rank to fix bayonets. the pushing back of the crowd once more. the crack of a revolver. then the dozen shots fired almost simultaneously. the great surge of the mob forward. the quick order, and the rattle of guns, as they rose to the shoulder. another order, and the sheet of flame. the great surge of the mob backwards. then silence. silence in the ranks. silence in the mob. silence in those who lay on the ground between the two. capital and labor were disagreed as to a ten per cent reduction of wages, and were trying to settle it. at first blush capital had the best of it. "only a few strikers and militia-men killed," was the apparent result of that struggle. the scabs were in safety inside the station, and trains were already making up, preparatory to a resumption of traffic. but capital did not go scot-free. "firing in the streets of new york," was the word sent out all over the world, and on every exchange in the country, stocks fell. capital paid twenty-five million dollars that day, for those few ounces of lead. such a method of settlement seems rather crude and costly, for the last decade of the nineteenth century. boys all over the city were quickly crying extras of the "labor-party" organ, the first column of which was headed: butcher stirling the nominee of the democratic party shoots down unarmed men in cold blood. this was supplemented by inflammatory broadsides. men stood up on fences, lamp-posts, or barrels, wherever they could get an audience, and shrieked out invectives against police, troops, government, and property; and waved red flags. orders went out to embody more regiments. timid people retired indoors, and bolted their shutters. the streets became deserted, except where they were filled by groups of angry men listening to angrier speakers. it was not a calm night in new york. yet in reality, the condition was less serious, for representatives of capital, labor, and government were in consultation. inside the station, in the directors' room of the railroad, its officials, a committee of the strikers, and an officer in fatigue uniform, with a face to match, were seated in great leather-covered chairs, around a large table. when they had first gathered, there had been dark brows, and every sentence had been like the blow of flint on steel. at one moment all but the officer had risen from their seats, and the meeting had seemed ended. but the officer had said something quietly, and once more they had seated themselves. far into the night they sat, while mobs yelled, and sentries marched their beats. when the gathering ended, the scowls were gone. civil partings were exchanged, and the committee and the officer passed out together. "that stirling is a gritty bull-dog for holding on, isn't he?" said one of the railroad officials. "it's a regular surrender for us." "yes, but we couldn't afford to be too obstinate with him, for he may be the next governor." one of the committee said to the officer as they passed into the street, "well, we've given up everything to the road, to please you. i hope you'll remember it when you're governor and we want things done." "gentlemen," said peter, "for every surrender of opinion you and the railroad officials have made to-night, i thank you. but you should have compromised twelve hours sooner." "so as you should not have had to make yourself unpopular?" asked kurfeldt. "you needn't be afraid. you've done your best for us. now we'll do our best for you." "i was not thinking of myself. i was thinking of the dead," said peter. peter sent a despatch to headquarters and went the rounds to see if all was as it should be. then spreading his blanket in the passenger waiting-room, he fell asleep, not with a very happy look on the grave face. but the morning-papers announced that the strike was ended by a compromise, and new york and the country breathed easier. peter did not get much sleep, for he was barely dreaming of--of a striker, who had destroyed his peace, by striking him in the heart with a pair of slate-colored eyes--when a hand was placed on his shoulder. he was on his feet before the disturber of his dreams could speak. "a despatch from headquarters," said the man. peter broke it open. it said: "take possession of printing-house square, and await further orders." in ten minutes the regiment was tramping through the dark, silent streets, on its way to the new position. "i think we deserve a rest," growled the lieutenant-colonel to peter. "we shan't get it," said peter, "if there's anything hard to be done, we shall have it." then he smiled. "you'll have to have an understanding hereafter, before you make a man colonel, that he shan't run for office." "what are we in for now?" "i can't say. to-day's the time of the parade and meeting in city hall park." it was sunrise when the regiment drew up in the square facing the park. it was a lovely morning, with no sign of trouble in sight, unless the bulletin boards of the newspapers, which were chiefly devoted to the doings about the central station, could be taken as such. except for this, the regiment was the only indication that the universal peace had not come, and even this looked peaceful, as soon as it had settled down to hot coffee, bread and raw ham. in the park, however, was a suggestive sight. for not merely were all the benches filled with sleeping men, but the steps of the city hall, the grass, and even the hard asphalt pavement were besprinkled with a dirty, ragged, hungry-looking lot of men, unlike those usually seen in the streets of new york. when the regiment marched into the square, a few of the stragglers rose from their recumbent attitudes, and looked at it, without much love in their faces. as the regiment breakfasted, more and more rose from their hard beds to their harder lives. they moved about restlessly, as if waiting for something. some gathered in little groups and listened to men who talked and shrieked far louder than was necessary in order that their listeners should hear. some came to the edge of the street and cursed and vituperated the breakfasting regiment. some sat on the ground and ate food which they produced from their pockets or from paper bundles. it was not very tempting-looking food. yet there were men in the crowd who looked longingly at it, and a few scuffles occurred in attempts to get some. that crowd represented the slag and scum of the boiling pot of nineteenth-century conditions. and as the flotsam on a river always centres at its eddies, so these had drifted, from the country, and from the slums, to the centre of the whirlpool of american life. here they were waiting. waiting for what? the future only would show. but each moment is a future, till it becomes the present. while the regiment still breakfasted it became conscious of a monotonous sound, growing steadily in volume. then came the tap of the drum, and the regiment rose from a half-eaten meal, and lined up as if on parade. several of the members remarked crossly: "why couldn't they wait ten minutes?" the next moment the head of another regiment swung from chambers street into the square. it was greeted by hisses and groans from the denizens of the park, but this lack of politeness was more than atoned for, by the order: "present arms," passed down the immovable line awaiting it. after a return salute the commanding officers advanced and once more saluted. "in obedience to orders from headquarters, i have the honor to report my regiment to you, colonel stirling, and await your orders," said the officer of the "visiting" regiment, evidently trying not to laugh. "let your men break ranks, and breakfast, major rivington," said peter. in two minutes dandy and mick were mingled, exchanging experiences, as they sliced meat off the same ham-bones and emptied the same cracker boxes. what was more, each was respecting and liking the other. one touch of danger is almost as efficacious as one touch of nature. it is not the differences in men which make ill-feeling or want of sympathy, it is differences in conditions. in the mean time, peter, ray and ogden had come together over their grub, much as if it was a legal rather than an illegal trouble to be dealt with. "where were you?" asked peter. "at the sixty-third street terminals," said ray. "we didn't have any fun at all. as quiet as a cow. you always were lucky! excuse me, peter, i oughtn't to have said it," ray continued, seeing peter's face. "it's this wretched american trick of joking at everything." ogden, to change the subject, asked: "did you really say 'damn'?" "yes." "but i thought you disapproved of cuss words." "i do. but the crowd wouldn't believe that i was honest in my intention to protect the substitutes. they thought i was too much of a politician to dare to do it. so i swore, thinking they would understand that as they would not anything else. i hoped it might save actual firing. but they became so enraged that they didn't care if we did shoot." just then one of the crowd shrieked, "down with the blood-suckers. on to freedom. freedom of life, of property, of food, of water, of air, of land. destroy the money power!" "if we ever get to the freedom he wants," said ray, "we'll utilize that chap for supplying free gas." "splendid raw material for free soap," said ogden. "he's not the only one," said ray. "i haven't had a wash in nine hours, and salt meats are beginning to pall." "there are plenty of fellows out there will eat it for you, ray," said peter, "and plenty more who have not washed in weeks." "it's their own fault." "yes. but if you burn or cut yourself, through ignorance, that doesn't make the pain any the less." "they don't look like a crowd which could give us trouble." "they are just the kind who can. they are men lifted off their common sense, and therefore capable of thinking they can do anything, just as john brown expected to conquer virginia with forty men." "but there's no danger of their getting the upper hand." "no. yet i wish we had orders to clear the park now, while there are comparatively few here, or else to go back to our armories, and let them have their meeting in peace. our being here will only excite them." "hear that," said ray, as the crowd gave a great roar as another regiment came up park place, across the park and spread out so as to cover broadway. as they sat, new yorkers began to rise and begin business. but many seemed to have none, and drifted into the park. some idlers came from curiosity, but most seemed to have some purpose other than the mere spectacle. from six till ten they silted in imperceptibly from twenty streets. as fast as the crowd grew, regiments appeared, and taking up positions, lay at ease. there was something terrible about the quiet way in which both crowd and troops increased. the mercury was not high, but it promised to be a hot morning in new york. all the car lines took off their cars. trucks disappeared from the streets. the exchanges and the banks closed their doors, and many hundred shops followed their example. new york almost came to a standstill as order and anarchy faced each other. while these antagonistic forces still gathered, a man who had been yelling to his own coterie of listeners in that dense crowd, extracted himself, and limped towards peter. "mr. stirling," he shouted, "come out from those murderers. i want to tell you something." peter went forward. "what is it, podds?" he asked. podds dropped his voice. "we're out for blood to-day. but i don't want yours, if you do murder my fellow-men. get away from here, quick. hide yourself before the people rise in their might." peter smiled sadly. "how are mrs. podds and the children?" he asked kindly. "what is a family at such a moment?" shrieked podds. "the world is my family. i love the whole world, and i'm going to revolutionize it. i'm going to give every man his rights. the gutters shall reek with blood, and every plutocrat's castle shall be levelled to the soil. but i'll spare you, for though you are one of the classes, it's your ignorance, not your disposition, that makes you one. get away from here. get away before it's too late." just then the sound of a horse's feet was heard, and a staff officer came cantering from a side street into the square. he saluted peter and said, "colonel stirling, the governor has issued a proclamation forbidding the meeting and parade. general canfield orders you to clear the park, by pushing the mob towards broadway. the regiments have been drawn in so as to leave a free passage down the side streets." "don't try to move us a foot," screamed podds, "or there'll be blood. we claim the right of free meeting and free speech." even as he spoke, the two regiments formed, stiffened, fixed bayonets, and moved forward, as if they were machines rather than two thousand men. "brethren," yelled podds, "the foot of the tyrant is on us. rise. rise in your might." then podds turned to find the rigid line of bayonets close upon him. he gave a spring, and grappled with peter, throwing his arms about peter's neck. peter caught him by the throat with his free arm. "don't push me off," shrieked podds in his ear, "it's coming," and he clung with desperate energy to peter. peter gave a twist with his arm. he felt the tight clasp relax, and the whole figure shudder. he braced his arm for a push, intending to send podds flying across the street. but suddenly there was a flash, as of lightning. then a crash. then the earth shook, cobble-stones, railroad tracks, anarchists, and soldiers, rose in the air, leaving a great chasm in crowd and street. into that chasm a moment later, stones, rails, anarchists, and soldiers fell, leaving nothing but a thick cloud of overhanging dust. underneath that great dun pall lay soldier and anarchist, side by side, at last at peace. the one died for his duty, the other died for his idea. the world was none the better, but went on unchanged. chapter lvii happiness the evening on which peter had left grey-court, leonore had been moved "for sundry reasons" to go to her piano and sing an english ballad entitled "happiness." she had sung it several times, and with gusto. the next morning she read the political part of the papers. "i don't see anything to have taken him back," she said "but i am really glad, for he was getting hard to manage. i couldn't send him away, but now i hope he'll stay there." then leonore fluttered all day, in the true newport style, with no apparent thought of her "friend." but something at a dinner that evening interested her. "i'm ashamed," said the hostess, "of my shortage of men. marlow was summoned back to new york last night, by business, quite unexpectedly, and mr. dupont telegraphed me this afternoon that he was detained there." "it's curious," said dorothy. "mr. rivington and my brother came on tuesday expecting to stay for a week, but they had special delivery letters yesterday, and both started for new york. they would not tell me what it was." "mr. stirling received a special delivery, too," said leonore, "and started at once. and he wouldn't tell." "how extraordinary!" said the hostess. "there must be something very good at the roof-gardens." "it has something to do with headwears," said leonore, not hiding her light under a bushel. "headwear?" said a man. "yes," said leonore. "i only had a glimpse of the heading, but i saw 'headwears n.g.s.n.y.'" a sudden silence fell, no one laughing at the mistake. "what's the matter?" asked leonore. "we are wondering what will happen," said the host, "if men go in for headwear too." "they do that already," said a man, "but unlike women, they do it on the inside, not the outside of the head." but nobody laughed, and the dinner seemed to drag from that moment. leonore and dorothy had come together, and as soon as they were in their carriage, leonore said, "what a dull dinner it was?" "oh, leonore," cried dorothy, "don't talk about dinners. i've kept up till now, bu--" and dorothy's sentence melted into a sob. "is it home, mrs. rivington?" asked the tiger, sublimely unconscious, as a good servant should be, of this dialogue, and of his mistress's tears. "no, portman, the club," sobbed dorothy. "dorothy," begged leonore, "what is it?" "don't you understand?" sobbed dorothy. "all this fearful anarchist talk and discontent? and my poor, poor darling! oh, don't talk to me." dorothy became inarticulate once more. "how foolish married women are!" thought leonore, even while putting her arm around dorothy, and trying blindly to comfort her. "is it a message, mrs. rivington?" asked the man, opening the carriage-door. "ask for mr. melton, or mr. duer, and say mrs. rivington wishes to see one of them." dorothy dried her eyes, and braced up. before leonore had time to demand an explanation, peter's gentlemanly scoundrel was at the door. "what is it, mrs. rivington?" he asked. "mr. duer, is there any bad news from new york?" "yes. a great strike on the central is on, and the troops have been called in to keep order." "is that all the news?" asked dorothy. "yes." "thank you," said dorothy. "home, portman." the two women were absolutely silent during the drive. but they kissed each other in parting, not with the peck which women so often give each other, but with a true kiss. and when leonore, in crossing the porch, encountered the mastiff which peter had given her, she stopped and kissed him too, very tenderly. what is more, she brought him inside, which was against the rules, and put him down before the fire. then she told the footman to bring her the evening-papers, and sitting down on the rug by bêtise, proceeded to search them, not now for the political outlook, but for the labor troubles. leonore suddenly awoke to the fact that there were such things as commercial depressions and unemployed. she read it all with the utmost care. she read the outpourings of the anarchists, in a combination of indignation, amazement and fear, "i never dreamed there could be such fearful wretches!" she said. there was one man--a fellow named podds--whom the paper reported as shrieking in union square to a select audience: "rise! wipe from the face of the earth the money power! kill! kill! only by blood atonement can we lead the way to better things. to a universal brotherhood of love. down with rich men! down with their paid hirelings, the troops! blow them in pieces!" "oh!" cried leonore shuddering. "it's fearful. i wish some one would blow you in pieces!" thereby was she proving herself not unlike podds. all humanity have something of the anarchist in them. then leonore turned to the mastiff and told him some things. of how bad the strikers were, and how terrible were the anarchists. "yes, dear," she said, "i wish we had them here, and then you could treat them as they deserve, wouldn't you, bêtise? i'm so glad he has my luck-piece!" a moment later her father and another man came into the hall from the street, compelling leonore to assume a more proper attitude. "hello, dot!" said watts. "still up? vaughan and i are going to have a game of billiards. won't you score for us?" "yes," said leonore. "bad news from new york, isn't it?" said vaughan, nonchalantly, as he stood back after his first play. leonore saw her father make a grimace at vaughan, which vaughan did not see. she said, "what?" "i missed," said watts. "your turn, will." "tell me the news before you shoot?" said leonore. "the collision of the strikers and the troops." "was any one hurt?" asked leonore, calmly scoring two to her father's credit. "yes. eleven soldiers and twenty-two strikers." "what regiment was it?" asked leonore. "colonel stirling's," said vaughan, making a brilliant _massé_. "fortunately it's a mick regiment, so we needn't worry over who was killed." leonore thought to herself: "you are as bad every bit as podds!" aloud she said, "did it say who were killed?" "no. the dispatch only said fourteen dead." "that was a beautiful shot," said leonore. "you ought to run the game out with that position. i think, papa, that i'll go to bed. i find i'm a little tired. good-night, mr. vaughan." leonore went upstairs, slowly, deep in thought. she did not ring for her maid. on the contrary she lay down on her bed in her dinner-gown, to its everlasting detriment. "i know he isn't hurt," she said, "because i should feel it. but i wish the telegram had said." she hardly believed herself, apparently, for she buried her head in the pillow, and began to sob quietly. "if i only had said good-bye," she moaned. early the next morning watts found leonore in the hall. "how pale my dot is!" he exclaimed. "i didn't sleep well," said leonore. "aren't you going to ride with me?" "no. i don't feel like it this morning," said leonore. as watts left the hall, a servant entered it. "i had to wait, miss d'alloi," he said. "no papers are for sale till eight o'clock." leonore took the newspaper silently and went to the library. then she opened it and looked at the first column. she read it hurriedly. "i knew he wasn't hurt," she said, "because i would have felt it, and because he had my luck piece." then she stepped out of one of the windows, called bêtise to her, and putting her arms about his neck, kissed him. when the new york papers came things were even better, for they recorded the end of the strike. leonore even laughed over that big, big d. "i can't imagine him getting so angry," she said "he must have a temper, after all." she sang a little, as she fixed the flowers in the vases, and one of the songs was "happiness." nor did she snub a man who hinted at afternoon tea, as she had a poor unfortunate who suggested tennis earlier in the day. while they were sipping their tea, however, watts came in from the club. "helen," he said, going to the bay window farthest from the tea-table, "come here i want to say something." they whispered for a moment, and then mrs. d'alloi came back to her tea. "won't you have a cup, papa?" asked leonore. "'not to-day, dear," said watts, with an unusual tenderness in his voice. leonore was raising a spoon to her mouth, but suddenly her hand trembled a little. after a glance at her father and mother, she pushed her tea-cup into the centre of the table as if she had finished it, though it had just been poured. then she turned and began to talk and laugh with the caller. but the moment the visitor was out of the room, leonore said: "what is it, papa?" watts was standing by the fire. he hesitated. then he groaned. then he went to the door. "ask your mother," he said, and went out of the room. "mamma?" said leonore. "don't excite yourself, dear," said her mother. "i'll tell you to-morrow." leonore was on her feet. "no," she said huskily, "tell me now." "wait till we've had dinner." "mamma," cried leonore, appealingly, "don't you see that--that--that i suffer more by not knowing it? tell me." "oh, leonore," cried her mother, "don't look that way. i'll tell you; but don't look that way!" "what?" mrs. d'alloi put her arms about leonore. "the anarchists have exploded a bomb." "yes?" said leonore. "and it killed a great many of the soldiers." "not--?" "yes." "thank you, mamma," said leonore. she unclasped her mother's arms, and went towards the door. "leonore," cried her mother, "stay here with me, dear." "i'd rather be alone," said leonore, quietly. she went upstairs to her room and sank down by an ottoman which stood in the middle of the floor. she sat silent and motionless, for over an hour, looking straight before her at nothing, as peter had so often done. is it harder to lose out of life the man or woman whom one loves, or to see him or her happy in the love of another. is the hopelessness of the impossible less or greater than the hopelessness of the unattainable? finally leonore rose, and touched her bell. when her maid came she said, "get me my travelling dress." ten minutes later she came into the library, saying to watts. "papa, i want you to take me to new york, by the first train." "are you crazy, my darling?" cried watts. "with riots and anarchists all over the city." "i must go to new york," said leonore. "if you won't take me, i'll go with madame." "not for a moment--" began watts. "papa," cried leonore, "don't you see it's killing me? i can't bear it--" and leonore stopped. "yes, watts, we must," said mrs. d'alloi. two hours later they were all three rolling towards new york. it was a five hours' ride, but leonore sat the whole distance without speaking, or showing any consciousness of her surroundings. for every turn of those wheels seemed to fall into a rhythmic repetition of: "if i had only said 'good-bye.'" the train was late in arriving, and watts tried to induce leonore to go to a hotel for the night. she only said "no. take me to him," but it was in a voice which watts could not disregard. so after a few questions at the terminal, which produced no satisfactory information, watts told the cabman to drive to the city hall park. they did not reach it, however, for at the corner of centre street and chambers, there came a cry of "halt," and the cab had to stop. "you can't pass this line," said the sentry. "you must go round by broadway." "why?" asked watts. "the street is impassable." watts got out, and held a whispered dialogue with the sentry. this resulted in the summoning of the officer of the watch. in the mean time leonore descended and joined them. watts turned and said to her: "the sentry says he's here." presently an officer came up. "an' what do the likes av yez want at this time av night?" he inquired crossly. "go away wid yez." "oh, captain moriarty," said leonore, "won't you let me see him? i'm miss d'alloi." "shure," said dennis, "yez oughtn't to be afther disturbin' him. it's two nights he's had no sleep." leonore suddenly put her hand on dennis's arm. "he's not killed?" she whispered, as if she could not breathe, and the figure swayed a little. "divil a bit! they got it wrong entirely. it was that dirty spalpeen av a podds." "are you sure?" said leonore, pleadingly. "you are not deceiving me?" "begobs," said dennis, "do yez think oi could stand here wid a dry eye if he was dead?" leonore put her head on dennis's shoulder, and began to sob softly. for a moment dennis looked aghast at the results of his speech, but suddenly his face changed. "shure," he whispered, "we all love him just like that, an that's why the blessed virgin saved him for us." then leonore, with tears in her eyes, said, "i felt it," in the most joyful of voices. a voice that had a whole _te deum_ in it. "won't you let me see him?" she begged. "i won't wake him, i promise you." "that yez shall," said dennis. "will yez take my arm?" the four passed within the lines. "step careful," he continued. "there's pavin' stones, and rails, and plate-glass everywheres. it looks like there'd been a primary itself." all thought that was the best of jokes and laughed. they passed round a great chasm in the street and sidewalk. then they came to long rows of bodies stretched on the grass, or rather what was left of the grass, in the park. leonore shuddered. "are they all dead?" she whispered. "dead! shurely not. it's the regiment sleepin'," she was told. they passed between these rows for a little distance. "this is him," said dennis, "sleepin' like a babby." dennis turned his back and began to describe the explosion to mrs. d'alloi and watts. there, half covered with a blanket, wrapped in a regulation great coat, his head pillowed on a roll of newspapers, lay peter. leonore knelt down on the ground beside him, regardless of the proprieties or the damp. she listened to hear if he was breathing, and when she found that he actually was, her face had on it a little thanksgiving proclamation of its own. then with the prettiest of motherly manners, she softly pulled the blanket up and tucked it in about his arms. then she looked to see if there was not something else to do. but there was nothing. so she made more. "the poor dear oughtn't to sleep without something on his head. he'll take cold." she took her handkerchief and tried to fix it so that it should protect peter's head. she tried four different ways, any one of which would have served; but each time she thought of a better way, and had to try once more. she probably would have thought of a fifth, if peter had not suddenly opened his eyes. "oh!" said leonore, "what a shame? i've waked you up. and just as i had fixed it right." peter studied the situation calmly, without moving a muscle. he looked at the kneeling figure for some time. then he looked up at the arc light a little distance away. then he looked at the city hall clock. then his eyes came back to leonore. "peter," he said finally, "this is getting to be a monomania. you must stop it." "what?" said leonore, laughing at his manner as if it was intended as a joke. peter put out his hand and touched leonore's dress. then he rose quickly to his feet. "what is the matter?" he asked. "hello," cried watts. "have you come to? well. here we are, you see. all the way from newport to see you in fragments, only to be disappointed. shake!" peter said nothing for a moment. but after he had shaken hands, he said, "it's very good of you to have thought of me." "oh," explained leonore promptly, "i'm always anxious about my friends. mamma will tell you i am." peter turned to leonore, who had retired behind her mother. "such friends are worth having," he said, with a strong emphasis on "friends." then leonore came out from behind her mother. "'how nice he's stupid," she thought. "he is peter simple, after all." "well," said watts, "'your friends are nearly dying with hunger and want of sleep, so the best thing we can do, since we needn't hunt for you in scraps, is to go to the nearest hotel. where is that?" "you'll have to go uptown," said peter. "nothing down here is open at this time." "i'm not sleepy," said leonore, "but i am so hungry!" "serves you right for eating no din--" watts started to say, but leonore interjected, in an unusually loud voice. "can't you get us something?" "nothing; that will do for you, i'm afraid," said peter. "i had dennett send up one of his coffee-boilers so that the men should have hot coffee through the night, and there's a sausage-roll man close to him who's doing a big business. but they'll hardly serve your purpose." "the very thing," cried watts. "what a lark!" "i can eat anything," said leonore. so they went over to the stands. peter's blanket was spread on the sidewalk, and three newport swells, and the democratic nominee for governor sat upon it, with their feet in the gutter, and drank half-bean coffee and ate hot sausage rolls, made all the hotter by the undue amount of mustard which the cook would put in. what is worse, they enjoyed it as much as if it was the finest of dinners. would not society have been scandalized had it known of their doings? how true it is that happiness is in a mood rather than in a moment. how eagerly we prepare for and pursue the fickle sprite, only to find our preparations and chase giving nothing but dullness, fatigue, and ennui. but then how often without exertion or warning, the sprite is upon us, and tinges the whole atmosphere. so it was at this moment, with two of the four. the coffee might have been all beans, and yet it would have been better than the best served in viennese cafés. the rolls might have had even a more weepy amount of mustard, and yet the burning and the tears would only have been the more of a joke. the sun came up, as they ate, talked and laughed, touching everything about them with gold, but it might have poured torrents, and the two would have been as happy. for leonore was singing to herself: "he isn't dead. he isn't dead." and peter was thinking: "she loves me. she must love me." chapter lviii. gifts. after the rolls and coffee had been finished, peter walked with his friends to their cab. it had all been arranged that they were to go to peter's quarters, and get some sleep. these were less than eight blocks away, but the parting was very terrific! however, it had to be done, and so it was gone through with. hard as it was, peter had presence of mind enough to say, through the carriage window. "you had better take my room, miss d'alloi, for the spare room is the largest. i give you the absolute freedom of it, minus the gold-box. use anything you find." then peter went back to the chaotic street and the now breakfasting regiment, feeling that strikes, anarchists, and dynamite were only minor circumstances in life. about noon leonore came back to life, and succeeded in making a very bewitching toilet despite the absence of her maid. whether she peeped into any drawers or other places, is left to feminine readers to decide. if she did, she certainly had ample authority from peter. this done she went into the study, and, after sticking her nose into some of the window flowers, she started to go to the bookshelves. as she walked her foot struck something which rang with a metallic sound, as it moved on the wood floor. the next moment, a man started out of a deep chair. "oh!" was all leonore said. "i hope i didn't startle you. you must have kicked my sword." "i--i didn't know you were here!" leonore eyed the door leading to the hall, as if she were planning for a sudden flight. "the regiment was relieved by another from albany this morning. so i came up here for a little sleep." "what a shame that i should have kept you out of your room," said leonore, still eyeing the door. from leonore's appearance, one would have supposed that she had purloined something of value from his quarters, and was meditating a sudden dash of escape with it. "i don't look at it in that light," said peter. "but since you've finished with the room for the moment, i'll borrow the use temporarily. strikers and anarchists care so little for soap and water themselves, that they show no consideration to other people for those articles." peter passed through the doorway towards which leonore had glanced. then leonore's anxious look left her, and she no longer looked at the door. one would almost have inferred that leonore was afraid of peter, but that is absurd, since they were such good friends, since leonore had come all the way from newport to see him, and since leonore had decided that peter must do as she pleased. yet, curiously enough, when peter returned in about twenty minutes, the same look came into leonore's face. "we shall have something to eat in ten minutes," peter said, "for i hear your father and mother moving." leonore looked towards the door. she did not intend that peter should see her do it, but he did. "now what shall we do or talk about?" he said. "you know i am host and mustn't do anything my guests don't wish." peter said this in the most matter-of-fact way, but leonore, after a look from under her eyelashes at him, stopped thinking about the door. she went over to one of the window-seats. "come and sit here by me," she said, "and tell me everything about it." so peter described "the war, and what they fought each other for," as well as he was able, for, despite his intentions, his mind would wander as those eyes looked into his. "i am glad that podds was blown to pieces!" said leonore. "don't say that." "why?" "because it's one of those cases of a man of really good intentions, merely gone wrong. he was a horse-car driver, who got inflammatory rheumatism by the exposure, and was discharged. he suffered fearful pain, and saw his family suffer for bread. he grew bitter, and took up with these wild theories, not having enough original brain force, or education, to see their folly. he believed firmly in them. so firmly, that when i tried to reason him out of them many years ago he came to despise me and ordered me out of his rooms. i had once done him a service, and felt angered at what i thought ungrateful conduct, so i made no attempt to keep up the friendliness. he knew yesterday that dynamite was in the hands of some of those men, and tried to warn me away. when i refused to go, he threw himself upon me, to protect me from the explosion. nothing else saved my life." "peter, will your regiment have to do anything more?" "i don't think so. the dynamite has caused a reaction, and has driven off the soberer part of the mob. the pendulum, when it swings too far, always swings correspondingly far the other way. i must stay here for a couple of days, but then if i'm asked, i'll go back to newport." "papa and mamma want you, i'm sure," said leonore, glancing at the door again, after an entire forgetfulness. "then i shall go," said peter, though longing to say something else. leonore looked at him and said in the frankest way; "and i want you too." that was the way she paid peter for his forbearance. then they all went up on the roof, where in one corner there were pots of flowers about a little table, over which was spread an awning. over that table, too, jenifer had spread himself. how good that breakfast was! what a glorious september day it was! how beautiful the view of the city and the bay was! it was all so thoroughly satisfactory, that the three nearly missed the "limited." of course peter went to the station with them, and, short as was the time, he succeeded in obtaining for one of the party, "all the comic papers," "the latest novel," a small basket of fruit, and a bunch of flowers, not one of which, with the exception of the latter, the real object of these attentions wanted in the least. just here it is of value to record an interesting scientific discovery of leonore's, because women so rarely have made them. it was, that the distance from new york to newport is very much less than the distance from newport to new york. curiously enough, two days later, his journey seemed to peter the longest railroad ride he had ever taken. "his friend" did not meet him this time. his friend felt that her trip to new york must be offset before she could resume her proper self-respect. "he was very nice," she had said, in monologue, "about putting the trip down to friendship. and he was very nice that morning in his study. but i think his very niceness is suspicious, and so i must be hard on him!" a woman's reasoning is apt to seem defective, yet sometimes it solves problems not otherwise answerable. leonore found her "hard" policy harder than she thought for. she told peter the first evening that she was going to a card-party. "i can't take you," she said. "i shall be all the better for a long night's sleep," said peter, calmly. this was bad enough, but the next morning, as she was arranging the flowers, she remarked to some one who stood and watched her, "miss winthrop is engaged. how foolish of a girl in her first season! before she's had any fun, to settle down to dull married life." she had a rose in her hand, prepared to revive peter with it, in case her speech was too much for one dose, but when she glanced at him, he was smiling happily. "what is it?" asked leonore, disapprovingly. "i beg your pardon," said peter. "i wasn't listening. did you say miss winthrop was married?" "what were you smiling over?" said leonore, in the same voice. "i was thinking of--of--." then peter hesitated and laughed. "of what?" asked leonore. "you really mustn't ask me," laughed peter. "of what were you thinking?" "of eyelashes," confessed peter. "it's terrible!" cogitated leonore, "i can't snub him any more, try as i may." in truth, peter was not worrying any longer over what leonore said or did to him. he was merely enjoying her companionship. he was at once absolutely happy, and absolutely miserable. happy in his hope. miserable in its non-certainty. to make a paradox, he was confident that she loved him, yet he was not sure. a man will be absolutely confident that a certain horse will win a race, or he will be certain that a profit will accrue from a given business transaction. yet, until the horse has won, or the profit is actually made, he is not assured. so it was with peter. he thought that he had but to speak, yet dared not do it. the present was so certain, and the future might have such agonies. so for two days he merely followed leonore about, enjoying her pretty ways and hardly heeding her snubs and petulance. he was very silent, and often abstracted, but his silence and abstraction brought no relief to leonore, and only frightened her the more, for he hardly let her out of his sight, and the silent devotion and tenderness were so obvious that leonore felt how absolutely absurd was her pretence of unconsciousness. in his very "miss d'alloi" now, there was a tone in his voice and a look in his face which really said the words: "my darling." leonore thought this was a mean trick, of apparently sustaining the conventions of society, while in reality outraging them horribly, but she was helpless to better his conduct. twice unwittingly he even called her "leonore" (as he had to himself for two months), thereby terribly disconcerting the owner of that name. she wanted to catch him up and snub him each time, but she was losing her courage. she knew that she was walking on a mine, and could not tell what chance word or deed of hers would bring an explosion. "and then what can i say to him?" she asked. what she said was this: peter came downstairs the third evening of his stay "armed and equipped as the law directs" for a cotillion. in the large hallway, he found leonore, likewise in gala dress, resting her hand on the tall mantel of the hall, and looking down at the fire. peter stopped on the landing to enjoy that pose. he went over every detail with deliberation. but girl, gown, and things in general, were much too tempting to make this distant glimpse over lengthy. so he descended to get a closer view. the pose said nothing, and peter strolled to the fire, and did likewise. but if he did not speak he more than made up for his silence with his eyes. finally the pose said, "i suppose it's time we started?" "some one's got to speak," the pose had decided. evidently the pose felt uneasy under that silent gaze. "it's only a little past ten," said peter, who was quite satisfied with the _status quo_. then silence came again. after this had held for a few moments, the pose said: "do say something!" "something," said peter. "anything else i can do for you?" "unless you can be more entertaining, we might as well be sitting in the purdies' dressing-rooms, as standing here. suppose we go to the library and sit with mamma and papa?" clearly the pose felt nervous. peter did not like this idea. so he said: "i'll try to amuse you. let me tell you something very interesting to me. it's my birthday to-morrow." "oh!" said leonore. "why didn't you tell me sooner? then i would have had a gift for you." "that's what i was afraid of." "don't you want me to give you something?" "yes." then peter's hands trembled, and he seemed to have hard work in adding, "i want you to give me--a kiss." "peter!" said leonore, drawing back grieved and indignant. "i didn't think you would speak to me so. of all men!" "you mustn't think," said peter, "that i meant to pain you." "you have," said leonore, almost ready to cry. "because," said peter, "that isn't what i meant." peter obviously struggled to find words to say what he did mean as he had never struggled over the knottiest of legal points, or the hardest of wrestling matches. "if i thought you were a girl who would kiss a man for the asking, i should not care for a kiss from you." peter strayed away from the fire uneasily. "but i know you are not." peter gazed wildly round, as if the furnishings, of the hall might suggest the words for which he was blindly groping. but they didn't, and after one or two half-begun sentences, he continued: "i haven't watched you, and dreamed about you, and loved you, for all this time, without learning what you are." peter roamed about the great hall restlessly. "i know that your lips will never give what your heart doesn't." then his face took a despairing look, and he continued quite rapidly: "i ask without much hope. you are so lovely, while i--well i'm not a man women care for. i've tried to please you. tried to please you so hard, that i may have deceived you. i probably am what women say of me. but if i've been otherwise with you it is because you are different from any other woman in the world." here the sudden flow of words ended, and peter paced up and down, trying to find what to say. if any one had seen peter as he paced, without his present environment, he would have thought him a man meditating suicide. suddenly his voice and face became less wild, and he said tenderly: "there is no use in my telling you how i love you. you know it now, or will never learn it from anything i can say." peter strode back to the fire. "it is my love which asks for a kiss. and i want it for the love you will give with it, if you can give it." leonore had apparently kept her eyes on the blazing logs during the whole of this monologue. but she must have seen something of peter's uneasy wanderings about the room, for she had said to herself: "poor dear! he must be fearfully in earnest, i never knew him so restless. he prowls just like a wild animal." a moment's silence came after peter's return to the fire. then he said: "will you give it to me, miss d'alloi?" but his voice in truth, made the words, "give me what i ask, my darling." "yes," said leonore softly. "on your birthday." then leonore shrank back a little, as if afraid that her gift would be sought sooner. no young girl, however much she loves a man, is quite ready for that first kiss. a man's lips upon her own are too contrary to her instinct and previous training to make them an unalloyed pleasure. the girl who is over-ready for her lover's first kiss, has tasted the forbidden fruit already, or has waited over-long for it. peter saw the little shrinking and understood it. what was more, he heeded it as many men would not have done. perhaps there was something selfish in his self-denial, for the purity and girlishness which it indicated were very dear to him, and he hated to lessen them by anything he did. he stood quietly by her, and merely said, "i needn't tell you how happy i am!" leonore looked up into peter's face. if leonore had seen there any lack of desire to take her in his arms and kiss her, she would never have forgiven him. but since his face showed beyond doubt that he was longing to do it, leonore loved him all the better for his repression of self, out of regard for her. she slipped her little hand into peter's confidingly, and said, "so am i." it means a good deal when a girl does not wish to run away from her lover the moment after she has confessed her love. so they stood for some time, leonore looking down into the fire, and peter looking down at leonore. finally peter said, "will you do me a great favor?" "no," said leonore, "i've done enough for one night. but you can tell me what it is." "will you look up at me?" "what for?" said leonore, promptly looking up. "i want to see your eyes," said peter. "why?" asked leonore, promptly looking down again. "well," said peter, "i've been dreaming all my life about some eyes, and i want to see what my dream is like in reality." "that's a very funny request," said leonore perversely. "you ought to have found out about them long ago. the idea of any one falling in love, without knowing about the eyes!" "but you show your eyes so little," said peter. "i've never had a thoroughly satisfying look at them." "you look at them every time i look at you," said leonore. "sometimes it was very embarrassing. just supposing that i showed them to you now, and that you find they aren't what you like?" "i never waste time discussing impossibilities," said peter. "are you going to let me see them?" "how long will it take?" "i can tell better after i've seen them," said peter, astutely. "i don't think i have time this evening," said leonore, still perversely, though smiling a look of contentment down into the fire. peter said nothing for a moment, wishing to give leonore's conscience a chance to begin to prick. then be ended the silence by saying: "if i had anything that would give you pleasure, i wouldn't make you ask for it twice." "that's--different," said leonore. "still, i'll--well, look at them," and leonore lifted her eyes to peter's half laughingly and half timidly. peter studied those eyes in silence--studied them till leonore, who did not find that steady look altogether easy to bear, and yet was not willing to confess herself stared out of countenance, asked: "do you like them?" "yes," said peter. "is that all you can say? other people have said very complimentary things!" said leonore, pretending to be grieved over the monosyllable, yet in reality delighting in its expressiveness as peter said it. "i think," said peter, "that before i can tell you what i think of your eyes, we shall have to invent some new words." leonore looked down again into the fire, smiling a satisfied smile. peter looked down at that down-turned head, also with a satisfied smile. then there was another long silence. incidentally it is to be noted that peter still held the hand given him some time before. to use a poker term, peter was standing "pat," and wished no change. once or twice the little hand had hinted that it had been held long enough, but peter did not think so, and the hand had concluded that it was safest to let well alone. if it was too cruel it might rouse the sleeping lion which the owner of that hand knew to exist behind that firm, quiet face. presently peter put his unoccupied hand in his breast-pocket, and produced a small sachet. "i did something twice," he said, "that i have felt very meanly about at times. perhaps you'll forgive me now?" he took from the sachet, a glove, and a small pocket-handkerchief, and without a word showed them to leonore. leonore looked at them. "that's the glove i lost at mrs. costell's, isn't it?" she asked gravely. peter nodded his head. "and is that the handkerchief which disappeared in your rooms, at your second dinner?" peter nodded his head. "and both times you helped me hunt for them?" peter nodded his head. he at last knew how prisoners felt when he was cross-examining them. "i knew you had them all the time," said leonore laughing. "it was dreadfully funny to see you pretend to hunt, when the guilty look on your own face was enough to show you had them. that's why i was so determined to find them." peter knew how prisoners felt when the jury says, "not guilty." "but how did the holes come in them?" said leonore. "do you have mice in your room?" leonore suddenly looked as worried as had peter the moment before. peter put his hand in the sachet, and produced a bent coin. "look at that," he said. "why, it's my luck-piece!" exclaimed leonore. "and you've spoiled that too. what a careless boy!" "no," said peter. "they are not spoiled to me. do you know what cut these holes and bent this coin?" "what?" "a bullet." "peter!" "yes. your luck-piece stopped it, or i shouldn't be here." "there," said leonore triumphantly, "i said you weren't hurt, when the news of the shooting came, because i knew you had it. i was so glad you had taken it!" "i am going to give it back to you by and by," said peter. "i had rather that you should have it," said leonore. "i want you to have my luck." "i shall have it just the same even after i've given it to you," said peter. "how?" "i'm going to have it made into a plain gold ring," replied peter, "and when i give it to you, i shall have all your luck." then came a silence. finally peter said, "will you please tell me what you meant by talking about five years!" "oh! really, peter," leonore hastened to explain, in an anxious way, as if peter had charged her with murder or some other heinous crime. "i did think so. i didn't find it out till--till that night. really! won't you believe me?" peter smiled. he could have believed anything. "now," he said, "i know at last what anarchists are for." his ready acceptance of her statement made leonore feel a slight prick of conscience. she said: "well--peter--i mean--that is--at least, i did sometimes think before then--that when i married, i'd marry you--but i didn't think it would come so soon. did you? i thought we'd wait. it would have been so much more sensible!" "i've waited a long time," said peter. "poor dear!" said leonore, putting her other hand over peter's, which held hers. peter enjoyed this exquisite pleasure in silence for a time, but the enjoyment was too great not to be expressed so he said; "i like your hands almost as much as your eyes." "that's very nice," said leonore. "and i like the way you say 'dear,'" said peter. "don't you want to say it again?" "no, i hate people who say the same thing twice." then there was a long pause. "what poor things words are?" said peter, at the end of it. "i know just what you mean," said leonore. clearly they both meant what they said, for there came another absence of words. how long the absence would have continued is a debatable point. much too soon a door opened. "hello!" said a voice. "back already? what kind of an evening had you?" "a very pleasant one," said peter, calmly, yet expressively. "let go my hand, peter, please," a voice whispered imploringly. "oh, please! i can't to-night. oh, please!" "say 'dear,'" whispered peter, meanly. "please, dear," said leonore. then leonore went towards the stairs hurriedly. "not off already, dot, surely?" "yes. i'm going to bed." "come and have a cigar, peter," said watts, walking towards the library. "in a moment," said peter. he went to the foot of the stairs and said, "please, dear," to the figure going up. "well?" said the figure. peter went up five steps. "please," he begged. "no," said the figure, "but there is my hand." so peter turned the little soft palm uppermost and kissed it then he forgot the cigar and watts. he went to his room, and thought of--of his birthday gift. chapter lix. "gather ye rosebuds while ye may." if peter had roamed about the hall that evening, he was still more restless the next morning. he was down early, though for no apparent reason, and did nothing but pass from hall to room, and room to hall, spending most of his time in the latter, however. how leonore could have got from her room into the garden without peter's seeing her was a question which puzzled him not a little, when, by a chance glance out of a window, he saw that personage clipping roses off the bushes. he did not have time to spare, however, to reason out an explanation. he merely stopped roaming, and went out to--to the roses. "good-morning," said leonore pleasantly, though not looking at peter, as she continued her clipping. peter did not say anything for a moment. then he asked, "is that all?" "i don't know what you mean," said leonore, innocently. "besides, someone might be looking out of a window." peter calmly took hold of the basket to help leonore sustain its enormous weight. "let me help you carry it," he said. "very well," said leonore. "but there's no occasion to carry my hand too. i'm not decrepit." "i hoped i was helping you," said peter. "you are not. but you may carry the basket, since you want to hold something." "very well," said peter meekly. "do you know," said leonore, as she snipped, and dropped roses into the basket, "you are not as obstinate as people say you are." "don't deceive yourself on that score," said peter. "well! i mean you are not absolutely determined to have your own way." "i never give up my own views," said peter, "unless i can see more to be gained by so doing. to that extent i am not at all obstinate." "suppose," said leonore, "that you go and cut the roses on those furthest bushes while i go in and arrange these?" "suppose," said peter calmly, and with an evident lack of enthusiasm. "well. will you?" "no." "why not?" "the motion to adjourn," said peter, "is never debatable." "do you know," said leonore, "that you are beginning very badly?" "that is what i have thought ever since i joined you." "then why don't you go away?" "why make bad, worse?" "there," said leonore, "your talking has made me cut my finger, almost." "let me see," said peter, reaching out for her hand. "i'm too busy," said leonore. "do you know," said peter, "that if you cut many more buds, you won't have any more roses for a week. you've cut twice as many roses as you usually do." "then i'll go in and arrange them. i wish you would give bêtise a run across the lawn." "i never run before breakfast," said peter. "doctors say it's very bad." so he followed her in. leonore became tremendously occupied in arranging the flowers, peter became tremendously occupied in watching her. "you want to save one of those for me," he said, presently. "take one," said leonore. "my legal rule has been that i never take what i can get given me. you can't do less than pin it in my button-hole, considering that it is my birthday." "if i have a duty to do, i always get through with it at once," said leonore. she picked out a rose, arranged the leaves as only womankind can, and, turning to peter, pinned it in his button-hole. but when she went to take her hands away, she found them held against the spot so firmly that she could feel the heart-beats underneath. "oh, please," was all she said, appealingly, while peter's rose seemed to reflect some of its color on her cheeks. "i don't want you to give it to me if you don't wish," said peter, simply. "but last night i sat up late thinking about it. all night i dreamed about it. when i waked up this morning, i was thinking about it. and i've thought about it ever since. i can wait, but i've waited so long!" then leonore, with very red cheeks, and a very timid manner, held her lips up to peter. "still," leonore said presently, when again arranging of the roses, "since you've waited so long, you needn't have been so slow about it when you did get it." "i'm sorry i did it so badly," said peter, contritely. "i always was slow! let me try again?" "no." "then show me how?" "no." "now who's obstinate?" inquired peter. "you," said leonore, promptly. "and i don't like it." "oh, leonore," said peter. "if you only knew how happy i am!" leonore forgot all about her charge of obstinacy. "so am i," she said. "and i won't be obstinate any more." "was that better?" peter asked, presently. "no," said leonore. "that wouldn't have been possible. but you do take so long! i shan't be able to give you more than one a day. it takes so much time." "but then i shall have to be much slower about it." "then i'll only give you one every other day." "then i shall be so much the longer." "yes," sighed leonore. "you are obstinate, after all!" so they went on till breakfast was announced. perhaps it was foolish. but they were happy in their foolishness, if such it was. it is not profitable to write what they said. it is idle to write of the week that followed. to all others what they said and did could only be the sayings and doings of two very intolerable people. but to them it was what can never be told in words--and to them we will leave it. it was leonore who put an end to this week. each day that peter lingered brought letter and telegraphic appeals to him from the party-leaders, over which peter only laughed, and which he not infrequently failed even to answer. but mr. pell told leonore something one day which made her say to peter later: "is it true that you promised to speak in new york on the fifteenth?" "yes. but i wrote green last night saying i shan't." "and were you to have made a week of speeches through the state?" "yes. but i can't spare the time." "yes, you can. you must leave to-morrow and make them." "i can't," groaned peter. "you must." "who says so?" "i do. please, peter? i so want to see you win. i shall never forgive myself if i defeat you." "but a whole week," groaned peter. "we shall break up here on the eighteenth, and of course you would have to leave a day sooner. so you'll not be any better off." "well," sighed peter, "if i do as you want, will you give me the seven i shall lose before i go." "dear me, peter," sighed leonore, "you oughtn't to ask them, since it's for your own sake. i can't keep you contented. you do nothing but encroach." "i should get them if i was here," said peter, "and one a day is little enough! i think, if i oblige you by going away, i shouldn't be made to suffer more than is necessary." "i'm going to call you growley," said leonore, patting him on the cheek. then she put her own against it. "thank you, dear," she said. "it's just as hard for me." so peter buckled on his armor and descended into the arena. whether he spoke well or ill, we leave it to those to say who care to turn back to the files of the papers of that campaign. perhaps, however, it may be well to add that an entirely unbiassed person, after reading his opening speeches, delivered in the cooper union and the metropolitan opera house, in new york city, wrote him: "it is libel to call you taciturnity. they are splendid! how i wish i could hear you--and see you, dear. i'm very lonely, and so are bêtise and tawney-eye. we do nothing but wander round the house all day, waiting for your letter, and the papers." three thousand people in the brooklyn rink were kept waiting for nearly ten minutes by peter's perusal of that letter. but when he had finished it, and had reached the rink, he out-stirlinged stirling. a speaker nowadays speaks far more to the people absent than to the people present. peter did this that evening. he spoke, it is true, to only one person that night, but it was the best speech of the campaign. a week later, peter rang the bell of the fifty-seventh street house. he was in riding costume, although he had not been riding. "mr. and mrs. d'alloi are at breakfast," he was informed. peter rather hurriedly laid his hat and crop on the hall-table, and went through the hall, but his hurry suddenly came to an end, when a young lady, carrying her napkin, added herself to the vista. "i knew it must be you," she said, offering her hand very properly--(on what grounds leonore surmised that a ring at the door-bell at nine o'clock meant peter, history does not state)--"i wondered if you knew enough to come to breakfast. mamma sent me out to say that you are to come right in." peter was rather longer over the handshake than convention demands, but he asked very politely, "how are your father and--?" but just then the footman closed a door behind him, and peter's interest in parents suddenly ceased. "how could you be so late?" said some one presently. "i watched out of the window for nearly an hour." "my train was late. the time-table on that road is simply a satire!" said peter. yet it is the best managed road in the country, and this particular train was only seven minutes overdue. "you have been to ride, though," said leonore. "no. i have an engagement to ride with a disagreeable girl after breakfast, so i dressed for it." "suppose the disagreeable girl should break her engagement--or declare there never was one?" "she won't," said peter. "it may not have been put in the contract, but the common law settles it beyond question." leonore laughed a happy laugh. then she asked: "for whom are those violets?" "i had to go to four places before i could get any at this season," said peter. "ugly girls are just troublesome enough to have preferences. what will you give me for them?" "some of them," said leonore, and obtained the bunch. who dares to say after that that women have no business ability nor shrewdness? it is true that she kissed the fraction returned before putting it in peter's button-hole, which raises the question which had the best of the bargain. "i'm behind the curtain, so i can't see anything," said a voice from a doorway, "and therefore you needn't jump; but i wish to inquire if you two want any breakfast?" a few days later peter again went up the steps of the fifty-seventh street house. this practice was becoming habitual with peter; in fact, so habitual that his cabby had said to him this very day, "the old place, sir?" where peter got the time it is difficult to understand, considering that his law practice was said to be large, and his political occupations just at present not small. but that is immaterial. the simple fact that peter went up the steps is the essential truth. from the steps, he passed into a door; from the door he passed into a hall; from a hall he passed into a room; from a room he passed into a pair of arms. "thank the lord, you've come," watts remarked. "leonore has up and down refused to make the tea till you arrived." "i was at headquarters, and they would talk, talk, talk," said peter. "i get out of patience with them. one would think the destinies of the human race depended on this campaign!" "so the growley should have his tea," said a vision, now seated on the lounge at the tea-table. "then growley will feel better." "i'm doing that already," said growley, sitting down on the delightfully short lounge--now such a fashionable and deservedly popular drawing-room article. "may i tell you how you can make me absolutely contented?" "i suppose that will mean some favor from me," said leonore. "i don't like children who want to be bribed out of their bad temper. nice little boys are never bad-tempered." "i was only bad-tempered," whispered peter, "because i was kept from being with you. that's cause enough to make the best-tempered man in the universe murderous." "well?" said leonore, mollifying, "what is it this time?" "i want you all to come down to my quarters this evening after dinner. i've received warning that i'm to be serenaded about nine o'clock, and i thought you would like to hear it." "what fun," cried leonore. "of course we'll go. shall you speak?" "no. we'll sit in my window-seats merely, and listen." "how many will there be?" "it depends on the paper you read. the 'world' will probably say ten thousand, the 'tribune' three thousand, and the 'voice of labor' 'a handful.' oh! by the way, i brought you a 'voice'." he handed leonore a paper, which he took from his pocket. now this was simply shameful of him! peter had found, whenever the papers really abused him, that leonore was doubly tender to him, the more, if he pretended that the attacks and abuse pained him. so he brought her regularly now that organ of the labor party which was most vituperative of him, and looked sad over it just as long as was possible, considering that leonore was trying to comfort him. "oh, dear!" said leonore. "that dreadful paper. i can't bear to read it. is it very bad to-day?" "i haven't read it," said peter, smiling. "i never read--" then peter coughed, suddenly looked sad, and continued--"the parts that do not speak of me." "that isn't a lie," he told himself, "i don't read them." but he felt guilty. clearly peter was losing his old-time straightforwardness. "after its saying that you had deceived your clients into settling those suits against mr. bohlmann, upon his promise to help you in politics, i don't believe they can say anything worse," said leonore, putting two lumps of sugar (with her fingers) into a cup of tea. then she stirred the tea, and tasted it. then she touched the edge of the cup with her lips. "is that right?" she asked, as she passed it to peter. "absolutely," said peter, looking the picture of bliss. but then he remembered that this wasn't his rôle, so he looked sad and said: "that hurt me, i confess. it is so unkind." "poor dear," whispered a voice. "you shall have an extra one to-day, and you shall take just as long as you want!" now, how could mortal man look grieved, even over an american newspaper, with that prospect in view? it is true that "one" is a very indefinite thing. perhaps leonore merely meant another cup of tea. whatever she meant, peter never learned, for, barely had he tasted his tea when the girl on the lounge beside him gave a cry. she rose, and as she did so, some of the tea-things fell to the floor with a crash. "leonore!" cried peter. "what--" "peter!" cried leonore. "say it isn't so?" it was terrible to see the suffering in her face and to hear the appeal in her voice. "my darling," cried the mother, "what is the matter?" "it can't be," cried leonore. "mamma! papa! say it isn't so?" "what, my darling?" said peter, supporting the swaying figure. "this," said leonore, huskily, holding out the newspaper. mrs. d'alloi snatched it. one glance she gave it. "oh, my poor darling!" she cried. "i ought not to have allowed it. peter! peter! was not the stain great enough, but you must make my poor child suffer for it?" she shoved peter away, and clasped leonore wildly in her arms. "mamma!" cried leonore. "don't talk so! don't! i know he didn't! he couldn't!" peter caught up the paper. there in big head-lines was: speak up, stirling! * * * * * who is this boy? detective pelter finds a ward unknown to the courts, and explanations are in order from purity stirling. the rest of the article it is needless to quote. what it said was so worded as to convey everything vile by innuendo and inference, yet in truth saying nothing. "oh, my darling!" continued mrs. d'alloi. "you have a right to kill me for letting him come here after he had confessed it to me. but i--oh, don't tremble so. oh, watts! we have killed her." peter held the paper for a moment. then he handed it to watts. he only said "watts?" but it was a cry for help and mercy as terrible as leonore's had been the moment before. "of course, chum," cried watts. "leonore, dear, it's all right. you mustn't mind. peter's a good man. better than most of us. you mustn't mind." "don't," cried leonore. "let me speak. mamma, did peter tell you it was so?" all were silent. "mamma! say something? papa! peter! will nobody speak?" "leonore," said peter, "do not doubt me. trust me and i will--" "tell me," cried leonore interrupting, "was this why you didn't come to see us? oh! i see it all! this is what mamma knew. this is what pained you. and i thought it was your love for--!" leonore screamed. "my darling," cried peter wildly, "don't look so. don't speak--" "don't touch me," cried leonore. "don't. only go away." leonore threw herself upon the rug weeping. it was fearful the way those sobs shook her. "it can't be," said peter. "watts! she is killing herself." but watts had disappeared from the room. "only go away," cried leonore. "that's all you can do now. there's nothing to be done." peter leaned over and picked up the prostrate figure, and laid it tenderly on the sofa. then he kissed the edge of her skirt. "yes. that's all i can do," he said quietly. "good-bye, sweetheart. i'll go away." he looked about as if bewildered, then passed from the room to the hall, from the hall to the door, from the door to the steps. he went down them, staggering a little as if dizzy, and tried to walk towards the avenue. presently he ran into something. "clumsy," said a lady's voice. "i beg your pardon," said peter mechanically. a moment later he ran into something again. "i beg your pardon," said peter, and two well-dressed girls laughed to see a bareheaded man apologize to a lamp-post. he walked on once more, but had not gone ten paces when a hand was rested on his shoulder. "now then, my beauty," said a voice. "you want to get a cab, or i shall have to run you in. where do you want to go?" "i beg your pardon," said peter. "come," said the policeman shaking him, "where do you belong? my god! it's mr. stirling. why, sir. what's the matter?" "i think i've killed her," said peter. "he's awfully screwed," ejaculated the policeman. "and him of all men! nobody shall know." he hailed a passing cab, and put peter into it. then he gave peter's office address, and also got in. he was fined the next day for being off his beat "without adequate reasons," but he never told where he had been. when they reached the building, he helped peter into the elevator. from there he helped him to his door. he rang the bell, but no answer came. it was past office-hours, and jenifer having been told that peter would dine up-town, had departed on his own leave of absence. the policeman had already gone through peter's pockets to get money for cabby, and now he repeated the operation, taking possession of peter's keys. he opened the door and, putting him into a deep chair in the study, laid the purse and keys on peter's desk, writing on a scrap of paper with much difficulty: "mr. stirling $ . i took to pay the carriage. john motty policeman precinct," he laid it beside the keys and purse. then he went back to his beat. and what was peter doing all this time? just what he now did. he tried to think, though each eye felt as if a red hot needle was burning in it. presently he rose, and began to pace the floor, but he kept stumbling over the desk and chairs. as he stumbled he thought, sometimes to himself, sometimes aloud: "if i could only think! i can't see. what was it dr. pilcere said about her eyes? or was it my eyes? did he give me some medicine? i can't remember. and it wouldn't help her. why can't i think? what is this pain in her head and eyes? why does everything look so dark, except when those pains go through her head? they feel like flashes of lightning, and then i can see. why can't i think? her eyes get in the way. he gave me something to put on them. but i can't give it to her. she told me to go away. to stop this agony! how she suffers. it's getting worse every moment. i can't remember about the medicine. there it comes again. now i know. it's not lightning. it's the petroleum! be quick, boys. can't you hear my darling scream? it's terrible. if i could only think. what was it the french doctor said to do, if it came back? no. we want to get some rails." peter dashed himself against a window. "once more, men, together. can't you hear her scream? break down the door!" peter caught up and hurled a pot of flowers at the window, and the glass shattered and fell to the floor and street "if i could see. but it's all dark. are those lights? no. it's too late. i can't save her from it." so he wandered physically and mentally. wandered till sounds of martial music came up through the broken window. "fall in," cried peter. "the anarchists are after her. it's dynamite, not lightning. podds, don't let them hurt her. save her. oh! save her i why can't i get to her? don't try to hold me," he cried, as he came in contact with a chair. he caught it up and hurled it across the room, so that it crashed into the picture-frames, smashing chair and frames into fragments. "i can't be the one to throw it," he cried, in an agonized voice. "she's all i have. for years i've been so lonely. don't i can't throw it. it kills me to see her suffer. it wouldn't be so horrible if i hadn't done it myself. if i didn't love her so. but to blow her up myself. i can't. men, will you stand by me, and help me to save her?" the band of music stopped. a moment's silence fell and then up from the street, came the air of: "marching through georgia," five thousand voices singing: "rally round our party, boys; rally to the blue, and battle for our candidate, so sterling and so true, fight for honest government, boys, and down the vicious crew; voting for freedom and stirling. "hurrah, hurrah, for stirling, brave and strong. hurrah, hurrah, for stirling, never wrong. and roll the voters up in line, two hundred thousand strong; voting for freedom and stirling." "i can't fight so many. two hundred thousand! i have no sword. i didn't shoot them. no! i only gave the order. it hurt me, but i didn't mean to hurt her. she's all i have. do you think i intended to kill her? no! no sacrifice would be too great. and you can talk to me of votes! two hundred thousand votes! i did my best for her. i didn't mean to hurt her. and i went to see the families. i went to see them all. if i only could think. but she is suffering too much. i can't think as long as she lies on the rug, and trembles so. see the flashes of lightning pass through her head. don't bury your face in the rug. no wonder it's all dark. try to think, and then it will be all right." up from the street came the air of: "there were three crows," and the words: "steven maguire has schemed to be elected november fourth, steven maguire has schemed to be elected november fourth. steven maguire has schemed and schemed, but all his schemes will end in froth! and the people will all shout, hurrah, rah, rah, rah. and the people will all shout, hurrah, rah, rah, rah. "for peter stirling elected will be upon november fourth, for peter stirling elected will be upon november fourth, for peter stirling elected will be and steven maguire will be in broth, and the people will all shout, hurrah, rah, rah, rah, and the people will all shout, hurrah, rah, rah, rah." "it's steven maguire. he never could be honest. if i had him here!" peter came in contact with a chair. "who's that? ah! it's you. you've killed her. now!" and another chair went flying across the room with such force, that the door to the hall flew off its hinges, and fell with a crash. "i've killed him" screamed peter. "i've--no, i've killed my darling. all i have in the world!" and so he raved, and roamed, and stumbled, and fell; and rose, and roamed, and raved, and stumbled, and fell, while the great torchlight procession sang and cheered him from below. he was wildly fighting his pain still when two persons, who, after ringing and ringing, had finally been let in by jenifer's key, stood where the door had been. "my god," cried one, in terror. "he's crazy! come away!" but the other, without a word or sign of fear, went up to that wild-looking figure, and put her hand in his. peter stopped his crazed stride. "i can't think, i tell you. i can't think as long as you lie there on the rug. and your eyes blaze so. they feel just like balls of fire." "please sit down, peter. please? for my sake. here. here is the chair. please sit down." peter sank back in the chair. "i tell you i can't think. they do nothing but burn. it's the petroleum!" he started forward, but a slender arm arrested his attempt to rise, and he sank back again as if it had some power over him. "hyah, miss. foh de lub ub heaben, put some ub dis yar on he eyes," said jenifer, who had appeared with a bottle, and was blubbering enough to supply a whole whaling fleet. "de doctor he done give dis yar foh de aspic nerve." which is a dish that jenifer must have invented himself, for it is not discoverable even on the fullest of menus. leonore knelt in front of peter, and, drenching her fingers with the wash, began rubbing it softly over his eyes. it has always been a problem whether it was the remedy or the ends of those fingers which took those lines of suffering out of peter's face and made him sit quietly in that chain those having little faith in medicines, and much faith in a woman's hands, will opine the latter. doctors will not. sufficeth it to say, after ten minutes of this treatment, during which peter's face had slowly changed, first to a look of rest, and then to one which denoted eagerness, doubt and anxiety, but not pain, that he finally put out his hands and took leonore's. "you have come to me," he said, "has he told you?" "who? what?" asked leonore. "you still think i could?" cried peter. "then why are you here?" he opened his eyes wildly and would have risen, only leonore was kneeling in front of the chair still. "don't excite yourself, peter," begged leonore. "we'll not talk of that now. not till you are better." "what are you here for?" cried peter. "why did you come--?" "oh, please, peter, be quiet." "tell me, i will have it." peter was exciting himself, more from leonore's look than by what she said. "oh, peter. i made papa bring me--because--oh! i wanted to ask you to do something. for my sake!" "what is it?" "i wanted to ask you," sobbed leonore, "to marry her. then i shall always think you were what i--i--have been loving, and not--" leonore laid her head down on his knee, and sobbed bitterly. peter raised leonore in his arms, and laid the little head on his shoulder. "dear one," he said, "do you love me?" "yes," sobbed leonore. "and do you think i love you?" "yes." "now look into your heart. could you tell me a lie?" "no." "nor can i you. i am not the father of that boy, and i never wronged his mother." "but you told--" sobbed leonore. "i lied to your mother, dear." "for what?" leonore had lifted her head, and there was a look of hope in her eyes, as well as of doubt. "because it was better at that time than the truth. but watts will tell you that i lied." "papa?" "yes, dot. dear old peter speaks the truth." "but if you lied to her, why not to me?" "i can't lie to you, leonore. i am telling you the truth. won't you believe me?" "i do," cried leonore. "i know you speak the truth. it's in your face and voice." and the next moment her arms were about peter's neck, and her lips were on his. just then some one in the "torchlight" shouted: "what's the matter wid stirling?" and a thousand voices joyfully yelled; "he's all right." and so was the crowd. chapter lx. a conundrum. mr. pierce was preparing to talk. usually mr. pierce was talking. mr. pierce had been talking already, but it had been to single listeners only, and for quite a time in the last three hours mr. pierce had been compelled to be silent. but at last mr. pierce believed his moment had come. mr. pierce thought he had an audience, and a plastic audience at that. and these three circumstances in combination made mr. pierce fairly bubbling with words. no longer would he have to waste his precious wit and wisdom, _tête-à-tête,_ or on himself. at first blush mr. pierce seemed right in his conjecture. seated--in truth, collapsed, on chairs and lounges, in a disarranged and untidy-looking drawing-room, were nearly twenty very tired-looking people. the room looked as if there had just been a free fight there, and the people looked as if they had been the participants. but the multitude of flowers and the gay dresses proved beyond question that something else had made the disorder of the room and had put that exhausted look upon the faces. experienced observers would have understood it at a glimpse. from the work and fatigues of this world, people had gathered for a little enjoyment of what we call society. it is true that both the room and its occupants did not indicate that there had been much recreation. but, then, one can lay it down as an axiom that the people who work for pleasure are the hardest-working people in the world; and, as it is that for which society labors, this scene is but another proof that they get very much fatigued over their pursuit of happiness and enjoyment, considering that they hunt for it in packs, and entirely exclude the most delicious intoxicant known--usually called oxygen--from their list of supplies from the caterer. certainly this particular group did look exhausted far beyond the speech-making point. but this, too, was a deception. these limp-looking individuals had only remained in this drawing-room for the sole purpose of "talking it over," and mr. pierce had no walk-over before him. mr. pierce cleared his throat and remarked: "the development of marriage customs and ceremonies from primeval days is one of the most curious and--" "what a lovely wedding it has been!" said dorothy, heaving a sigh of fatigue and pleasure combined. "wasn't it!" went up a chorus from the whole party, except mr. pierce, who looked eminently disgusted. "as i was remarking--" began mr. pierce again. "but the best part," said watts, who was lolling on one of the lounges, "was those 'sixt' ward presents. as mr. moriarty said; 'begobs, it's hard it would be to find the equal av that tureen!' he was right! its equal for ugliness is inconceivable." "yet the poor beggars spent eight hundred dollars on it" sighed lispenard, wearily. "relative to the subject--" said mr. pierce. "and leonore told me," said a charmingly-dressed girl, "that she liked it better than any other present she had received." "oh, she was more enthusiastic," laughed watts, "over all the 'sixt' ward and political presents than she was over what we gave her. we weren't in it at all with the micks. she has come out as much a worshipper of hoi-polloi as peter." "i don't believe she cares a particle for them," said our old friend, the gentlemanly scoundrel; "but she worships them because they worship him." "well," sighed lispenard, "that's the way things go in life. there's that fellow gets worshipped by every one, from the irish saloon-keeper up to leonore. while look at me! i'm a clever, sweet-tempered, friendly sort of a chap, but nobody worships me. there isn't any one who gives a second thought for yours truly. i seem good for nothing, except being best man to much luckier chaps. while look at peter! he's won the love of a lovely girl, who worships him to a degree simply inconceivable. i never saw such idealization." "then you haven't been watching peter," said mrs. d'alloi, who, as a mother, had no intention of having it supposed that leonore was not more loved than loving. "taking modern marriage as a basis--" said mr. pierce. "oh," laughed dorothy, "there's no doubt they are a pair, and i'm very proud of it, because i did it." "cock-a-doodle-doo!" crowed ray. "i did," said dorothy, "and my own husband is not the one to cast reflection on my statement." "he's the only one who dares," said ogden. "well, i did. leonore would never have cared for such a silent, serious man if i hadn't shown her that other women did, and--" "nonsense," laughed ogden. "it was podds did it. dynamite is famous for the uncertainty of the direction in which it will expend its force, and in this case it blew in a circle, and carried leonore's heart clear from newport to peter." "or, to put it scientifically," said lispenard, "along the line of least resistance." "it seems to me that peter was the one who did it," said le grand. "but of course, as a bachelor, i can't expect my opinion to be accepted." "no," said dorothy. "he nearly spoiled it by cheapening himself. no girl will think a man is worth much who lets her tramp on him." "still," said lispenard, "few girls can resist the flattery of being treated by a man as if she is the only woman worth considering in the world, and peter did that to an extent which was simply disgraceful. it was laughable to see the old hermit become social the moment she appeared, and to see how his eyes and attention followed her. and his learning to dance! that showed how things were." "he began long before any of you dreamed," said mrs. d'alloi. "didn't he, watts?" "undoubtedly," laughed watts. "and so did she. i really think leonore did quite as much in her way, as peter did. i never saw her treat any one quite as she behaved to peter from the very first. i remember her coming in after her runaway, wild with enthusiasm over him, and saying to me 'oh, i'm so happy. i've got a new friend, and we are going to be such friends always!'" "that raises the same question," laughed ogden, "that the irishman did about the street-fight, when he asked 'who throwed that last brick first?'" "really, if it didn't seem too absurd," said watts, "i should say they began it the moment they met." "i don't think that at all absurd," said a gray-haired, refined looking woman who was the least collapsed of the group, or was perhaps so well bred as to conceal her feelings. "i myself think it began before they even met. leonore was half in love with peter when she was in europe, and peter, though he knew nothing of her, was the kind of a man who imagines an ideal and loves that. she happened to be his ideal." "really, miss de voe," said mr. pierce, "you must have misjudged him. though peter is now my grandson, i am still able to know what he is. he is not at all the kind of man who allows himself to be controlled by an ideal." "i do not feel that i have ever known peter. he does not let people perceive what is underneath," said miss de voe. "but of one thing i am sure. nearly everything he does is done from sentiment. at heart he is an idealist." "oh!" cried several. "that is a most singular statement," said mr. pierce. "there is not a man i know who has less of the sentimental and ideal in him. an idealist is a man of dreams and romance. peter is far too sensible a fellow to be that. there is nothing heroic or romantic in him." "nonsense, _paternus_," said watts. "you don't know anything about the old chap. you've only seen him as a cool clever lawyer. if your old definition of romance is right: that it is 'love, and the battle between good and evil,' peter has had more true romance than all the rest of us put together." "no," said mr. pierce. "you have merely seen peter in love, and so you all think he is romantic. he isn't. he is a cool man, who never acts without weighing his actions, and therein has lain the secret of his success. he calmly marks out his line of life, and, regardless of everything else, pursues it. he disregards everything not to his purpose, and utilizes everything that serves. i predicted great success for him many years ago when he was fresh from college, simply from a study of his mental characteristics and i have proved myself a prophet. he has never made a slip, legally, politically, or socially. to use a yachting expression, he has 'made everything draw.' an idealist, or a man of romance and fire and impulse could never succeed as he has done. it is his entire lack of feeling which has led to his success. indeed--" "i can't agree with you," interrupted dorothy, sitting up from her collapse as if galvanized into life and speech by mr. pierce's monologue. "you don't understand peter. he is a man of great feeling. think of that speech of his about those children! think of his conduct to his mother as long as she lived! think of the goodness and kindness he showed to the poor! why, ray says he has refused case after case for want of time in recent years, while doing work for people in his ward which was worth nothing. if--" "they were worth votes," interjected mr. pierce. "look at his buying the costell place in westchester when mr. costell died so poor, and giving it to mrs. costell," continued dorothy, warming with her subject. "look at his going to those strikers' families, and arranging to help them. were those things done for votes? if i could only tell you of something he once did for me, you would not say that he was a man without feeling." "i have no doubt," said mr. pierce blandly, "that he did many things which, on their face, seemed admirable and to indicate feeling. but if carefully examined, they would be found to have been advantageous to him. any service he could have done to mrs. rivington surely did not harm him. his purchase of costell's place pleased the political friends of the dead leader. his aiding the strikers' families placated the men, and gained him praise from the press. i dislike greatly to oppose this rose-colored view of peter, but, from my own knowledge of the man, i must. he is without feeling, and necessarily makes no mistakes, nor is he led off from his own ambitions by sentiment of any kind. when we had that meeting with the strikers, he sat there, while all new york was seething, with mobs and dead just outside the walls, as cool and impassive as a machine. he was simply determined that we should compromise, because his own interests demanded it, and he carried his point merely because he was the one cool man at that meeting. if he had had feeling he could not have been cool. that one incident shows the key-note of his success." "and i say his strong sympathies and feeling were the key-note," reiterated dorothy. "i think," said pell, "that peter's great success lay in his ability to make friends. it was simply marvellous. i've seen it, over and over again, both in politics and society. he never seemed to excite envy or bitterness. he had a way of doing things which made people like him. every one he meets trusts him. yet nobody understands him. so he interests people, without exciting hostility. i've heard person after person say that he was an uninteresting, ordinary man, and yet nobody ever seemed to forget him. every one of us feels, i am sure, that, as miss de voe says, he had within something he never showed people. i have never been able to see why he did or did not do hundreds of things. yet it always turned out that what he did was right. he makes me think of the frenchwoman who said to her sister, 'i don't know why it is, sister, but i never meet any one who's always right but myself.'" "you have hit it," said ogden ogden, "and i can prove that you have by peter's own explanation of his success. i spoke to him once of a rather curious line of argument, as it seemed to me, which he was taking in a case, and he said: 'ogden, i take that course because it is the way judge potter's mind acts. if you want to convince yourself, take the arguments which do that best, but when you have to deal with judges or juries, take the lines which fit their capacities. people talk about my unusual success in winning cases. it's simply because i am not certain that my way and my argument are the only way and the only argument. i've studied the judges closely, so that i know what lines to take, and i always notice what seems to interest the jury most, in each case. but, more important than this study, is the fact that i can comprehend about how the average man will look at a certain thing. you see i am the son of plain people. then i am meeting all grades of mankind, and hearing what they say, and getting their points of view. i have never sat in a closet out of touch with the world and decided what is right for others, and then spent time trying to prove it to them. in other words, i have succeeded, because i am merely the normal or average man, and therefore am understood by normal or average people, or by majorities, to put it in another way.'" "but mr. stirling isn't a commonplace man," said another of the charmingly dressed girls. "he is very silent, and what he says isn't at all clever, but he's very unusual and interesting." "nevertheless," said ogden, "i believe he was right. he has a way of knowing what the majority of people think or feel about things. and that is the secret of his success, and not his possession or lack of feeling." "you none of you have got at the true secret of peter's success," said ray. "it was his wonderful capacity for work. to a lazy beggar like myself it is marvellous. i've known that man to work from nine in the morning till one at night, merely stopping for meals." "yet he did not seem an ambitious man," said le grand. "he cared nothing for social success, he never has accepted office till now, and he has refused over and over again law work which meant big money." "no," said ray. "peter worked hard in law and politics. yet he didn't want office or money. he could more than once have been a judge, and costell wanted him governor six years ago. he took the nomination this year against his own wishes. he cared as little for money or reputation in law, as he cared for society, and would compromise cases which would have added greatly to his reputation if he had let them go to trial. he might have been worth double what he is to-day, if he had merely invested his money, instead of letting it lie in savings banks or trust companies. i've spoken about it repeatedly to him, but he only said that he wasn't going to spend time taking care of money, for money ceased to be valuable when it had to be taken care of; its sole use to him being to have it take care of him. i think he worked for the sake of working." "that explains peter, certainly. his one wish was to help others," said miss de voe. "he had no desire for reputation or money, and so did not care to increase either." "and mark my words," said lispenard. "from this day, he'll set no limit to his endeavors to obtain both." "he can't work harder than he has to get political power," said an usher. "think of how anxious he must have been to get it, when he would spend so much time in the slums and saloons! he couldn't have liked the men he met there." "i've taken him to task about that, and told him he had no business to waste his time so," said ogden; "but he said that he was not taking care of other people's money or trying to build up a great business, and that if he chose to curtail his practice, so as to have some time to work in politics, it was a matter of personal judgment." "i once asked peter," said miss de voe, "how he could bear, with his tastes and feelings, to go into saloons, and spend so much time with politicians, and with the low, uneducated people of his district. he said, 'that is my way of trying to do good, and it is made enjoyable to me by helping men over rough spots, or by preventing political wrong. i have taken the world and humanity as it is, and have done what i could, without stopping to criticise or weep over shortcomings and sins. i admire men who stand for noble impossibilities. but i have given my own life to the doing of small possibilities. i don't say the way is the best. but it is my way, for i am a worker, not a preacher. and just because i have been willing to do things as the world is willing to have them done, power and success have come to me to do more.' i believe it was because peter had no wish for worldly success, that it came to him." "you are all wrong," groaned lispenard. "i love peter as much as i love my own kin, with due apology to those of it who are present, but i must say that his whole career has been the worst case of sheer, downright luck of which i ever saw or heard." "luck!" exclaimed dorothy. "yes, luck!" said lispenard. "look at it. he starts in like all the rest of us. and miss luck calls him in to look at a sick kitten die. very ordinary occurrence that! health-board report several hundred every week. but miss luck knew what she was about and called him in to just the right kind of a kitten to make a big speech about. thereupon he makes it, blackguarding and wiping the floor up with a millionaire brewer. does the brewer wait for his turn to get even with him? not a bit. miss luck takes a hand in and the brewer falls on peter's breast-bone, and loves him ever afterwards. my cousin writes him, and he snubs her. does she annihilate him as she would have other men? no. miss luck has arranged all that, and they become the best of friends." "lispenard--" miss de voe started to interrupt indignantly, but lispenard continued, "hold on till i finish. one at a time. well. miss luck gets him chosen to a convention by a fluke and peter votes against costell's wishes. what happens? costell promptly takes him up and pushes him for all he's worth. he snubs society, and society concludes that a man who is more snubby and exclusive than itself must be a man to cultivate. he refuses to talk, and every one promptly says: 'how interesting he is!' he gets in the way of a dynamite bomb. does it kill him? certainly not. miss luck has put an old fool there, to protect him. he swears a bad word. does it shock respectable people? no! every one breathes easier, and likes him the better. he enrages and shoots the strikers. does he lose votes? not one. miss luck arranges that the directors shall yield things which they had sworn not to yield; and the strikers are reconciled and print a card in praise of him. he runs for office. do the other parties make a good fight of it? no. they promptly nominate a scoundrelly demagogue and a nonentity who thinks votes are won by going about in shirtsleeves. so he is elected by the biggest plurality the state has ever given. has miss luck done enough? no. she at once sets every one predicting that he'll get the presidential nomination two years from now, if he cares for it. be it friend or enemy, intentional or unintentional, every one with whom he comes in contact gives him a boost. while look at me! there isn't a soul who ever gave me help. it's been pure, fire-with-your-eyes-shut luck. "was this morning luck too?" asked a bridesmaid. "absolutely," sighed lispenard. "and what luck! i always said that peter would never marry, because he would insist on taking women seriously, and because at heart he was afraid of them to a woeful degree, and showed it in such a way, as simply to make women think he didn't like them individually. but miss luck wouldn't allow that. oh, no! miss luck isn't content even that peter shall take his chance of getting a wife, with the rest of us. she's not going to have any accidents for him. so she takes the loveliest of girls and trots her all over europe, so that she shan't have friends, or even know men well. she arranges too, that the young girl shall have her head filled with peter by a lot of admiring women, who are determined to make him into a sad, unfortunate hero, instead of the successful man he is. a regular conspiracy to delude a young girl. then before the girl has seen anything of the world, she trots her over here. does she introduce them at a dance, so that peter shall be awkward and silent? not she! she puts him where he looks his best--on a horse. she starts the thing off romantically, so that he begins on the most intimate footing, before another man has left his pasteboard. so he's way ahead of the pack when they open cry. is that enough? no! at the critical moment he is called to the aid of his country. gets lauded for his pluck. gets blown up. gets everything to make a young girl worship him. pure luck! it doesn't matter what peter says or does. miss luck always arranges that it turn up the winning card." "there is no luck in it," cried mr. pierce. "it was all due to his foresight and shrewdness. he plans things beforehand, and merely presses the button. why, look at his marriage alone? does he fall in love early in life, and hamper himself with a miss nobody? not he! he waits till he has achieved a position where he can pick from the best, and then he does exactly that, if you'll pardon a doating grandfather's saying it." "well," said watts, "we have all known peter long enough to have found out what he is, yet there seems to be a slight divergence of opinion. are we fools, or is peter a gay deceiver?" "he is the most outspoken man i ever knew," said miss de voe. "but he tells nothing," said an usher. "yes. he is absolutely silent," said a bridesmaid. "except when he's speechifying," said ray. "and leonore says he talks and jokes a great deal," said watts. "i never knew any one who is deceiving herself so about a man," said dorothy. "it's terrible. what do you think she had the face to say to me to-day?" "what?" "she was speaking of their plans after returning from the wedding journey, and she said: 'i am going to have peter keep up his bachelor quarters.' 'does he say he'll do it?' i asked. 'i haven't spoken to him,' she replied, 'but of course he will.' i said: 'leonore, all women think they rule their husbands, but they don't in reality, and peter will be less ruled than any man i know.' then what do you think she said?" "don't keep us in suspense." "she said: 'none of you ever understood peter. but i do.' think of it! from that little chit, who's known peter half the number of months that i've known him years!" "i don't know," sighed lispenard. "i'm not prepared to say it isn't so. indeed, after seeing peter, who never seemed able to understand women till this one appeared on the scene, develop into a regulation lover, i am quite prepared to believe that every one knows more than i do. at the same time, i can't afford to risk my reputation for discrimination and insight over such a simple thing as peter's character. you've all tried to say what peter is. now i'll tell you in two words and you'll all find you are right, and you'll all find you are wrong." "you are as bad as leonore," cried dorothy. "well," said watts, "we are all listening. what is peter?" "he is an extreme type of a man far from uncommon in this country, yet who has never been understood by foreigners, and by few americans." "well?" "peter is a practical idealist" chapter lxi. leonore's theory. and how well had that "talk-it-over" group at the end of peters wedding-day grasped his character? how clearly do we ever gain an insight into the feelings and motives which induce conduct even in those whom we best know and love? each had found something in peter that no other had discovered. we speak of rose-colored glasses, and shakespeare wrote, "all things are yellow to a jaundiced eye." when we take a bit of blue glass, and place it with yellow, it becomes green. when we put it with red, it becomes purple. yet blue it is all the time. is not each person responsible for the tint he seems to produce in others? can we ever learn that the thing is blue, and that the green or purple aspect is only the tinge which we ourselves help to give? can we ever learn that we love and are loved entirely as we give ourselves colors which may harmonize with those about us? that love, wins love; kindness, kindness; hate, hate. that just such elements as we give to the individual, the individual gives back to us? that the sides we show are the sides seen by the world. there were people who could truly believe that peter was a ward boss; a frequenter of saloons; a drunkard; a liar; a swearer; a murderer, in intention, if not in act; a profligate; and a compromiser of many of his own strongest principles. yet there were people who could, say other things of him. but more important than the opinion of peter's friends, and of the world, was the opinion of peter's wife. was she right in her theory that she was the only one who understood him? or had she, as he had once done, reared an ideal, and given that ideal the love which she supposed she was giving peter? it is always a problem in love to say whether we love people most for the qualities they actually possess, or for those with which our own love endows them. here was a young girl, inexperienced in world and men, joyfully sinking her own life in that of a man whom, but a few months before, had been only a matter of hearsay to her. yet she had apparently taken him, as women will, for better, for worse, till death, as trustfully as if he and men generally were as knowable as a b c, instead of as unknown as the algebraic x. only once had she faltered in her trust of him, and then but for a moment. how far had her love, and the sight of peter's misery, led her blindly to renew that trust? and would it hold? she had seen how little people thought of that scurrilous article, and how the decent papers had passed it over without a word. but she had also seen, the scandal harped upon by partisans and noted that peter failed to vindicate himself publicly, or vouchsafe an explanation to her. had she taken peter with trust or doubt, knowledge or blindness? perhaps a conversation between the two, a week later, will answer these questions. it occurred on the deck of a vessel. yet this parting glimpse of peter is very different from that which introduced him. the vessel is not drifting helplessly, but its great screw is whirling it towards the island of martinique, as if itself anxious to reach that fairy land of fairy lands. though the middle of november, the soft warmth of the tropics is in the air. nor are the sea and sky now leaden. the first is turned into liquid gold by the phosphorescence, and the full moon silvers everything else. neither is peter pacing the deck with lines of pain and endurance on his face. he is up in the bow, where the vessel's forefoot throws up the white foam in silver drops in the moonlight. and he does not look miserable. anything but that. he is sitting on an anchor stock, with his back comfortably braced against the rail. another person is not far distant. what that person sits upon and leans against is immaterial to the narrative. "why don't you smoke?" asked that person. "i'm too happy," said peter, in a voice evidencing the truth of his words. "will you if i bite off the end?" asked eve, jr., placing temptation most temptingly. "i like the idea exceedingly," said peter. "but my right arm is so very pleasantly placed that it objects to moving." "don't move it. i know where they are. i even know about the matches." and peter sat calmly while his pockets were picked. he even seemed to enjoy the sensation of that small hand rummaging in his waistcoat pockets. "you see, dear, that i am learning your ways," leonore continued, in a tone of voice which suggested that that was the chief end of woman. perhaps it is. the westminster catechism only tells us the chief end of man. "there. now are you really happy?" "i don't know anybody more so." "then, dear, i want to talk with you." "the wish is reciprocal. but what have we been doing for six days?" "we've been telling each other everything, just as we ought. but now i want to ask two favors, dear." "i don't think that's necessary. just tell me what they are." "yes. these favors are. though i know you'll say 'yes.'" "well?" "first. i want you always to keep your rooms just as they are?" "dear-heart, after our six weeks' trip, we must be in albany for three years, and when we come back to new york, we'll have a house of course." "yes. but i want you to keep the rooms just as they are, because i love them. i don't think i shall ever feel the same for any other place. it will be very convenient to have them whenever, we want to run down from albany. and of course you must keep up with the ward." "but you don't suppose, after we are back in new-york, that i'll stay down there, with you uptown?" "oh, no! of course not. peter! how absurd you are! but i shall go down very often. sometimes we'll give little dinners to real friends. and sometimes, when we want to get away from people, we'll dine by ourselves and spend the night there. then whenever you want to be at the saloons or primaries we'll dine together there and i'll wait for you. and then i think i'll go down sometimes, when i'm shopping, and lunch with you. i'll promise not to bother you. you shall go back to your work, and i'll amuse myself with your flowers, and books, till you are ready to go uptown. then we'll ride together." "lispenard frightened me the other day, but you frighten me worse." "how?" "he said you would be a much lovelier woman at thirty than you are now." "and that frightened you?" laughed leonore. "terribly. if you are that i shall have to give up law and politics entirely, so as to see enough of you." "but what has that to do with my lunching with you?" "do you think i could work at law with you in the next room?" "don't you want me? i thought it was such a nice plan." "it is. if your other favor is like that i shan't know what to say. i shall merely long for you to ask favors." "this is very different. will you try to understand me?" "i shan't misunderstand you, at all events." which was a crazy speech for any man to make any woman. "then, dear, i want to speak of that terrible time--only for a moment, dear. you mustn't think i don't believe what you said. i do! i do! every word of it, and to prove it to you i shall never speak of it again. but when i've shown you that i trust you entirely, some stormy evening, when we've had the nicest little dinner together at your rooms, and i've given you some coffee, and bitten your cigar for you, i shall put you down before the fire, and sit down in your lap, as i am doing now, and put my arms about your neck so, and put my cheek so. and then i want you, without my asking to tell me why you told mamma that lie, and all about it." "dear-heart," said peter, "i cannot tell. i promised." "oh, but that didn't include your wife, dear, of course. besides, peter, friends should tell each other everything. and we are the best of friends, aren't we?" "and if i don't tell my dearest friend?" "i shall never speak of it, peter, but i know sometimes when i am by myself i shall cry over it. not because i doubt you, dear, but because you won't give me your confidence." "do you know, dear-heart, that i can't bear the thought of your doing that!" "of course not, dear. that's the reason i tell you. i knew you couldn't bear it." "how did you know?" "because i understand you, dear. i know just what you are. i'm the only person who does." "tell me what i am." "i think, dear, that something once came into your life that made you very miserable, and took away all your hope and ambition. so, instead of trying to make a great position or fortune, you tried to do good to others. you found that you could do the most good among the poor people, so you worked among them. then you found that you needed money, so you worked hard to get that. then you found that you could help most by working in politics, so you did that. and you have tried to gain power so as to increase your power for good. i know you haven't liked a great deal you have had to do. i know that you much prefer to sit before your study fire and read than sit in saloons. i know that you would rather keep away from tricky people than to ask or take their help. but you have sacrificed your own feelings and principles because you felt that they were not to be considered if you could help others. and, because people have laughed at you or misunderstood, you have become silent and unsocial, except as you have believed your mixing with the world to be necessary to accomplish good." "what a little idealist we are!" "well, dear, that isn't all the little idealist has found out. she knows something else. she knows that all his life her ideal has been waiting and longing for some one who did understand him, so that he can tell her all his hopes and feelings, and that at last he has found her, and she will try to make up for all the misery and sacrifice he has endured she knows, too, that he wants to tell her everything. you mustn't think, dear, that it was only prying which made me ask you so many questions. i--i really wasn't curious except to see if you would answer, for i felt that you didn't tell other people your real thoughts and feelings, and so, whenever you told me, it was really getting you to say that you loved me. you wanted me to know what you really are. and that was why i knew that you told me the truth that night. and that is the reason why i know that some day you will tell me about that lie." peter, whatever he might think, did not deny the correctness of leonore's theories concerning his motives in the past or his conduct in the future. he kissed the soft cheek so near him, tenderly, and said: "i like your thoughts about me, dear one." "of course you do," said leonore. "you said once that when you had a fine subject it was always easy to make a fine speech. it's true, too, of thoughts, dear." [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 : blank lines, type : 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. _all rights reserved_ copyright, , , by the century co. copyright, , by the macmillan company. set up, electrotyped, and published october, . 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 a story of bleecker street the kid hangs up his stocking the slipper-maker's fast death comes to cat alley a proposal on the elevated little will's message lost children paolo's awakening the little dollar's christmas journey the kid when the letter came the cat took the kosher meat nibsy's christmas in the children's hospital nigger martha's wake what the christmas sun saw in the tenements midwinter in new york a chip from the maelstrom sarah joyce's husbands merry christmas in the tenements abe's game of jacks a little picture a dream of the woods 'twas 'liza's doings heroes who fight fire john gavin, misfit a heathen baby the christening in bottle alley in the mulberry street court difficulties of a deacon fire in the barracks war on the goats he kept his tryst rover's last fight how jim went to the war a backwoods hero jack's sermon skippy of scrabble alley making a way out of the slum 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 . 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. "mögtest 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 th 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 cañon 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 fostó 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."[ ] [footnote : 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 protégé 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. 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 . 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 reëchoed 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 --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 , , 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 , 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 , 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 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. 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. entered. "was sarah joyce brought here?" he asked clerk betts. the clerk couldn't find the name. "look for mary donovan," said no. . "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. . 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,[ ] 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 : written in .] 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. 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[ ] 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 : rooney wore the bennett medal for saving the life of a woman at the disastrous fire in the old "world" building, on january , . 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. , 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 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. , 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. , 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, ; 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. , 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 , , when the geneva club on lexington avenue was burnt out. fireman howe drove hook-and-ladder no. 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 . he was next in command of engine no. 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 , . 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 to ,--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. , 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. at . 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 there were fires in new york, with an average loss of $ . per fire. in , with fires, the loss was but $ . at each. in , fires averaged only $ . . 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. " 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 , . 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 _rôle_ 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. . 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 pæan 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 , 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.[ ] 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 : this was written in .] 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 , found of three hundred families only two-thirds remaining on their farms. in , 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 $ , , . 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 coöperation, 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 $ , 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 acres of land from $ to $ , 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 $ a month for three rooms. this cottage is their own. they have paid for it ($ ) 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 $ ; the hirsch fund taking a first mortgage of $ , the manufacturer, or the occupant, if able, paying the rest the mortgage is paid off in monthly instalments of $ . . 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 $ 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 $ to $ 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, $ per month; for four rooms in a monroe street tenement, $ ; household expenses, $ . here he pays shop rent (whole house), $ ; dwelling on farm, $ ; household, $ . this family enjoys greater comfort in the country for $ a month less. a working family of eight paid $ for three rooms in an essex street tenement, $ for the household; here the rent is $ , and the household expenses $ --better living for $ 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 acres, it will make , 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, families, with some previous training and fitness for farming, have been settled upon new england farms and are generally doing well. more than $ , , 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 years from to , 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 $ , , to $ , , 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, jewish families settled about the great rubber-works. the workings of a trust shut it down after years' successful operation, causing loss of wages and much suffering to 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 years families had been moved out. in five months just before i wrote this , came to stay in new york city. the number of immigrant jews during those months was , , of whom only went farther. the population of the ghetto passed already , . 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. [transcriber's note: ^ indicates superscript.] the battle with the slum [illustration: editor's logo.] [illustration: author.] the battle with the slum by jacob a. riis author of "the making of an american," "how the other half lives," etc. _illustrated_ new york the macmillan company london: macmillan & co., ltd. _all rights reserved_ copyright, , by the macmillan company. set up and electrotyped october, . norwood press j. s. cushing & co.--berwick & smith norwood mass. u.s.a. preface three years ago i published under the title "a ten years' war" a series of papers intended to account for the battle with the slum since i wrote "how the other half lives." a good many things can happen in three years. so many things have happened in these three, the fighting has been so general all along the line and has so held public attention, that this seems the proper time to pass it all in review once more. that i have tried to do in this book, retaining all that still applied of the old volume and adding as much more. the "stories" were printed in the _century magazine_. they are fact, not fiction. if the latter, they would have no place here. "the battle with the slum" is properly the sequel to "how the other half lives," and tells how far we have come and how. "with his usual hopefulness," i read in the annals of the american academy of political and social science of my book three years ago, "the author is still looking forward to better things in the future." i was not deceived then. not in the thirty years before did we advance as in these three, though tammany blocked the way most of the time. it is great to have lived in a day that sees such things done. j. a. r. richmond hill, august , . contents page introduction. what the fight is about chapter i. battling against heavy odds ii. the outworks of the slum taken iii. the devil's money iv. the blight of the double-decker v. "druv into decency" vi. the mills house vii. pietro and the jew viii. on whom shall we shut the door? ix. the genesis of the gang x. jim xi. letting in the light xii. the passing of cat alley xiii. justice to the boy xiv. the band begins to play xv. "neighbor" the password xvi. reform by humane touch xvii. the unnecessary story of mrs. ben wah and her parrot index list of illustrations theodore roosevelt _frontispiece_ page one of the five points fifty years ago the "old church" tenement an old wooster street court a fourth ward colony in the bad old days dens of death gotham court green dragon yard, london a flagged hallway in the "big flat" jersey street rookeries the survival of the unfittest the rear tenement grows up professor felix adler a cellar dive in the bend it costs a dollar a month to sleep in these sheds mulberry street police station. waiting for the lodging to open night in gotham court a mulberry bend alley "in the hallway i ran across two children, little tots, who were inquiring their way to the 'commissioner'" "with his whole hungry little soul in his eyes" one family's outlook on the air shaft. the mother said, "our daughter does not care to come home to sleep" the only bath-tub in the block. it hangs in the air shaft the old style of tenements, with yards as a solid block of double-deckers, lawful until now, would appear richard watson gilder the mott street barracks r. fulton cutting alfred corning clark buildings the riverside tenements in brooklyn a typical east side block robert w. de forest plan of a typical floor of the competition in the c. o. s. plans of model tenements plans of tenements a seven-cent lodging house in the bowery they had a mind to see how it looked doorway of the mills house, no. evening in one of the courts in the mills house, no. lodging room in the leonard street police station women's lodging room in eldridge street police station a "scrub" and her bed--the plank what a search of the lodgers brought forth bedroom in the new city lodging houses "are we not young enough to work for him?" the play school. dressing dolls for a lesson label of consumers' league josephine shaw lowell one door that has been opened: st. john's park in hudson street, once a graveyard dr. jane elizabeth robbins one way of bringing the children into camp: basket-weaving in vacation school the children's christmas tree jacob beresheim heading off the gang. vacation playground near old frog hollow craps children's playground. good citizenship at the bottom of this barrel the gang fell in with joyous shouts "oh, mother! you were gone so long" keep off the grass colonel george e. waring, jr. a tammany-swept east side street before colonel waring's day the same street when colonel waring wielded the broom the mulberry bend bone alley mulberry bend park roof playground on a public school kindergarten on the recreation pier at the foot of east th street the east river park the seward park the seward park on opening day in the roof garden of the hebrew educational alliance bottle alley, whyó gang's headquarters the first christmas tree in gotham court the mouth of the alley the wrecking of cat alley trilby old barney the old and the new public school no. , manhattan letter h plan of public school no. public school no. , the bronx girls' playground on the roof the new idea: a stairway of public school no. truck farming on the site of stryker's lane doorway of public school no. main entrance of public school no. superintendent c. b. j. snyder "the fellows and papa and mamma shall be invited in yet" the "slide" that was the children's only playground once a cooking lesson in vacation school "such a ball-room!" teaching the girls to swim athletic meets in crotona park flag drill in the king's garden mrs. ben wah the battle with the slum what the fight is about the slum is as old as civilization. civilization implies a race to get ahead. in a race there are usually some who for one cause or another cannot keep up, or are thrust out from among their fellows. they fall behind, and when they have been left far in the rear they lose hope and ambition, and give up. thenceforward, if left to their own resources, they are the victims, not the masters, of their environment; and it is a bad master. they drag one another always farther down. the bad environment becomes the heredity of the next generation. then, given the crowd, you have the slum ready-made. the battle with the slum began the day civilization recognized in it her enemy. it was a losing fight until conscience joined forces with fear and self-interest against it. when common sense and the golden rule obtain among men as a rule of practice, it will be over. the two have not always been classed together, but here they are plainly seen to belong together. justice to the individual is accepted in theory as the only safe groundwork of the commonwealth. when it is practised in dealing with the slum, there will shortly be no slum. we need not wait for the millennium, to get rid of it. we can do it now. all that is required is that it shall not be left to itself. that is justice to it and to us, since its grievous ailment is that it cannot help itself. when a man is drowning, the thing to do is to pull him out of the water; afterward there will be time for talking it over. we got at it the other way in dealing with our social problems. the wise men had their day, and they decided to let bad enough alone; that it was unsafe to interfere with "causes that operate sociologically," as one survivor of these unfittest put it to me. it was a piece of scientific humbug that cost the age which listened to it dear. "causes that operate sociologically" are the opportunity of the political and every other kind of scamp who trades upon the depravity and helplessness of the slum, and the refuge of the pessimist who is useless in the fight against them. we have not done yet paying the bills he ran up for us. some time since we turned to, to pull the drowning man out, and it was time. a little while longer, and we should hardly have escaped being dragged down with him. the slum complaint had been chronic in all ages, but the great changes which the nineteenth century saw, the new industry, political freedom, brought on an acute attack which put that very freedom in jeopardy. too many of us had supposed that, built as our commonwealth was on universal suffrage, it would be proof against the complaints that harassed older states; but in fact it turned out that there was extra hazard in that. having solemnly resolved that all men are created equal and have certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we shut our eyes and waited for the formula to work. it was as if a man with a cold should take the doctor's prescription to bed with him, expecting it to cure him. the formula was all right, but merely repeating it worked no cure. when, after a hundred years, we opened our eyes, it was upon sixty cents a day as the living wage of the working-woman in our cities; upon "knee pants" at forty cents a dozen for the making; upon the potter's field taking tithe of our city life, ten per cent each year for the trench, truly the lost tenth of the slum. our country had grown great and rich; through our ports was poured food for the millions of europe. but in the back streets multitudes huddled in ignorance and want. the foreign oppressor had been vanquished, the fetters stricken from the black man at home; but his white brother, in his bitter plight, sent up a cry of distress that had in it a distinct note of menace. political freedom we had won; but the problem of helpless poverty, grown vast with the added offscourings of the old world, mocked us, unsolved. liberty at sixty cents a day set presently its stamp upon the government of our cities, and it became the scandal and the peril of our political system. so the battle began. three times since the war that absorbed the nation's energies and attention had the slum confronted us in new york with its challenge. in the darkest days of the great struggle it was the treacherous mob;[ ] later on, the threat of the cholera, which found swine foraging in the streets as the only scavengers, and a swarming host, but little above the hog in its appetites and in the quality of the shelter afforded it, peopling the back alleys. still later, the mob, caught looting the city's treasury with its idol, the thief tweed, at its head, drunk with power and plunder, had insolently defied the outraged community to do its worst. there were meetings and protests. the rascals were turned out for a season; the arch-chief died in jail. i see him now, going through the gloomy portals of the tombs, whither, as a newspaper reporter, i had gone with him, his stubborn head held high as ever. i asked myself more than once, at the time when the vile prison was torn down, whether the comic clamor to have the ugly old gates preserved and set up in central park had anything to do with the memory of the "martyred" thief, or whether it was in joyful celebration of the fact that others had escaped. his name is even now one to conjure with in the sixth ward. he never "squealed," and he was "so good to the poor"--evidence that the slum is not laid by the heels by merely destroying five points and the mulberry bend. there are other fights to be fought in that war, other victories to be won, and it is slow work. it was nearly ten years after the great robbery before decency got a good upper grip. that was when the civic conscience awoke in . [footnote : the draft riots of .] and after all that, the lexow disclosures of inconceivable rottenness of a tammany police; the woe unto you! of christian priests calling vainly upon the chief of the city "to save its children from a living hell," and the contemptuous reply on the witness-stand of the head of the party of organized robbery, at the door of which it was all laid, that he was "in politics, working for his own pocket all the time, same as you and everybody else!" slow work, yes! but be it ever so slow, the battle has got to be fought, and fought out. for it is one thing or the other: either we wipe out the slum, or it wipes out us. let there be no mistake about this. it cannot be shirked. shirking means surrender, and surrender means the end of government by the people. if any one believes this to be needless alarm, let him think a moment. government by the people must ever rest upon the people's ability to govern themselves, upon their intelligence and public spirit. the slum stands for ignorance, want, unfitness, for mob-rule in the day of wrath. this at one end. at the other, hard-heartedness, indifference, self-seeking, greed. it is human nature. we are brothers whether we own it or not, and when the brotherhood is denied in mulberry street we shall look vainly for the virtue of good citizenship on fifth avenue. when the slum flourishes unchallenged in the cities, their wharves may, indeed, be busy, their treasure-houses filled,--wealth and want go so together,--but patriotism among their people is dead. as long ago as the very beginning of our republic, its founders saw that the cities were danger-spots in their plan. in them was the peril of democratic government. at that time, scarce one in twenty-five of the people in the united states lived in a city. now it is one in three. and to the selfishness of the trader has been added the threat of the slum. ask yourself then how long before it would make an end of us, if let alone. put it this way: you cannot let men live like pigs when you need their votes as freemen; it is not safe.[ ] you cannot rob a child of its childhood, of its home, its play, its freedom from toil and care, and expect to appeal to the grown-up voter's manhood. the children are our to-morrow, and as we mould them to-day so will they deal with us then. therefore that is not safe. unsafest of all is any thing or deed that strikes at the home, for from the people's home proceeds citizen virtue, and nowhere else does it live. the slum is the enemy of the home. because of it the chief city of our land came long ago to be called "the homeless city." when this people comes to be truly called a nation without homes there will no longer be any nation. [footnote : "the experiment has been long tried on a large scale, with a dreadful success, affording the demonstration that if, from early infancy, you allow human beings to _live_ like brutes, you can degrade them down to their level, leaving them scarcely more intellect, and no feelings and affections proper to human hearts."--_report on the health of british towns._] hence, i say, in the battle with the slum we win or we perish. there is no middle way. we shall win, for we are not letting things be the way our fathers did. but it will be a running fight, and it is not going to be won in two years, or in ten, or in twenty. for all that, we must keep on fighting, content if in our time we avert the punishment that waits upon the third and the fourth generation of those who forget the brotherhood. as a man does in dealing with his brother so it is the way of god that his children shall reap, that through toil and tears we may make out the lesson which sums up all the commandments and alone can make the earth fit for the kingdom that is to come. chapter i battling against heavy odds the slum i speak of is our own. we made it, but let us be glad we have no patent on the manufacture. it is not, as one wrote with soul quite too patriotic to let the old world into competition on any terms, "the offspring of the american factory system." not that, thank goodness! it comes much nearer to being a slice of original sin which makes right of might whenever the chance offers. when to-day we clamor for air and light and water as man's natural rights because necessary to his being, we are merely following in the track hippocrates trod twenty-five centuries ago. how like the slums of rome were to those of new york any one may learn from juvenal's satires and gibbon's description of rome under augustus. "i must live in a place where there are no fires, no nightly alarms," cries the poet, apostle of commuters. "already is ucalegon shouting for water, already is he removing his chattels; the third story in the house you live in is already in a blaze. you know nothing about it. for if the alarm begin from the bottom of the stairs, he will be the last to be burned whom a single tile protects from the rain where the tame pigeons lay their eggs." (clearly they had no air-shafts in the roman tenements!) "codrus had a bed too small for his procula; six little jugs, the ornament of his sideboard, and a little can, besides, beneath it.... what a height it is from the lofty roofs from which a potsherd tumbles on your brains. how often cracked and chipped earthenware falls from the windows.... pray and bear about with you the miserable wish that they may be contented with throwing down only what the broad basins have held.... if you can tear yourself away from the games in the circus, you can buy a capital house at sora, or fabrateria, or frasino, for the price at which you are now hiring your dark hole for one year. there you will have your little garden ... live there enamoured of the pitchfork.... it is something to be able in any spot to have made oneself proprietor even of a single lizard.... none but the wealthy can sleep in rome."[ ] [footnote : satire iii, juvenal.] one reads with a grim smile of the hold-ups of old: "'where do you come from?' he (policeman?) thunders out. 'you don't answer? speak or be kicked! say, where do you hang out?' it is all one whether you speak or hold your tongue; they beat you just the same, and then, in a passion, force you to give bail to answer for the assault.... i must be off. let those stay ... for whom it is an easy matter to get contracts for building temples, clearing rivers, constructing harbors, cleansing sewers, etc."[ ] not even in the boss and his pull can we claim exclusive right. [footnote : satire iii, juvenal.] rome had its walls, as new york has its rivers, and they played a like part in penning up the crowds. within space became scarce and dear, and when there was no longer room to build in rows where the poor lived, they put the houses on top of one another. that is the first chapter of the story of the tenement everywhere. gibbon quotes the architect vitruvius, who lived in the augustan age, as complaining of "the common though inconvenient practice of raising houses to a considerable height in the air. but the loftiness of the buildings, which often consisted of hasty work and insufficient material, was the cause of frequent and fatal accidents, and it was repeatedly enacted by augustus as well as by nero that the height of private dwellings should not exceed the measure of seventy feet above the ground." "repeatedly" suggests that the jerry-builder was a hard nut to crack then as now. as to nero's edict, new york enacted it for its own protection in our own generation. [illustration: one of the five points fifty years ago.] step now across eighteen centuries and all the chapters of the dreary story to the middle of the century we have just left behind, and look upon this picture of the new world's metropolis as it was drawn in public reports at a time when a legislative committee came to new york to see how crime and drunkenness came to be the natural crop of a population "housed in crazy old buildings, crowded, filthy tenements in rear yards, dark, damp basements, leaking garrets, shops, outhouses, and stables converted into dwellings, though scarcely fit to shelter brutes," or in towering tenements, "often carried up to a great height without regard to the strength of the foundation walls." what matter? they were not intended to last. the rent was high enough to make up for the risk--to the property. the tenant was not considered. nothing was expected of him, and he came up to the expectation, as men have a trick of doing. "reckless slovenliness, discontent, privation, and ignorance were left to work out their inevitable results, until the entire premises reached the level of tenant-house dilapidation, containing, but sheltering not, the miserable hordes that crowded beneath smouldering, water-rotted roofs, or burrowed among the rats of clammy cellars."[ ] [footnote : report of select committee of assembly. new york, .] we had not yet taken a lesson from nero. that came later. but otherwise we were abreast. no doubt the roman landlord, like his new york brother of a later day, when called to account, "urged the filthy habits of his tenants as an excuse for the condition of the property." it has been the landlord's plea in every age. "they utterly forgot," observes the sanitarian who was set to clean up, "that it was the tolerance of those habits which was the real evil, and that for this they themselves were alone responsible."[ ] [footnote : york health department report, , appendix a, p. .] those days came vividly back to me last winter, when in a wisconsin country town i was rehearsing the story of the long fight, and pointing out its meaning to us all. in the audience sat a sturdy, white-haired, old farmer who followed the recital with keen interest, losing no word. when he saw this picture of one of the five points, he spoke out loud: "yes! that is right. i was there." it turned out that he and his sister had borne a hand in the attack upon that stronghold of the slum by the forces of decency, in and , which ended in the wiping out of the city's worst disgrace. it was the first pitched battle in the fight. soon after he had come west and taken homestead land; but the daily repetition during a lifetime of the message to men, which the woods and the fields and god's open sky have in keeping, had not dulled his ears to it, and after fifty years his interest in his brothers in the great city was as keen as ever, his sympathies as quick. he had driven twenty miles across the frozen prairie to hear my story. it is his kind who win such battles, and a few of them go a long way. [illustration: the "old church" tenement.] a handful of methodist women made the five points decent. to understand what that meant, look at the "dens of death" in baxter street, which were part of it, "houses," says the health inspector,[ ] "into which the sunlight never enters ... that are dark, damp, and dismal throughout all the days of the year, and for which it is no exaggeration to say that the money paid to the owners as rent is literally the 'price of blood.'" it took us twenty-four years after that to register the conviction in the form of law that that was good cause for the destruction of a tenement in cold blood; but we got rid of some at that time in a fit of anger. the mortality officially registered in those "dens of death" was . per cent of their population. we think now that the death-rate of new york is yet too high at or in a thousand of the living. [footnote : report of board of health, new york, , p. .] a dozen steps away in mulberry street, called "death's thoroughfare" in the same report, were the "old church tenements," part of the five points and nearly the worst part. "one of the largest contributors to the hospitals," this repulsive pile had seen the day when men and women sat under its roof and worshipped god. when the congregation grew rich, it handed over its house to the devil and moved up-town. that is not putting it too strong. counting in the front tenements that shut out what little air and sunshine might otherwise have reached the wretched tenants, it had a population of according to the record, and a mortality of per thousand! [illustration: an old wooster street court.] the sketches of the fourth ward and wooster street barracks are reproduced from an old report of the association for improving the condition of the poor. they rightly made out, those early missionaries, that the improvement must begin with the people's homes, or not at all, and allowed no indifference on the part of the public to turn them from their path. it is worth the while of chicago and the other western cities that are growing with such joyful metropolitan ambitions, to notice that their slums look to-day very much as new york's did then. in fifty years how will it be? "the offspring of municipal neglect" the assembly committee of called our "tenement-house" system. "forgetfulness of the poor" was the way a citizens' council put it. it comes to the same thing. whether seen from the point of view of the citizen, the philanthropist, or the christian, the slum is the poorest investment a city can make, and once made it is not easily unmade. in a mississippi river town, when pleading for the turning over to the people's use of some vacant land on the river-shore that would make a fine breathing space, i was told that by and by they would consider it. just now it was too valuable for factory purposes. when the city had grown opulent, in say twenty-five years, they would be willing to hand it over. fatal delusion! men do not grow that kind of sense as they grow rich. the land will be always "too valuable." when we in new york were scandalized at last into making a park of the mulberry bend, it cost us a million and a half, and it had made the slum a fixture, not to be dislodged. no! the way to fight the slum is to head it off. it is like fighting a fire. chasing it up is hard and doubtful work; the chances are that you will not overtake it till the house is burned down. [illustration: a fourth ward colony in the bad old days.] there were those who thought when the civil war was over, that a big fire would not be the worst thing that could happen to new york; and, if it could have burned sense into men's minds as it burned up the evidence of their lack of it, they would have been right. but forty per cent--the rent some of the barracks brought--is a powerful damper on sense and conscience, even with the cholera at the door. however, the fear of it gave us the citizens' council of hygiene, and new york heard the truth for once. "not only," it ran, "does filth, overcrowding, lack of privacy and domesticity, lack of ventilation and lighting, and absence of supervision and of sanitary regulation still characterize the greater number of the tenements; but they are built to a greater height in stories; there are more rear houses built back to back with other buildings, correspondingly situated on parallel streets; the courts and alleys are more greedily encroached upon and narrowed into unventilated, unlighted, damp, and well-like holes between the many-storied front and rear tenements; and more fever-breeding wynds and _culs-de-sac_ are created as the demand for the humble homes of the laboring poor increases."[ ] the council, which was composed of sixteen of new york's most distinguished physicians, declared that by ordinary sanitary management the city's death-rate should be reduced thirty per cent. its judgment has been more than borne out. in the thirty-five years that have passed since, it has in fact been reduced over fifty per cent. [footnote : council of hygiene's report, .] men and women were found living in cellars deep down under the ground. one or two of those holes are left still in park street near the five points mission, but they have not been used as living-rooms for a generation. in cellars near the river the tide rose and fell, compelling the tenants "to keep the children in bed till ebb-tide." the plumber had come upon the field, but his coming brought no relief. his was not a case of conscience. "untrapped soil pipes opened into every floor and poisoned the tenants." where the "dens of death" were in baxter street, big barracks crowded out the old shanties. more came every day. i remember the story of those shown in the picture. they had been built only a little while when complaint came to the board of health of smells in the houses. a sanitary inspector was sent to find the cause. he followed the smell down in the cellar and, digging there, discovered that the waste pipe was a blind. it had simply been run three feet into the ground and was not connected with the sewer. the houses were built to sell. that they killed the tenants was no concern of builder's. his name, by the way, was buddensiek. a dozen years after, when it happened that a row of tenements he was building fell down ahead of time, before they were finished and sold, and killed the workmen, he was arrested and sent to sing sing for ten years, for manslaughter. [illustration: dens of death.] that time he had forgotten to put lime in the mortar. it was just sand. when the houses fell in the sight of men, the law was at last able to make him responsible. it failed in the matter of the soil pipe. it does sometimes to this very day. knocking a man in the head with an axe, or sticking a knife into him, goes against the grain. slowly poisoning a hundred so that the pockets of one be made to bulge may not even banish a man from respectable society. we are a queer lot in some things. however, that is hardly quite fair to society. it is a fact that that part of it which would deserve the respect of its fellow-citizens has got rid of its tenement-house property in recent years. it speculates in railway shares now. twenty cases of typhoid fever from a single house in one year was the record that had gone unconsidered. bedrooms in tenements were dark closets, utterly without ventilation. there couldn't be any. the houses were built like huge square boxes, covering nearly the whole of the lot. some light came in at the ends, but the middle was always black. forty thousand windows, cut by order of the health board that first year, gave us a daylight view of the slum: "damp and rotten and dark, walls and banisters sticky with constant moisture." think of living babies in such hell-holes; and make a note of it, you in the young cities who can still head off the slum where we have to wrestle with it for our sins. put a brand upon the murderer who would smother babies in dark holes and bedrooms. he is nothing else. forbid the putting of a house five stories high, or six, on a twenty-five foot lot, unless at least thirty-five per cent of the lot be reserved for sunlight and air. forbid it absolutely, if you can. it is the devil's job, and you will have to pay his dues in the end, depend on it. and while you are about it make a note of a fact we let go unheeded too long to our harm, and haven't grasped fully yet. the legislative committee of said it: "to prevent drunkenness provide every man with a clean and comfortable home." call it paternalism, crankery, any other hard name you can think of, all the same it goes down underneath the foundation of things. i have known drunkards to wreck homes a plenty in my time; but i have known homes, too, that made drunkards by the shortest cut. i know a dozen now--yes, ten dozen--from which, if i had to live there, i should certainly escape to the saloon with its brightness and cheer as often and as long as i could to brood there perhaps over the fate which sowed desolation in one man's path that another might reap wealth and luxury. that last might not be my way, but it is a human way, and it breeds hatred which is not good mortar for us to build with. it does not bind. let us remember that and just be sensible about things, or we shall not get anywhere. [illustration: gotham court.] by which i do not mean that we are not getting anywhere; for we are. look at gotham court, described in the health reports of the sixties as a "packing-box tenement" of the hopeless back-to-back type, which meant that there was no ventilation and could be none. the stenches from the "horribly foul cellars" with their "infernal system of sewerage" must needs poison the tenants all the way up to the fifth story. i knew the court well, knew the gang that made its headquarters with the rats in the cellar, terrorizing the helpless tenants; knew the well-worn rut of the dead-wagon and the ambulance to the gate, for the tenants died there like flies in all seasons, and a tenth of its population was always in the hospital. i knew the story of how it had been built by a quaker with good intentions, but without good sense, for the purpose of rescuing people from the awful cellar-holes they burrowed in around there,--this within fifty-one years of the death of george washington, who lived just across the street on the crest of cherry hill when he was president,--and how in a score of years from the time it was built it had come to earn the official description, "a nuisance which, from its very magnitude, is assumed to be unremovable and irremediable."[ ] that was at that time. but i have lived to see it taken in hand three times, once by the landlord under compulsion of the board of health, once by christian men bent upon proving what could be done on their plan with the worst tenement house. and a good deal was accomplished. the mortality was brought below the general death-rate of the city, and the condition of the living was made by comparison tolerable. only the best was bad in that spot, on account of the good quaker's poor sense, and the third time the court was taken in hand it was by the authorities, who destroyed it, as they should have done a generation before. oh, yes, we are getting there; but that sort of thing takes time. [footnote : health department report, , p. .] [illustration: green dragon yard, london.] going through whitechapel, london, about the time we were making ready to deal with gotham court as it deserved, i photographed green dragon yard as typical of what i saw about me. compare the court and the yard and see the difference between our slum problem and that of old world cities. gotham court contained families when i made a canvass of it in the old days, comprising over persons, not counting the vagrants who infested the cellars. the population of green dragon yard was greater than the sight of it would lead you to expect, for in whitechapel one-room flats were the rule; but with its utmost crowding it came nowhere near the court. sullen discontent was the badge of it. gotham court was in an active state of warfare at all hours, for its population was evenly divided between irish and italians, with only two german families, who caught it from both sides. but there was hope in that, for they were on the move; before the court was torn down, one-third of its tenants were greeks. their slum over yonder is dead, black, given over to smoky chimneys and bad draughts, with red-eyed and hopeless men and women forever blowing the bellows on ineffectual fires. ours is alive if it _is_ with fighting. there is yeast in it, and bright skies without, if not within. i don't believe there is a bellows to be had in new york. our slum, with its greater crowd, has more urgent need of sharp attention, chiefly because of the overflow of theirs which it receives. but after all, even that represents what still had courage and manhood enough to make it want to get away and do better. we shall "get there" if we don't give up. it sometimes seems to me that _their_ only hope is to get here. [illustration: flagged hallway in the "big flat."] speaking of the fair beginning of gotham court reminds me of the big flat in mott street, a mighty tenement with room for a hundred families that was another instance of reform still-born; by which i mean that it came before we were ready for it, and willing to back it up; also before we knew just how. that house was built by the philanthropists of those days on such a generous scale that it reached clear through the block to elizabeth street. it had not occurred to the builders that the neighborhood was one in which such an arrangement might prove of special convenience to the lawbreakers with which it swarmed. thieves and thugs made it a runway, and decent people shunned it. other philanthropists, with the will but without the wisdom that was needed, took it up and tried to make a workingwoman's home of it; but that end was worse than the beginning. the women would have none of the rules that went with the philanthropy, and the big flat lapsed back among the slum tenements and became the worst of a bad lot. i speak of it here because just now the recollection of it is a kind of a milestone in the battle with the slum. twenty years after, a. t. stewart, the merchant prince, set another in the park avenue hotel which he intended for his working-girls; and that was a worse failure than the first, for it never served the purpose he intended for it. and now, just as i am writing this, they are putting the finishing touches to a real woman's hotel up-town which will not be a failure, though it will hardly reach the same class which the remodellers of the big flat had in mind. however, we shall get there, too, now we know the way. slowly, with many setbacks, we battled our way into the light. a board of health had come with the cholera panic in . the swine that ran at large in the streets, practically the only scavengers, were banished. the cholera and the yellow fever that had ravaged the city by turns never came back. the smallpox went its way, too,[ ] and was heard of again only once as an epidemic, till people had forgotten what it was like,--enough to make them listen to the anti-vaccination cranks,--and politics had the health department by the throat again and held the gate open. we acquired tenement house laws, and the process of education that had begun with the foraging ground of the swine was extended step by step to the citizen's home. short steps and cautious were they. every obstacle which the landlord's cunning and the perversion of the machinery of the law to serve his interests could devise was thrown in the way. it was a new doctrine to that day that any power should intervene between him and the tenants who represented his income, and it was held to be a hardship if not downright robbery. the builder took the same view. every tenement house plan was the subject of hot debate between the health board and the builder, or his architect. the smallest air-shaft had to be wrung out of him, as it were, by main strength. the church itself was too often on the side of the enemy, where its material interests were involved. trinity, the wealthiest church corporation in the land, was in constant opposition as a tenement house landlord, and finally, to save a few hundred dollars, came near upsetting the whole structure of tenement law that had been built up in the interest of the toilers and of the city's safety with such infinite pains. the courts were reluctant. courts in such matters record rather than lead the state of the public mind, and now that the immediate danger of an epidemic was over, the public mind had a hard time grasping the fact that bettering the housing of the poor was simple protection for the community. when suit was brought against a bad landlord, judges demanded that the department must prove not only that a certain state of soil saturation, for instance, was dangerous to health, but that some one had been actually made sick by that specified nuisance. fat-boilers, slaughter-house men, and keepers of other nuisances made common cause against the new decency, and with these obstacles in front, the sanitarians found the enemy constantly recruited from the rear. with the immense immigration that poured in after the civil war, the evil with which they were struggling grew enormously. economic problems other than the old one of rent came to vex us. the sweater moved into the east side tenements. child-labor grew and swelled. [footnote : they had "health wardens" in the old days, and the council of hygiene tells of the efficient way two of them fought the smallpox. one stood at the foot of the stairs and yelled to those minding a patient in the next story to "put pieces of camphor about the clothes of the sick and occasionally throw a piece on the hot stove." the other summoned the occupants of a smallpox smitten tenement to the hall door and cautioned them to say nothing about it to any one, or he would send them all to the pest-house!] the tenement had grown its logical crop. in the sweating conspiracy it is a prime factor. its extortionate rates make the need, and the need of the poor was ever the opportunity of their oppressor. what they have to take becomes the standard of all the rest. sweating is only a modern name for it. the cause is as old as the slum itself. [illustration: jersey street rookeries.] however, the new light was not without its allies. chief among them was the onward march of business that wiped out many a foul spot which had sorely, tried the patience of us all. a carriage factory took the place of the big flat when it had become a disgusting scandal. jersey street, a short block between mulberry and crosby streets, to which no whitechapel slum could hold a candle, became a factory-street. no one lives there now. the last who did was murdered by the gang that grew as naturally out of its wickedness as a toadstool grows on a rotten log. he kept the saloon on the corner of crosby street. saloon and tenements are gone together. where they were are rows of factories, empty and silent at night. a man may go safely there now at any hour. i should not have advised strangers to try that when it was at its worst, though police headquarters was but a block away. [illustration: the survival of the unfittest.] i photographed that phase of the battle with the slum just before they shut in the last tenement in the block with a factory building in its rear. it stood for a while after that down in a deep sort of pocket with not enough light struggling down on the brightest of days to make out anything clearly in the rooms,--truly a survival of the unfittest; but the tenants stayed. they had access through a hallway on crosby street; they had never been used to a yard; as for the darkness, that they had always been used to. they were "manured to the soil," in the words of mrs. partington. but at length business claimed the last foot of the block, and peace came to it and to us. all the while we were learning. it was emphatically a campaign of education. when the cholera threatened there was the old disposition to lie down under the visitation and pray. the council pointed to the fifteen hundred cases of smallpox ferreted out by its inspectors "in a few days," and sternly reminded the people of lord palmerston's advice to those who would stay an epidemic with a national fast, that they had better turn to and clean up. we pray nowadays with broom in hand, and the prayer tells. do not understand me as discouraging the prayer; far from it. but i would lend an edge to it with the broom that cuts. that kind of foolishness we got rid of; the other kind that thinks the individual's interest superior to the public good--that is the thing we have got to fight till we die. but we made notches in that on which to hang arguments that stick. human life then counted for less than the landlord's profits; to-day it is weighed in the scale against them. property still has powerful pull. "vested rights" rise up and confront you, and no matter how loudly you may protest that no man has the right to kill his neighbor, they are still there. no one will contradict you, but they won't yield--till you make them. in a hundred ways you are made to feel that vested rights are sacred, if human life is not. but the glory is that you _can_ make them yield. you couldn't then. we haven't reached the millennium yet. but let us be glad. a hundred years ago they hanged a woman on tyburn hill for stealing a loaf of bread. to-day we destroy the den that helped make her a thief. chapter ii the outworks of the slum taken i said that we got our grip when the civic conscience awoke in . in that year the slum was arraigned in the churches. the sad and shameful story was told of how it grew and was fostered by avarice that saw in the homeless crowds from over the sea only a chance for business, and exploited them to the uttermost; how christianity, citizenship, human fellowship, shook their skirts clear of the rabble that was only good enough to fill the greedy purse, and how the rabble, left to itself, improved such opportunities as it found after such fashion as it knew; how it ran elections merely to count its thugs in, and fattened at the public crib; and how the whole evil thing had its root in the tenements, where the home had ceased to be sacred,--those dark and deadly dens in which the family ideal was tortured to death, and character was smothered; in which children were "damned rather than born" into the world, thus realizing a slum kind of foreordination to torment, happily brief in many cases. the tenement house commission long afterward called the worst of the barracks "infant slaughter houses," and showed, by reference to the mortality lists, that they killed one in every five babies born in them. [illustration: the rear tenement grows up. an alley condemned by the council of hygiene.] the story shocked the town into action. plans for a better kind of tenement were called for, and a premium was put on every ray of light and breath of air that could be let into it. it was not much, for the plans clung to the twenty-five-foot lot which was the primal curse, and the type of tenement evolved, the double-decker of the "dumb-bell" shape, while it seemed at the time a great advance upon the black, old packing-box kind, came with the great growth of our city to be a worse peril than what had gone before. but what we got was according to our sense. at least the will was there. money was raised to build model houses, and a bill to give the health authorities summary powers in dealing with tenements was sent to the legislature. the landlords held it up until the last day of the session, when it was forced through by an angered public opinion, shorn of its most significant clause, which proposed the licensing of tenements and so their control and effective repression. however, the landlords had received a real set-back. many of them got rid of their property, which in a large number of cases they had never seen, and tried to forget the source of their ill-gotten wealth. light and air did find their way into the tenements in a half-hearted fashion, and we began to count the tenants as "souls." that is another of our milestones in the history of new york. they were never reckoned so before; no one ever thought of them as "souls." so, restored to human fellowship, in the twilight of the air-shaft that had penetrated to their dens, the first tenement house committee[ ] was able to make them out "better than the houses" they lived in, and a long step forward was taken. the mulberry bend, the wicked core of the "bloody sixth ward," was marked for destruction, and all slumdom held its breath to see it go. with that gone, it seemed as if the old days must be gone too, never to return. there would not be another mulberry bend. as long as it stood, there was yet a chance. the slum had backing, as it were. [footnote : the adler tenement house committee of . it was the first citizens' commission. the legislative inquiry of was conducted by a select committee of the assembly.] [illustration: professor felix adler.] what was it like? says a man at my elbow, who never saw it. like nothing i ever saw before, or hope ever to see again. a crooked three-acre lot built over with rotten structures that harbored the very dregs of humanity. ordinary enough to look at from the street, but pierced by a maze of foul alleys, in the depths of which skulked the tramp and the outcast thief with loathsome wrecks that had once laid claim to the name of woman. every foot of it reeked with incest and murder. bandits' roost, bottle alley, were names synonymous with robbery and red-handed outrage. by night, in its worst days, i have gone poking about their shuddering haunts with a policeman on the beat, and come away in a ferment of anger and disgust that would keep me awake far into the morning hours planning means of its destruction. that was what it was like. thank god, we shall never see another such! [illustration: a cellar dive in the bend.] that was the exhibit that urged us on. but the civic conscience was not very robust yet, and required many and protracted naps. it slumbered fitfully eight long years, waking up now and then with a start, while the bend lay stewing in its slime. i wondered often, in those years of delay, if it was just plain stupidity that kept the politicians from spending the money which the law had put within their grasp; for with every year that passed, a million dollars that could have been used for small park purposes was lost.[ ] but they were wiser than i. i understood when i saw the changes which letting in the sunshine worked. they were not of the kind that made for their good. we had all believed it, but they knew it all along. at the same time, they lost none of the chances that offered. they helped the landlords in the bend, who considered themselves greatly aggrieved because their property was thereafter to front on a park instead of a pigsty, to transfer the whole assessment of half a million dollars for park benefit to the city. they undid in less than six weeks what it had taken considerably more than six years to do; but the park was cheap at the price. we could afford to pay all it cost to wake us up. when finally, upon the wave of wrath excited by the parkhurst and lexow disclosures, reform came with a shock that dislodged tammany, it found us wide awake, and, it must be admitted, not a little astonished at our sudden access of righteousness. [footnote : the small parks law of allowed the expenditure of a million dollars a year for the making of neighborhood parks; but only as payment for work done or property taken. if not used in any one year, that year's appropriation was lost.] the battle went against the slum in the three years that followed, until it found backing in the "odium of reform" that became the issue in the municipal organization of the greater city. tammany made notes. the cry meant that we were tired of too much virtue. of what was done, how it was done, and why, during those years, i shall have occasion to speak further in these pages. here i wish to measure the stretch we have come since i wrote "how the other half lives," thirteen years ago. some of it we came plodding, and some at full speed; some of it in the face of every obstacle that could be thrown in our way, wresting victory from defeat at every step; some of it with the enemy on the run. take it all together, it is a long way. much of it will not have to be travelled over again. the engine of municipal progress once started as it has been in new york, may slip many a cog with tammany as the engineer; it may even be stopped for a season; but it can never be made to work backward. even tammany knows that, and gropes desperately for a new hold, a certificate of character. in the last election ( ) she laid loud claim to having built many new schools, though she had done little more than to carry out the plans of the previous reform administration, where they could not be upset. as a matter of fact we had fallen behind again, sadly. but even the claim was significant. how long we strove for those schools, to no purpose! our arguments, our anger, the anxious pleading of philanthropists who saw the young on the east side going to ruin, the warning year after year of the superintendent of schools that the compulsory education law was but an empty mockery where it was most needed, the knocking of uncounted thousands of children for whom there was no room,--uncounted in sober fact; there was not even a way of finding out how many were adrift,[ ]--brought only the response that the tax rate must be kept down. kept down it was. "waste" was successfully averted at the spigot; at the bunghole it went on unchecked. in a swarming population like that you must have either schools or jails, and the jails waxed fat with the overflow. the east side, that had been orderly, became a hotbed of child crime. and when, in answer to the charge made by a legislative committee ( ) that the father forced his child into the shop, on a perjured age certificate, to labor when he ought to have been at play, that father, bent and heavy-eyed with unceasing toil, flung back the charge with the bitter reproach that we gave him no other choice, that it was either the street or the shop for his boy, and that perjury for him was cheaper than the ruin of the child, we were mute. what, indeed, was there to say? the crime was ours, not his. that was seven years ago. once since then have we been where we could count the months to the time when every child that knocked should find a seat in our schools; but tammany came back. once again, now, we are catching up. yesterday mayor low's reform government voted six millions of dollars for new schools. the school census law that was forgotten almost as soon as made (the census was to be taken once in two years, but was taken only twice) is to be enforced again so that we know where we stand. in that most crowded neighborhood in all the world, where the superintendent lately pleaded in vain for three new schools, half a dozen have been built, the finest in this or any other land,--great, light, and airy structures, with playgrounds on the roof; and all over the city the like are going up. the briefest of our laws, every word of which is like the blow of a hammer driving the nails home in the coffin of the bad old days, says that never one shall be built without its playground. [footnote : the first school census was taken in by order of the legislature. it showed that there were , children of school age in new york city out of school and unemployed. the number had been variously estimated from to , .] and not for the child's use only. the band shall play there yet and neighbor meet neighbor in such social contact as the slum has never known to its undoing. even as i write this the band is tuning up and the children dancing to its strains with shouts of joy. the president of the board of education and members of the board lead in the revolt against the old. clergymen applaud the opening of the school buildings on sunday for concerts, lectures, and neighborhood meetings. common sense is having its day. the streets are cleaned. the slum has even been washed. we tried that on hester street years ago, in the age of cobblestone pavements, and the result fairly frightened us. i remember the indignant reply of a well-known citizen, a man of large business responsibility and experience in the handling of men, to whom the office of street-cleaning commissioner had been offered, when i asked him if he would accept. "i have lived," he said, "a blameless life for forty years, and have a character in the community. i cannot afford--no man with a reputation can afford--to hold that office; it will surely wreck it." it made colonel waring's reputation. he took the trucks from the streets. tammany, in a brief interregnum of vigor under mayor grant, had laid the axe to the unsightly telegraph poles and begun to pave the streets with asphalt, but it left the trucks and the ash barrels to colonel waring as hopeless. trucks have votes; at least their drivers have. now that they are gone, the drivers would be the last to bring them back; for they have children, too, and the rescued streets gave them their first playground. perilous, begrudged by policeman and storekeeper, though it was, it was still a playground. [illustration: it costs a dollar a month to sleep in these sheds.] but one is coming in which the boy shall rule unchallenged. the mulberry bend park kept its promise. before the sod was laid in it two more were under way in the thickest of the tenement house crowding, and though the landscape gardener has tried twice to steal them, he will not succeed. play piers and play schools are the order of the day. we shall yet settle the "causes that operated sociologically" on the boy with a lawn-mower and a sand heap. you have got your boy, and the heredity of the next one, when you can order his setting. social halls for the older people's play are coming where the saloon has had a monopoly of the cheer too long. the labor unions and the reformers work together to put an end to sweating and child-labor. the gospel of less law and more enforcement acquired standing while theodore roosevelt sat in the governor's chair rehearsing to us jefferson's forgotten lesson that "the whole art and science of government consists in being honest." with a back door to every ordinance that touched the lives of the people, if indeed the whole thing was not the subject of open ridicule or the vehicle of official blackmail, it seemed as if we had provided a perfect municipal machinery for bringing the law into contempt with the young, and so for wrecking citizenship by the shortest cut. of free soup there is an end. it was never food for free men. the last spoonful was ladled out by yellow journalism with the certificate of the men who fought roosevelt and reform in the police board that it was good. it is not likely that it will ever plague us again. our experience has taught us a new reading of the old word that charity covers a multitude of sins. it does. uncovering some of them has kept us busy since our conscience awoke, and there are more left. the worst of them all, that awful parody on municipal charity, the police station lodging room, is gone, after twenty years of persistent attack upon the foul dens,--years during which they were arraigned, condemned, indicted by every authority having jurisdiction, all to no purpose. the stale beer dives went with them and with the bend, and the grip of the tramp on our throat has been loosened. we shall not easily throw it off altogether, for the tramp has a vote, too, for which tammany, with admirable ingenuity, found a new use, when the ante-election inspection of lodging houses made them less available for colonization purposes than they had been. perhaps i should say a new way of very old use. it was simplicity itself. instead of keeping tramps in hired lodgings for weeks at a daily outlay, the new way was to send them all to the island on short commitments during the canvass, and vote them from there _en bloc_ at the city's expense. [illustration: mulberry street police station. waiting for the lodging to open.] time and education must solve that, like so many other problems which the slum has thrust upon us. they are the forces upon which, when we have gone as far as our present supply of steam will carry us, we must always fall back; and this we may do with confidence so long as we keep stirring, if it is only marking time, when that is all that can be done. it is in the retrospect that one sees how far we have come, after all, and from that gathers courage for the rest of the way. thirty-two years have passed since i slept in a police station lodging house, a lonely lad, and was robbed, beaten, and thrown out for protesting; and when the vagrant cur that had joined its homelessness to mine, and had sat all night at the door waiting for me to come out,--it had been clubbed away the night before,--snarled and showed its teeth at the doorman, raging and impotent i saw it beaten to death on the step. i little dreamed then that the friendless beast, dead, should prove the undoing of the monstrous wrong done by the maintenance of these evil holes to every helpless man and woman who was without shelter in new york; but it did. it was after an inspection of the lodging rooms, when i stood with theodore roosevelt, then president of the police board, in the one where i had slept that night, and told him of it, that he swore they should go. and go they did, as did so many another abuse in those two years of honest purpose and effort. i hated them. it may not have been a very high motive to furnish power for municipal reform; but we had tried every other way, and none of them worked. arbitration is good, but there are times when it becomes necessary to knock a man down and arbitrate sitting on him, and this was such a time. it was what we started out to do with the rear tenements, the worst of the slum barracks, and it would have been better had we kept on that track. i have always maintained that we made a false move when we stopped to discuss damages with the landlord, or to hear his side of it at all. his share in it was our grievance; it blocked the mortality records with its burden of human woe. the damage was all ours, the profit all his. if there are damages to collect, he should foot the bill, not we. vested rights are to be protected, but, as i have said, no man has a right to be protected in killing his neighbor. [illustration: night in gotham court.] however, they are down, the worst of them. the community has asserted its right to destroy tenements that destroy life, and for that cause. we bought the slum off in the mulberry bend at its own figure. on the rear tenements we set the price, and set it low. it was a long step. bottle alley is gone, and bandits' roost. bone alley, thieves' alley, and kerosene row,--they are all gone. hell's kitchen and poverty gap have acquired standards of decency; poverty gap has risen even to the height of neckties. the time is fresh in my recollection when a different kind of necktie was its pride; when the boy-murderer--he was barely nineteen--who wore it on the gallows took leave of the captain of detectives with the cheerful invitation to "come over to the wake. they'll have a hell of a time." and the event fully redeemed the promise. the whole gap turned out to do the dead bully honor. i have not heard from the gap, and hardly from hell's kitchen, in five years. the last news from the kitchen was when the thin wedge of a column of negroes, in their up-town migration, tried to squeeze in, and provoked a race war; but that in fairness should not be laid up against it. in certain local aspects it might be accounted a sacred duty; as much so as to get drunk and provoke a fight on the anniversary of the battle of the boyne. but on the whole the kitchen has grown orderly. the gang rarely beats a policeman nowadays, and it has not killed one in a long while. so, one after another, the outworks of the slum have been taken. it has been beaten in many battles; even to the double-decker tenement on the twenty-five-foot lot have we put a stop. but its legacy is with us in the habitations of two million souls. this is the sore spot, and as against it all the rest seems often enough unavailing. yet it cannot be. it is true that the home, about which all that is to work for permanent progress must cluster, is struggling against desperate odds in the tenement, and that the struggle has been reflected in the morals of the people, in the corruption of the young, to an alarming extent; but it must be that the higher standards now set up on every hand, in the cleaner streets, in the better schools, in the parks and the clubs, in the settlements, and in the thousand and one agencies for good that touch and help the lives of the poor at as many points, will tell at no distant day, and react upon the homes and upon their builders. in fact, we know it is so from our experience last fall, when the summons to battle for the people's homes came from the young on the east side. it was their fight for the very standards i spoke of, their reply to the appeal they made to them. to any one who knew that east side ten years ago, the difference between that day and this in the appearance of the children whom he sees there must be striking. rags and dirt are now the exception rather than the rule. perhaps the statement is a trifle too strong as to the dirt; but dirt is not harmful except when coupled with rags; it can be washed off, and nowadays is washed off where such a thing would have been considered affectation in the days that were. soap and water have worked a visible cure already that goes more than skin-deep. they are moral agents of the first value in the slum. and the day is coming soon now, when with real rapid transit and the transmission of power to suburban workshops the reason for the outrageous crowding shall cease to exist. it has been a long while, a whole century of city packing, closer and more close; but it looks as if the tide were to turn at last. meanwhile, philanthropy is not sitting idle and waiting. it is building tenements on the humane plan that lets in sunshine and air and hope. it is putting up hotels deserving of the name for the army that but just now had no other home than the cheap lodging houses which inspector byrnes fitly called "nurseries of crime." these also are standards from which there is no backing down, even if coming up to them is slow work: and they are here to stay, for they pay. that is the test. not charity, but justice,--that is the gospel which they preach. [illustration: a mulberry bend alley.] flushed with the success of many victories, we challenged the slum to a fight to the finish in , and bade it come on. it came on. on our side fought the bravest and best. the man who marshalled the citizen forces for their candidate had been foremost in building homes, in erecting baths for the people, in directing the self-sacrificing labors of the oldest and worthiest of the agencies for improving the condition of the poor. with him battled men who had given lives of patient study and effort to the cause of helping their fellow-men. shoulder to shoulder with them stood the thoughtful workingman from the east side tenement. the slum, too, marshalled its forces. tammany produced its notes. it pointed to the increased tax rate, showed what it had cost to build schools and parks and to clean house, and called it criminal recklessness. the issue was made sharp and clear. the war cry of the slum was characteristic: "to hell with reform!" we all remember the result. politics interfered, and turned victory into defeat. we were beaten. i shall never forget that election night. i walked home through the bowery in the midnight hour, and saw it gorging itself, like a starved wolf, upon the promise of the morrow. drunken men and women sat in every doorway, howling ribald songs and curses. hard faces i had not seen for years showed themselves about the dives. the mob made merry after its fashion. the old days were coming back. reform was dead, and decency with it. [illustration: "in the hallway i ran across two children, little tots, who were inquiring their way to 'the commissioner.'"] a year later, i passed that same way on the night of election.[ ] the scene was strangely changed. the street was unusually quiet for such a time. men stood in groups about the saloons, and talked in whispers, with serious faces. the name of roosevelt was heard on every hand. the dives were running, but there was no shouting, and violence was discouraged. when, on the following day, i met the proprietor of one of the oldest concerns in the bowery,--which, while doing a legitimate business, caters necessarily to its crowds, and therefore sides with them,--he told me with bitter reproach how he had been stricken in pocket. a gambler had just been in to see him, who had come on from the far west, in anticipation of a wide-open town, and had got all ready to open a house in the tenderloin. "he brought $ , to put in the business, and he came to take it away to baltimore. just now the cashier of ---- bank told me that two other gentlemen--gamblers? yes, that's what you call them--had drawn $ , which they would have invested here, and had gone after him. think of all that money gone to baltimore! that's what you've done!" [footnote : , when roosevelt was elected governor after a fierce fight with tammany.] i went over to police headquarters, thinking of the sad state of that man, and in the hallway i ran across two children, little tots, who were inquiring their way to "the commissioner." the older was a hunchback girl, who led her younger brother (he could not have been over five or six years old) by the hand. they explained their case to me. they came from allen street. some "bad ladies" had moved into the tenement, and when complaint was made that sent the police there, the children's father, who was a poor jewish tailor, was blamed. the tenants took it out of the boy by punching his nose till it bled. whereupon the children went straight to mulberry street to see "the commissioner" and get justice. it was the first time in twenty years that i had known allen street to come to police headquarters for justice and in the discovery that the legacy of roosevelt had reached even to the little children i read the doom of the slum, despite its loud vauntings. no, it was not true that reform was dead, with decency. we had our innings four years later and proved it; of which more farther on. it was not the slum that had won; it was we who had lost. we were not up to the mark,--not yet. we may lose again, more than once, but even our losses shall be our gains, if we learn from them. and we are doing that. new york is a many times cleaner and better city to-day than it was twenty or even ten years ago. then i was able to grasp easily the whole plan for wresting it from the neglect and indifference that had put us where we were. it was chiefly, almost wholly, remedial in its scope. now it is preventive, constructive, and no ten men could gather all the threads and hold them. we have made, are making, headway, and no tammany has the power to stop us. they know it, too, at the hall, and were in such frantic haste to fill their pockets this last time that they abandoned their old ally, the tax rate, and the pretence of making bad government cheap government. tammany dug its arms into the treasury fairly up to the elbows, raising taxes, assessments, and salaries all at once, and collecting blackmail from everything in sight. its charges for the lesson it taught us came high; but we can afford to pay them. if to learning it we add common sense, we shall discover the bearings of it all without trouble. yesterday i picked up a book,--a learned disquisition on government,--and read on the title-page, "affectionately dedicated to all who despise politics." that was not common sense. to win the battle with the slum, we must not begin by despising politics. we have been doing that too long. the politics of the slum are apt to be like the slum itself, dirty. then they must be cleaned. it is what the fight is about. politics are the weapon. we must learn to use it so as to cut straight and sure. that is common sense, and the golden rule as applied to tammany. some years ago, the united states government conducted an inquiry into the slums of great cities. to its staff of experts was attached a chemist, who gathered and isolated a lot of bacilli with fearsome latin names, in the tenements where he went. among those he labelled were the _staphylococcus pyogenes albus_, the _micrococcus fervidosus_, the _saccharomyces rosaceus_, and the _bacillus buccalis fortuitis_. i made a note of the names at the time, because of the dread with which they inspired me. but i searched the collection in vain for the real bacillus of the slum. it escaped science, to be, identified by human sympathy and a conscience-stricken community with that of ordinary human selfishness. the antitoxin has been found, and it is applied successfully. since justice has replaced charity on the prescription the patient is improving. and the improvement is not confined to him; it is general. conscience is not a local issue in our day. a few years ago, a united states senator sought reëlection on the platform that the decalogue and the golden rule were glittering generalities that had no place in politics, and lost. we have not quite reached the millennium yet, but since then a man was governor in the empire state, elected on the pledge that he would rule by the ten commandments. these are facts that mean much or little, according to the way one looks at them. the significant thing is that they are facts, and that, in spite of slipping and sliding, the world moves forward, not backward. the poor we shall have always with us, but the slum we need not have. these two do not rightfully belong together. their present partnership is at once poverty's worst hardship and our worst blunder. chapter iii the devil's money that was what the women called it, and the name stuck and killed the looters. the young men of the east side began it, and the women finished it. it was a campaign of decency against tammany, that one of of which i am going to make the record brief as may be, for we all remember it; and also, thank god, that decency won the fight. if ever inhuman robbery deserved the name, that which caused the downfall of tammany surely did. drunk with the power and plunder of four long unchallenged years, during which the honest name of democracy was pilloried in the sight of all men as the active partner of blackmail and the brothel, the monstrous malignity reached a point at last where it was no longer to be borne. then came the crash. the pillory lied. tammany is no more a political organization than it is the benevolent concern it is innocently supposed to be by some people who never learn. it neither knows nor cares for principles. "koch?" said its president of the health department when mention was made in his hearing of the authority of the great german doctor, "who is that man koch you are talking about?" and he was typical of the rest. his function was to collect the political revenue of the department, and the city was overrun with smallpox for the first time in thirty years. the police force, of whom roosevelt had made heroes, became the tools of robbers. robbery is the business of tammany. for that, and for that only, is it organized. politics are merely the convenient pretence. i do not mean that every tammany man is a thief. probably the great majority of its adherents honestly believe that it stands for something worth fighting for,--for personal freedom, for the people's cause,--and their delusion is the opportunity of scoundrels. they have never understood its organization or read its history. for a hundred years that has been an almost unbroken record of fraud and peculation. its very founder, william mooney, was charged with being a deserter from the patriot army to the british forces. he was later on removed from office as superintendent of the almshouse for swindling the city. aaron burr plotted treason within its councils. the briefest survey of the administration of the metropolis from his day down to that of tweed shows a score of its conspicuous leaders removed, indicted, or tried, for default, bribe-taking, or theft; and the fewest were punished. the civic history of new york to the present day is one long struggle to free itself from its blighting grip. its people's parties, its committees of seventy, were ever emergency measures to that end, but they succeeded only for a season. there have been decent tammany mayors, but not for long. there have been attempts to reform the organization from within, but they have been failures. you cannot reform an "organized appetite" except by reforming it away. and then there would be nothing left of the organization. for whatever the rank and file have believed, the organization has never been anything else but the means of satisfying the appetite that never will be cloyed. whatever principles it has professed, they have served the purpose only of filling the pockets of the handful of men who rule its inner councils and use it to their own enrichment and our loss and disgrace. we have heard its most successful leader testify brazenly before the mazet legislative committee that he was in politics working for his own pocket all the time. that was his principle. and his followers applauded till the room rang. that is the tammany which has placed murderers and gamblers in its high seats. that is the tammany which you have to fight at every step when battling with the slum; the tammany which, unmasked and beaten by the parkhurst and lexow disclosures, came back with the greater new york to exploit the opportunity reform had made for itself, and gave us a lesson we will not soon forget. for at last it dropped all pretence and showed its real face to us. civil service reform was thrown to the winds; the city departments were openly parcelled out among the district leaders: a $ office to one,--two $ to another to even up. that is the secret of the "organization" which politicians admire. it does make a strong body. how it served the city in one department, the smallpox epidemic bore witness. that department, the pride of the city and its mainstay in days of danger, was wrecked. the first duty of the new president, when the four years were over and tammany out again, was to remove more than a hundred and fifty useless employees. their only function had been to draw the salaries which the city paid. the streets that had been clean became dirty--the "voter" was back "behind the broom"--and they swarmed once more with children for whom there was no room in school. officials who drew big salaries starved the inmates of the almshouse on weak tea and dry bread, and bellevue, the poor people's hospital, became a public scandal. in one night there were five drunken fights, one of them between two of the attendants who dropped the corpse they were carrying to the morgue and fought over it. the tenements were plunged back into the foulness of their worst day; the inspectors were answerable, not to the health board, but to the district leader, and the landlord who stood well with him thumbed his nose at them and at their orders to clean up. the neighborhood parks, acquired at such heavy sacrifice, lay waste. tammany took no step toward improving them. one it did take up at fort george; and though the property only cost the city $ , , the bills for taking it were $ , . that is the true tammany style. in the seward park, where the need of relief was greatest, tammany election district captains built booths, rent free, for the sale of dry goods and fish. that was "their share." wealthy corporations were made to pay heavily for "peace"; timid storekeepers were blackmailed. one, a jew, told his story: he was ordered to pay five dollars a week for privilege of keeping open sundays. he paid, and they asked ten. when he refused, he was told that it would be the worse for him. he closed up. the very next week he was sued for a hundred dollars by a man of whom he had never borrowed anything. he did not defend the suit, and it went against him. in three days the sheriff was in his store. he knew the hopelessness of it then, and went out and mortgaged his store and paid the bill. the next week another man sued him for a hundred dollars he did not owe. he went and threw himself on his mercy, and the man let him off for the costs. he was one of the many thousands of toilers who look with fear to the approaching summer because it is then the hot tenement kills their babies. their one chance of life then depends upon the supply of ice that is hawked from door to door in small pieces, since tenements have rarely other refrigerator than the draughty air-shaft. the greed of politicians plotted to deprive them of even this chance. they had control of docks and means of transportation and they cornered the supply, raising the price from thirty to sixty cents a hundred pounds and suppressing the five-cent piece. some of them that sat in high official station grew rich, but the poor man's babies died and he saw at last the quality of the friendship tammany professed for him. the push-cart pedlers, blackmailed and driven from pillar to post, saw it. they had escaped from unbearable tyranny in their old home to find a worse where they thought to be free; for to their oppressors yonder at least their women were sacred. it is difficult to approach calmly what is left of the diabolical recital. the police, set once more to collecting blackmail from saloon keepers, gambling hells, policy shops, and houses of ill fame, under a chief who on a policeman's pay became in a few short years fairly bloated with wealth, sank to the level of their occupation or into helpless or hopeless compliance with the apparently inevitable. the east side, where the home struggled against such heavy odds, became a sinkhole of undreamt-of corruption. the tenements were overrun with lewd women who paid the police for protection and received it. back of them the politician who controlled all and took the profits. this newspaper arraignment published in january, , tells the bald truth: "imagine, if you can, a section of the city territory completely dominated by one man, without whose permission neither legitimate nor illegitimate business can be conducted; where illegitimate business is encouraged and legitimate business discouraged; where the respectable residents have to fasten their doors and windows summer nights and sit in their rooms with asphyxiating air and one hundred degrees temperature, rather than try to catch the faint whiff of breeze in their natural breathing places--the stoops of their homes; where naked women dance by night in the streets, and unsexed men prowl like vultures through the darkness on "business" not only permitted, but encouraged, by the police; where the education of infants begins with the knowledge of prostitution and the training of little girls is training in the arts of phryne; where american girls brought up with the refinements of american homes are imported from small towns up-state, massachusetts, connecticut, and new jersey, and kept as virtually prisoners as if they were locked up behind jail bars until they have lost all semblance of womanhood; where small boys are taught to solicit for the women of disorderly houses; where there is an organized society of young men whose sole business in life is to corrupt young girls and turn them over to bawdy houses; where men walking with their wives along the street are openly insulted; where children that have adult diseases are the chief patrons of the hospitals and dispensaries; where it is the rule, rather than the exception, that murder, rape, robbery, and theft go unpunished--in short, where the premium of the most awful forms of vice is the profit of the politicians. "there is no 'wine, woman, and song' over there. the 'wine' is stale beer, the 'woman' is a degraded money-making machine, and the 'song' is the wail of the outraged innocent. the political backers have got it down to what has been called a 'cash-register, commutation-ticket basis,' called so from the fact that in some of these places they issued tickets, on the plan of a commutation meal-ticket, and had cash registers at the entries." lest some one think the newspaper exaggerating after all, let me add bishop potter's comment before his diocesan convention. he will not be suspected of sensationalism: "the corrupt system, whose infamous details have been steadily uncovered to our increasing horror and humiliation, was brazenly ignored by those who were fattening on its spoils; and the world was presented with the astounding spectacle of a great municipality whose civic mechanism was largely employed in trading in the bodies and souls of the innocent and defenceless. what has been published in this connection is but the merest hint of what exists--and exists, most appalling of all, as the evidence has come to me under the seal of confidence in overwhelming volume and force to demonstrate--under a system of terrorism which compels its victims to recognize that to denounce it means the utter ruin, so far as all their worldly interests are concerned, of those who dare to do so. this infamous organization for making merchandise of girls and boys, and defenceless men and women, has adroitly sought to obscure a situation concerning which all honest people are entirely clear, by saying that vice cannot be wholly suppressed. nobody has made upon the authorities of new york any such grotesque demand. all that our citizens have asked is that the government of the city shall not be employed to protect a trade in vice, which is carried on for the benefit of a political organization. the case is entirely clear. no mephistophelian cunning can obscure it, and i thank god that there is abundant evidence that the end of such a condition of things is not far off." it was, indeed, coming. but tammany, gorged with power and the lust of it, neither saw nor heeded. at a meeting of young men on the east side, one of them, responding to an address by felix adler, drew such a heart-rending picture of the conditions prevailing there that the echoes of the meeting found its way into the farthest places: "now you go," he said, "to your quiet home in a decent street where no harm comes to you or your wife or children in the night, for it is their home. and we--we go with our high resolves, the noble ambitions you have stirred, to our tenements where evil lurks in the darkness at every step, where innocence is murdered in babyhood, where mothers bemoan the birth of a daughter as the last misfortune, where virtue is sold into a worse slavery than ever our fathers knew, and our sisters betrayed by paid panders; where the name of home is as a bitter mockery, for alas! we have none. these are the standards to which we go from here." and then followed the whole amazing story of damning conspiracy between power and vice in those tenements before which a whole city stood aghast. a meeting was called the following day by dr. adler, of men and women who had the welfare of their city at heart, and when they had heard the story, they resolved that they would not rest till those things were no longer true. one of their number was the rev. robert paddock, the priest in charge of bishop potter's pro-cathedral, right in the heart of it all in stanton street. he set about gathering evidence that would warrant the arraignment of the evil-doers in his district; but when he brought it to the police he was treated with scorn and called liar. the measure was nearly full. bishop potter came back from the east, where he had been travelling, and met his people. out of that meeting came the most awful arraignment of a city government which the world has ever heard. "nowhere else on earth," the bishop wrote to the mayor of new york, "certainly not in any civilized or christian community, does there exist such a situation as defiles and dishonors new york to-day." "in the name of these little ones," his letter ran, "these weak and defenceless ones, christian and hebrew alike, of many races and tongues, but homes in which god is feared and his law revered, and virtue and decency honored and exemplified, i call upon you, sir, to save these people, who are in a very real way committed to your charge, from a living hell, defiling, deadly, damning, to which the criminal supineness of the constituted authorities set for the defence of decency and good order, threatens to doom them." the mayor's virtual response was to put the corrupt chief of police in practically complete and irresponsible charge of the force. richard croker, the boss of tammany hall, had openly counselled violence at the election then pending ( ), and the chief in a general order to the force repeated the threat. but they had reckoned without governor roosevelt. he compelled the mayor to have the order rescinded, and removed the district attorney who had been elected on the compact platform "to hell with reform." the whole city was aroused. the chamber of commerce formed a committee of fifteen which soon furnished evidence without stint of the corruption that was abroad. the connection between the police and the gambling dens was demonstrated, and also that the police were the mere tools of "politics." in tenements that were investigated flats were found harboring prostitutes in defiance of law. the police were compelled to act. the "cadets," who lived by seducing young girls and selling them to their employer at $ a head, were arrested and sent to jail for long terms. they showed fight, and it developed that they had a regular organization with political affiliations. the campaign of approached. judge jerome went upon the stump and rattled the brass checks from the cash-register that paid for the virtue of innocent girls, the daughters of his hearers. the mothers of the east side, the very tammany women themselves, rose and denounced the devil's money, and made their husbands and brothers go to the polls and vote their anger.[ ] the world knows the rest. the "red light" of the east side damned tammany to defeat. seth low was elected mayor. decency once more moved into the city hall and into the homes of the poor. croker abdicated and went away, and a new day broke for our harassed city. [footnote : up to that time i wrote of tammany as "she"; but i dropped it then as an outrage upon the sex. "it" it is and will remain hereafter. i am ashamed of ever having put the stigma on the name of woman.] that, in brief, is the story of the campaign that discharged the devil as paymaster, and put his money out of circulation--for good, let us all hope. chapter iv the blight of the double-decker in a stanton street tenement, the other day, i stumbled upon a polish capmaker's home. there were other capmakers in the house, russian and polish, but they simply "lived" there. this one had a home. the fact proclaimed itself the moment the door was opened, in spite of the darkness. the rooms were in the rear, gloomy with the twilight of the tenement although the day was sunny without, but neat, even cosey. it was early, but the day's chores were evidently done. the tea-kettle sang on the stove, at which a bright-looking girl of twelve, with a pale but cheery face, and sleeves brushed back to the elbows, was busy poking up the fire. a little boy stood by the window, flattening his nose against the pane, and gazed wistfully up among the chimney pots where a piece of blue sky about as big as the kitchen could be made out. i remarked to the mother that they were nice rooms. [illustration: "with his whole hungry little soul in his eyes."] "ah yes," she said, with a weary little smile that struggled bravely with hope long deferred, "but it is hard to make a home here. we would so like to live in the front, but we can't pay the rent." i knew the front with its unlovely view of the tenement street too well, and i said a good word for the air-shaft--yard or court it could not be called, it was too small for that--which rather surprised myself. i had found few virtues enough in it before. the girl at the stove had left off poking the fire. she broke in the moment i finished, with eager enthusiasm: "why, they have the sun in there. when the door is opened the light comes right in your face." "does it never come here?" i asked, and wished i had not done so, as soon as the words were spoken. the child at the window was listening, with his whole hungry little soul in his eyes. yes, it did, she said. once every summer, for a little while, it came over the houses. she knew the month and the exact hour of the day when its rays shone into their home, and just the reach of its slant on the wall. they had lived there six years. in june the sun was due. a haunting fear that the baby would ask how long it was till june--it was february then--took possession of me, and i hastened to change the subject. warsaw was their old home. they kept a little store there, and were young and happy. oh, it was a fine city, with parks and squares, and bridges over the beautiful river,--and grass and flowers and birds and soldiers, put in the girl breathlessly. she remembered. but the children kept coming, and they went across the sea to give them a better chance. father made fifteen dollars a week, much money; but there were long seasons when there was no work. she, the mother, was never very well here,--she hadn't any strength; and the baby! she glanced at his grave white face, and took him in her arms. the picture of the two, and of the pale-faced girl longing back to the fields and the sunlight, in their prison of gloom and gray walls, haunts me yet. i have not had the courage to go back since. i recalled the report of an english army surgeon, which i read years ago, on the many more soldiers that died--were killed would be more correct--in barracks into which the sun never shone than in those that were open to the light. they have yet two months to the sun in stanton street. the capmaker's case is the case of the nineteenth century of civilization against the metropolis of america. the home, the family, are the rallying points of civilization. the greatness of a city is to be measured, not by its balance sheets of exports and imports, not by its fleet of merchantmen, or by its miles of paved streets, nor even by its colleges, its art museums, its schools of learning, but by its homes. new york has all these, but its people live in tenements where "all the conditions which surround childhood, youth, and womanhood make for unrighteousness."[ ] this still, after forty years of battling, during which we have gone on piling layer upon layer of human beings and calling _that_ home! the , tenements the council of hygiene found in have become , , and their population of , has swelled into nearly a million and three-quarters.[ ] there were four flights of stairs at most in the old days. now they build tenements six and seven stories high, and the street has become a mere runway. it cannot take up the crowds for which it was never meant. go look at those east side streets on a summer evening or on any fair sunday when, at all events, some of the workers are at home, and see what they are like. in the average number of persons to each dwelling in new york, counting them all in, the rich and the poor, was . ; in it was . ; in , according to the united states census, the average in the old city was . . it all means that there are so many more and so much bigger tenements, and four families to the floor where there were two before. statistics are not my hobby. i like to get their human story out of them. anybody who wants them can get the figures in the census books. but as an instance of the unchecked drift--unchecked as yet--look at this record of the tenth ward, the "most crowded spot in the world." in , when it had not yet attained to that bad eminence, it contained , persons, or . to the acre. in the census showed a population of , , which was to the acre. the police census of found , persons living in houses, which was . to the acre. the health department's census for the first half of gave a total of , persons living in tenements, with inhabited buildings yet to be heard from. this is the process of doubling up,--literally, since the cause and the vehicle of it all is the double-decker tenement,--which in the year had crowded a single block in that ward at the rate of persons per acre, and one in the eleventh ward at the rate of .[ ] it goes on not in the tenth ward or on the east side only, but throughout the city. when, in , it was proposed to lay out a small park in the twenty-second ward, up on the far west side, it was shown that five blocks in that section, between forty-ninth and sixty-second streets and ninth and eleventh avenues, had a population of more than each. the block between sixty-first and sixty-second streets and tenth and eleventh avenues harbored when the police made a count in , which meant persons to the acre. [footnote : report of tenement house commission, .] [footnote : tenement house census of : manhattan and the bronx boroughs (the old city), , tenements, with a population of , , . the united states census of the two boroughs gave them a population of , , . in the greater new york there are , tenements, and two-thirds of our nearly four millions of people live in them.] [footnote : police census of , block bounded by canal, hester, eldridge, and forsyth streets: size × , population , rate per acre . block bounded by stanton, houston, attorney, and ridge streets: size × , population , rate per acre .] these are the facts. the question is, are they beyond our control? let us look at them squarely and see. in the first place, it is no answer to the charge that new york's way of housing its workers is the worst in the world to say that they are better off than they were where they came from. it is not true, in most cases, as far as the home is concerned; a shanty is better than a flat in a slum tenement, any day. even if it were true, it would still be beside the issue. in poland my capmaker counted for nothing. nothing was expected of him. here he ranks, after a few brief years, politically equal with the man who hires his labor. a citizen's duty is expected of him, and home and citizenship are convertible terms. the observation of the frenchman who had watched the experiment of herding two thousand human beings in eight tenement barracks over yonder, that the result was the "exasperation of the tenant against society," is true the world over. we have done as badly in new york. social hatefulness is not a good soil for citizenship to grow in, where political equality rules. nor is it going to help us any to charge it all to the tenant "who _will_ herd." he herds because he has no other chance; because it puts money into some one's pockets to let him. we never yet have passed a law for his relief that was not attacked in the same or the next legislature in the interest of the tenement-house builder. commission after commission has pointed out that the tenants are "better than the houses they live in"; that they "respond quickly to improved conditions." those are not honest answers. the man who talks that way is a fool, or worse. the truth is that if we cannot stop the crowds from coming, we _can_ make homes for those who come, and at a profit on the investment. that has been proved, is being proved now every day. it is not a case of transforming human nature in the tenant, but of reforming it in the landlord builder. it is a plain question of the per cent he is willing to take. so then, we have got it on the moral ground where it belongs. let the capmaker's case be ever so strong, we shall yet win. we shall win his fight and our own together; they are one. this is the way it stands at the outset of the twentieth century: new york's housing is still the worst in the world. we have the biggest crowds. we have been killing the home that is our very life at the most reckless rate. but, badly as we are off and shall be off for years to come,--allowing even that we are getting worse off in the matter of crowding,--we know now that we can do better. we have done it. we are every year wresting more light and air from the builder. he no longer dares come out and fight in the open, for he knows that public sentiment is against him. the people understand--to what an extent is shown in a report of a tenement house committee in the city of yonkers, which the postman put on my table this minute. the committee was organized "to prevent the danger to yonkers of incurring the same evils that have fallen so heavily upon new york and have cost that city millions of money and thousands of lives." it sprang from the civic league, was appointed by a republican mayor and indorsed by a democratic council! that is as it should be. so, we shall win. in fact, we are winning now, backed by this very understanding. the double-decker is doomed, and the twenty-five-foot lot has had its day. we are building tenements in which it is possible to rear homes. we are at last in a fair way to make the slum unprofitable, and that is the only way to make it go. so that we may speed it the more let us go with the capmaker a while and get his point of view. after all, that is the one that counts; the community is not nearly as much interested in the profits of the landlord as in the welfare of the workers. that we may get it fairly, suppose we take a stroll through a tenement-house neighborhood and see for ourselves. we were in stanton street. let us start there, then, going east. towering barracks on either side, five, six stories high. teeming crowds. push-cart men "moved on" by the policeman, who seems to exist only for the purpose. forsyth street: there is a church on the corner, polish and catholic, a combination that strikes one as queer here on the east side, where polish has come to be synonymous with jewish. i have cause to remember that corner. a man killed his wife in this house, and was hanged for it. just across the street, on the stoop of that brown-stone tenement, the tragedy was reënacted the next year; only the murderer saved the county trouble and expense by taking himself off also. that other stoop in the same row witnessed a suicide. why do i tell you these things? because they are true. the policeman here will bear me out. they belong to the ordinary setting of life in a crowd such as this. it is never so little worth living, and therefore held so cheap along with the fierce, unceasing battle that goes on to save it. you will go no further unless i leave it out? very well; i shall leave out the murder after we have passed the block yonder. the tragedy of that is of a kind that comes too close to the everyday life of tenement-house people to be omitted. the house caught fire in the night, and five were burned to death,--father, mother, and three children. the others got out; why not they? they stayed, it seems, to make sure none was left; they were not willing to leave one behind, to save themselves. and then it was too late; the stairs were burning. there was no proper fire escape. that was where the murder came in; but it was not all chargeable to the landlord, nor even the greater part. more than thirty years ago, in , the state made it law that the stairs in every tenement four stories high should be fireproof, and forbade the storing of any inflammable material in such houses. i do not know when the law was repealed, or if it ever was. i only know that in the fire department, out of pity for the tenants and regard for the safety of its own men, forced through an amendment to the building law, requiring the stairs of the common type of five-story tenements to be built of fireproof material, and that they are still of wood, just as they always were. ninety-seven per cent of the tenements examined by the late tenement house commission ( ) in manhattan had stairs of wood. in brooklyn they were _all_ of wood. once, a couple of years ago, i looked up the superintendent of buildings and asked him what it meant. i showed him the law, which said that the stairs should be "built of slow-burning construction or fireproof material"; and he put his finger upon the clause that follows, "as the superintendent of buildings shall decide." the law gave him discretion, and that is how he used it. "hard wood burns slowly," said he. the fire of which i speak was a "cruller fire," if i remember rightly, which is to say that it broke out in the basement bakeshop, where they were boiling crullers (doughnuts) in fat, at a.m., with a hundred tenants asleep in the house above them. the fat went into the fire, and the rest followed. i suppose that i had to do with a hundred such fires, as a police reporter, before, under the protest of the gilder tenement house commission and the good government clubs, the boiling of fat in tenement bakeshops was forbidden. the chief of the fire department, in his testimony before the commission, said that "tenements are erected mainly with a view of returning a large income for the amount of capital invested. it is only after a fire in which great loss of life occurs that any interest whatever is taken in the safety of the occupants." the superintendent of buildings, after such a fire in march, , said that there were thousands of tenement firetraps in the city. my reporter's notebook bears witness to the correctness of his statement, and it has many blank leaves that are waiting to be put to that use yet. the reckoning for eleven years showed that, of , fires in new york, . per cent were in tenement houses, though they were only a little more than per cent of all the buildings, and that occupants were killed, maimed, and rescued by the firemen. their rescue cost the lives of three of these brave men, and were injured in the effort. and when all that is said, not the half is told. a fire in the night in one of those human beehives, with its terror and woe, is one of the things that live in the recollection ever after as a terrible nightmare. the fire-chief thought that every tenement house should be fireproof, but he warned the commission that such a proposition would "meet with strong opposition from the different interests, should legislation be requested." he was right. it is purely a question of the builder's profits. up to date we have rescued the first floor from him. that must be fireproof. we shall get the whole structure yet if we pull long enough and hard enough, as we will. here is a block of tenements inhabited by poor jews. most of the jews who live over here are poor; and the poorer they are, the higher rent do they pay, and the more do they crowd to make it up between them. "the destruction of the poor is their poverty." it is only the old story in a new setting. the slum landlord's profits were always the highest. he spends nothing for repairs, and lays the blame on the tenant. the "district leader" saves him, when tammany is at the helm, unless he is on the wrong side of the political fence, in which case the sanitary code comes handy, to chase him into camp. a big "order" on his house is a very effective way of making a tenement-house landlord discern political truth on the eve of an important election. just before the election which put theodore roosevelt in the governor's chair at albany the sanitary force displayed such activity as had never been known till then in the examination of tenements belonging very largely, as it happened, to sympathizers with the gallant rough rider's cause; and those who knew did not marvel much at the large vote polled by the tammany candidate in the old city. the halls of these tenements are dark. under the law there should be a light burning, but it is one of the rarest things to find one. the thing seems well-nigh impossible of accomplishment. when the good government clubs set about backing up the board of health in its efforts to work out this reform, which comes close to being one of the most necessary of all,--such untold mischief is abroad in the darkness of these thoroughfares,--the sanitary police reported , tenement halls unlighted by night, even, and brought them, by repeated orders, down to less than in six months. i doubt that the light burned in of them all a month after the election that brought tammany back. it is so easy to put it out when the policeman's back is turned. gas costs money. let what doesn't take care of itself. we had a curious instance, at the time, of the difficulties that sometimes beset reform. certain halls that were known to be dark were reported sufficiently lighted by the policeman of the district, and it was discovered that it was his standard that was vitiated. he himself lived in a tenement, and was used to its gloom. so an order was issued defining darkness to the sanitary police: if the sink in the hall could be made out, and the slops overflowing on the floor, and if a baby could be seen on the stairs, the hall was light; if, on the other hand, the baby's shrieks were the first warning that it was being trampled upon, the hall was dark. some days later the old question arose about an eldridge street tenement. the policeman had reported the hall light enough. the president of the board of health, to settle it once for all, went over with me, to see for himself. the hall was very dark. he sent for the policeman. "did you see the sink in that hall?" he asked. the policeman said he did. "but it is pitch dark. how did you see it?" "i lit a match," said the policeman. four families live on these floors, with heaven knows how many children. it was here the police commissioners were requested, in sober earnest, some years ago, by a committee of very practical woman philanthropists, to have the children tagged, as they do in japan, i am told, so as to save the policeman wear and tear in taking them back and forth between the eldridge street police station and headquarters, when they got lost. if tagged, they could be assorted at once and taken to their homes. incidentally, the city would save the expense of many meals. it was shrewdly suspected that the little ones were lost on purpose in a good many cases, as a way of getting them fed at the public expense. [illustration: one family's outlook on the air shaft. the mother said, "our daughter does not care to come home to sleep."] that the children preferred the excitement of the police station, and the distinction of a trip in charge of a brass-buttoned guardian, to the ludlow street flat is easy enough to understand. a more unlovely existence than that in one of these tenements it would be hard to imagine. everywhere is the stench of the kerosene stove that is forever burning, serving for cooking, heating, and ironing alike, until the last atom of oxygen is burned out of the close air. oil is cheaper than coal. the air shaft is too busy carrying up smells from below to bring any air down, even if it is not hung full of washing in every story, as it ordinarily is. enterprising tenants turn it to use as a refrigerator as well. there is at least a draught of air, such as it is. when fire breaks out, this draught makes of the air shaft a flue through which the fire roars fiercely to the roof, so transforming what was meant for the good of the tenants into their greatest peril. the stuffy rooms bring to mind this denunciation of the tenement builder of fifty years ago by an angry writer, "he measures the height of his ceilings by the shortest of the people, and by thin partitions divides the interior into as narrow spaces as the leanest carpenter can work in." most decidedly, there is not room to swing the proverbial cat in any one of them. in one i helped the children, last holiday, to set up a christmas tree, so that a glimpse of something that was not utterly sordid and mean might for once enter their lives. three weeks after, i found the tree standing yet in the corner. it was very cold, and there was no fire in the room. "we were going to burn it," said the little woman, whose husband was then in the insane asylum, "and then i couldn't. it looked so kind o' cheery-like there in the corner." my tree had borne the fruit i wished. it remained for the new york slum landlord to assess the exact value of a ray of sunlight,--upon the tenant, of course. here are two back-to-back rear tenements, with dark bedrooms on the south. the flat on the north gives upon a neighbor's yard, and a hole two feet square has been knocked in the wall, letting in air and sunlight; little enough of the latter, but what there is is carefully computed in the lease. six dollars for this flat, six and a half for the one with the hole in the wall. six dollars a year per ray. in half a dozen houses in this block have i found the same rate maintained. the modern tenement on the corner goes higher: for four front rooms, "where the sun comes right in your face," seventeen dollars; for the rear flat of three rooms, larger and better every other way, but always dark, like the capmaker's, eleven dollars. from the landlord's point of view, this last is probably a concession. but he is a landlord with a heart. his house is as good a one as can be built on a twenty-five-foot lot. the man who owns the corner building in orchard street, with the two adjoining tenements, has no heart. in the depth of last winter i found a family of poor jews living in a coop under his stairs, an abandoned piece of hallway, in which their baby was born, and for which he made them pay eight dollars a month. it was the most outrageous case of landlord robbery i had ever come across, and it gave me sincere pleasure to assist the sanitary policeman in curtailing his profits by even this much. the hall is not now occupied. the jews under the stairs had two children. the shoemaker in the cellar next door had three. they were fighting and snarling like so many dogs over the coarse food on the table before them, when we looked in. the baby, it seems, was the cause of the row. he wanted it all. he was a very dirty and a very fierce baby, and the other two children were no match for him. the shoemaker grunted fretfully at his last, "ach, he is all de time hungry!" at the sight of the policeman, the young imp set up such a howl that we beat a hasty retreat. the cellar "flat" was undoubtedly in violation of law, but it was allowed to pass. in the main hall, on the ground floor, we counted seventeen children. the facts of life here suspend ordinary landlord prejudices to a certain extent. occasionally it is the tenant who suspends them. the policeman laughed as he told me of the case of a mother who coveted a flat into which she well knew her family would not be admitted; the landlord was particular. she knocked, with a troubled face, alone. yes, the flat was to let; had she any children? the woman heaved a sigh. "six, but they are all in greenwood." the landlord's heart was touched by such woe. he let her have the flat. by night he was amazed to find a flock of half a dozen robust youngsters domiciled under his roof. they had indeed been in greenwood; but they had come back from the cemetery to stay. and stay they did, the rent being paid. high rents, slack work, and low wages go hand in hand in the tenements as promoters of overcrowding. the rent is always one-fourth of the family income, often more. the fierce competition for a bare living cuts down wages; and when loss of work is added, the only thing left is to take in lodgers to meet the landlord's claim. the jew usually takes them singly, the italian by families. the midnight visit of the sanitary policeman discloses a state of affairs against which he feels himself helpless. he has his standard: cubic feet of air space for each adult sleeper, for a child. that in itself is a concession to the practical necessities of the case. the original demand was for feet. but of , and odd tenants canvassed in new york, in the slumming investigation prosecuted by the general government in , , were found to have less than feet, and of these slept in unventilated rooms with no windows. no more such rooms have been added since; but there has come that which is worse. it was the boast of new york, till a few years ago, that at least that worst of tenement depravities, the one-room house, too familiar in the english slums, was practically unknown here. it is not so any longer. the evil began in the old houses in orchard and allen streets, a bad neighborhood, infested by fallen women and the thievish rascals who prey upon their misery,--a region where the whole plan of humanity, if plan there be in this disgusting mess, jars out of tune continually. the furnished-room house has become an institution here, speeded on by a conscienceless jew who bought up the old buildings as fast as they came into the market, and filled them with a class of tenants before whom charity recoils, helpless and hopeless. when the houses were filled, the crowds overflowed into the yard. in one, i found, in midwinter, tenants living in sheds built of odd boards and roof tin, and paying a dollar a week for herding with the rats. one of them, a red-faced german, was a philosopher after his kind. he did not trouble himself to get up, when i looked in, but stretched himself in his bed,--it was high noon,--responding to my sniff of disgust that it was "sehr schoen! ein bischen kalt, aber was!" his neighbor, a white-haired old woman, begged, trembling, not to be put out. she would not know where to go. it was out of one of these houses that fritz meyer, the murderer, went to rob the poor box in the redemptorist church, the night when he killed policeman smith. the policeman surprised him at his work. in the room he had occupied i came upon a brazen-looking woman with a black eye, who answered the question of the officer, "where did you get that shiner?" with a laugh. "i ran up against the fist of me man," she said. her "man," a big, sullen lout, sat by, dumb. the woman answered for him that he was a mechanic. "what does he work at?" snorted the policeman, restraining himself with an effort from kicking the fellow. she laughed scornfully, "at the junk business." it meant that he was a thief. young men, with blotched faces and cadaverous looks, were loafing in every room. they hung their heads in silence. the women turned their faces away at the sight of the uniform. they cling to these wretches, who exploit their starved affections for their own ease, with a grip of desperation. it is their last hold. women have to love something. it is their deepest degradation that they must love these. even the wretches themselves feel the shame of it, and repay them by beating and robbing them, as their daily occupation. a poor little baby in one of the rooms gave a shuddering human touch to it all. the old houses began it, as they began all the tenement mischief that has come upon new york. but the opportunity that was made by the tenant's need was not one to be neglected. in some of the newer tenements, with their smaller rooms, the lodger is by this time provided for in the plan, with a special entrance from the hall. "lodger" comes, by an easy transition, to stand for "family." one winter's night i went with the sanitary police on their midnight inspection through a row of elizabeth street tenements which i had known since they were built, seventeen or eighteen years ago. that is the neighborhood in which the recent italian immigrants crowd. in the house which we selected for examination, in all respects the type of the rest, we found forty-three families where there should have been sixteen. upon each floor were four flats, and in each flat three rooms that measured respectively × , × , and × - / feet. in only one flat did we find a single family. in three there were two to each. in the other twelve each room had its own family living and sleeping there. they cooked, i suppose, at the one stove in the kitchen, which was the largest room. in one big bed we counted six persons, the parents and four children. two of them lay crosswise at the foot of the bed, or there would not have been room. a curtain was hung before the bed in each of the two smaller rooms, leaving a passageway from the hall to the room with the windows. the rent for the front flats was twelve dollars; for that in the rear ten dollars. the social distinctions going with the advantage of location were rigidly observed, i suppose. the three steps across a tenement hall, from the front to "the back," are often a longer road than from ludlow street to fifth avenue. they were sweaters' tenements. but i shall keep that end of the story until i come to speak of the tenants. the houses i have in mind now. they were astor leasehold property, and i had seen them built upon the improved plan of , with air shafts and all that. there had not been water in the tenements for a month then, we were told by the one tenant who spoke english that could be understood. the cold snap had locked the pipes. fitly enough, the lessee was an undertaker, an italian himself, who combined with his business of housing his people above and below the ground also that of the padrone, to let no profit slip. he had not taken the trouble to make many or recent repairs. the buildings had made a fair start; they promised well. but the promise had not been kept. in their premature decay they were distinctly as bad as the worst. i had the curiosity to seek out the agent, the middleman, and ask him why they were so. he shrugged his shoulders. with such tenants nothing could be done, he said. i have always held that italians are most manageable, and that, with all the surface indications to the contrary, they are really inclined to cleanliness, if cause can be shown, and i told him so. he changed the subject diplomatically. no doubt it was with him simply a question of the rent. they might crowd and carry on as they pleased, once that was paid; and they did. it used to be the joke of elizabeth street that when the midnight police came, the tenants would keep them waiting outside, pretending to search for the key, until the surplus population of men had time to climb down the fire-escape. when the police were gone they came back. we surprised them all in bed. like most of the other tenements we have come across on our trip, these were double-deckers. that is the type of tenement that is responsible for the crowding that till now has gone on unchecked. for twenty years it has been replacing the older barracks everywhere, as fast as they rotted or were torn down. this double-decker was thus described by the tenement house commission of : "it is the one hopeless form of tenement construction. it cannot be well ventilated, it cannot be well lighted; it is not safe in case of fire. it is built on a lot feet wide by or less in depth, with apartments for four families in each story. this necessitates the occupation of from to per cent of the lot's depth. the stairway, made in the centre of the house, and the necessary walls and partitions reduce the width of the middle rooms (which serve as bedrooms for at least two people each) to feet each at the most, and a narrow light and air shaft, now legally required in the centre of each side wall, still further lessens the floor space of these middle rooms. direct light is only possible for the rooms at the front and rear. the middle rooms must borrow what light they can from dark hallways, the shallow shafts, and the rear rooms. their air must pass through other rooms or the tiny shafts, and cannot but be contaminated before it reaches them. a five-story house of this character contains apartments for eighteen or twenty families, a population frequently amounting to people, and sometimes increased by boarders or lodgers to or more." [illustration: the only bath-tub in the block: it hangs in the air shaft.] the commission, after looking in vain through the slums of the old world cities for something to compare the double-deckers with, declared that, in their setting, the separateness and sacredness of home life were interfered with, and evils bred, physical and moral, that "conduce to the corruption of the young." "make for unrighteousness" said the commission of , six years later. yet it is for these that the "interests" of which the fire-chief spoke have rushed into battle at almost every session of the legislature, whenever a step was taken to arraign them before the bar of public opinion. no winter has passed, since the awakening conscience of the people of new york city manifested itself in a desire to better the lot of the other half, that has not seen an assault made, in one shape or another, on the structure of tenement-house law built up with such anxious solicitude. once a bill to exempt from police supervision, by withdrawing them from the tenement-house class, the very worst of the houses, whose death-rate threatened the community, was sneaked through the legislature all unknown, and had reached the executive before the alarm was sounded. the governor, put upon his guard, returned the bill, with the indorsement that he was unable to understand what could have prompted a measure that seemed to have reason and every argument against it and none for it. but the motive is not so obscure, after all. it is the same old one of profit without conscience. it took from the health department the supervision of the light, ventilation, and plumbing of the tenements, which by right belonged there, and put it in charge of a compliant building department, "for the convenience of architects and their clients, and the saving of time and expense to them." for the convenience of the architect's client, the builder, the lot was encroached upon, until of one big block which the gilder commission measured only per cent was left open to the air; per cent of it was covered with brick and mortar. rear tenements, to the number of nearly , have been condemned as "slaughter-houses," with good reason, but this block was built practically solid. the average of space covered in tenement blocks was shown to be . per cent. the law allowed only . the "discretion" that penned tenants in a burning tenement with stairs of wood for the builder's "convenience" cut down the chance of life of their babies unmoved. sunlight and air mean just that, where three thousand human beings are packed into a single block. that was why the matter was given into the charge of the health officials, when politics was yet kept out of their work. [illustration: the old style of tenements, with yards.] of such kind are the interests that oppose betterment of the worker's hard lot in new york, that dictated the appointment by tammany of a commission composed of builders to revise its code of tenement laws, and that sneered at the "laughable results of the gilder tenement house commission." those results made for the health and happiness and safety of a million and a half of souls, and were accounted, on every humane ground, the longest step forward that had been taken by this community. for the old absentee landlord, who did not know what mischief was afoot, we have got the speculative builder, who does know, but does not care, so long as he gets his pound of flesh. half of the just laws that have been passed for the relief of the people he has paralyzed with his treacherous discretion clause, carefully nursed in the school of practical politics to which he gives faithful adherence. the thing has been the curse of our city from the day when the earliest struggle toward better things began. among the first manifestations of that was the prohibition of soap factories below grand street by the act of , which created a board of health with police powers. the act was passed in february, to take effect in july; but long before that time the same legislature had amended it by giving the authorities discretion in the matter. and the biggest soap factory of them all is down there to this day, and is even now stirring up a rumpus among the latest immigrants, the syrians, who have settled about it. no doubt it is all a question of political education; but is not a hundred years enough to settle this much, that compromise is out of place where the lives of the people are at stake, and that it is time our years of "discretion" were numbered? [illustration: as a solid block of double-deckers. lawful until now, would appear.] at last there comes for the answer an emphatic yes. this year the law has killed the discretionary clause and spoken out plainly. no more stairs of wood; no more encroachment on the tenants' sunlight; and here, set in its frame of swarming tenements, is a wide, open space, yet to be a real park, with flowers and grass and birds to gladden the hearts of those to whom such things have been as tales that are told, all these dreary years, and with a playground in which the children of yonder big school may roam at will, undismayed by landlord or policeman. not all the forces of reaction can put back the barracks that were torn down as one of the "laughable results" of that very tenement house commission's work, or restore to the undertaker his profits from bone alley of horrid memory. it was the tenant's turn to laugh, that time. half a dozen blocks away, among even denser swarms, is another such plot, where there will be football and a skating pond before another season. they are breaking ground to-day. seven years of official red tape have we had since the plans were first made, and it isn't all unwound yet; but it will be speedily now, and we shall hear the story of those parks and rejoice that the day of reckoning is coming for the builder without a soul. till then let him deck the fronts of his tenements with bravery of plate glass and brass to hide the darkness within. he has done his worst. we can go no farther. yonder lies the river. a full mile we have come, through unbroken ranks of tenements with their mighty, pent-up multitudes. here they seem, with a common impulse, to overflow into the street. from corner to corner it is crowded with girls and children, dragging babies nearly as big as themselves, with desperate endeavor to lose nothing of the show. there is a funeral in the block. unnumbered sewing-machines cease for once their tireless rivalry with the flour mill in the next block, that is forever grinding in a vain effort to catch up. heads are poked from windows. on the stoops hooded and shawled figures have front seats. the crowd is hardly restrained by the policeman and the undertaker in holiday mourning, who clear a path by main strength to the plumed hearse. the eager haste, the frantic rush to see,--what does it not tell of these starved lives, of the quality of their aims and ambitions? the mill clatters loudly; there is one mouth less to fill. in the midst of it all, with clamor of urgent gong, the patrol wagon rounds the corner, carrying two policemen precariously perched upon a struggling "drunk," a woman. the crowd scatters, following the new sensation. the tragedies of death and life in the slum have met together. many a mile i might lead you along these rivers, east and west, through the island of manhattan, and find little else than we have seen. the great crowd is yet below fourteenth street, but the northward march knows no slackening of pace. as the tide sets up-town, it reproduces faithfully the scenes of the older wards, though with less of their human interest than here, where the old houses, in all their ugliness, have yet some imprint of the individuality of their tenants. only on feast days does little italy, in harlem, recall the bend when it put on holiday attire. anything more desolate and disheartening than the unending rows of tenements, all alike and all equally repellent, of the up-town streets, it is hard to imagine. hell's kitchen in its ancient wickedness was picturesque, at least, with its rocks and its goats and shanties. since the negroes took possession it is only dull, except when, once in a while, the remnant of the irish settlers make a stand against the intruders. vain hope! perpetual eviction is their destiny. negro, italian, and jew, biting the dust with many a bruised head under the hibernian's stalwart fist, resistlessly drive him before them, nevertheless, out of house and home. the landlord pockets the gate money. the old robbery still goes on. where the negro pitches his tent, he pays more rent than his white neighbor next door, and is a better tenant. and he is good game forever. he never buys the tenement, as the jew or the italian is likely to do when he has scraped up money enough to reënact, after his own fashion, the trick taught him by his oppressor. the black column has reached the hundredth street on the east side, and the sixties on the west,[ ] and there for the present it halts. jammed between africa, italy, and bohemia, the irishman has abandoned the east side up-town. only west of central park does he yet face his foe, undaunted in defeat as in victory. the local street nomenclature, in which the directory has no hand,--nigger row, mixed ale flats, etc.,--indicates the hostile camps with unerring accuracy. [footnote : there is an advanced outpost of blacks as far up as one hundred and forty-fifth street, but the main body lingers yet among the sixties.] up-town or down-town, as the tenements grow taller, the thing that is rarest to find is the home of the olden days, even as it was in the shanty on the rocks. "no home, no family, no manhood, no patriotism!" said the old frenchman. seventy-seven per cent of their young prisoners, say the managers of the state reformatory, have no moral sense, or next to none. "weakness, not wickedness, ails them," adds the prison chaplain; no manhood, that is to say. it is the stamp of the home that is lacking, and we need to be about restoring it, if we would be safe. years ago, roaming through the british museum, i came upon an exhibit that riveted my attention as nothing else had. it was a huge stone arm, torn from the shoulder of some rock image, with doubled fist and every rigid muscle instinct with angry menace. where it came from or what was its story i do not know. i did not ask. it was its message to us i was trying to read. i had been spending weary days and nights in the slums of london, where hatred grew, a noxious crop, upon the wreck of the home. lying there, mute and menacing, the great fist seemed to me like a shadow thrown from the gray dawn of the race into our busy day with a purpose, a grim, unheeded warning. what was it? in the slum the question haunts me yet. they perished, the empires those rock-hewers built, and the governments reared upon their ruins are long since dead and forgotten. they were born to die, for they were not built upon human happiness, but upon human terror and greed. we built ours upon the bed rock, and its cornerstone is the home. with this bitter mockery of it that makes the slum, can it be that the warning is indeed for us? chapter v "druv into decency" i stood at seven dials and heard the policeman's account of what it used to be. seven dials is no more like the slum of old than is the five points to-day. the conscience of london wrought upon the one as the conscience of new york upon the other. a mission house, a children's refuge, two big schools, and, hard by, a public bath and a wash-house, stand as the record of the battle with the slum, which, with these forces in the field, has but one ending. the policeman's story rambled among the days when things were different. then it was dangerous for an officer to go alone there at night. around the corner there came from one of the side streets a procession with banners, parading in honor and aid of some church charity. we watched it pass. in it marched young men and boys with swords and battle-axes, and upon its outskirts skipped a host of young roughs--so one would have called them but for the evidence of their honest employment--who rattled collection boxes, reaping a harvest of pennies from far and near. i looked at the battle-axes and the collection boxes, and thought of forty years ago. where was the seven dials of that day, and the men who gave it its bad name? i asked the policeman. "they were druv into decency, sor," he said, and answered from his own experience the question ever asked by faint-hearted philanthropists. "my father, he done duty here afore me in ' . the worst dive was where that church stands. it was always full of thieves,"--whose sons, i added mentally, have become collectors for the church. the one fact was a whole chapter on the slum. london's way with the tenant we adopted at last in new york with the slum landlord. he was "druv into decency." we had to. moral suasion had been stretched to the limit. the point had been reached where one knock-down blow outweighed a bushel of arguments. it was all very well to build model tenements as object lessons to show that the thing could be done; it had become necessary to enforce the lesson by demonstrating that the community had power to destroy houses which were a menace to its life. the rear tenements were chosen for this purpose. they were the worst, as they were the first, of new york's tenements. the double-deckers of which i have spoken had, with all their evils, at least this to their credit, that their death-rate was not nearly as high as that of the old houses. that was not because of any virtue inherent in the double-deckers, but because the earlier tenements were old, and built in a day that knew nothing of sanitary restrictions, and cared less. hence the showing that the big tenements had much the lowest mortality. the death-rate does not sound the depths of tenement-house evils, but it makes a record that is needed when it comes to attacking property rights. the mortality of the rear tenements had long been a scandal. they are built in the back yard, generally back to back with the rear buildings on abutting lots. if there is an open space between them, it is never more than a slit a foot or so wide, and gets to be the receptacle of garbage and filth of every kind; so that any opening made in these walls for purposes of ventilation becomes a source of greater danger than if there were none. the last count that was made, in , showed that among the , tenements in manhattan and the bronx there were still rear houses left.[ ] where they are the death-rate rises, for reasons that are apparent. the sun cannot reach them. they are damp and dark, and the tenants, who are always the poorest and most crowded, live "as in a cage open only toward the front." a canvass made of the mortality records by dr. roger s. tracy, the registrar of records, showed that while in the first ward (the oldest), for instance, the death-rate in houses standing singly on the lot was . per of the living, where there were rear houses it rose to . . the infant death-rate is a still better test; that rose from . in the single tenements of the same ward to . where there were rear houses.[ ] one in every five babies had to die; that is to say, the house killed it. no wonder the gilder commission styled the rear tenements "slaughter-houses," and called upon the legislature to root them out, and with them every old, ramshackle, disease-breeding tenement in the city. [footnote : that was, however, a reduction of since , when the census showed rear houses.] [footnote : report of gilder tenement house commission, .] a law which is in substance a copy of the english act for destroying slum property was passed in the spring of . it provided for the seizure of buildings that were dangerous to the public health or unfit for human habitation, and their destruction upon proper proof, with compensation to the owner on a sliding scale down to the point of entire unfitness, when he might claim only the value of the material in his house. up to that time, the only way to get rid of such a house had been to declare it a nuisance under the sanitary code; but as the city could not very well pay for the removal of a nuisance, to order it down seemed too much like robbery; so the owner was allowed to keep it. it takes time and a good many lives to grow a sentiment such as this law expressed. the anglo-saxon respect for vested rights is strong in us also. i remember going through a ragged school in london, once, and finding the eyes of the children in the infant class red and sore. suspecting some contagion, i made inquiries, and was told that a collar factory next door was the cause of the trouble. the fumes from it poisoned the children's eyes. [illustration: richard watson gilder, chairman of the tenement house commission of .] "and you allow it to stay, and let this thing go on?" i asked, in wonder. the superintendent shrugged his shoulders. "it is their factory," he said. i was on the point of saying something that might not have been polite, seeing that i was a guest, when i remembered that, in the newspaper which i carried in my pocket, i had just been reading a plea of some honorable m. p. for a much-needed reform in the system of counsel fees, then being agitated in the house of commons. the reply of the solicitor general had made me laugh. he was inclined to agree with the honorable member, but still preferred to follow precedent by referring the matter to the inns of court. quite incidentally, he mentioned that the matter had been hanging fire in the house two hundred years. it seemed very english to me then; but when we afterward came to tackle our rear tenements, and in the first batch there was a row which i knew to have been picked out by the sanitary inspector twenty-five years before as fit only to be destroyed, i recognized that we were kin, after all. that was gotham court. it was first on the list, and the mott street barracks came next, when, as executive officer of the good government clubs, i helped the board of health put the law to the test the following year. roosevelt was police president and health commissioner; nobody was afraid of the landlord. the health department kept a list of old houses, with a population of tenants, in which there had been deaths in a little over five years ( - ). from among them we picked our lot, and the department drove the tenants out. the owners went to law, one and all; but, to their surprise and dismay, the courts held with the health officers. the moral effect was instant and overwhelming. rather than keep up the fight, with no rent coming in, the landlords surrendered at discretion. in consideration of this, compensation was allowed them at the rate of about a thousand dollars a house, although they were really entitled only to the value of the old bricks. the buildings all came under the head of "wholly unfit." gotham court, with its sixteen buildings, in which, many years before, a health inspector counted cases of sickness, including "all kinds of infectious disease," was bought for $ , , and mullen's court, adjoining, for $ . to show the character of all, let two serve; in each case it is the official record, upon which seizure was made, that is quoted: no. catherine street: "the floor in the apartments and the wooden steps leading to the second-floor apartment are broken, loose, saturated with filth. the roof and eaves gutters leak, rendering the apartments wet. the two apartments on the first floor consist of one room each, in which the tenants are compelled to cook, eat, and sleep. the back walls are defective, the house wet and damp, and unfit for human habitation. it robs the surrounding houses of light." "the sunlight never enters" was the constant refrain. no. sullivan street: "occupied by the lowest whites and negroes, living together. the houses are decayed from cellar to garret, and filthy beyond description,--the filthiest, in fact, we have ever seen. the beams, the floors, the plaster on the walls, where there is any plaster, are rotten, and alive with vermin. they are a menace to the public health, and cannot be repaired. their annual death-rate in five years was . ." [illustration: the mott street barracks.] the sunlight enters where these stood, at all events, and into other yards that once were plague spots. of rear tenements seized that year, were torn down, of them voluntarily by the owners; were remodelled and allowed to stand, chiefly as workshops; other houses were standing empty, and yielding no rent, when i last heard of them. i suppose they have been demolished since. the worst of them all, the mott street barracks, were taken into court by the owner; but all the judges and juries in the land had no power to put them back when it was decided upon a technicality that they should not have been destroyed offhand. it was a case of "they can't put you in jail for that."--"yes, but i am in jail." they were gone, torn down under the referee's decision that they ought to go, before the appellate division called a halt. we were not in a mood to trifle with the barracks, or risk any of the law's delays. in i counted tenants in these tenements, front and rear, all italians, and the infant death-rate of the barracks that year was per . there were forty babies, and one in three of them had to die. the general infant death-rate for the whole tenement-house population that year was . . in the four years following, during which the population and the death-rate of the houses were both reduced with an effort, fifty-one funerals went out of the barracks. with entire fitness, a cemetery corporation held the mortgage upon the property. the referee allowed it the price of opening one grave, in the settlement, gave one dollar to the lessee, and one hundred and ten dollars to the landlord, who refused to collect and took his case into the courts. we waited to see the landlord attack the law itself on the score of constitutionality, but he did not. the court of appeals decided that it had not been shown that the barracks might not have been used for some other purpose than a tenement and that therefore we had been hasty. the city paid damages, but it was all right. it was emphatically a case of haste making for speed. so far the law stands unchallenged, both here and in massachusetts, where they destroyed twice as many unfit houses as we did in new york and stood their ground on its letter, paying the owners the bare cost of the old timbers. as in every other instance, we seized only the rear houses at the barracks; but within a year or two the front houses were also sold and destroyed too, and so disappeared quite the worst rookery that was left on manhattan island. those of us who had explored it with the "midnight police" in its worst days had no cause to wonder at its mortality. in berlin they found the death-rate per thousand to be . where a family occupied one room, . where it lived in two rooms, . in the case of three-room dwellers, and . where they had four rooms.[ ] does any one ask yet why we fight the slum in berlin and new york? the barracks in those days suggested the first kind. [footnote : "municipal government in continental europe," by albert shaw.] i have said before that i do not believe in paying the slum landlord for taking his hand off our throats, when we have got the grip on him in turn. mr. roger foster, who as a member of the tenement house committee drew the law, and as counsel for the health department fought the landlords successfully in the courts, holds to the opposite view. i am bound to say that instances turned up in which it did seem a hardship to deprive the owners of even such property. i remember especially a tenement in roosevelt street, which was the patrimony and whole estate of two children. with the rear house taken away, the income from the front would not be enough to cover the interest on the mortgage. it was one of those things that occasionally make standing upon abstract principle so very uncomfortable. i confess i never had the courage to ask what was done in their case. i know that the tenement went, and i hope--well, never mind what i hope. it has nothing to do with the case. the house is down, and the main issue decided upon its merits. in the tenements (counting the front houses in; they cannot be separated from the rear tenements in the death registry) there were in five years deaths, a rate of . at a time when the general city death-rate was . . it was the last and heaviest blow aimed at the abnormal mortality of a city that ought, by reason of many advantages, to be one of the healthiest in the world. with clean streets, pure milk, medical school inspection, antitoxin treatment of deadly diseases, and better sanitary methods generally; with the sunlight let into its slums, and its worst plague spots cleaned out, the death-rate of new york came down from . per inhabitants in to . in . inasmuch as a round half million was added to its population within the ten years, it requires little figuring to show that the number whose lives were literally saved by reform would people a city of no mean proportions. the extraordinary spell of hot weather in the summer of , when the temperature hung for ten consecutive days in the nineties, with days and nights of extreme discomfort, brought out the full meaning of this. while many were killed by sunstroke, the population as a whole was shown to have acquired, in better hygienic surroundings, a much greater power of resistance. it yielded slowly to the heat. where two days had been sufficient, in former years, to send the death-rate up, it now took five; and the infant mortality remained low throughout the dreadful trial. perhaps the substitution of beer for whiskey as a summer drink had something to do with it; but colonel waring's broom and unpolitical sanitation had more. since it spared him so many voters, the politician ought to have been grateful for this; but he was not. death-rates are not as good political arguments as tax rates, we found out. in the midst of it all, a policeman whom i knew went to his tammany captain to ask if good government clubs were political clubs within the meaning of the law which forbade policemen joining such. the answer he received set me to thinking: "yes, the meanest, worst kind of political clubs, they are." yet they had done nothing worse than to save the babies, the captain's with the rest. the landlord read the signs better, and ran to cover till the storm should blow over. houses that had hardly known repairs since they were built were put in order with all speed. all over the city, he made haste to set his house to rights, lest it be seized or brought to the bar in other ways. the good government clubs had their hands full that year ( - ). they made war upon the dark hall in the double-decker, and upon the cruller bakery. they compelled the opening of small parks, or the condemnation of sites for them anyway, exposed the abuses of the civil courts, the "poor man's courts," urged on the building of new schools, cleaned up in the tombs prison and hastened the demolition of the wicked old pile, and took a hand in evolving a sensible and humane system of dealing with the young vagrants who were going to waste on free soup. the proposition to establish a farm colony for their reclamation was met with the challenge at albany that "we have had enough reform in new york city," and, as the event proved, for the time being we had really gone as far as we could. but even that was a good long way. some things had been nailed that could never again be undone; and hand in hand with the effort to destroy had gone another to build up, that promised to set us far enough ahead to appeal at last successfully to the self-interest of the builder, if not to his humanity; or, failing that, to compel him to decency. if that promise has not been all kept, the end is not yet. i believe it will be kept. [illustration: r. fulton cutting, chairman of the citizens' union.] the movement for reform, in the matter of housing the people, had proceeded upon a clearly outlined plan that apportioned to each of several forces its own share of the work. at a meeting held under the auspices of the association for improving the condition of the poor, early in the days of the movement, the field had been gone over thoroughly. to the good government clubs fell the task, as already set forth, of compelling the enforcement of the existing tenement-house laws. d. o. mills, the philanthropic banker, declared his purpose to build hotels which should prove that a bed and lodging as good as any could be furnished to the great army of homeless men at a price that would compete with the cheap lodging houses, and yet yield a profit to the owner. on behalf of a number of well-known capitalists, who had been identified with the cause of tenement-house reform for years, robert fulton cutting, the president of the association for improving the condition of the poor, offered to build homes for the working people that should be worthy of the name, on a large scale. a company was formed, and chose for its president dr. elgin r. l. gould, author of the government report on the "housing of the working people," the standard work on the subject. a million dollars was raised by public subscription, and operations were begun at once. two ideas were kept in mind as fundamental: one, that charity that will not pay will not stay; the other, that nothing can be done with the twenty-five-foot lot. it is the primal curse of our housing system, and any effort toward better things must reckon with it first. nineteen lots on sixty-eighth and sixty-ninth streets, west of tenth avenue, were purchased of mrs. alfred corning clark, who took one tenth of the capital stock of the city and suburban homes company; and upon these was erected the first block of tenements. this is the neighborhood toward which the population has been setting with ever increasing congestion. already in the twenty-second ward contained nearly , souls. i gave figures in the previous chapter that showed a crowding of more than persons per acre in some of the blocks here where the conditions of the notorious tenth ward are certain to be reproduced, if indeed they are not exceeded. in the fifteenth assembly district, some distance below, but on the same line, the first sociological canvass of the federation of churches had found the churches, schools, and other educational agencies marshalling a frontage of feet on the street, while the saloon fronts stretched themselves over nearly a mile; so that, said the compiler of these pregnant facts, "saloon social ideals are minting themselves on the minds of the people at the ratio of seven saloon thoughts to one educational thought." it would not have been easy to find a spot better fitted for the experiment of restoring the home to its place. [illustration: alfred corning clark buildings.] the alfred corning clark buildings, as they were called in recognition of the effort of this public-spirited woman, have at this writing been occupied five years. they harbor nearly four hundred families, as contented a lot as i ever saw anywhere. the one tenant who left in disgust was a young doctor who had settled on the estate, thinking he could pick up a practice among so many. but he couldn't. they were not often sick, those tenants. last year only three died, and they were all killed while away from home. so he had good cause of complaint. the rest had none, and having none, they stay, which is no mean blow struck for the home in the battle with the slum. the home feeling can never grow where people do not stay long enough to feel at home, any more than the plant can which the child is pulling up every two or three days to "see if it has roots." half the tenement house population--and i am not sure that i ought not to say the whole of it--is everlastingly on the move. dr. gould quotes as an instance of it the experience of an assembly district leader in distributing political circulars among the people in a good tenement neighborhood. in three months after the enrolment lists had been made out, one-third of the tenants had moved. no doubt the experience was typical. how can the one who hardly knows what a home means be expected to have any pride or interest in his home in the larger sense: the city? and to what in such men is one to appeal in the interests of civic betterment? that is why every effort that goes to help tie the citizen to one spot long enough to give him the proprietary sense in it which is the first step toward civic interest and pride, is of such account. it is one way in which the public schools as neighborhood houses in the best sense could be of great help, and a chief factor in the success of the social settlement. and that is why model tenements, which pay and foster the home, give back more than a money interest to the community. they must pay, for else, as i said, they will not stay. these pay four per cent, and are expected to pay five, the company's limit. so it is not strange that the concern has prospered. it has since raised more than one million of dollars, and has built another block, with room for families, on first avenue and on sixty-fourth and sixty-fifth streets, within hail of battle row, of anciently warlike memory. still another block is going up at avenue a and seventy-eighth street, and in west sixty-second street, where the colored population crowds, the company is erecting two buildings for negro tenants, where they will live as well as their white fellows do in _their_ model tenements,--a long-delayed act of justice, for as far back as any one can remember the colored man has been paying more and getting less for his money in new york than whites of the same grade, who are poorer tenants every way. the company's "city homes" come as near being that as any can. there is light and air in abundance, steam heat in winter in the latest ones, fireproof stairs, and deadened partitions to help on the privacy that is at once the most needed and hardest to get in a tenement. the houses do not look like barracks. any one who has ever seen a row of factory tenements that were just houses, not homes, will understand how much that means. i can think of some such rows now, with their ugly brick fronts, straight up and down without a break and without a vine or a window-box of greens or flowers, and the mere thought of them gives me the blues for the rest of the day. there is nothing of that about these tenements, unless it be the long play-yard between the buildings in sixty-eighth and sixty-ninth streets. it is too narrow to have anything in it but asphalt. but the rest makes up for it in part. all together, the company has redeemed its promise of real model tenements; and it has had no trouble with its tenants. the few and simple rules are readily understood as being for the general good, and so obeyed. it is the old story, told years and years ago by mr. alfred t. white when he had built his riverside tenements in brooklyn. the tenants "do not have to come up" to the landlord's standard. they are more than abreast of him in his utmost endeavor, if he will only use common sense in the management of his property. they do that in the city and suburban homes company's buildings. they give their tenants shower-baths and a friend for a rent-collector, their children playrooms and christmas parties, and the whole neighborhood feels the stimulus of the new and humane plan. in all battle row there has not been a scrap, let alone an old-time shindy, since the "accommodation flats" came upon the scene. that is what they call them. it is an everyday observation that the row has "come up" since some of the old houses have been remodelled. the new that are being built aim visibly toward the higher standard. the company's rents average a dollar a week per room, and are a trifle higher than those of the old tenements round about; but they have so much more in the way of comfort that the money is eagerly paid; nor is the difference so great that the "picking of tenants" amounts to more than the putting of a premium on steadiness, sobriety, and cleanliness, which in itself is a service to render. one experience of the management which caused some astonishment, but upon reflection was accepted as an encouraging sign, was the refusal of the tenants to use the common wash-tubs in the laundry. they are little used to this day. the women will use the drying racks, but they object to rubbing elbows with their neighbors while they wash their clothes. it is, after all, a sign that the tenement that smothers individuality left them this useful handle, and if the experience squashed the hopes of some who dreamed of municipal wash-houses on the glasgow plan, there is nothing to grieve over. every peg of personal pride rescued from the tenement is worth a thousand theories for hanging the hope of improvement on. with $ , , invested by this time, the company has built city homes for families, and has only made a beginning. all the money that is needed for going on with its work is in sight. nor are the rich the only investors. of the stockholders have small lots, ten shares and less each, a healthy sign that the company is holding the confidence of the community. it has fairly earned it. no one could have done a greater and better thing for the metropolis than to demonstrate that it is possible to build homes for the toilers as a business and net a business interest upon the investment. the statement is emphasized by the company's experience with the suburban end of its work. it bought sites for two or three hundred little cottages out on long island, but within the greater city, and only half an hour by trolley or elevated from the city hall. a hundred houses were built, neat and cosey homes of brick and timber, each in its own garden; and a plan was devised under which the purchaser had twenty years to pay for the property. a life insurance policy protected the seller and secured the house to the widow should the breadwinner die. the plan has worked well in belgium under the eyes of the government, but it failed to attract buyers here. of those whom it did attract at the outset, not a few have given up and gone away. when i went out to have a look at the place the year after homewood had been settled, seventy-two houses had found owners under the company's plans. after four years fifty-six only are so held, ten have been bought outright, and three sold under contract. practically the company has had to give up its well-thought-out plan and rent as many of the houses as it could. nine were vacant this last spring. so what we all thought the "way out" of the slum seems barred for the time being. for there is no other explanation of the failure than that the people will not go "among the stumps." lack of facilities for getting there played a part, possibly, but a minor one, and now there is no such grievance. the simple fact is that the home-feeling that makes a man rear a home upon the soil as the chief ambition of his life was not there. the tenement and the flat have weakened that peg among the class of workers for whom homewood was planned. i hate to say that they have broken the peg, for i do not believe it. but it has been hurt without doubt. they longed for the crowds. the grass and the trees and the birds and the salt breath of the sea did not speak to them in a language they understood. the brass bands and the hand-organs, the street cries and the rush and roar of the city, had made them forget their childhood's tongue. for the children understood, even in the gutter. "it means, i suppose," said dr. gould to me, when we had talked it all over, "that we are and always shall be a tenement house city, and that we have got to reckon with and plan for that only." i think not. i believe he is mistaken. and yet i can give no other ground for my belief than my unyielding faith that things will come right yet, if it does take time. they are not right as they are. man is not made to be born and to live all his life in a box, packed away with his fellows like so many herring in a barrel. he is here in this world for something that is not attained in that way; but is, if not attained, at least perceived when the daisies and the robins come in. if to help men perceive it is all we can do in our generation, that is a good deal. but i believe that before our children have come to the divide, perhaps before we are gone, we shall see the tide of the last century's drift to the cities turn, under the impulse of the new forces that are being harnessed for man's work, and homewood come to its rights, i say i believe it i wish i could say i knew; but then you would ask for my proofs, and i haven't any. for all that, i still believe it. meanwhile dr. gould's advice is good sense. if he is right, it is of the last importance; if i am right, it is still the way to proving me so by holding on to what is left of the home in the tenement and making the most of it. that we have taken the advice is good ground for hope, in the face of the fact that new york has still the worst housing in the world. we can now destroy what is not fit to stand. we have done it, and the republic yet survives. the slum landlord would have had us believe that it must perish with his rookeries. we are building model tenements and making them pay. alfred t. white's riverside tenements are as good to-day as when they were built a dozen years ago--better if anything, for they were honestly built--and in all that time they have paid five and six per cent, and even more. dr. gould found that only six per cent of all the great model housing operations which he examined for the government here and abroad had failed to pay. all the rest were successful. and by virtue of the showing we have taken the twenty-five-foot lot itself by the throat. three years ago, speaking of it as the one thing that was in the way of progress in new york, i wrote: "it will continue to be in the way. a man who has one lot will build on it; it is his right. the state, which taxes his lot, has no right to confiscate it by forbidding him to make it yield him an income, on the plea that he might build something which would be a nuisance. but it can so order the building that it shall not be a nuisance; that is not only its right, but its duty." [illustration: the riverside tenements in brooklyn.] that duty has been done since; let me tell how. popular sentiment, taking more and more firmly hold of the fact that there is a direct connection between helpless poverty and bad housing, shaped itself in into a volunteer tenement house committee which, as an effective branch of the charity organization society, drew up and presented to the municipal authorities a reform code of building ordinances affecting the dwellings of the poor. but tammany was back, and they would not listen at the city hall. seeing which, the committee made up its mind to appeal to the people themselves in such fashion that it should be heard. that was the way the tenement house exhibition of the winter of came into existence. rich and poor came to see that speaking record of a city's sorry plight, and at last we all understood. not to understand after one look at the poverty and disease maps that hung on the wall was to declare oneself a dullard. the tenements were all down in them, with the size of them and the air space within, if there was any. black dots upon the poverty maps showed that for each one five families in that house had applied for charity within a given time. there were those that had as many as fifteen of the ominous marks, showing that seventy-five families had asked aid from the one house. to find a tenement free from the taint one had to search long and with care. upon the disease maps the scourge of tuberculosis lay like a black pall over the double-decker districts. a year later the state commission, that continued the work then begun, said: "there is hardly a tenement house in which there has not been at least one case of pulmonary tuberculosis within the last five years, and in some houses there have been as many as twenty-two different cases of this terrible disease. there are over deaths a year in new york city from this disease alone, at least , cases of well-developed and recognized tuberculosis, and in addition a large number of obscure and incipient cases. the connection between tuberculosis and the character of the tenement houses in which the poor people live is of the very closest."[ ] [footnote : report of the tenement house committee of . the secretary of that body said: "well might those maps earn for new york the title of the city of the living death."] [illustration: a typical east side block.] a model was shown of a typical east side block, containing persons on two acres of land, nearly every bit of which was covered with buildings. there were babies in the block (under five years), but not a bath-tub except one that hung in an air shaft. of the rooms were dark, with no ventilation to the outer air except through other rooms; rooms gave upon twilight "air shafts." in five year cases of tuberculosis had been reported from that block, and in that time different families in the block had applied for charity. the year before the bureau of contagious diseases had registered cases of diphtheria there. however, the rent-roll was all right. it amounted to $ , a year. [illustration: robert w. de forest, chairman of the tenement house commission of .] those facts told. new york--the whole country--woke up. more than architects sent in plans in the competition for a humane tenement that should be commercially profitable. roosevelt was governor, and promptly appointed a tenement house commission, the third citizen body appointed for such purposes by authority of the state. mr. robert de forest, a distinguished lawyer and a public-spirited man, who had been at the head of the charity organization society and of the relief efforts i spoke of, in time became its chairman, and commissioner of the new tenement house department that was created by the new charter of the city to carry into effect the law the commission drew up. at this writing, with the department not yet fully organized, it is too early to say with any degree of certainty exactly how far the last two years have set us ahead; but this much is certain: "discretion" is dead--at last. in manhattan, no superintendent of buildings shall have leave after this to pen tenants in a building with stairs of wood because he thinks with luck it might burn slowly; nor in brooklyn shall a deputy commissioner rate a room with a window opening on a hall, or a skylight covered over at the top, "the outer air."[ ] of these things there is an end. the air shaft that was a narrow slit between towering walls has become a "court," a yard big enough for children to run in. thirty per cent of the tenement-house lot must be open to the sun. the double-decker has had its day, and it is over. a man may still build a tenement on a twenty-five-foot lot if he so chooses, but he can hardly pack four families on each floor of it and keep within the law. he can do much better, and make an ample profit, by crossing the lot line and building on forty or fifty feet; in consequence of which, building being a business, he does so. in a lot of half a hundred tenement plans i looked over at the department yesterday, there were only two for single houses, and they had but three families on the floor. [footnote : report of tenement house commission of .] so it seems as if the blight of the twenty-five-foot lot were really wiped out with the double-decker. and no one is hurt. the speculative builder weeps--for the poor, he says. he will build no more, he avers, and rents will go up, so they will have to sleep on the streets. but i notice the plans i spoke of call for an investment of three millions of dollars, and that they are working overtime at the department to pass on them, so great is the rush. belike, then, they are crocodile tears. anyway, let him weep. he has laughed long enough. [illustration: . old knickerbocker dwelling. . the same made over into a tenement. . the rear tenement caves. . packing-box tenement built for revenue only. . the limit; the air shaft--first concession to tenant. . the double-decker, where the civic conscience began to stir in . . evolution of double-decker up to date. . prize plan of tenement house exhibition, (fifty-foot lot).] [illustration: plan of a typical floor in class first of the competition in the c. o. s. plans of model tenements. rentable area . ^o = . % of lot free air-space (courts) . ^o = . % of lot walls, partitions, and public space . ^o = . % of lot total . ^o = . % = lot two-room apartments three-room apartments four-room apartments apartments. rooms] as for the rents, he will put them as high as he can, no doubt. they were too high always, for what they bought. in the case of the builder the state can add force to persuasion, and so urge him along the path of righteousness. when it comes to the rent collector the case is different. it may yet be necessary for the municipality to enter the field as a competing landlord on the five-per-cent basis; but i would rather we, as a community, learned first a little more of the art of governing ourselves without scandal. with tammany liable to turn up at any moment--no, no! political tenements might yet add a chapter to the story of our disgrace to make men weep. i have not forgotten the use tammany made of the people's baths erected in the hamilton fish park on the east side--the ham-fish, locally. they were shut from the day they were opened, i came near saying; i mean from the day they should have been opened; and two stalwart watchmen drew salaries for sitting in the door to keep the people out. that was a perfectly characteristic use of the people's money, and is not lightly to be invited back. rather wait awhile yet, and see what our bridges and real rapid transit, and the "philanthropy and five per cent" plan, will do for us. when that latter has been grasped so by the tenant that a little extra brass and plate-glass does not tempt him over into the enemy's camp, the usurious rents may yet follow the double-decker, as they have clung to it in the past. but if the city may not be the landlord of tenements, i have often thought it might with advantage manage them to the extent of building them to contain so many tenements on basis of air space, and no more. the thing was proposed when the tenement house question first came up for discussion, but was dropped then. the last tenement house commission considered it carefully, but decided to wait and see first how the new department worked. the whole expense of that, with its nearly two hundred inspectors, might easily be borne by the collection of a license fee so small that even the tenement house landlord could not complain. lodging houses are licensed, and workshops in the tenements likewise, to secure efficient control of them. if that is not secured in the case of the workshops, as it is not, it is no fault of the plan, but of the working out of it. i do not expect the licensing of tenements to dispose of all the evils in them. no law or system will ever do that. but it ought to make it easier to get the grip on them that has been wanting heretofore, to our hurt. chapter vi the mills houses sitting by my window the other day, i saw a boy steering across the street for my little lad, who was laying out a base-ball diamond on the lawn. it seems that he knew him from school. "hey," he said, as he rounded to at the gate, "we've got yer dad's book to home; yer father was a bum onct." [illustration: a seven-cent lodging house in the bowery.] proof was immediately forthcoming that whatever the father might have been, his son was able to uphold the family pride, and i had my revenge. some day soon now my boy will read his father's story[ ] himself, and i hope will not be ashamed. they read it in their way in the other boy's house, and got out of it that i was a "bum" because once i was on the level of the bowery lodging house. but if he does not stay there, a man need not be that; and for that matter, there are plenty who do whom it would be a gross injury to call by such a name. there are lonely men, who, with no kin of their own, prefer even such society as the cheap lodging house has to offer to the desolation of the tenement; and there are plenty of young lads from the country, who, waiting in the big city for the something that is sure to turn up and open their road to fortune, get stranded there. beginning, perhaps, at the thirty-cent house, they go down, down, till they strike the fifteen or the ten cent house, with the dirty sheets and the ready club in the watchman's hand. and then some day, when the last penny is gone, and the question where the next meal is going to come from looms larger than the philippine policy of the nation, a heavy-browed man taps one on the shoulder with an offer of an easy job--easy and straight enough in the mood the fellow is in just then; for does not the world owe him a living? it is one of the devil's most tempting baits to a starving man that makes him feel quite a moral hero in taking that of which his more successful neighbor has deprived him. the heavy-browed fellow is a thief, who is out recruiting his band which the police have broken up in this or some other city. by and by his victim will have time, behind prison bars, to make out the lie that caught him. the world owes no man a living except as the price of honest work. but, wrathful and hungry, he walks easily into the trap. [footnote : "the making of an american."] that was what inspector byrnes meant by calling the cheap lodging houses nurseries of crime. i have personally, as a police reporter, helped trace many foul crimes to these houses where they were hatched. they were all robberies to begin with, but three of them ended in murder. most of my readers will remember at least one of them, the lyman s. weeks murder in brooklyn, a thoroughly characteristic case of the kind i have described. a case they never heard of, because it was nipped in the bud, was typical of another kind. two young western fellows had come on, on purpose to hold up new york, and were practising in their lodging, but not, it seems, with much success, for the police pulled them in at their second or third job. when searched, a tintype, evidently of bowery make, was found in the pocket of one, showing them at rehearsal. they grinned when asked about it. "we done a fellow up easy that way," they said, "and we'd a mind to see how it looked." they were lucky in being caught so soon. a little while, and the gallows would have claimed them, on the road they were travelling. [illustration: they had a mind to see how it looked.] i mention this to show the kind of problem we have in our bowery lodging houses, with their army of fifteen or sixteen thousand lodgers, hanging on to the ragged edge most of them, and i have only skimmed the surface of it at that. the political boss searches the depths of it about election time when he needs votes; the sanitary policeman in times of epidemic, when smallpox or typhus fever threatens. all other efforts to reach it had proved unavailing when d. o. mills, the banker, built his two "mills houses," no. in bleecker street for the west side and no. in rivington street for the homeless of the east side. they did reach it, by a cut 'cross lots as it were, by putting the whole thing on a neighborly basis. it had been just business before, and, like the keeping of slum tenements, a mighty well-paying one. the men who ran it might well have given more, but they didn't. it was the same thing over again: let the lodgers shift as they could; their landlord lived in style on the avenue. what were they to him except the means of keeping it up? [illustration: doorway of the mills house, no. ] the mills houses do not neglect the business end. indeed, they insist upon it. "no patron," said mr. mills at the opening, "will receive more than he pays for, unless it be my hearty good-will and good wishes. it is true that i have devoted thought, labor, and capital to a very earnest effort to help him, but only by enabling him to help himself. in doing the work on so large a scale, and in securing the utmost economies in purchases and in administration, i hope to give him a larger equivalent for his money than has hitherto been possible. he can, without scruple, permit me to offer him this advantage; but he will think better of himself, and will be a more self-reliant, manly man and a better citizen, if he knows that he is honestly paying for what he gets." that had the right ring to it, and from the beginning so have the houses had. big, handsome hotels, as fine as any, with wide marble stairs for the dark hole through which one dived into the man-traps of old. mr. mills gave to the lodger a man's chance, if he _is_ poor. his room is small, but the bed for which he pays twenty cents is clean and good. indeed, it is said that the spring in it was made by the man who made the springs for the five-dollar beds in the waldorf-astoria, and that it is just the same. however that may be, it is comfortable enough, as comfortable as any need have it in bleecker street or on fifth avenue. the guest at the mills house has all the privileges the other has, except to while away the sunlit hours in his bed. then he is expected to be out hustling. at nine o'clock his door is barred against him, and is not again opened until five in the afternoon. but there are smoking and writing rooms, and a library for his use; games if he chooses, baths when he feels like taking one, and a laundry where he may wash his own clothes if he has to save the pennies, as he likely has to. it is a good place to do it, too, for he can sleep comfortably and have two square meals a day for fifty cents all told. there is a restaurant in the basement where his dinner costs him fifteen cents. i will not say that the dinner is as savory as the one they would serve at delmonico's, but he comes to it probably with a good deal better appetite, and that is the thing after all. i ate with him once, and here is the bill of fare of that day. i kept it. soup one meat dish two vegetables dessert tea, coffee or milk cents * * * * * soups consommé with noodles purée of tomatoes hot meats roast turkey, cranberry sauce roast beef, dish gravy fricasseed spring lamb with mushrooms cold meat boiled fresh beef tongue fish fried smelts, tartare sauce boiled cod, egg sauce vegetables boiled sweet potatoes mashed potatoes cauliflower, hollandaise sauce fried egg plant celery salad dessert plum pudding, hard or lemon sauce pumpkin pie baked apples tea coffee milk i will own the turkey seemed to me to taste of codfish and the codfish of turkey, as if it were all cooked in one huge dish; but there was enough of it, and it was otherwise good. and the fault may have been with my palate, probably was. it is getting to be quite the thing for clubs with a social inquiry turn to meet and take their dinners at mills house no. in bleecker street, so it must be all right. perhaps i struck the cook's off day.[ ] [footnote : since reading this proof i have been over and verified my diagnosis. the trouble must have been with me. the soup and the mutton and the pie had each its proper savor, and the cook is all right. so is the lunch. there is no fifty-cent lunch in the city that i know of which is better.] [illustration: evening in one of the courts in the mills house, no. .] no. is the largest, with rooms for guests, and usually there are there. no. in rivington street has rooms. together they are capable of housing about twelve per cent of all who nightly seek the cheap lodging houses, not counting the raines law hotels, which are chiefly used for purposes of assignation. the bowery houses have felt the competition, and have been compelled to make concessions that profit the lodger. the greatest gain to him is the chance of getting away from there. at the mills houses he is reasonably safe from the hold-up man and the recruiting thief. though the latter often gives the police the bleecker street house as his permanent address on the principle that makes the impecunious seeker of a job conduct his correspondence from the fifth avenue hotel or the savoy, he is rarely found there, and if found, is not kept long. if he does get in, he is quiet and harmless because he has to be. crooks in action seek crooked houses kept by crooked men, and they find them along the bowery more readily than anywhere. there are the shows and the resorts that draw the young lads, who, away from home, are all too easily drawn, to their undoing. the getting them out of their latitude is the greatest gain, and this service the mills house performs, to a salutary extent. the more readily since its fame has gone abroad, and the mills house has become a type. there is scarcely a mail now that does not bring me word from some city in the west or east that a mills house has been started there in the effort to grapple with the problem of the floating population. the fear that their reputation may help increase that problem by drawing greater crowds from the country is rather strained, it seems to me. the objection would lie against free shelters, but hardly against a business concern that simply strives to give the poor lodger his money's worth. as to him, the everlasting pessimist predicted, when the mills houses were opened, that they would have to "make bathing compulsory." the lodger has given him the lie; the average has been over bathers per day,--one in five,--and the record has passed . no doubt soap may be cheap and salvation dear, but on the other hand cleanliness does and must ever begin godliness when fighting the slum, and no one who ever took a look into one of the old-style lodging houses will doubt that we are better off by so much. the mills houses have paid four, even five, per cent on their owner's investment of a million and a half. it follows that the business will attract capital, which means that there will be an end of the old nuisance. beyond this, they have borne and will bear increasingly a hand in settling with the saloon with which they compete on its strong ground--that of social fellowship. it has no rival in the bowery house or in the boarding-house back bedroom. every philanthropic effort to fight it on that ground has drawn renewed courage and hope from mr. mills's work and success. many years ago a rich merchant planned to do for his working women the thing mr. mills has done for lonely men. out on long island he built a town for his clerks that was to be their very own. but it came out differently. the long island town became a cathedral city and the home of wealth and fashion; his woman's boarding house a great public hotel far beyond the reach of those he sought to benefit. the passing years saw his great house, its wealth, its very name, vanish as if they had never been, and even his bones denied by ghoulish thieves rest in the grave. there is no more pathetic page in the history of our city than that which records the eclipse of the house of alexander t. stewart, merchant prince. i like to think of the banker's successful philanthropy as a kind of justice to the memory of the dead merchant, more eloquent than marble and brass in the empty crypt. mills house no. stands upon the site of mr. stewart's old home, where he dreamed his barren dream of benevolence to his kind. his work lies undone yet. while i am writing this, they are putting the roof on a great structure in east twenty-ninth street that is to be the "woman's hotel" of the city and bear the name of martha washington. it is intended for business and professional women who can pay from seven or eight dollars a week up to almost anything for their board and lodging, and it is expected to fill so great a need as to be commercially profitable at once. that will be well, and we shall all be glad. but who will build the mills house for lonely girls and women who cannot pay seven or eight dollars a week, and would not go to the woman's hotel if they could? the social cleft between madison avenue and bleecker street is too wide to be bridged by the best intentions of a hotel company. i doubt if they would know where to go in that strange up-town country. when as an immigrant i paid two dollars a day for board that was not worth fifty cents, in a greenwich street house, i might have lodged in comfort in a broadway hotel for less money, had i only known where. there are hosts of half-starved women and girls living in cheerless back rooms,--or, rather, they do not live, they exist on weak coffee or tea, laying up an evil day for the generation of which they are to be the mothers,--to whom such a house would be home, freedom, and life. ask any working girls' vacation society whence the need of their labor early and late, if not to put a little life and vigor into those ill-nourished bodies. ask the priest, or any one who knows the temptations of youth, how much that bald and dreary life of theirs counts for in the fight he has on hand. who will build the working women's hotel somewhere between stewart's old store and twenty-third street, east of broadway, that shall give them their sadly needed chance? and while about it, let him add a wing, or build a separate house, such as they have in glasgow, for widows with little children, that shall answer another of our perplexing problems,--a house, this latter, with nursery, kindergarten, and laundry, where the mother might know her child safe while she provided for it with her work. who will be the d. o. mills of these helpless ones? [illustration: lodging room in the leonard street police station.] or is there but one mills? i have heard it said that he has been waiting, asking the same question. let him wait no longer, then, if he would put the finishing touch to a practical philanthropy that will rank in days to come with the great benefactions to mankind. [illustration: women's lodging room in eldridge street police station.] i have dwelt upon the need of bracing up the home, or finding something to replace it as nearly like it as could be, where that had to be done, because the home is the key to good citizenship. unhappily for the great cities, there exists in them all a class that has lost the key or thrown it away. for this class, new york, until three years ago, had never made any provision. the police station lodging rooms, of which i have spoken, were not to be dignified by the term. these vile dens, in which the homeless of our great city were herded, without pretence of bed, of bath, of food, on rude planks, were the most pernicious parody on municipal charity, i verily believe, that any civilized community had ever devised. to escape physical and moral contagion in these crowds seemed humanly impossible. of the innocently homeless lad they made a tramp by the shortest cut. to the old tramp they were indeed ideal provision, for they enabled him to spend for drink every cent he could beg or steal. with the stale beer dive, the free lunch counter, and the police lodging room at hand, his cup of happiness was full. there came an evil day, when the stale beer dive shut its doors and the free lunch disappeared for a season. the beer pump, which drained the kegs dry and robbed the stale beer collector of his ware, drove the dives out of business; the raines law forbade the free lunch. just at this time theodore roosevelt shut the police lodging rooms, and the tramp was literally left out in the cold, cursing reform and its fruits. it was the climax of a campaign a generation old, during which no one had ever been found to say a word in defence of these lodging rooms; yet nothing had availed to close them. [illustration: a "scrub" and her bed--the plank.] the city took lodgers on an old barge in the east river, that winter ( ), and kept a register of them. we learned something from that. of nearly , lodgers, one-half were under thirty years old and in good health--fat, in fact. the doctors reported them "well nourished." among whom i watched taking their compulsory bath, one night, only two were skinny; the others were stout, well-fed men, abundantly able to do a man's work. they all insisted that they were willing, too; but the moment inquiries began with a view of setting such to work as really wanted it, and sending the rest to the island as vagrants, their number fell off most remarkably. from between and who had crowded the barge and the pier sheds, the attendance fell on march , the day the investigation began, to , on the second day to , and on the third day to ; by march it had been cut down to . the problem of the honestly homeless, who were without means to pay for a bed even in a ten-cent lodging house, and who had a claim upon the city by virtue of residence in it, had dwindled to surprisingly small proportions. of lodgers, were shown to have been here less than sixty days, and more not a year. the old mistake, that there is always a given amount of absolutely homeless destitution in a city, and that it is to be measured by the number of those who apply for free lodging, had been reduced to a demonstration. the truth is that the opportunity furnished by the triple alliance of stale beer, free lunch, and free lodging at the police station was the open door to permanent and hopeless vagrancy. men, a good bishop said, will do what you pay them to do: if to work, they will work; if you make it pay them to beg, they will beg; if to maim helpless children makes begging pay better, they will do that too. see what it is to encourage laziness in man whose salvation is work. [illustration: what a search of the lodgers brought forth.] a city lodging house was established, with decent beds, baths, and breakfast, and a system of investigation of the lodger's claim that is yet to be developed to useful proportions. the link that is missing is a farm school, for the training of young vagrants to habits of industry and steady work, as the alternative of the workhouse. efforts to forge this link have failed so far, but in the good time that is coming, when we shall have learned the lesson that the unkindest thing that can be done to a young tramp is to let him go on tramping, and when magistrates shall blush to discharge him on the plea that "it is no crime to be poor in this country," they will succeed, and the tramp also we shall then have "druv into decency." when i look back now to the time, ten or fifteen years ago, when, night after night, with every police station filled, i found the old tenements in the "bend" jammed with a reeking mass of human wrecks that huddled in hall and yard, and slept, crouching in shivering files, all the way up the stairs to the attic, it does seem as if we had come a good way, and as if all the turmoil and the bruises and the fighting had been worth while. new york is no longer, at least when tammany is out, a tramp's town. and that is so much gained, to us and to the tramp. chapter vii pietro and the jew we have seen that the problem of the tenement is to make homes for the people, out of it if we can, in it if we must. now about the tenant. how much of a problem is he? and how are we to go about solving it? the government "slum inquiry," of which i have spoken before, gave us some facts about him. in new york it found . per cent of the population of the slum to be foreign-born, whereas for the whole city the percentage of foreigners was only . . while the proportion of illiteracy in all was only as . to , in the slum it was . per cent. that with nearly twice as many saloons to a given number there should be three times as many arrests in the slum as in the city at large need not be attributed to nationality, except indirectly in its possible responsibility for the saloons. i say "possible" advisably. anybody, i should think, whose misfortune it is to live in the slum might be expected to find in the saloon a refuge. i shall not quarrel with the other view of it. i am merely stating a personal impression. the fact that concerns us here is the great proportion of the foreign-born. though the inquiry covered only a small section of a tenement district, the result may be accepted as typical. we shall not, then, have to do with an american element in discussing this tenant, for even of the "natives" in the census, by far the largest share is made up of the children of the immigrant. indeed, in new york only . per cent of the slum population canvassed were shown to be of native parentage. the parents of . per cent had come over the sea, to better themselves, it may be assumed. let us see what they brought us, and what we have given them in return. the italians were in the majority where this census-taker went. they were from the south of italy, avowedly the worst of the italian immigration, which in the eleven years from to gave us nearly a million of victor emmanuel's subjects. the exact number of italian immigrants, as registered by the emigration bureau, from july , , to june , , a month short of eleven years, was , . and they come in greater numbers every year. in , , came over, of whom , gave new york as their destination. in the italian immigrants numbered , , and as i write shiploads with thousands upon thousands are afloat, bound for our shores. yet there is a gleam of promise in the showing of last year, for of the , , those who came to stay in new york numbered only , . enough surely, but they were after all only one-half of the whole against two-thirds in . if this means that they came to join friends elsewhere in the country--that other centres of immigration have been set up--well and good. there is room for them there. going out to break ground, they give us more than they get. the peril lies in their being cooped up in the city. [illustration: bedroom in the new city lodging house.] of last year's intake , came from southern italy, where they wash less, and also plot less against the peace of mankind, than they do in the north. quite a lot were from sicily, the island of the absentee landlord, where peasants die of hunger. i make no apology for quoting here the statement of an italian officer, on duty in the island, to a staff correspondent of the _tribuna_ of rome, a paper not to be suspected of disloyalty to united italy. i take it from the _evening post_: "in the month of july i stopped on a march by a threshing-floor where they were measuring grain. when the shares had been divided, the one who had cultivated the land received a single _tumolo_ (less than a half bushel). the peasant, leaning on his spade, looked at his share as if stunned. his wife and their five children were standing by. from the painful toil of a year this was what was left to him with which to feed his family. the tears rolled silently down his cheeks." these things occasionally help one to understand. over against this picture there arises in my memory one from the barge office, where i had gone to see an italian steamer come in. a family sat apart, ordered to wait by the inspecting officer; in the group was an old man, worn and wrinkled, who viewed the turmoil with the calmness of one having no share in it. the younger members formed a sort of bulwark around him. "your father is too old to come in," said the official. [illustration: "are we not young enough to work for him?"] two young women and a boy of sixteen rose to their feet at once. "are not we young enough to work for him?" they said. the boy showed his strong arms. it is charged against this italian immigrant that he is dirty, and the charge is true. he lives in the darkest of slums, and pays rent that ought to hire a decent flat. to wash, water is needed; and we have a law which orders tenement landlords to put it on every floor, so that their tenants may have the chance. and it is not yet half a score years since one of the biggest tenement-house landlords in the city, the wealthiest church corporation in the land, attacked the constitutionality of this statute rather than pay two or three hundred dollars for putting water into two old buildings, as the board of health had ordered, and so came near upsetting the whole structure of tenement-house law upon which our safety depends. talk about the church and the people; that one thing did more to drive them apart than all the ranting of atheists that ever were. yesterday a magazine came in the mail in which i read: "on a certain street corner in chicago stands a handsome church where hundreds of worshippers gather every sabbath morning for prayer and praise. just a little way off, almost within the shadow of its spire, lived, or rather herded, in a dark, damp basement, a family of eight--father, mother, and six children. for all the influence that the songs or the sermons or the prayers had upon them they might have lived there and died like rats in a hole. they did not believe in god, nor heaven, nor hell, other than that in which they lived. church-goers were to them a lot of canting hypocrites who wrapped their comfortable robes about them and cared nothing for the sufferings of others. hunger and misery were daily realities." no, it was not a yellow newspaper. it was a religious publication, and it told how a warm human love did find them out, and showed them what the church had failed to do--what god's love is like. and i am not attacking the church either. god forbid! i would help, not hinder it; for i, too, am a churchman. only--well, let it pass. it will not happen again. that same year i read in my paper the reply of the priest at the pro-cathedral in stanton street to a crank who scoffed at the kind of "religion" they had there: kindergartens, nurseries, boys' and girls' clubs, and mothers' meetings. "yes," he wrote, "that is our religion. we believe that a love of god that doesn't forthwith run to manifest itself in some loving deed to his children is not worth having." that is how i came to be a churchman in bishop potter's camp. i "joined" then and there. our italian is ignorant, it is said, and that charge is also true, i doubt if one of the family in the barge office could read or write his own name. yet would you fear especial danger to our institutions, to our citizenship, from those four? he lives cheaply, crowds, and underbids even the jew in the sweat shop. i can myself testify to the truth of these statements. a couple of years ago i was the umpire in a quarrel between the jewish tailors and the factory inspector whom they arraigned before the governor on charges of inefficiency. the burden of their grievance was that the italians were underbidding them in their own market, which of course the factory inspector could not prevent. yet, even so, the evidence is not that the italian always gets the best of it. i came across a family once working on "knee-pants." "twelve pants, ten cents," said the tailor, when there was work. "ve work for dem sheenies," he explained. "ven dey has work, ve gets some; ven dey hasn't, ve don't." he was an unusually gifted tailor as to english, but apparently not as to business capacity. in the astor tenements, in elizabeth street, where we found forty-three families living in rooms intended for sixteen, i saw women finishing "pants" at thirty cents a day. some of the garments were of good grade, and some of poor; some of them were soldiers' trousers, made for the government; but whether they received five, seven, eight, or ten cents a pair, it came to thirty cents a day, except in a single instance, in which two women, sewing from five in the morning till eleven at night, were able, being practised hands, to finish forty-five "pants" at three and a half cents a pair, and so made together over a dollar and a half. they were content, even happy. i suppose it seemed wealth to them, coming from a land where a parisian investigator of repute found three lire (not quite sixty cents) _per month_ a girl's wages. i remember one of those flats, poor and dingy, yet with signs of the instinctive groping toward orderly arrangement which i have observed so many times, and take to be evidence that in better surroundings much might be made of these people. clothes were hung to dry on a line strung the whole length of the room. upon couches by the wall some men were snoring. they were the boarders. the "man" was out shovelling snow with the midnight shift. by a lamp with brown paper shade, over at the window, sat two women sewing. one had a baby on her lap. two sweet little cherubs, nearly naked, slept on a pile of unfinished "pants," and smiled in their sleep. a girl of six or seven dozed in a child's rocker between the two workers, with her head hanging down on one side; the mother propped it up with her elbow as she sewed. they were all there, and happy in being together even in such a place. on a corner shelf burned a night lamp before a print of the mother of god, flanked by two green bottles, which, seen at a certain angle, made quite a festive show. complaint is made that the italian promotes child labor. his children work at home on "pants" and flowers at an hour when they ought to have been long in bed. their sore eyes betray the little flower-makers when they come tardily to school. doubtless there are such cases, and quite too many of them; yet, in the very block which i have spoken of, the investigation conducted for the gilder tenement house commission by the department of sociology of columbia university, under professor franklin h. giddings, discovered, of children of school age, only at work or at home, and in the next block only out of . that was the showing of the foreign population all the way through. of russian jewish children only were missing from school, and of little bohemians only . the overcrowding of the schools and their long waiting lists occasionally furnished the explanation why they were not there. professor giddings reported, after considering all the evidence: "the foreign-born population of the city is not, to any great extent, forcing children of legal school age into money-earning occupations. on the contrary, this population shows a strong desire to have its children acquire the common rudiments of education. if the city does not provide liberally and wisely for the satisfaction of this desire, the blame for the civic and moral dangers that will threaten our community, because of ignorance, vice, and poverty, must rest on the whole public, not on our foreign-born residents." and superintendent maxwell of the department of education adds, six years later, that with a shortage of , seats, and worse coming, "it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the insufficiency of school accommodation in new york city is a most serious menace to our universal welfare."[ ] for we have reached the stage again, thanks be to four years of tammany, when, after all the sacrifices of the past, we are once more face to face with an army of enforced truants, and all they stand for. [footnote : superintendent maxwell in _municipal affairs_, december, .] he is clannish, this italian; he gambles and uses a knife, though rarely on anybody not of his own people; he "takes what he can get," wherever anything is free, as who would not, coming to the feast like a starved wolf? there was nothing free where he came from. even the salt was taxed past a poor man's getting any of it. lastly, he buys fraudulent naturalization papers, and uses them. i shall plead guilty for him to every one of these counts. they are all proven. gambling is his besetting sin. he is sober, industrious, frugal, enduring beyond belief; but he will gamble on sunday and quarrel over his cards, and when he sticks his partner in the heat of the quarrel, the partner is not apt to tell. he prefers to bide his time. yet there has lately been evidence once or twice, in the surrender of an assassin by his countrymen, that the old vendetta is being shelved and a new idea of law and justice is breaking through. as to the last charge: our italian is not dull. with his intense admiration for the land where a dollar a day waits upon the man with a shovel, he can see no reason why he should not accept the whole "american plan" with ready enthusiasm. it is a good plan. to him it sums itself up in the statement: a dollar a day for the shovel; two dollars for the shovel with a citizen behind it. and he takes the papers and the two dollars. he came here for a chance to live. of politics, social ethics, he knows nothing. government in his old home existed only for his oppression. why should he not attach himself with his whole loyal soul to the plan of government in his new home that offers to boost him into the place of his wildest ambition, a "job on the streets,"--that is, in the street cleaning department,--and asks no other return than that he shall vote as directed? vote! not only he, but his cousins and brothers and uncles will vote as they are told, to get pietro the job he covets. if it pleases the other man, what is it to him for whom he votes? he is after the job. here, ready-made to the hand of the politician, is such material as he never saw before. for pietro's loyalty is great. as a police detective, one of his own people, once put it to me, "he got a kind of an idea, or an old rule: an eye for an eye; do to another as you'd be done by; if he don't squeal on you, you stick by him, no matter what the consequences." this "kind of an idea" is all he has to draw upon for an answer to the question if the thing is right. but the question does not arise. why should it? was he not told by the agitators whom the police jailed at home that in a republic all men are made happy by means of the vote? and is there not proof of it? it has made him happy, has it not? and the man who bought his vote seems to like it. well, then? [illustration: the play school. dressing dolls for a lesson.] very early pietro discovered that it was every man for himself, in the chase of the happiness which this powerful vote had in keeping. he was robbed by the padrone--that is, the boss--when he came over, fleeced on his steamship fare, made to pay for getting a job, and charged three prices for board and lodging and extras while working in the railroad gang. the boss had a monopoly, and pietro was told that it was maintained by his "divvying" with some railroad official. rumor said, a very high-up official, and that the railroad was in politics in the city; that is to say, dealt in votes. when the job gave out, the boss packed him into the tenement he had bought with his profits on the contract; and if pietro had a family, told him to take in lodgers and crowd his flat, as the elizabeth street tenements were crowded, so as to make out the rent, and to never mind the law. the padrone was a politician, and had a pull. he was bigger than the law, and it was the votes he traded in that did it all. now it was pietro's turn. with his vote he could buy what to him seemed wealth; two dollars a day. in the muddle of ideas, that was the one which stood out clearly. when citizen papers were offered him for $ . , he bought them quickly, and got his job on the street. it was the custom of the country. if there was any doubt about it, the proof was furnished when pietro was arrested through the envy and plotting of the opposition boss. distinguished counsel, employed by the machine, pleaded his case in court. pietro felt himself to be quite a personage, and he was told that he was safe from harm, though a good deal of dust might be kicked up; because, when it came down to that, both the bosses were doing the same kind of business. i quote from the report of the state superintendent of elections of january, : "in nearly every case of illegal registration, the defendant was represented by eminent counsel who were identified with the democratic organization, among them being three assistants to the corporation counsel. my deputies arrested rosario calecione and giuseppe marrone, both of whom appeared to vote at the fifth election district of the sixth assembly district; marrone being the democratic captain of the district, and, it was charged, himself engaged in the business of securing fraudulent naturalization papers. in both of these cases farriello had procured the naturalization papers for the men for a consideration. they were subsequently indicted. marrone and calecione were bailed by the democratic leader of the sixth assembly district." the business, says the state superintendent, is carried on "to an enormous extent." it appears, then, that pietro has already "got on to" the american plan as the slum presented it to him, and has in good earnest become a problem. i guessed as much from the statement of a tammany politician to me, a year ago, that every italian voter in his district got his "old two" on election day. he ought to know, for he held the purse. suppose, now, we speak our minds as frankly, for once, and put the blame where it belongs. will it be on pietro? and upon this showing, who ought to be excluded, when it comes to that? the slum census taker did not cross the bowery. had he done so, he would have come upon the refugee jew, the other economic marplot of whom complaint is made with reason. if his nemesis has overtaken him in the italian, certainly he challenged that fate. he did cut wages by his coming. he was starving, and he came in shoals. in eighteen years more than half a million jewish immigrants have landed in new york.[ ] they had to have work and food, and they got both as they could. in the strife they developed qualities that were anything but pleasing. they herded like cattle. they had been so herded by christian rulers, a despised and persecuted race, through the centuries. their very coming was to escape from their last inhuman captivity in a christian state. they lied, they were greedy, they were charged with bad faith. they brought nothing, neither money nor artisan skill,--nothing but their consuming energy, to our land, and their one gift was their greatest offence. one might have pointed out that they had been trained to lie, for their safety; had been forbidden to work at trades, to own land; had been taught for a thousand years, with the scourge and the stake, that only gold could buy them freedom from torture. but what was the use? the charges were true. the jew was--he still is--a problem of our slum. [footnote : according to the register of the united hebrew charities, between october , , and june , , the number was , , and it is again on the increase. the year will probably show an increase in this class of immigration over of quite , .] and yet, if ever there was material for citizenship, this jew is such material. alone of all our immigrants he comes to us without a past. he has no country to renounce, no ties to forget. within him there burns a passionate longing for a home to call his, a country which will own him, that waits only for the spark of such another love to spring into flame which nothing can quench. waiting for it, all his energies are turned into his business. he is not always choice in method; he often offends. he crowds to the front in everything, no matter whom he crowds out. the land is filled with his clamor. "if the east side would shut its mouth and the west side get off the saloon corner, we could get somewhere," said a weary philanthropist to me the other day, and made me laugh, for i knew what he meant. but the jew heeds it not. he knows what he wants and he gets it. he succeeds. he is the yeast of any slum, if given time. if it will not let him go, it must rise with him. the charity managers in london said it, when we looked through their slums some years ago, "the jews have renovated whitechapel." i, for one, am a firm believer in this jew, and in his boy. ignorant they are, but with a thirst for knowledge that surmounts any barrier. the boy takes all the prizes in the school. his comrades sneer that he will not fight. neither will he when there is nothing to be gained by it. yet, in defence of his rights, there is in all the world no such fighter as he. literally, he will die fighting, by inches, too, from starvation. witness his strikes. i believe that, should the time come when the country needs fighting men, the son of the despised immigrant jew will resurrect on american soil, the first that bade him welcome, the old maccabee type, and set an example for all the rest of us to follow. this long while he has been in the public eye as the vehicle and promoter of sweating, and much severe condemnation has been visited upon him with good cause. he had to do something, and he took to the clothes-maker's trade as that which was most quickly learned. the increasing crowds, the tenement, and his grinding poverty made the soil wherein the evil grew rank. but the real sweater does not live in ludlow street; he keeps the stylish shop on broadway, and he does not always trouble himself to find out how his workers fare, much as that may have to do with the comfort and security of his customers. "we do not have to have a license," said the tenants in one wretched flat where a consumptive was sewing on coats almost with his last gasp; "we work for a first-class place on broadway." and so they did. sweating is simply a question of profit to the manufacturer. by letting out his work on contract, he can save the expense of running his factory and delay longer making his choice of styles. if the contractor, in turn, can get along with less shop room by having as much of the work as can profitably be so farmed out done in the tenements by cheap home labor, he is so much better off. and tenement labor is always cheap because of the crowds that clamor for it and must have bread. the poor jew is the victim of the mischief quite as much as he has helped it on. back of the manufacturer and the contractor there is still another sweater,--the public. only by its sufferance of the bargain counter and of sweat-shop-made goods has the nuisance existed as long as it has. i am glad i have lived to see the day of its passing, for, unless i greatly mistake, it is at hand now that the old silent partner is going out of the firm. i mean the public. we tried it in the old days, but the courts said the bill to stop tenement cigar-making was unconstitutional. labor was property, and property is inviolable--rightly so until it itself becomes a threat to the commonwealth. child labor is such a threat. it has been stopped in the factories, but no one can stop it in the tenement so long as families are licensed to work there. the wrecking of the home that is inevitable where the home is turned into a shop with thirty cents as a woman's wage is that; the overcrowding that goes hand in hand with home-work is that; the scourge of consumption which doctors and boards of health wrestle with in vain while dying men and women "sew on coats with their last gasp" and sew the death warrant of the buyer into the lining, is a threat the gravity of which we have hardly yet made out. courts and constitutions reflect the depth of public sentiment on a moral or political issue. we have been doing a deal of dredging since then, and we are at it yet. while i am writing a tuberculosis committee is at work sifting the facts of tenement-house life as they bear on that peril. a child labor committee is preparing to attack the slum in its centre, as we stopped the advance guard when we made the double-decker unprofitable. the factory inspector is gathering statistics of earnings and hours of labor in sweat shop and tenement to throw light on the robbery that goes on there. when they have told us what they have to tell, it may be that we shall be able to say to the manufacturer: "you shall not send out goods to be made in sweat shop or tenement. you shall make them in your own shop or not at all." he will not be hurt, for all will have to do alike. i am rather inclined to think that he will be glad to take that way out of a grisly plight. [illustration: label of consumers' league.] for he has seen the signs of a flank movement that goes straight for his pocket-book, an organized public sentiment that is getting ready to say to him, "we will buy no clothes or wear them, or any other thing whatsoever, that is made at the price of the life and hope of other men or women." wherever i went last winter, through the length and breadth of the land, women were stirring to organize branches of the consumers' league. true, they were the well-to-do, not yet the majority. but they were the very ones who once neither knew nor cared. now they do both. that is more than half the fight. whatever may be the present results of the agitation, in the long run i would rather take my chances with a vigorous consumers' league and not a law in the state to safeguard labor or the community's interests, than with the most elaborate code man has yet devised, and the bargain counter in full blast, unchallenged, from monday to saturday. laws may be evaded, and too often are; tags betraying that goods are "tenement made" may be removed, and they make no appeal anyhow to a community deaf to the arraignment of the bargain counter. but an instructed public sentiment, such as that of which the consumers' league[ ] is the most recent expression, makes laws and enforces them too. by its aid we have forced the children out of the factories, the sweat shops out of the tenements, and shut the door against the stranger there. only to families are licenses granted. by its aid we shall yet drive work out of the home altogether; for goods are made to sell, and none will be made which no one will buy. [footnote : the following is the declaration of principles of the national consumers' league:-- sec. . that the interests of the community demand that all workers shall receive fair living wages, and that goods shall be produced under sanitary conditions. sec. . that the responsibility for some of the worst evils from which producers suffer rests with the consumers who seek the cheapest markets regardless how cheapness is brought about. sec. . that it is, therefore, the duty of consumers to find out under what conditions the articles they purchase are produced and distributed, and insist that these conditions shall be wholesome, and consistent with a respectable existence on the part of the workers.] [illustration: josephine shaw lowell, chairman of the vagrancy committee, and one of the strongest forces in charity organization, the consumers' league, and every other healthy reform effort.] organized labor makes its own appeal to the same end. from this year ( ) on, the united garment workers of america resolved in national convention to give their stamp to no manufacturer who does not have all his work done on his own premises. if they faithfully live up to that compact with the public, they will win. two winters ago i took their label, which was supposed to guarantee living wages and clean and healthy conditions, from the hip pocket of a pair of trousers which i found a man, sick with scarlet fever, using as a pillow in one of the foulest sweater's tenements i had ever been in, and carried it to the headquarters of the union to show them what a mockery they were making of the mightiest engine that had come to their hand. i am glad to believe those days are over for good; and when we all believe it their fight will be won. when the union label deserves public confidence as a guarantee against such things, it will receive it. when i know that insisting on a union plumber for my pipes means that the job will be done right, then i will always send for a union plumber and have no other. that is the whole story, and on that day the label will be mightier than any law, because the latter will be merely the effort to express by statute the principle it embodies. stragglers there will always be, i suppose. it was only the other day i read in the report of the consumers' league in my own city that "a benevolent institution," when found giving out clothing to be made in tenement houses that were not licensed, and taken to task for it, asked the agents of the league to "show some way in which the law could be evaded"; but it is just as well for that "benevolent institution" that name and address were wanting, or it might find its funds running short unaccountably. we _are_ waking up. this very licensing of tenement workers is proof of it, though it gives one a cold chill to see thirty thousand licenses out, with hardly a score of factory inspectors to keep tab on them. roosevelt, as governor, set the pace, going himself among the tenements to see how the law was enforced, and how it could be mended. now we have a registry system copied from massachusetts, where they do these things right and most others besides. an index is so arranged by streets that when the printed sheet comes every morning from the bureau of contagious diseases, with name and house number of every case of smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, etc. reported during the twenty-four hours, a clerk can check one off from the other in half an hour, and before noon have every infected flat quarantined. word is sent to the manufacturer to stop sending any more supplies there, and the garments in the house are tagged till after disinfection. and by the same means all the cards are laid on the table. if a merchant in california or in florida brags that he buys only factory-made goods, the customer can find out through the consumers' league if it is true. if the register shows that the manufacturer has filed lists of the tenements where his goods are made up, it is not true. all of which helps. but massachusetts is massachusetts, and new york is new york. a tenement-house population of more than two millions of souls makes its own problems, and there is no other like it. after all, the chief function of the license must, in the end, be to show that it cannot be done so--safely. even with the active coöperation of the board of health, and with the nearly two hundred tenement-house inspectors that are being turned loose this summer, full of new zeal and desire to make a record, we shall yet be whipping the devil around the stump until the public sentiment fostered by the consumers' league and its allies heads him off on the other side. the truth of the matter is that the job is too big for the law alone. it needs the gospel to back it up. together they can do it. chapter viii on whom shall we shut the door? the jew and the italian have filled the landscape so far, because, as a matter of fact, that is what they do. yesterday it was the irishman and the bohemian. to-morrow it may be the greek, who already undersells the italian from his push-cart in the fourth ward, and the syrian, who can give greek, italian, and jew points at a trade. the rebellious slovak holds his own corner in our industrial system, though never for long. he yearns ever for the mountain sides of his own hungary. he remembers, where the jew tries only to forget. from dalmatia comes a new emigration, and there are signs that the whole balkan peninsula has caught the fever and is waiting only for cheap transportation to be established on the danube to the black sea, when there is no telling what will be heading our way. i sometimes wonder what thoughts come to the eagle that perches over the great stone gateway on ellis island, as he watches the procession that files through it into the united states day after day, and never ends. he looks out of his grave, unblinking eye at the motley crowd, but gives no sign. does he ask: "where are the pilgrim fathers, the brave huguenots, the patient puritans, the sturdy priests, and the others that came for conscience' sake to build upon this continent a home for freedom? and these, why do they come with their strange tongues--for gold?" true, eagle! but look to the roster of those who fought and died for the freedom those pioneers planted, who watered the tree with their life blood, and see how many you find inscribed there who came through that gate. go to the public school and hear their children speak the tongue that is sweet to your ear; hear their young voices as they salute the flag that is _theirs_: [illustration: one door that has been opened: st. john's park in hudson street,--once a graveyard.] "we give our heads and our hearts to our country. one country, one language, one flag!" fear not, eagle! while that gate is open let no one bar the one you guard. while the flag flies over the public school, keep it aloft over ellis island and have no misgivings. the school has the answer to your riddle. about once a week i am asked: would i shut out any, and whom and how and why? sometimes, looking at it from the point of view of the tenement and the sweat shop,--that is to say, the city,--i think i would. and were that all, i certainly should. but then, there comes up the recollection of a picture of the city of prague that hangs in a bohemian friend's parlor, here in new york. i stood looking at it one day, and noticed in the foreground cannon that pointed in over the city. i spoke of it, unthinking, and said to my host that they should be trained, if against an enemy, the other way. the man's eye flashed fire. "ha!" he cried, "here, yes!" when i think of that, i do not want to shut the door. again, there occurs to me an experience the police had a few years ago in mulberry street. they were looking for a murderer, and came upon a nest of italian thugs who lived by blackmailing their countrymen. they were curious about them, and sent their names to naples with a request for information. there came back such a record as none of the detectives had ever seen or heard of before. all of them were notorious criminals, who had been charged with every conceivable crime, from burglary to kidnapping and "maiming," and some not to be conceived of by the american mind. five of them together had been sixty-three times in jail, and one no less than twenty-one times. yet, though they were all "under special surveillance," they had come here without let or hindrance within a year. when i recall that, i want to shut the door quick. i sent the exhibit to washington at the time. [illustration: dr. jane elizabeth robbins, the "woman doctor."] but then, again, when i think of mrs. michelangelo, in her poor mourning for one child run over and killed, wiping her tears away and going bravely to work to keep the home together for the other five until the oldest shall be old enough to take her father's place; and when, as now, there strays into my hand the letter from my good friend, the "woman doctor" in the slum, in which she wrote, when her father lay dead: "the little scamps of the street have been positively pathetic; they have made such shy, boyish attempts at friendliness; one little chap offered to let me hold his top while it was spinning, in token of affection,"--when i read that, i have not the heart to shut anybody out. except, of course, the unfit, the criminal, and the pauper, cast off by their own, and the man brought over here merely to put money into the pockets of the steamship agent, the padrone, and the mine owner. we have laws to bar these out. suppose we begin by being honest with ourselves and the immigrant, and respecting our own laws. the door that is to be shut is over yonder, at the port where they take ship. there is where the scrutiny is to be made, to be effective. when the door has been shut and locked against the man who left his country for his country's good, whether by its "assistance" or not, and when trafficking in the immigrant for private profit has been stopped, then, perhaps, we shall be better able to decide what degree of ignorance in him constitutes unfitness for citizenship and cause for shutting him out. perchance then, also, we shall hear less of the cant about his being a peril to the republic. doubtless ignorance is a peril, but the selfishness that trades upon ignorance is a much greater. he came to us without a country, ready to adopt such a standard of patriotism as he found, at its face value, and we gave him the rear tenement and slum politics. if he accepted the standard, whose fault was it? his being in such a hurry to vote that he could not wait till the law made him a citizen was no worse, to my mind, than the treachery of the "upper class" native, who refuses to go to the polls for fear he may rub up against him there. this last let us settle with first, and see what remains of our problem. we can approach it honestly, then, at all events. i came into town on the pennsylvania railroad the other day just when the emigrant lighter had tied up at the wharf to discharge its west-bound cargo. for a full hour i stood watching the stream of them, thousands upon thousands, carrying knapsacks and trunks, odd in speech and ways, but all of them with hopeful faces set toward the great country where they were to win their own way. so they answered the query of the eagle at the island gate. scarce an hour within the gate, they were no longer a problem. the country needs these men of strong arms and strong courage. it is in the city the shoe pinches. what can we do to relieve it? much could be done with effective inspection on the other side, to discourage the blind immigration that stops short in the city's slums. they come to better themselves, and it is largely a question of making it clear to them that they do not better themselves and make us to be worse off by staying there, whereas their going farther would benefit both. but i repeat that that lever must be applied over there, to move this load. once they are here, we might have a land and labor bureau that would take in the whole country, and serve as a great directory and distributing agency, instead of leaving it to private initiative to take up the crowds,--something much more comprehensive than anything now existing. there would still be a surplus; but at least it would be less by so many as we sent away. and in the nature of things the congestion would be lessened as more went out. immigrants go where they have friends, and if those friends lived in michigan we should not be troubled with them long in new york. if the immigration came all from one country, we should, because of that, have no problem at all, or not much of one at all events, except perhaps in the jews, who have lived in ghettos since time out of mind. the others would speedily be found making only a way station of new york. it is the constant kaleidoscopic change i spoke of that brings us hordes every few years who have to break entirely new ground. it seems to have been always so. forty years after the settlement of manhattan island, says theodore roosevelt in his history of new york, eighteen different languages and dialects were spoken in its streets, though the future metropolis was then but a small village. "no sooner," says he, "has one set of varying elements been fused together, than another stream has been poured into the crucible." what was true of new york two hundred years ago is true to-day of the country of which it is the gateway. in dealing with the surplus that remains, we shall have to rely first and foremost on the public school. of that i shall speak hereafter. it can do more and better work than it is doing, for the old as for the young, when it becomes the real neighborhood centre, especially in the slums. the flag flies over it, that is one thing, and not such a little thing as some imagine. i think we are beginning to see it, with our flag day and our putting it out when we never thought of it five or six years ago. and by the way, when last i was in denmark, my native land, i noticed they had a way of flying the flag on sunday,--whether in honor of the day, or because they loved it, or because they felt the need of flying it in the face of their big and greedy german neighbor, i shall not say. but it was all right. why can we not do the same? it would not hurt the flag, and it would not hurt the day. they would both be better for it--we would all be. you cannot have too much of the flag in the right way, and there would be nothing wrong about that. just go into one of the children's aid society's ragged schools, where the children are practically all from abroad, and see how they take to it. watch an italian parade, in which it is always borne side by side with the standard of united italy, and if you had any doubts about what it stands for you will change your mind quickly. the sight of it is worth a whole course in the school, for education in citizenship. [illustration: one way of bringing the children into camp: basket-weaving in vacation school.] and then it looks fine in the landscape always. it always makes me think there that i added to the red and white of my fathers' flag only the blue of heaven, where wrongs are righted, and i feel better for it. why should it not have the same effect on others? i know it has. the school might be made the means, as the house to which all the life of the neighborhood turned, of enrolling the immigrants in the perilous years when they are not yet citizens. i know what they mean; i have gone through them, seen most of the mischief they hold for the unattached. that _is_ the mischief, that they are unattached. a way must be found of claiming them, if they are not to be lost to the cause of good citizenship where they might so easily have been saved. i spoke of it in "the making of an american." they want to belong, they are waiting to be claimed by some one, and the some one that comes is tammany with its slum politics. the mere enrolling of them, with leave to march behind a band of music, suffices with the young. they belong then. the old are used to enrolment. where they came from they were enrolled in the church, in the army, by the official vaccinator, by the tax-collector--oh, yes, the tax-collector--and here, set all of a sudden adrift, it seems like a piece of home to have some one come along and claim them, write them down, and tell them that they are to do so and so. childish, is it? not at all. it is just human nature, the kind we are working with. the mere fact that the schoolhouse is there, inviting them in, is something. when it comes to seek them out, to invite them to their own hall for discussion, for play, it will be a good deal, particularly if the women go along. and the enrolment of the schoolhouse could be counted as being for decency. it makes all the difference what the start is like. "excellency," wrote an italian to his consul in new york, "i arrived from italy last week. as soon as i landed a policeman clubbed me. i am going to write to victor emmanuel how things are done here. viva l' italia! abbasso l' america!" i should not be surprised to find that man plotting anarchy in paterson as soon as he got his bearings, and neither need you be. there is still another alternative to either keeping them out or keeping them in the city, namely, to ship them away after they have reached the slum and been stranded there, individually or in squads. the latter way was tried when the great jewish immigration first poured in, in the early eighties. five colonies of refugee jews were started in southern new jersey, but they failed. the soil was sandy and poor, and the work unfamiliar. thrown upon his own resources, in a strange and unfriendly neighborhood, the man grew discouraged and gave up in despair. the colonies were in a state of collapse when the new york managers of the baron de hirsch fund took them under the arms and gave them a start on a new plan. they themselves had located a partly industrial, partly farming, community in the neighborhood. they persuaded several large clothing contractors to move their plants out to the villages, where they would be assured of steady hands, with much less chance of disturbing strikes; while on the other hand their workers would have steadier work and could never starve in dull seasons, for they could work their farms and gardens. and, indeed, a perfect frenzy for spading and hoeing seized them when the crops appeared, with promise of unlimited potatoes for the digging of them. the experiment is still in progress. it is an experiment, because as yet the hirsch fund millions back the colonies up, and there is no passing of reasonable judgment upon them till they have stood alone awhile. to all appearances they are prospering, woodbine, the hirsch colony, especially so, with its agricultural school that has set out upon the mission of turning the jew back to the soil from which he has been barred so long. its pupils came out of the sweat shops and the tenement barracks of the ghetto, and a likelier lot it would not be easy to find. one can but wish that the hopes of their friends may be realized in fullest measure. they have put their hands to a task that seems like turning back the finger of time, and snags of various kinds beset their way. i remember the president of the board coming into my office one day with despair written all over him: of a hundred families, carefully picked to go into the country where homes and work awaited them, when it came to the actual departure only seven wanted to go. it was the old story of objection to "the society of the stump." they wanted the crowds, the bands, the kosher butcher shops, the fake auction stores, and the synagogues they were used to. they have learned a lesson from that in the jersey colonies, and are building entertainment halls for the social life that is to keep them together. only a year or so ago an attempt at home-building, much nearer new york, at new orange, just over the hills in jersey, came to an abrupt end. it left out the farming end, aiming merely at the removal of needle workers from the city with their factory. a building was put up for a large new york tailoring firm, and it moved over bodily with its men--that is, with such as were willing to go. work was plentiful in the city, and they were not all ready to surrender the tenement for the sake of a home upon the land, though a very attractive little cottage awaited them on singularly easy terms. however that was almost got over when the firm suddenly threw up the contract. it proved to be costlier for them to manufacture away from the city, and they could not compete. if there is yet an element of doubt about the jew as a colonist, there is none about his ability to make ends meet as an individual farmer, given a fair chance. more than a thousand such are now scattered through the new england states and the dairy counties of new york. the jewish agricultural aid societies of new york and chicago gave them their start, and report decided progress. the farmers are paying their debts and laying away money. as a dairy farmer or poultry raiser the jew has more of an immediate commercial grip on the situation and works with more courage than if he has to wait for long, uncertain crops. in sullivan and ulster counties, new york, a hundred jewish farmers keep summer boarders besides, and are on the highroad to success. very recently the new york society has broken new paths upon an individual "removal plan," started by the b'nai b'rith in . agents are sent throughout the country to make arrangements with jewish communities for the reception of workers from the ghetto; and so successful have been these efforts that at this writing some five thousand have been moved singly and scattered over the country from the atlantic to the pacific--that is, in not yet three years since the beginning. they are carefully looked after, and the reports show that over eighty per cent of all do well in their new surroundings. this result has been wrought at a per capita expense of twelve dollars, not a very great sum for such a work. in its bold outline the movement contemplates nothing less than the draining of the ghetto by the indirect process of which i spoke. "the importance of it," says the removal committee in its report for , "is found, not in the numbers removed, but in the inauguration of the movement, which should and must be greatly extended, and which is declared to be of far-reaching significance. the experience of past years has proven that almost every family removed becomes a centre around which immediately and with ever increasing force others congregate. the committee in charge of the russian immigration in , , etc., has evidence that cities and towns, to which but a very small number of newly arrived immigrants were sent, have become the centres of large russian-jewish communities. no argument is needed to emphasize this statement." it is pleasing to be told that the office of the removal committee has been besieged by eager applicants from the beginning. so light is breaking also in that dark corner. there is enough of it everywhere, if one will only look away from the slum to those it holds fast. "the people are all right," was the unvarying report of the early tenement house committees, "if we only give them half a chance." when the country was in the throes of the silver campaign, the newspapers told the story of an old laborer who went to the sub-treasury and demanded to see the "boss." he undid the strings of an old leathern purse with fumbling fingers, and counted out more than two hundred dollars in gold eagles, the hoard of a lifetime of toil and self-denial. they were for the government, he said. he had not the head to understand all the talk that was going on, but he gathered from what he heard that the government was in trouble, and that somehow it was about not having gold enough. so he had brought what he had. he owed it all to the country, and now that she needed it he had come to give it back. the man was an irishman. very likely he was enrolled in tammany and voted its ticket. i remember a tenement at the bottom of a back alley, over on the east side, where i once went visiting with the pastor of a mission chapel. up in the attic there was a family of father and daughter in two rooms that had been made out of one by dividing off the deep dormer window. it was midwinter, and they had no fire. he was a pedler, but the snow had stalled his push-cart, and robbed them of their only other source of income, a lodger who hired cot room in the attic for a few cents a night. the daughter was not able to work. but she said, cheerfully, that they were "getting along." when it came out that she had not tasted solid food for many days, was starving in fact,--indeed, she died within a year, of the slow starvation of the tenements that parades in the mortality returns under a variety of scientific name which all mean the same thing,--she met her pastor's gentle chiding with the excuse: "oh, your church has many that are poorer than i. i don't want to take your money." these were germans, ordinarily held to be close-fisted; but i found that in their dire distress they had taken in a poor old man who was past working, and kept him all winter, sharing with him what they had. he was none of theirs; they hardly even knew him, as it appeared. it was enough that he was "poorer than they," and lonely and hungry and cold. [illustration: the children's christmas tree.] it was over here that the children of mr. elsing's sunday-school gave out the depth of their poverty fifty-four dollars in pennies to be hung on the christmas tree as their offering to the persecuted armenians. one of their teachers told me of a bohemian family that let the holiday dinner she brought them stand and wait, while they sent out to bid to the feast four little ragamuffins of the neighborhood who else would have gone hungry. and here it was in "the hard winter" when no one had work, that the nurse from the henry street settlement found her cobbler patient entertaining a lodger, with barely bread in the house for himself and his boy. he introduced the stranger with some embarrassment, and when they were alone, excused himself for doing it. the man was just from prison--a man with "a history." "but," said the nurse, doubtfully, "is it a good thing for your boy to have that man in the house?" there was a passing glimpse of uneasiness in the cobbler's glance, but it went as quickly as it had come. he laid his hand upon the nurse's. "this," he said, "ain't no winter to let a fellow from sing sing be on the street." i might keep on, and fill many pages with instances of such kind, which simply go to prove that our poor human nature is at least as robust on avenue a as up on fifth avenue, if it has half a chance, and often enough with no chance at all; and i might set over against it the product of sordid and mean environment which one has never far to seek. good and evil go together in the tenements as in the fine houses, and the evil sticks out sometimes merely because it lies nearer the surface. the point is that the good does outweigh the bad, and that the virtues that turn the balance are after all those that make for manhood and good citizenship anywhere; while the faults are oftenest the accidents of ignorance and lack of training, which it is the business of society to correct. i recall my discouragement when i looked over the examination papers of a batch of candidates for police appointment,--young men largely the product of our public schools in this city and elsewhere,--and read in them that five of the original new england states were "england, ireland, scotland, belfast, and cork"; that the fire department ruled new york in the absence of the mayor,--i have sometimes wished it did, and that he would stay away awhile, while they turned the hose on at the city hall to make a clean job of it,--and that lincoln was murdered by ballington booth. but we shall agree, no doubt, that the indictment of those papers was not of the men who wrote them, but of the school that stuffed its pupils with useless trash, and did not teach them to think. neither have i forgotten that it was one of these very men who, having failed and afterward got a job as a bridge policeman, on his first pay day went straight from his post, half frozen as he was, to the settlement worker who had befriended him and his sick father, and gave him five dollars for "some one who was poorer than they." poorer than they! what worker among the poor has not heard it? it is the charity of the tenement that covers a multitude of sins. there were thirteen in this policeman's family, and his wages were the biggest item of income in the house. jealousy, envy, and meanness wear no fine clothes and masquerade under no smooth speeches in the slums. often enough it is the very nakedness of the virtues that makes us stumble in our judgment. i have in mind the "difficult case" that confronted some philanthropic friends of mine in a rear tenement on twelfth street, in the person of an aged widow, quite seventy i should think, who worked uncomplainingly for a sweater all day and far into the night, pinching and saving and stinting herself, with black bread and chickory coffee as her only fare, in order that she might carry her pitiful earnings to her big, lazy lout of a son in brooklyn. he never worked. my friends' difficulty was a very real one, for absolutely every attempt to relieve the widow was wrecked upon her mother heart. it all went over the river. yet would you have had her different? sometimes it is only the unfamiliar setting that shocks. when an east side midnight burglar, discovered and pursued, killed a tenant who blocked his way of escape, not long ago, his "girl" gave him up to the police. but it was not because he had taken human life. "he was good to me," she explained to the captain whom she told where to find him, "but since he robbed the church i had no use for him." he had stolen, it seems, the communion service in a staten island church. the thoughtless laughed. but in her ignorant way she was only trying to apply the ethical standards she knew. our servant, pondering if the fortune she was told is "real good" at fifteen cents, when it should have cost her twenty-five by right, only she told the fortune-teller she had only fifteen, and lied in telling, is doing the same after her fashion. stunted, bemuddled, as their standards were, i think i should prefer to take my chances with either rather than with the woman of wealth and luxury who gave a christmas party to her lap-dog, as on the whole the sounder and by far the more hopeful. all of which is merely saying that the country is all right, and the people are to be trusted with the old faith in spite of the slum. and it is true, if we remember to put it that way,--in spite of the slum. there is nothing in the slum to warrant that faith save human nature as yet uncorrupted. how long it is to remain so is altogether a question of the sacrifices we are willing to make in our fight with the slum. as yet, we are told by the officials having to do with the enforcement of the health ordinances, which come closer to the life of the individual than any other kind, that the poor in the tenements are "more amenable to the law than the better class." it is of the first importance, then, that we should have laws deserving of their respect, and that these laws should be enforced, lest they conclude that the whole thing is a sham. respect for law is a very powerful bar against the slum. but what, for instance, must the poor jew understand, who is permitted to buy a live hen at the market, but neither to kill nor keep it in his tenement, and who on his feast day finds a whole squad of policemen detailed to follow him around and see that he does not do any of the things with his fowl for which he must have bought it? or the day laborer, who drinks his beer in a "raines law hotel," where brick sandwiches, consisting of two pieces of bread with a brick between, are set out on the counter, in derision of the state law which forbids the serving of drinks without "meals"?[ ] the stanton street saloon keeper who did that was solemnly acquitted by a jury. or the boy, who may buy fireworks on the fourth of july, but not set them off? these are only ridiculous instances of an abuse that pervades our community life to an extent which constitutes one of its gravest perils. insincerity of that kind is not lost on our fellow-citizen by adoption, who is only anxious to fall in with the ways of the country; and especially is it not lost on his boy. [footnote : the following is from the new york _herald_ of april , : one of the strangest sandwich complications so far recorded occurred in a saloon in columbia street, brooklyn, on sunday. a boy rushed into the amity street police station at noon, declaring that two men in the saloon were killing each other. two policemen ran to the place, and found the bartender and a customer pummelling each other on the floor. when the men had been separated the police learned that the trouble had arisen from the attempt of the customer to eat the sandwich which had been served with his drink. the barkeeper objected, and, finding remonstrance in vain, resorted to physical force to rescue the sandwich from the clutches of the hungry stranger. the police restored the sandwich to the bartender and made no arrests.] we shall see how it affects him. he is the one for whom we are waging the battle with the slum. he is the to-morrow that sits to-day drinking in the lesson of the prosperity of the big boss who declared with pride upon the witness stand that he rules new york, that judges pay him tribute, and that only when _he_ says so a thing "goes"; and that he is "working for his own pocket all the time just the same as everybody else." he sees corporations pay blackmail and rob the people in return, quite according to the schedule of hester street. only there it is the police who charge the pedler twenty cents, while here it is the politicians taking toll of the franchises, twenty per cent. wall street is not ordinarily reckoned in the slum, because of certain physical advantages; but, upon the evidence of the day, i think we shall have to conclude that the advantage ends there. the boy who is learning such lessons,--how is it with him? the president of the society for the prevention of cruelty to children says that children's crime is increasing, and he ought to know. the managers of the children's aid society, after nearly fifty years of wrestling with the slum for the boy, in which they have lately seemed to get the upper hand, said recently, that on the east side children are growing up in certain districts "entirely neglected," and that the number of such children "increases beyond the power of philanthropic and religious bodies to cope properly with their needs." in the tompkins square lodging house the evening classes were thinning out, and the keeper wailed, "those with whom we have dealt of late have not been inclined to accept this privilege; how to make night school attractive to shiftless, indifferent street boys is a difficult problem to solve." perhaps it was only that he had lost the key. across the square, the boys' club of st. mark's place, that began with a handful, counts seven thousand members to-day, and is building a house of its own. the school census man announces that no boy in that old stronghold of the "bread or blood" brigade need henceforth loiter in the street because of there not being room in the public school, and the brigade has disbanded for want of recruits. the factory is being more and more firmly shut against the boy, and the bars let down at the playground. from tompkins square, nevertheless, came jacob beresheim, whose story let me stop here to tell you. chapter ix the genesis of the gang jacob beresheim was fifteen when he was charged with murder. it is now more than six years ago, but the touch of his hand is cold upon mine, with mortal fear, as i write. every few minutes, during our long talk on the night of his arrest and confession, he would spring to his feet, and, clutching my arm as a drowning man catches at a rope, demand with shaking voice, "will they give me the chair?" the assurance that boys were not executed quieted him only for the moment. then the dread and the horror were upon him again. of his crime the less said the better. it was the climax of a career of depravity that differed from other such chiefly in the opportunities afforded by an environment which led up to and helped shape it. my business is with that environment. the man is dead, the boy in jail. but unless i am to be my brother's jail keeper merely, the iron bars do not square the account of jacob with society. society exists for the purpose of securing justice to its members, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. when it fails in this, the item is carried on the ledger with interest and compound interest toward a day of reckoning that comes surely with the paymaster. we have heard the chink of his coin on the counter, these days, in the unblushing revelations before legislative investigating committees of degraded citizenship, of the murder of the civic conscience, and in the applause that hailed them from the unthinking crowd. and we have begun to understand that these are the interest on jacob's account, older, much older, than himself. he is just an item carried on the ledger. but with that knowledge the account is at last in the way of getting squared. let us see how it stands. we shall take jacob as a type of the street boy on the east side, where he belonged. what does not apply to him in the review applies to his class. but there was very little of it indeed that he missed or that missed him. he was born in a tenement in that section where the gilder tenement house commission found , persons living out of sight and reach of a green spot of any kind, and where sometimes the buildings--front, middle, and rear--took up ninety-three per cent of all the space in the block. such a home as he had was there, and of the things that belonged to it he was the heir. the sunlight was not among them. it "never entered" there. darkness and discouragement did, and dirt. later on, when he took to the dirt as his natural weapon in his battles with society, it was said of him that it was the only friend that stuck to him, and it was true. very early the tenement gave him up to the street. the thing he took with him as the one legacy of home was the instinct for the crowd, which meant that the tenement had wrought its worst mischief upon him; it had smothered that in him around which character is built. the more readily did he fall in with the street and its ways. character implies depth, a soil, and growth. the street is all surface. nothing grows there; it hides only a sewer. [illustration: jacob beresheim.] it taught him gambling as its first lesson, and stealing as the next. the two are never far apart. from shooting craps behind the "cop's" back to filching from the grocer's stock or plundering a defenceless pedler is only a step. there is in both the spice of law-breaking that appeals to the shallow ambition of the street as heroic. at the very time when the adventurous spirit is growing in the boy, and his games are all of daring, of chasing and being chased, the policeman looms up to take a hand, and is hailed with joyful awe. occasionally the raids have a comic tinge. a german grocer wandered into police headquarters with an appeal for protection against the boys. "vat means dot 'cheese it'?" he asked, rubbing his bald head in helpless bewilderment. "efery dime dey says 'cheese it,' somedings vas gone." to the lawlessness of the street the home opposes no obstacle, as we have seen. within the memory of most of us the school did not. it might have more to offer even now. but we have gone such a long way since the day i am thinking of that i am not going to find fault. i used to think that some of them needed to be made over, until they were fit to turn out whole, sound boys, instead of queer manikins stuffed with information for which they have no use, and which is none of their business anyhow. it seemed to me, sometimes, when watching the process of cramming the school course with the sum of human knowledge and conceit, as if it all meant that we distrusted nature's way of growing a man from a boy, and had set out to show her a shorter cut. a common result was the kind of mental befogment that had abraham lincoln murdered by ballington booth, and a superficiality, a hopeless slurring of tasks, that hitched perfectly with the spirit of the street, and left nothing to be explained in the verdict of the reformatory, "no moral sense." there was no moral sense to be got out of the thing, for there was little sense of any kind in it. the boy was not given a chance to be honest with himself by thinking a thing through; he came naturally to accept as his mental horizon the headlines in his penny paper and the literature of the dare-devil-dan-the-death-dealing-monster-of-dakota order, which comprise the ordinary æsthetic equipment of the slum. the mystery of his further development into the tough need not perplex anybody. but jacob beresheim had not even the benefit of such schooling as there was to be had. he did not go to school, and nobody cared. there was indeed a law directing that every child should go, and a corps of truant officers to catch him if he did not; but the law had been a dead letter for a quarter of a century. there was no census to tell which children ought to be in school, and no place but a jail to put those in who shirked. jacob was allowed to drift. from the time he was twelve till he was fifteen, he told me, he might have gone to school three weeks,--no more. church and sunday-school missed him. i was going to say that they passed by on the other side, remembering the migration of the churches up-town as the wealthy moved out of and the poor into the region south of fourteenth street. but that would hardly be fair. they moved after their congregations; but they left nothing behind. in the twenty years that followed the war, while enough to people a large city moved in down-town, the number of churches there was reduced from to . fourteen protestant churches moved out. only two roman catholic churches and a synagogue moved in. i am not aware that there has been any large increase of churches in the district since, but we have seen that the crowding has not slackened pace. jacob had no trouble in escaping the sunday-school, as he had escaped the public school. his tribe will have none until the responsibility incurred in the severance of church and state sits less lightly on a christian community, and the church, from a mob, shall have become an army, with von moltke's plan of campaign, "march apart, fight together." the christian church is not alone in its failure. the jew's boy is breaking away from safe moorings rather faster than his brother of the new dispensation. the church looks on, but it has no cause for congratulation. he is getting nothing in place of that which he lost, and the result is bad. there is no occasion for profound theories about it. the facts are plain enough. the new freedom has something to do with it; but neglect to look after the young has quite as much. apart from its religious aspect, seen from the angle of the community's interest wholly, the matter is of the gravest import. what the boy's play has to do with building character in him froebel has told us. through it, he showed us, the child "first perceives moral relations," and he made that the basis of the kindergarten and all common-sense education. that prop was knocked out. new york never had a children's playground till within the last three years. truly it seemed, as abram s. hewitt said, as if in the early plan of our city the children had not been thought of at all. such moral relations as jacob was able to make out ran parallel with the gutter always, and counter to law and order as represented by the policeman and the landlord. the landlord had his windows to mind, and the policeman his lamps and the city ordinances which prohibit even kite-flying below fourteenth street where the crowds are. the ball had no chance at all. we have seen in new york a boy shot down by a policeman for the heinous offence of playing football in the street on thanksgiving day. but a boy who cannot kick a ball around has no chance of growing up a decent and orderly citizen. he must have his childhood, so that he may be fitted to give to the community his manhood. the average boy is just like a little steam-engine with steam always up. the play is his safety-valve. with the landlord in the yard and the policeman on the street sitting on his safety-valve and holding it down, he is bound to explode. when he does, when he throws mud and stones, and shows us the side of him which the gutter developed, we are shocked, and marvel much what our boys are coming to, as if we had any right to expect better treatment of them. i doubt if jacob, in the whole course of his wizened little life, had ever a hand in an honest game that was not haunted by the spectre of the avenging policeman. that he was not "doing anything" was no defence. the mere claim was proof that he was up to mischief of some sort. besides, the policeman was usually right. play in such a setting becomes a direct incentive to mischief in a healthy boy. jacob was a healthy enough little animal. such fun as he had he got out of law-breaking in a small way. in this he was merely following the ruling fashion. laws were apparently made for no other purpose that he could see. such a view as he enjoyed of their makers and executors at election seasons inspired him with seasonable enthusiasm, but hardly with awe. a slogan, now, like that raised by tammany's late candidate for district attorney,[ ]--"to hell with reform!"--was something he could grasp. of what reform meant he had only the vaguest notion, but this thing had the right ring to it. roosevelt preaching enforcement of law was from the first a "lobster" to him, not to be taken seriously. it is not among the least of the merits of the man that, by his sturdy personality, as well as by his unyielding persistence, he won the boy over to the passive admission that there might be something in it. it had not been his experience. [footnote : in the first greater new york election.] there was the law which sternly commanded him to go to school, and which he laughed at every day. then there was the law to prevent child labor. it cost twenty-five cents for a false age certificate to break that, and jacob, if he thought of it at all, probably thought of perjury as rather an expensive thing. a quarter was a good deal to pay for the right to lock a child up in a factory, when he ought to have been at play. the excise law was everybody's game. the sign that hung in every saloon, saying that nothing was sold there to minors, never yet barred out his "growler" when he had the price. there was another such sign in the tobacco shop, forbidding the sale of cigarettes to boys of his age. jacob thought that when he had the money he smoked as many as fifteen packs a day, and he laughed when he told me. he laughed, too, when he remembered how the boys of the east side took to carrying balls of cord in their pockets, on the wave of the lexow reform, on purpose to measure the distance from the school door to the nearest saloon. they had been told that it should be two hundred feet, according to law. there were schools that had as many as a dozen within the tabooed limits. it was in the papers how, when the highest courts said that the law was good, the saloon keepers attacked _the schools_ as a nuisance and detrimental to property. in a general way jacob sided with the saloon keeper; not because he had any opinion about it, but because it seemed natural. such opinions as he ordinarily had he got from that quarter. when, later on, he came to be tried, his counsel said to me, "he is an amazing liar." no, hardly amazing. it would have been amazing if he had been anything else. lying and mockery were all around him, and he adjusted himself to the things that were. he lied in self-defence. [illustration: heading off the gang. vacation playground near old frog hollow.] jacob's story ends here, as far as he is personally concerned. the story of the gang begins. so trained for the responsibility of citizenship, robbed of home and of childhood, with every prop knocked from under him, all the elements that make for strength and character trodden out in the making of the boy, all the high ambition of youth caricatured by the slum and become base passions,--so equipped he comes to the business of life. as a "kid" he hunted with the pack in the street. as a young man he trains with the gang, because it furnishes the means of gratifying his inordinate vanity; that is the slum's counterfeit of self-esteem. upon the jacobs of other days there was a last hold,--the father's authority. changed conditions have loosened that also. there is a time in every young man's life when he knows more than his father. it is like the measles or the mumps, and he gets over it, with a little judicious firmness in the hand that guides. it is the misfortune of the slum boy of to-day that it is really so, and that he knows it. his father is an italian or a jew, and cannot even speak the language to which the boy is born. he has to depend on him in much, in the new order of things. the old man is "slow," he is "dutch." he may be an irishman with some advantages; he is still a "foreigner." he loses his grip on the boy. ethical standards of which he has no conception clash. watch the meeting of two currents in river or bay, and see the line of drift that tells of the struggle. so in the city's life strive the currents of the old and the new, and in the churning the boy goes adrift. the last hold upon him is gone. that is why the gang appears in the second generation, the first born upon the soil,--a fighting gang if the irishman is there with his ready fist, a thievish gang if it is the east side jew,--and disappears in the third. the second boy's father is not "slow." he has had experience. he was clubbed into decency in his own day, and the night stick wore off the glamour of the thing. his grip on the boy is good, and it holds. it depends now upon chance what is to become of the lad. but the slum has stacked the cards against him. there arises in the lawless crowd a leader, who rules with his stronger fists of his readier wit. around him the gang crystallizes, and what he is it becomes. he may be a thief, like david meyer, a report of whose doings i have before me. he was just a bully, and, being the biggest in his gang, made the others steal for him and surrender the "swag," or take a licking. but that was unusual. ordinarily the risk and the "swag" are distributed on more democratic principles. or he may be of the temper of mike of poverty gap, who was hanged for murder at nineteen. while he sat in his cell at police headquarters, he told with grim humor of the raids of his gang on saturday nights when they stocked up at "the club." they used to "hook" a butcher's cart or other light wagon, wherever found, and drive like mad up and down the avenue, stopping at saloon or grocery to throw in what they wanted. his job was to sit at the tail of the cart with a six-shooter and pop at any chance pursuer. he chuckled at the recollection of how men fell over one another to get out of his way. "it was great to see them run," he said. mike was a tough, but with a better chance he might have been a hero. the thought came to him, too, when it was all over and the end in sight. he put it all in one sober, retrospective sigh, that had in it no craven shirking of the responsibility which was properly his: "i never had no bringing up." there was a meeting some time after his death to boom a scheme for "getting the boys off the street," and i happened to speak of mike's case. in the audience was a gentleman of means and position, and his daughter, who manifested great interest and joined heartily in the proposed movement. a week later, i was thunderstruck at reading of the arrest of my sympathetic friend's son for train-wrecking up the state. the fellow was of the same age as mike. it appeared that he was supposed to be attending school, but had been reading dime novels instead, until he arrived at the point where he "had to kill some one before the end of the month." to that end he organized a gang of admiring but less resourceful comrades. after all, the planes of fellowship of poverty gap and madison avenue lie nearer than we often suppose. i set the incident down in justice to the memory of my friend mike. if this one went astray with so much to pull him the right way and but the single strand broken, what then of the other? mike's was the day of irish heroics. since their scene was shifted from the east side, there has come over there an epidemic of child crime of meaner sort, but following the same principle of gang organization. it is difficult to ascertain the exact extent of it, because of the well-meant but, i am inclined to think, mistaken effort on the part o£ the children's societies to suppress the record of it for the sake of the boy. enough testimony comes from the police and the courts, however, to make it clear that thieving is largely on the increase among the east side boys. and it is amazing at what an early age it begins. when, in the fight for a truant school, i had occasion to gather statistics upon this subject, to meet the sneer of the educational authorities that the "crimes" of street boys compassed at worst the theft of a top or a marble, i found among prisoners, of whom i had kept the run for ten months, two boys, of four and eight years respectively, arrested for breaking into a grocery, not to get candy or prunes, but to rob the till. the little one was useful to "crawl through a small hole." there were "burglars" of six and seven years; and five in a bunch, the whole gang apparently, at the age of eight. "wild" boys began to appear in court at that age. at eleven, i had seven thieves, two of whom had a record on the police blotter, and an "habitual liar"; at twelve, i had four burglars, three ordinary thieves, two arrested for drunkenness, three for assault, and three incendiaries; at thirteen, five burglars, one with a "record," as many thieves, one "drunk," five charged with assault and one with forgery; at fourteen, eleven thieves and housebreakers, six highway robbers,--the gang on its unlucky day, perhaps,--and ten arrested for fighting, not counting one who had assaulted a policeman, in a state of drunken frenzy. one of the gangs made a specialty of stealing baby carriages, when they were left unattended in front of stores. they "drapped the kids in the hallway" and "sneaked" the carriages. and so on. the recital was not a pleasant one, but it was effective. we got our truant school, and one way that led to the jail was blocked. [illustration: craps.] it may be that the leader is neither thief nor thug, but ambitious. in that case the gang is headed for politics by the shortest route. likewise, sometimes, when he is both. in either case it carries the situation by assault. when the gang wants a thing, the easiest way seems to it always to take it. there was an explosion in a fifth street tenement, one winter's night, that threw twenty families into a wild panic, and injured two of the tenants badly. there was much mystery about it, until it came out that the housekeeper had had a "run in" with the gang in the block. it wanted club room in the house, and she would not let it in. beaten, it avenged itself in characteristic fashion by leaving a package of gunpowder on the stairs, where she would be sure to find it when she went the rounds with her candle to close up. that was a gang of the kind i have reference to, headed straight for albany. and what is more, it will get there, unless things change greatly. the gunpowder was just a "bluff" to frighten the housekeeper, an instalment of the kind of politics it meant to play when it got its chance. there was "nothing against" this gang except a probable row with the saloon keeper, since it applied elsewhere for house room. not every gang has a police record of theft and "slugging" beyond the early encounters of the street. "our honorable leader" is not always the captain of a band of cutthroats. he is the honorary president of the "social club" that bears his name, and he counts for something in the ward. but the ethical standards do not differ. "do others, or they will do you," felicitously adapted from holy writ for the use of the slum, and the classic war-cry, "to the victor the spoils," made over locally to read, "i am not in politics for my health," still interpret the creed of the political as of the "slugging" gang. they draw their inspiration from the same source. of what gang politics mean every large city in our country has had its experience. new york is no exception. history on the subject is being made yet, in sight of us all. [illustration: children's playground. good citizenship at the bottom of this barrel.] our business with the gang, however, is in the making of it. take now the showing of the reformatory,[ ] to which i have before made reference, and see what light it throws upon the matter: . per cent of prisoners with no moral sense, or next to none, yet more than that proportion possessed of "good natural mental capacity," which is to say that they had the means of absorbing it from their environment, if there had been any to absorb. bad homes sent half ( . ) of all prisoners there; bad company . per cent. the reformatory repeats the prison chaplain's verdict, "weakness, not wickedness," in its own way: "malevolence does not characterize the criminal, but aversion to continuous labor." if "the street" had been written across it in capital letters, it could not have been made plainer. less than per cent of the prisoners came from good homes, and one in sixty-six ( . ) had kept good company; evidently he was not of the mentally capable. they will tell you at the prison that, under its discipline, eighty odd per cent are set upon their feet and make a fresh start. with due allowance for a friendly critic, there is still room for the three-fourths labelled normal, of "natural mental capacity." they came to their own with half a chance, even the chance of a prison. the children's aid society will give you still better news of the boys rescued from the slum before it had branded them for its own. scarce five per cent are lost, though they leave such a black mark that they make trouble for all the good boys that are sent out from new york. better than these was the kindergarten record in san francisco. new york has no monopoly of the slum. of nine thousand children from the slummiest quarters of that city who had gone through the golden gate association's kindergartens, just one was found to have got into jail. the merchants who looked coldly on the experiment before, brought their gold to pay for keeping it up. they were hard-headed men of business, and the demonstration that schools were better than jails any day appealed to them as eminently sane and practical. [footnote : "year-book of elmira state reformatory," . the statistics deal with , prisoners received there in twenty-seven years. the social stratum whence they came is sufficiently indicated by the statement that . per cent were illiterates, and . percent were able to read and write with difficulty; . per cent had an ordinary common school education; . per cent came out of high schools or colleges.] and well it might. the gang is a distemper of the slum that writes upon the generation it plagues the receipt for its own corrective. it is not the night stick, though in the acute stage that is not to be dispensed with. neither is it the jail. to put the gang behind iron bars affords passing relief, but it is like treating a symptom without getting at the root of the disease. prophylactic treatment is clearly indicated. the boy who flings mud and stones is entering his protest in his own way against the purblind policy that gave him jails for schools and the gutter for a playground; that gave him dummies for laws and the tenement for a home. he is demanding his rights, of which he has been cheated,--the right to his childhood, the right to know the true dignity of labor that makes a self-respecting manhood. the gang, rightly understood, is our ally, not our enemy. like any ailment of the body, it is a friend come to tell us of something that has gone amiss. the thing for us to do is to find out what it is, and set it right. that is the story of the gang. that we have read and grasped its lesson at last, many things bear witness. here is the league for political education providing a playground for the children up on the west side, near the model tenements which i described. just so! with a decent home and a chance for the boy to grow into a healthy man, his political education can proceed without much further hindrance. now let the league for political education trade off the policeman's club for a boys' club, and it may consider its course fairly organized. i spoke of the instinct for the crowd in the man as evidence that the slum had got its grip on him. and it is true of the boy. the experience that the helpless poor will not leave their slum when a chance of better things is offered is wearily familiar to most of us. one has to have resources to face the loneliness of the woods and the fields. we have seen what resources the slum has at its command. in the boy it laid hold of the instinct for organization, the desire to fall in and march in line that belongs to all boys, and is not here, as abroad, cloyed with military service in the young years,--and anyhow is stronger in the american boy than in his european brother,--and perverted it to its own use. that is the simple secret of the success of the club, the brigade, in winning back the boy. it is fighting the street with its own weapon. the gang is the club run wild. how readily it owns the kinship was never better shown than by the experience of the college settlement girls, when they first went to make friends in the east side tenements. i have told it before, but it will bear telling again, for it holds the key to the whole business. they gathered in the drift, all the little embryo gangs that were tuning up in the district, and made them into clubs,--young heroes, knights of the round table, and such like; all except one, the oldest, that had begun to make a name for itself with the police. that one held aloof, observing coldly what went on, to make sure it was "straight." they let it be, keeping the while an anxious eye upon it; until one day there came a delegation with this olive branch: "if you will let us in, we will change and have your kind of a gang." needless to say it was let in. and within a year, when, through a false rumor that the concern was moving away, there was a run on the settlement's penny provident bank, the converted gang proved itself its stanchest friend by doing actually what john halifax did in miss mulock's story: it brought all the pennies it could raise in the neighborhood by hook or by crook and deposited them as fast as the regular patrons--the gang had not yet risen to the dignity of a bank account--drew them out, until the run ceased. this same gang which, the year before, was training for trouble with the police! the cry, "get the boys off the street," that has been raised in our cities, as the real gravity of the situation has been made clear, has led to the adoption of curfew ordinances in many places. any attempt to fit such a scheme to metropolitan life would result only in adding one more dead-letter law, more dangerous than all the rest, to those we have. new york is new york, and one look at the crowds in the streets and the tenements will convince anybody. besides, the curfew rings at nine o'clock. the dangerous hours, when the gang is made, are from seven to nine, between supper and bedtime. this is the gap the club fills out. the boys take to the street because the home has nothing to keep them there. to lock them up in the house would only make them hate it more. the club follows the line of least resistance. it has only to keep also on the line of common sense. it must be a real club, not a reformatory. its proper function is to head off the jail. the gang must not run it. but rather that than have it help train up a band of wretched young cads. the signs are not hard to make out. when a boy has had his head swelled by his importance as a member of the junior street-cleaning band to the point of reproving his mother for throwing a banana peel in the street, the thing to be done is to take him out and spank him, if it _is_ reverting to "the savagery" of the street. better a savage than a cad. the boys have the making of both in them. their vanity furnishes abundant material for the cad, but only when unduly pampered. left to itself, the gang can be trusted not to develop that kink. it comes down in the end to the personal influence that is always most potent in dealing with these problems. we had a gang start up once when my boys were of that age, out in the village on long island where we lived. it had its headquarters in our barn, where it planned divers raids that aimed at killing the cat and other like outrages; the central fact being that the boys had an air rifle, with which it was necessary to murder something. my wife discovered the conspiracy, and, with woman's wit, defeated it by joining the gang. she "gave in wood" to the election bonfires, and pulled the safety valve upon all the other plots by entering into the true spirit of them,--which was adventure rather than mischief,--and so keeping them within safe lines. she was elected an honorary member, and became the counsellor of the gang in all its little scrapes. i can yet see her dear brow wrinkled in the study of some knotty gang problem, which we discussed when the boys had been long asleep. they did not dream of it, and the village never knew what small tragedies it escaped, nor who it was that so skilfully averted them. it is always the women who do those things. they are the law and the gospel to the boy, both in one. it is the mother heart, i suppose, and there is nothing better in all the world. i am reminded of the conversion of "the kid" by one who was in a very real sense the mother of a social settlement up-town, in the latitude of battle row. the kid was driftwood. he had been cast off by a drunken father and mother, and was living on what he could scrape out of ash barrels, and an occasional dime for kindling-wood which he sold from a wheelbarrow, when the gang found and adopted him. my friend adopted the gang in her turn, and civilized it by slow stages. easter sunday came, when she was to redeem her promise to take the boys to witness the services in a neighboring church, where the liturgy was especially impressive. it found the larger part of the gang at her door,--a minority, it was announced, were out stealing potatoes, hence were excusable,--in a state of high indignation. "the kid's been cussin' awful," explained the leader. the kid showed in the turbulent distance, red-eyed and raging. "but why?" asked my friend, in amazement. "'cause he can't go to church!" it appeared that the gang had shut him out, with a sense of what was due to the occasion, because of his rags. restored to grace, and choking down reminiscent sobs, the kid sat through the easter service, surrounded by the twenty-seven "proper" members of the gang. civilization had achieved a victory, and no doubt my friend remembered it in her prayers with thanksgiving. the manner was of less account. battle row has its own ways, even in its acceptance of means of grace. [illustration: "the gang fell in with joyous shouts."] i walked home from the office in the early gloaming. the street wore its normal aspect of mingled dulness and the kind of expectancy that is always waiting to turn any excitement, from a fallen horse to a fire, to instant account. the early june heat had driven the multitudes from the tenements into the street for a breath of air. the boys of the block were holding a meeting at the hydrant. in some way they had turned the water on, and were splashing in it with bare feet, revelling in the sense that they were doing something that "went against" their enemy, the policeman. upon the quiet of the evening broke a bugle note and the tramp of many feet keeping time. a military band came around the corner, stepping briskly to the tune of "the stars and stripes forever." their white duck trousers glimmered in the twilight, as the hundred legs moved as one. stoops and hydrant were deserted with a rush. the gang fell in with joyous shouts. the young fellow linked arms with his sweetheart and fell in too. the tired mother hurried with the baby carriage to catch up. the butcher came, hot and wiping his hands on his apron, to the door to see them pass. "yes," said my companion, guessing my thoughts,--we had been speaking of the boys,--"but look at the other side. there is the military spirit. do you not fear danger from it in this country?" no, my anxious friend, i do not. let them march; and if with a gun, better still. often enough it is the choice of the gun on the shoulder, or, by and by, the stripes on the back in the lockstep gang. chapter x jim i used to think that it would have been better for jim if he had never been born. what the good bishop said of some children--that they were not so much born into the world as they were damned into it--seemed true of jim, if ever it was true of any one. he had had a father, once, who was kind to him, but it was long since. the one he called by that name last had been sent to sing sing, to the lad's great relief, for a midnight burglary, shortly after he married jim's mother. his back hurt yet when he thought of the evil days when he was around. if any one had thought it worth while to teach jim to pray, he would have prayed with all his might that his father might never come out. but no one did, so that he was spared that sin. i suppose that was what it would have been called. i am free to confess that i would have joined jim in sinning with a right good will, even to the extent of speeding the benevolent intentions of providence in that direction--anyhow, until jim should be able to take care of himself. i mean with his fists. he was in a way of learning that without long delay, for ever since he was a little shaver he had had to fight his own way, and sometimes his mother's. he was thirteen when i met him, and most of his time had been put in around the rag gang's quarters, along first avenue and the river front, where that kind of learning was abundant and came cheap. his mother drank. i do not know what made her do it--whether it was the loss of the first husband, or getting the second, or both. it did not seem important when she stood there, weak and wretched and humble, with jim. and as for my preaching to her, sitting in my easy-chair, well fed and respectable, that would come near to being impertinence. so it always struck me. perhaps i was wrong. anyway, it would have done her no good. too much harm had been done her already. she would disappear for days, sometimes for weeks at a time, on her frequent sprees. jim never made any inquiries. on those occasions he kept aloof from us, and paddled his own canoe, lest we should ask questions. it was when she had come home sobered that we saw them always together. now it was the rent, and then again a few groceries. with such lifts as she got, sandwiched in with much good advice, and by the aid of an odd job now and then, mrs. kelly managed to keep a bit of a roof over her boy and herself, down in the "village" on the river front. at least, jim had a place to sleep. until, one day, our visitor reported that she was gone for good--she and the boy. they were both gone,--nobody in the neighborhood knew or cared where,--and the room was vacant. except that they had not been dispossessed, we could learn nothing. jim was not found, and in the press of many things the kellys were forgotten. once or twice his patient, watchful eyes, that seemed to be always trying to understand something to which he had not found the key, haunted me at my office; but at last i forgot about them too. some months passed. it was winter. a girl, who had been one of our cares, had been taken to the city hospital to die, and our visitor went there to see and comfort her. she was hastening down the long aisle between the two rows of beds, when she felt something tugging feebly at the sleeve of her coat. looking round, she saw on the pillow of the bed she had just passed the face of jim's mother. "why, mrs. kelly!" she exclaimed, and went to her. "where--?" but the question that rose to her lips was never spoken. one glance was enough to show that her time was very short, and she was not deceived. the nurse supplied the facts briefly in a whisper. she had been picked up in the street, drunk or sick--the diagnosis was not clearly made out at the time, but her record was against her. she lay a day or two in a police cell, and by the time it was clear that it was not rum this time, the mischief was done. probably it would have been done anyhow. the woman was worn out. what now lay on the hospital cot was a mere wreck of her, powerless to move or speak. she could only plead with her large, sad eyes. as she tried to make them say that which was in her soul, two big tears rolled slowly down the wan cheeks and fell on the coarse sheet. the visitor understood. what woman would not? "jim?" she said, and the light of joy and understanding came into the yearning eyes. she nodded ever so feebly, and the hand that rested in her friend's twitched and trembled in the effort to grasp hers. "i will find him. it is all right. now, you be quite happy. i will bring him here." the white face settled back on the pillow, and the weary eyes closed with a little sigh of contentment very strange in that place. when the visitor passed her cot ten minutes later, she was asleep, with a smile on her lips. it proved not so easy a matter to find jim. we came upon his track in his old haunts after a while, only to lose it again and again. it was clear that he was around, but it seemed almost as if he were purposely dodging us; and in fact that proved to have been the case when at last, after a hunt of weary days and nights through the neighborhood, he was brought in. ragged, pale, and pinched by hunger, we saw him with a shock of remorse for having let him drift so long. his story was simple enough. when his mother failed to come back, and, the rent coming due, the door of what had been home to him, even such as it was, was closed upon him, he took to the street. he slept in hallways and with the gang among the docks, never going far from the "village" lest he should miss news of his mother coming back. the cold nights came, and he shivered often in his burrows; but he never relaxed his watch. all the time his mother lay dying less than half a dozen blocks away, but there was no one to tell him. had any one done so, it is not likely that the guard would have let him through the gate, as he looked. seven weeks he had spent in the streets when he heard that he was wanted. the other boys told him that it was the "cruelty" man sure; and then began the game of hide-and-seek that tried our patience and wore on his mother, sinking rapidly now, but that eventually turned up jim. [illustration: "'oh, mother! you were gone so long!'"] we took him up to the hospital, and into the ward where his mother lay. away off at the farther end of the room, he knew her, the last in the row, and ran straight to her before we could stop him, and fell on her neck. "mother!" we heard him say, while he hugged her, with his head on her pillow. "mother, why don't you speak to me? i am all right--i am." he raised his head and looked at her. happy tears ran down the thin face turned to his. he took her in his arms again. "i am all right, mother; honest, i am. don't you cry. i couldn't keep the rooms, mother! they took everything, only the deed to father's grave. i kept that." he dug in the pocket of his old jacket, and brought out a piece of paper, carefully wrapped in many layers of rags and newspaper that hung in dirty tatters. "here it is. everything else is gone. but it is all right. i've got you, and i am here. oh, mother! you were gone so long!" longer--poor jim--the parting that was even then adding another to the mysteries that had vexed my soul concerning you. happiness at last had broken the weary heart. but if it added one, it dispelled another: i knew then that i erred, jim, when i thought it were better if you had never been born! chapter xi letting in the light i had been out of town and my way had not fallen through the mulberry bend in weeks until that morning when i came suddenly upon the park that had been made there in my absence. sod had been laid, and men were going over the lawn cutting the grass after the rain. the sun shone upon flowers and the tender leaves of young shrubs, and the smell of new-mown hay was in the air. crowds of little italian children shouted with delight over the "garden," while their elders sat around upon the benches with a look of contentment such as i had not seen before in that place. i stood and looked at it all, and a lump came in my throat as i thought of what it had been, and of all the weary years of battling for this. it had been such a hard fight, and now at last it was won. to me the whole battle with the slum had summed itself up in the struggle with this dark spot. the whir of the lawn-mower was as sweet a song in my ear as that which the skylark sang when i was a boy, in danish fields, and which gray hairs do not make the man forget. [illustration: "keep off the grass!"] in my delight i walked upon the grass. it seemed as if i should never be satisfied till i had felt the sod under my feet,--sod in the mulberry bend! i did not see the gray-coated policeman hastening my way, nor the wide-eyed youngsters awaiting with shuddering delight the catastrophe that was coming, until i felt his cane laid smartly across my back and heard his angry command: "hey! come off the grass! d'ye think it is made to walk on?" so that was what i got for it. it is the way of the world. but it was all right. the park was there, that was the thing. and i had my revenge. i had just had a hand in marking five blocks of tenements for destruction to let in more light, and in driving the slum from two other strongholds. where they were, parks are being made to-day in which the sign "keep off the grass!" will never be seen. the children may walk in them from morning till night, and i too, if i want to, with no policeman to drive us off. i tried to tell the policeman something about it. but he was of the old dispensation. all the answer i got was a gruff: "g'wan now! i don't want none o' yer guff!" it was all "guff" to the politicians, i suppose, from the day the trouble began about the mulberry bend, but toward the end they woke up nobly. when the park was finally dedicated to the people's use, they took charge of the celebration with immense unction, and invited themselves to sit in the high seats and glory in the achievement which they had done little but hamper and delay from the first. they had not reckoned with colonel waring, however. when they had had their say, the colonel arose, and, curtly reminding them that they had really had no hand in the business, proposed three cheers for the citizen effort that had struck the slum this staggering blow. there was rather a feeble response on the platform, but rousing cheers from the crowd, with whom the colonel was a prime favorite, and no wonder. two years later he laid down his life in the fight which he so valiantly and successfully waged. it is the simple truth that he was killed by politics. the services which he had rendered the city would have entitled him in any reputable business to be retained in the employment that was his life and his pride. had he been so retained, he would not have gone to cuba, and would in all human probability be now alive. but tammany is not "in politics for its health" and had no use for him, though no more grievous charge could be laid at his door, even in the heat of the campaign, than that he was a "foreigner," being from rhode island. spoils politics never craved a heavier sacrifice of any community. [illustration: colonel george e. waring, jr.] it was colonel waring's broom that first let light into the slum. that which had come to be considered an impossible task he did by the simple formula of "putting a man instead of a voter behind every broom." the words are his own. the man, from a political dummy who loathed his job and himself in it with cause, became a self-respecting citizen, and the streets that had been dirty were swept. the ash barrels which had befouled the sidewalks disappeared, almost without any one knowing it till they were gone. the trucks that obstructed the children's only playground, the street, went with the dirt, despite the opposition of the truckman who had traded off his vote to tammany in the past for stall room at the curbstone. they did not go without a struggle. when appeal to the alderman proved useless, the truckman resorted to strategy. he took a wheel off, or kept a perishing nag, that could not walk, hitched to the truck over night to make it appear that it was there for business. but subterfuge availed as little as resistance. in the mulberry bend he made his last stand. the old houses had been torn down, leaving a three-acre lot full of dirt mounds and cellar holes. into this the truckmen of the sixth ward hauled their carts, and defied the street cleaners. they were no longer in their way, and they were on the park department's domain, where no colonel waring was in control. but while their owners were triumphing, the children playing among the trucks set one of them rolling down into a cellar, and three or four of the little ones were crushed. that was the end. the trucks disappeared. even tammany has not ventured to put them back, so great was the relief of their going. they were not only a hindrance to the sweeper and the skulking-places of all manner of mischief at night, but i have repeatedly seen the firemen baffled in their efforts to reach a burning house, where they stood four and six deep in the wide "slips" at the river. colonel waring did more for the cause of labor than all the walking delegates of the town together, by investing a despised but highly important task with a dignity which won the hearty plaudits of a grateful city. when he uniformed his men and announced that he was going to parade with them so that we might all see what they were like, the town laughed and poked fun at the "white wings"; but no one went to see them who did not come away converted to an enthusiastic belief in the man and his work. public sentiment, that had been half reluctantly suspending judgment, expecting every day to see the colonel "knuckle down to politics" like his predecessors, turned in an hour, and after that there was little trouble. the tenement house children organized street cleaning bands to help along the work, and colonel waring enlisted them as regular auxiliaries and made them useful. they had no better friend. when the unhappy plight of the persecuted push-cart men--all immigrant jews, who were blackmailed, robbed, and driven from pillar to post as a nuisance after they had bought a license to trade in the street--appealed vainly for a remedy. colonel waring found a way out in a great morning market in hester street that should be turned over to the children for a playground in the afternoon. but though he proved that it would pay interest on the investment in market fees, and many times in the children's happiness, it was never built. it would have been a most fitting monument to the man's memory. his broom saved more lives in the crowded tenements than a squad of doctors. it did more: it swept the cobwebs out of our civic brain and conscience, and set up a standard of a citizen's duty which, however we may for the moment forget, will be ours until we have dragged other things than our pavements out of the mud. [illustration: a tammany-swept east side street before colonel waring's day.] even the colonel's broom would have been powerless to do that for "the bend." that was hopeless and had to go. there was no question of children or playground involved. the worst of all the gangs, the whyós, had its headquarters in the darkest of its dark alleys; but it was left to the police. we had not begun to understand that the gangs meant something to us beyond murder and vengeance, in those days. no one suspected that they had any such roots in the soil that they could be killed by merely destroying the slum. the cholera was rapping on our door, and, with the bend there, we felt about it as a man with stolen goods in his house must feel when the policeman comes up the street. back in the seventies we began discussing what ought to be done. by the first tenement house commission had summoned up courage to propose that a street be cut through the bad block. in the following year a bill was brought in to destroy it bodily, and then began the long fight that resulted in the defeat of the slum a dozen years later. [illustration: the same street when colonel waring wielded the broom.] it was a bitter fight, in which every position of the enemy had to be carried by assault. the enemy was the deadly official inertia that was the outcome of political corruption born of the slum plus the indifference of the mass of our citizens, who probably had never seen the bend. if i made it my own concern to the exclusion of all else, it was only because i knew it. i had been part of it. homeless and alone, i had sought its shelter, not for long,--that was not to be endured,--but long enough to taste of its poison, and i hated it. i knew that the blow must be struck there, to kill. looking back now over those years, i can see that it was all as it should be. we were learning the alphabet of our lesson then. we could have learned it in no other way so thoroughly. before we had been at it more than two or three years, it was no longer a question of the bend merely. the small parks law, that gave us a million dollars a year to force light and air into the slum, to its destruction, grew out of it. the whole sentiment which in its day, groping blindly and angrily, had wiped out the disgrace of the five points, just around the corner, crystallized and took shape in its fight. it waited merely for the issue of that, to attack the slum in its other strongholds; and no sooner was the bend gone than the rest surrendered. time was up. but it was not so easy campaigning at the start. in plans were filed for the demolition of the block. it took four years to get a report of what it would cost to tear it down. about once in two months during all that time the authorities had to be prodded into a spasm of activity, or we would probably have been yet where we were then. once, when i appealed to the corporation counsel to give a good reason for the delay, i got the truth out of him without evasion. "well, i tell you," he said blandly, "no one here is taking any interest in that business. that is good enough reason for you, isn't it?" it was. that tammany reason became the slogan of an assault upon official incompetence and treachery that hurried things up considerably. the property was condemned at a total cost to the city of a million and a half, in round numbers, including the assessment of half a million for park benefit which the property owners were quick enough, with the aid of the politicians, to get saddled on the city at large. in the city took possession and became the landlord of the old barracks. for a whole year it complacently collected the rents and did nothing. when it was shamed out of that rut, too, and the tenements were at last torn down, the square lay as the wreckers had left it for another year, until it became such a plague spot that, as a last resort, with a citizen's privilege, i arraigned the municipality before the board of health for maintaining a nuisance upon its premises. i can see the shocked look of the official now, as he studied the complaint. "but, my dear sir," he coughed diplomatically, "isn't it rather unusual? i never heard of such a thing." "neither did i," i replied, "but then there never was such a thing before." that night, while they were debating the "unusual thing," happened the accident to the children of which i spoke, emphasizing the charge that the nuisance was "dangerous to life," and there was an end. in the morning the bend was taken in hand, and the following spring the mulberry bend park was opened. [illustration: the mulberry bend.] i told the story of that in "the making of an american," and how the red tape of the comptroller's office pointed the way out, after all, with its check for three cents that had gone astray in the purchase of a school site. of that sort of thing we had enough. but the gilder tenement house commission had been sitting, the committee of seventy had been at work, and a law was on the statute books authorizing the expenditure of three million dollars for two open spaces in the parkless district on the east side, where jacob beresheim was born. it had been shown that while the proportion of park area inside the limits of the old city was equal to one-thirteenth of all, below fourteenth street, where one-third of the people lived, it was barely one-fortieth. it took a citizen's committee appointed by the mayor just three weeks to seize the two park sites for the children's use, and it took the good government clubs with their allies at albany less than two months to get warrant of law for the tearing down of the houses ahead of final condemnation, lest any mischance befall through delay or otherwise,--a precaution which subsequent events proved to be eminently wise. i believe the legal proceedings are going on yet. [illustration: bone alley.] the playground part of it was a provision of the gilder law that showed what apt scholars we had been. i was a member of that committee, and i fed fat my grudge against the slum tenement, knowing that i might not again have such a chance. bone alley went. i shall not soon get the picture of it, as i saw it last, out of my mind. i had wandered to the top floor of one of the ramshackle tenements in the heart of the block, to a door that stood ajar, and pushed it open. on the floor lay three women rag-pickers with their burdens, asleep, overcome by the heat and beer, the stale stench of which filled the place. swarms of flies covered them. the room--no! let it go. thank god, we shall not again hear of bone alley. where it cursed the earth with its gloom and its poverty, the sun shines to-day on children at play. if we are slow to understand the meaning of it all, they will not be. we shall have light from that quarter when they grow up, on what is truly "educational" in the bringing up of young citizens. the children will teach us something for a change that will do us lasting good. half a dozen blocks away, in rivington street, the city's first public bath-house has at last been built, after many delays, and godliness will have a chance to move in with cleanliness. the two are neighbors everywhere, but in the slum the last must come first. glasgow has half a dozen public baths. rome, two thousand years ago, washed its people most sedulously, and in heathen japan to-day, i am told, there are baths, as we have saloons, on every corner. christian new york never had an all-year bath-house until now. in a tenement population of , the gilder commission found only who had access to bathrooms in the houses where they lived, and they would have found the same thing wherever they went. the church federation canvass of the fifteenth assembly district over on the west side, where they did not go, counted three bath-tubs to families. nor was that because they so elected. the people's baths took in , half dimes last year ( ) for as many baths, and more than forty per cent of their customers were italians. in the first five months of the present year the rivington street baths accommodate , bathers, of whom , were women and girls. and this in winter. the free river baths have registered five and six millions of bathers in one brief season. the "great unwashed" were not so from choice, it would appear. the river baths were only for summer, and their time is past. as the sewers that empty into the river multiply, it is getting less and less a place fit to bathe in, though the boys find no fault. sixteen public bath-houses on shore are to take the place of the swimming baths. they are all to be in the crowded tenement districts. the sites for the first three are being chosen now. and a wise woman[ ] offers to build and equip one all complete at her own expense, as her gift to the city. [footnote : mrs. a. a. anderson.] pull up now a minute, if you think, with some good folks, that the world is not advancing, but just marking time, and look back half a century. i said that new york never had a public bath till now. i meant a free bath. as long ago as , just fifty years ago, the association for improving the condition of the poor built one in mott street near grand street, and spent $ , in doing it. it ran eight years, and was then closed for want of patronage. forty years passed, and it was again the association for improving the condition of the poor that built the people's baths in the same neighborhood. that time they succeeded at once. and now here we are, planning a great system of municipal baths as the people's right, not as a favor to any one, and the old lie that the poor prefer to steep in their squalor is no longer believed by any person with sense. this month contracts will be given out for the fitting of nine public schools with shower-baths where we had one before, and notice is given that that one will be open to the people on sunday mornings. no, we are not marking time; we are forging ahead. every park, every playground, every bath-house, is a nail in the coffin of the slum, and every big, beautiful schoolhouse, built for the people's use, not merely to lock the children up in during certain hours for which the teachers collect pay, is a pole rammed right through the heart of it so that even its ghost shall never walk again. for ever so much of it we thank that association of men of splendid courage and public spirit. they fight to win because they believe in the people. they fight _with_ the people and so they are bound to win. every once in a while these days a false note in it all jars upon me--a note of dread lest those we are trying to help get tired of the word "reform" and balk. reform such as we have occasionally had is to blame for some of that. certainly you do not want to reform men by main strength, drag them into righteousness by the hair of the head, as it were. and let it be freely admitted that the man on fifth avenue needs to be reformed quite as much as his neighbor in mulberry street whom he forgot,--more, since it is his will to mend things that has to be righted, while it is the other's power to do it that is lacking. but right there stop. let us have no pretending that there is nothing to mend. there is a good deal, and it is not going to be mended by stuffing the one you would help with conceit and ingratitude. ingratitude does not naturally inhabit the slums, but it is a crop that is easily grown there, and where it does grow there is an end of efforts to mend things in that generation. you do not want to come _down_ to your work for your fellows, when you go from the brown-stone front to the tenement; but neither do you want to make him believe that you feel you are coming up to him, for you know you do not feel that way. and moreover, it is not true, if you are coming at all. you want to come right _over_, to help him reform conditions of his life with which he cannot grapple alone, and it is as good for him, as it is for you to know that you are doing it. for that is the brotherhood. and now you can see how that is the only thing that really helps. charity may corrupt, correction may harden and estrange,--in the family they do neither. there you can give and take without offence. children of one father! spin all the fine theories you like, build up systems of profound philosophy, of social ethics, of philanthropic endeavor; back to that you get--if you get anywhere at all. i did not mean to preach, i was just thinking that the association for improving the condition of the poor, in its fifty years of battling with all that makes the slum, has come nearer that ideal than any and all the rest of us. and the president of it these ten years, the same who with his brother tried to reform gotham court, is the head, too, of the citizens' union which is the whole reform programme in a nutshell. all of which is as it ought to be. to return to the east side where the light was let in. bone alley brought thirty-seven dollars under the auctioneer's hammer. thieves' alley, in the other park down at rutgers square, where the police clubbed the jewish cloakmakers a few years ago for the offence of gathering to assert their right to "being men, live the life of men," as some one who knew summed up the labor movement, brought only seven dollars, and the old helvetia house, where boss tweed and his gang met at night to plan their plundering raids on the city's treasury, was knocked down for five. kerosene row, in the same block, did not bring enough to have bought kindling wood with which to start one of the numerous fires that gave it its bad name. it was in thieves' alley that the owner in the days long gone by hung out the sign, "no jews need apply." i stood and watched the opening of the first municipal playground upon the site of the old alley, and in the thousands that thronged street and tenements from curb to roof with thunder of applause, there were not twoscore who could have found lodging with the old jew-baiter. he had to go with his alley, before the better day could bring light and hope to the tenth ward. what became of the people who were dispossessed? the answer to that is the reply, too, to the wail that goes up from the speculative builder every time we put the screws on the tenement house law. it does not pay him to build any more, he says. but when the multitudes of mulberry bend, of hester street, and of the bone alley park were put out, there was more than room enough for them in new houses ready for their use. in the seventh, tenth, eleventh, thirteenth, and seventeenth wards, where they would naturally go if they wanted to be near home, there were vacant apartments with room for over , tenants at our new york average of four and a half to the family. including the bend, the whole number of the dispossessed was not , . on manhattan island there were at that time more than , vacant flats, so that it seems those builders were either "talking through their hats," or else they were philanthropists pure and simple. and i know they were not that. the whole question of rehousing the population that had been so carefully considered abroad made us no trouble, though it gave a few well-meaning people unnecessary concern. the unhoused were scattered some, which was one of the things we hoped for, but hardly dared believe would come to pass. many of them, as it appeared, had remained in their old slum more from force of habit and association than because of necessity. "everything takes ten years," said abram s. hewitt, when, exactly ten years after he had as mayor championed the small parks act, he took his seat as chairman of the advisory committee on small parks. the ten years had wrought a great change. it was no longer the slum of to-day, but that of to-morrow, that challenged attention. the committee took the point of view of the children from the first. it had a large map prepared, showing where in the city there was room to play and where there was none. then it called in the police and asked them to point out where there was trouble with the boys; and in every instance the policeman put his finger upon a treeless slum. "they have no other playground than the street," was the explanation given in each case. "they smash lamps and break windows. the storekeepers kick and there is trouble. that is how it begins." "many complaints are received daily of boys annoying pedestrians, storekeepers, and tenants by their continually playing base-ball in some parts of almost every street. the damage is not slight. arrests are frequent, much more frequent than when they had open lots to play in." this last was the report of an up-town captain. he remembered the days when there were open lots there. "but those lots are now built upon," he said, "and for every new house there are more boys and less chance for them to play." the committee put a red daub on the map to indicate trouble. then it asked those police captains who had not spoken to show them where their precincts were, and why they had no trouble. every one of them put his finger on a green spot that marked a park. "my people are quiet and orderly," said the captain of the tompkins square precinct. the police took the square from a mob by storm twice in my recollection, and the commander of the precinct was hit on the head with a hammer by "his people" and laid out for dead. "the hook gang is gone," said he of corlear's hook. the professional pursuit of that gang was to rob and murder inoffensive citizens by night and throw them into the river, and it achieved a bad eminence at its calling. [illustration: mulberry bend park.] "the whole neighborhood has taken a change, and decidedly for the better," said the captain of mulberry street; and the committee rose and said that it had heard enough. the map was hung on the wall, and in it were stuck pins to mark the site of present and projected schools as showing where the census had found the children crowding. the moment that was done the committee sent the map and a copy of chapter of the laws of to the mayor, and reported that its task was finished. this is the law and all there is of it:-- "the people of the state of new york, represented in senate and assembly, do enact as follows:-- "section . hereafter no schoolhouse shall be constructed in the city of new york without an open-air playground attached to or used in connection with the same. "section . this act shall take effect immediately." where the map was daubed with red the school pins crowded one another. on the lower east side, where child crime was growing fast, and no less than three storm centres were marked down by the police, nine new schools were going up or planned, and in the up-town precinct whence came the wail about the ball players there were seven. it was common sense, then, to hitch the school playground and the children together. it seemed a happy combination, for the new law had been a stumbling-block to the school commissioners, who were in a quandary over the needful size of an "open-air playground." the roof garden idea, which was at the start a measure of simple economy to save large expenditure for land, had suggested a way out. but there was the long vacation, when schools are closed and children most in need of a chance to play. to get the playground on the roof of the school house recognized as the _public playground_ seemed a long step toward turning it into a general neighborhood evening resort, that should be always open, and so towards bringing school and people, and especially the school and the boy, together in a bond of mutual sympathy good for them both. [illustration: roof playground on a public school.] that was the burden of the committee's report. it made thirteen recommendations besides, as to the location of parks and detached playgrounds, only two of which have been adopted to date. but that is of less account--as also was the information imparted to me as secretary of the committee by our late tammany mayor--and may he be the last--that we had "as much authority as a committee of bootblacks in his office"--it is all of less account than the fact that the field has at last been studied and its needs been made known. the rest will follow, with or without the politician's authority. one of the two suggestions carried out was for a riverside park in the region up-town, on the west side, where the federation of churches and christian workers found "saloon social ideals minting themselves upon the minds of the people at the rate of seven saloon thoughts to one educational thought." "hudson-bank" (it is at the foot of west fifty-third street) has been a playground these three years, in the charge of the outdoor recreation league, and it is recorded with pride by the directors, that not a board was stolen from the long fence that encloses it in all that time, while fences all about were ripped to pieces. boards have a market value in that neighborhood and private property was not always highly regarded. but this is "the children's"; that is why, within a year now, the bluff upon which the playground is will have been laid out as a beautiful park, and a bar set to the slum in that quarter, where it already had got a firm grip. hard by there is a recreation pier, and on summer evenings the young men of the neighborhood may be seen trooping riverward with their girls to hear the music. the gang that "laid out" two policemen, to my knowledge, has gone out of business. the best-laid plans are sometimes upset by surprising snags. we had planned for two municipal playgrounds on the east side, where the need is greatest, and our plans were eagerly accepted by the city authorities. but they were never put into practice. a negligent attorney killed one, a lazy clerk the other. and both served under the reform government. the first of the two playgrounds was to have been in rivington street, adjoining the new public bath, where the boys, for want of something better to do, were fighting daily battles with stones, to the great damage of windows and the worse aggravation of the householders. four hundred children in that neighborhood petitioned the committee for a place of their own, where there were no windows to break; and we found one. it was only after the proceedings had been started that we discovered that they had been taken under the wrong law and the money spent in advertising had been wasted. it was then too late. the daily assaults upon the windows were resumed. the other case was an attempt to establish a model school park in a block where more than four thousand children attended day and night school. the public school and the pro-cathedral, which divided the children between them, were to be allowed to stand, at opposite ends of the block. the surrounding tenements were to be torn down to make room for a park and playground which should embody the ideal of what such a place ought to be, in the opinion of the committee. for the roof garden was not in the original plan except as an alternative of the street-level playground, where land came too high. the plentiful supply of light and air, the safety from fire, to be obtained by putting the school in a park, beside the fact that it could thus be "built beautiful," were considerations of weight. plans were made, and there was great rejoicing in essex street, until it came out that this scheme had gone the way of the other. the clerk who should have filed the plans in the register's office left that duty to some one else, and it took just twenty-one days to make the journey, a distance of five hundred feet or less. the greater new york had come then with tammany, and the thing was not heard of again. when i traced the failure down to the clerk in question, and told him that he had killed the park, he yawned and said:-- "yes, and i think it is just as well it is dead. we haven't any money for those things. it is very nice to have small parks, and very nice to have a horse and wagon, if you can afford it. but we can't. why, there isn't enough to run the city government." so the labor of weary weeks and months in the children's behalf was all undone by a third-rate clerk in an executive office; but he saved the one thing he had in mind: the city government is "run" to date, and his pay is secure. it is a pity to have to confess it, but it was not the only time reform in office gave its cause a black eye in the sight of the people. the hamilton fish park that took the place of bone alley was laid out with such lack of sense that it will have to be worked all over again. the gymnasium and bath in it that cost, i am told, $ , , was never of any use for either purpose and was never opened. a policeman sat in the door and turned people away, while around the corner clamoring crowds besieged the new public bath i spoke of. there were more people waiting, sitting on the steps and strung out halfway through the block, when i went over to see, one july day, than could have found room in three buildings like it. so, also, after seven years, the promised park down by the schiff fountain called seward park lies still, an unlovely waste, waiting to be made beautiful. tammany let its heelers build shanties in it to sell fish and dry-goods and such in. reform just let things be, no matter how bad they were, and broke its promises to the people. no, that is not fair. there was enough to do besides, to straighten up things. tammany had seen to that. this very day[ ] the contractor's men are beginning work in seward park, which shall give that most crowded spot on earth its pleasure-ground, and i have warrant for promising that within a year not only will the "ham-fish" park be restored, but hudson-bank and the thomas jefferson park in little italy, which are still dreary wastes, be opened to the people; while from the civic club in richard croker's old home ward comes the broad hint that unless condemnation proceedings in the case of the park and playground, to take the place of the old tenements at east thirty-fifth street and second avenue, are hurried by the tammany commission, the club will take a hand and move to have the commission cashiered. there is to be no repetition of the mulberry bend scandal. [footnote : june , .] [illustration: kindergarten on the recreation pier, at the foot of e. th street.] it is all right. neither stupidity, spite, nor coldblooded neglect will be able much longer to cheat the child out of his rights. the playground is here to wrestle with the gang for the boy, and it will win. it came so quietly that we hardly knew of it till we heard the shouts. it took us seven years to make up our minds to build a play pier,--recreation pier is its municipal title,--and it took just about seven weeks to build it when we got so far; but then we learned more in one day than we had dreamed of in the seven years. half the east side swarmed over it with shrieks of delight, and carried the mayor and the city government, who had come to see the show, fairly off their feet. and now that pier has more than seven comrades--great, handsome structures, seven hundred feet long, some of them, with music every night for mother and the babies, and for papa, who can smoke his pipe there in peace. the moon shines upon the quiet river, and the steamers go by with their lights. the street is far away with its noise. the young people go sparking in all honor, as it is their right to do. the councilman who spoke of "pernicious influences" lying in wait for them there made the mistake of his life, unless he has made up his mind to go out of politics. that is just a question of effective superintendence, as is true of model tenements, and everything else in this world. you have got to keep the devil out of everything, yourself included. he will get in if he can, as he got into the garden of eden. the play piers have taken a hold of the people which no crabbed old bachelor can loosen with trumped-up charges. their civilizing influence upon the children is already felt in a reported demand for more soap in the neighborhood where they are, and even the grocer smiles approval. the play pier is the kindergarten in the educational campaign against the gang. it gives the little ones a chance. often enough it is a chance for life. the street as a playground is a heavy contributor to the undertaker's bank account in more than one way. distinguished doctors said at the tuberculosis congress this spring that it is to blame with its dust for sowing the seeds of that fatal disease in the half-developed bodies. i kept the police slips of a single day in may two years ago, when four little ones were killed and three crushed under the wheels of trucks in tenement streets. that was unusual, but no day has passed in my recollection that has not had its record of accidents, which bring grief as deep and lasting to the humblest home as if it were the pet of some mansion on fifth avenue that was slain. in the hudson guild on the west side they have the reports of ten children that were killed in the street immediately around there. the kindergarten teaching has borne fruit. private initiative set the pace, but the playground idea has at last been engrafted upon the municipal plan. the outdoor recreation league was organized by public-spirited citizens, including many amateur athletes and enthusiastic women, with the object of "obtaining recognition of the necessity for recreation and physical exercise as fundamental to the moral and physical welfare of the people." together with the school reform club and the federation of churches and christian workers, it maintained a playground on the up-town west side where the ball came into play for the first time as a recognized factor in civic progress. the day might well be kept for all time among those that mark human emancipation, for it was social reform and christian work in one, of the kind that tells. [illustration: the east river park.] only the year before, the athletic clubs had vainly craved the privilege of establishing a gymnasium in the east river park, where the children wistfully eyed the sacred grass, and cowered under the withering gaze of the policeman. a friend whose house stands opposite the park found them one day swarming over her stoop in such shoals that she could not enter, and asked them why they did not play tag under the trees instead. the instant shout came back, "'cause the cop won't let us." and now even poverty gap is to have its playground--poverty gap, that was partly transformed by its one brief season's experience with its holy terror park,[ ] a dreary sand lot upon the site of the old tenements in which the alley gang murdered the one good boy in the block, for the offence of supporting his aged parents by his work as a baker's apprentice. and who knows but the mulberry bend and "paradise park" at the five points may yet know the climbing pole and the vaulting buck. so the world moves. for years the city's only playground that had any claim upon the name--and that was only a little asphalted strip behind a public school in first street--was an old graveyard. we struggled vainly to get possession of another, long abandoned. but the dead were of more account than the living. [footnote : the name bestowed upon it by the older toughs before the fact, not after.] [illustration: the seward park.] but now at last it is their turn. i watched the crowds at their play where seward park is to be. the outdoor recreation league had put up gymnastic apparatus, and the dusty square was jammed with a mighty multitude. it was not an ideal spot, for it had not rained in weeks, and powdered sand and cinders had taken wing and floated like a pall over the perspiring crowd. but it was heaven to them. a hundred men and boys stood in line, waiting their turn upon the bridge ladder and the travelling rings, that hung full of struggling and squirming humanity, groping madly for the next grip. no failure, no rebuff, discouraged them. seven boys and girls rode with looks of deep concern--it is their way--upon each end of the seesaw, and two squeezed into each of the forty swings that had room for one, while a hundred counted time and saw that none had too much. it is an article of faith with these children that nothing that is "going" for their benefit is to be missed. sometimes the result provokes a smile, as when a band of young jews, starting up a club, called themselves the christian heroes. it was meant partly as a compliment, i suppose, to the ladies that gave them club room; but at the same time, if there was anything in a name, they were bound to have it. it is rather to cry over than to laugh at, if one but understands it. the sight of these little ones swarming over a sand heap until scarcely an inch of it was in sight, and gazing in rapt admiration at the poor show of a dozen geraniums and english ivy plants on the window-sill of the overseer's cottage, was pathetic in the extreme. they stood for ten minutes at a time, resting their eyes upon them. in the crowd were aged women and bearded men with the inevitable sabbath silk hat, who it seemed could never get enough of it. they moved slowly, when crowded out, looking back many times at the enchanted spot, as long as it was in sight. perhaps there was in it, on the part of the children at least, just a little bit of the comforting sense of proprietorship. they had contributed of their scant pennies more than a hundred dollars toward the opening of the playground, and they felt that it was their very own. all the better. two policemen watched the passing show, grinning; their clubs hung idly from their belts. the words of a little woman whom i met once in chicago kept echoing in my ear. she was the "happiest woman alive," for she had striven long for a playground for her poor children, and had got it. "the police like it," she said, "they say that it will do more good than all the sunday-schools in chicago. the mothers say, 'this is good business.' the carpenters that put up the swings and things worked with a will; everybody was glad. the police lieutenant has had a tree called after him. the boys that did that used to be terrors. now they take care of the trees. they plead for a low limb that is in the way, that no one may cut it off." [illustration: the seward park on opening day.] the twilight deepens and the gates of the playground are closed. the crowds disperse slowly. in the roof garden on the hebrew institute across east broadway lights are twinkling and the band is tuning up. little groups are settling down to a quiet game of checkers or love-making. paterfamilias leans back against the parapet where palms wave luxuriously in the summer breeze. the newspaper drops from his hand; he closes his eyes and is in dreamland, where strikes come not. mother knits contentedly in her seat, with a smile on her face that was not born of the ludlow street tenement. over yonder a knot of black-browed men talk with serious mien. they might be met any night in the anarchist café, half a dozen doors away, holding forth against empires. here wealth does not excite their wrath, nor power their plotting. in the roof garden anarchy is harmless, even though a policeman typifies its government. they laugh pleasantly to one another as he passes, and he gives them a match to light their cigars. it is thursday, and smoking is permitted. on friday it is discouraged because it offends the orthodox, to whom the lighting of a fire, even the holding of a candle, is anathema on the sabbath eve. [illustration: in the roof garden of the hebrew educational alliance.] the band plays on. one after another, tired heads droop upon babes slumbering peacefully at the breast. ludlow street--the tenement--are forgotten; eleven o'clock is not yet. down along the silver gleam of the river a mighty city slumbers. the great bridge has hung out its string of shining pearls from shore to shore. "sweet land of liberty!" overhead the dark sky, the stars that twinkled their message to the shepherds on judæan hills, that lighted their sons through ages of slavery, and the flag of freedom borne upon the breeze,--down there the tenement, the--ah, well! let us forget as do these. [illustration: bottle alley, whyó gang's headquarters. this picture was evidence at a murder trial. the x marks the place where the murderer stood when he shot his victim on the stairs.] now if you ask me: "and what of it all? what does it avail?" let me take you once more back to the mulberry bend, and to the policeman's verdict add the police reporter's story of what has taken place there. in fifteen years i never knew a week to pass without a murder there, rarely a sunday. it was the wickedest, as it was the foulest, spot in all the city. in the slum the two are interchangeable terms for reasons that are clear enough for me. but i shall not speculate about it, only state the facts. the old houses fairly reeked with outrage and violence. when they were torn down, i counted seventeen deeds of blood in that place which i myself remembered, and those i had forgotten probably numbered seven times seventeen. the district attorney connected more than a score of murders of his own recollection with bottle alley, the whyó gang's headquarters. five years have passed since it was made into a park, and scarce a knife had been drawn or a shot fired in all that neighborhood. only twice have i been called as a police reporter to the spot. it is not that the murder has moved to another neighborhood, for there has been no increase of violence in little italy or wherever else the crowd went that moved out. it is that the light has come in and made crime hideous. it is being let in wherever the slum has bred murder and robbery, bred the gang, in the past. wait, now, another ten years, and let us see what a story there will be to tell. avail? why, it was only the other day that tammany was actually caught applauding[ ] comptroller coler's words in plymouth church, "whenever the city builds a schoolhouse upon the site of a dive and creates a park, a distinct and permanent mental, moral, and physical improvement has been made, and public opinion will sustain such a policy, even if a dive-keeper is driven out of business and somebody's ground rent is reduced." and tammany's press agent, in his enthusiasm, sent forth this pæan: "in the light of such events how absurd it is for the enemies of the organization to contend that tammany is not the greatest moral force in the community." tammany a moral force! the park and the playground have availed, then, to bring back the day of miracles. [footnote : to be sure, it did nothing else. when the people asked for $ to fit up one playground. mayor van wyck replied with a sneer that "vaudeville destroyed rome."] chapter xii the passing of cat alley when santa claus comes around to new york this christmas he will look in vain for some of the slum alleys he used to know. they are gone. where some of them were, there are shrubs and trees and greensward; the sites of others are holes and hillocks yet, that by and by, when all the official red tape is unwound,--and what a lot of it there is to plague mankind!--will be levelled out and made into playgrounds for little feet that have been aching for them too long. perhaps it will surprise some good people to hear that santa claus knew the old alleys; but he did. i have been there with him, and i knew that, much as some things which he saw there grieved him,--the starved childhood, the pinching poverty, and the slovenly indifference that cut deeper than the rest because it spoke of hope that was dead,--yet by nothing was his gentle spirit so grieved and shocked as by the show that proposed to turn his holiday into a battalion drill of the children from the alleys and the courts for patricians, young and old, to review. it was well meant, but it was not christmas. that belongs to the home, and in the darkest slums santa claus found homes where his blessed tree took root and shed its mild radiance about, dispelling the darkness, and bringing back hope and courage and trust. they are gone, the old alleys. reform wiped them out. it is well. santa claus will not have harder work finding the doors that opened to him gladly, because the light has been let in. and others will stand ajar that before were closed. the chimneys in tenement-house alleys were never built on a plan generous enough to let him in in the orthodox way. the cost of coal had to be considered in putting them up. bottle alley and bandits' roost are gone with their bad memories. bone alley is gone, and gotham court. i well remember the christmas tree in the court, under which a hundred dolls stood in line, craving partners among the girls in its tenements. that was the kind of battalion drill that they understood. the ceiling of the room was so low that the tree had to be cut almost in half; but it was beautiful, and it lives yet, i know, in the hearts of the little ones, as it lives in mine. the "barracks" are gone, nibsey's alley is gone, where the first christmas tree was lighted the night poor nibsey lay dead in his coffin. and cat alley is gone. [illustration: the first christmas tree in gotham court.] cat alley was my alley. it was mine by right of long acquaintance. we were neighbors for twenty years. yet i never knew why it was called cat alley. there was the usual number of cats, gaunt and voracious, which foraged in its ash-barrels; but beyond the family of three-legged cats, that presented its own problem of heredity,--the kittens took it from the mother, who had lost one leg under the wheels of a dray,--there was nothing specially remarkable about them. it was not an alley, either, when it comes to that, but rather a row of four on five old tenements in a back yard that was reached by a passageway somewhat less than three feet wide between the sheer walls of the front houses. these had once had pretensions to some style. one of them had been the parsonage of the church next door that had by turns been an old-style methodist tabernacle, a fashionable negroes' temple, and an italian mission church, thus marking time, as it were, to the upward movement of the immigration that came in at the bottom, down in the fourth ward, fought its way through the bloody sixth, and by the time it had travelled the length of mulberry street had acquired a local standing and the right to be counted and rounded up by the political bosses. now the old houses were filled with newspaper offices and given over to perpetual insomnia. week-days and sundays, night or day, they never slept. police headquarters was right across the way, and kept the reporters awake. from his window the chief looked down the narrow passageway to the bottom of the alley, and the alley looked back at him, nothing daunted. no man is a hero to his valet, and the chief was not an autocrat to cat alley. it knew all his human weaknesses, could tell when his time was up generally before he could, and winked the other eye with the captains when the newspapers spoke of his having read them a severe lecture on gambling or sunday beer-selling. byrnes it worshipped, but for the others who were before him and followed after, it cherished a neighborly sort of contempt. in the character of its population cat alley was properly cosmopolitan. the only element that was missing was the native american, and in this it was representative of the tenement districts in america's chief city. the substratum was irish, of volcanic properties. upon this were imposed layers of german, french, jewish, and italian, or, as the alley would have put it, dutch, sabé, sheeny, and dago; but to this last it did not take kindly. with the experience of the rest of mulberry street before it, it foresaw its doom if the dago got a footing there, and within a month of the moving in of the gio family there was an eruption of the basement volcano, reënforced by the sanitary policeman, to whom complaint had been made that there were too many "ginnies" in the gio flat. there were four--about half as many as there were in some of the other flats when the item of house rent was lessened for economic reasons; but it covered the ground: the flat was too small for the gios. the appeal of the signora was unavailing. "you got-a three bambino," she said to the housekeeper, "all four, lika me," counting the number on her fingers. "i no putta me broder-in-law and me sister in the street-a. italian lika to be together." the housekeeper was unmoved. "humph!" she said, "to liken my kids to them dagos! out they go." and they went. up on the third floor there was the french couple. it was another of the contradictions of the alley that of this pair the man should have been a typical, stolid german, she a mercurial parisian, who at seventy sang the "marseillaise" with all the spirit of the commune in her cracked voice, and hated from the bottom of her patriotic soul the enemy with whom the irony of fate had yoked her. however, she improved the opportunity in truly french fashion. he was rheumatic, and most of the time was tied to his chair. he had not worked for seven years. "he no goode," she said, with a grimace, as her nimble fingers fashioned the wares by the sale of which, from a basket, she supported them both. the wares were dancing girls with tremendous limbs and very brief skirts of tricolor gauze,--"ballerinas," in her vocabulary,--and monkeys with tin hats, cunningly made to look like german soldiers. for these she taught him to supply the decorations. it was his department, she reasoned; the ballerinas were of her country and hers. _parbleu!_ must one not work? what then? starve? before her look and gesture the cripple quailed, and twisted and rolled and pasted all day long, to his country's shame, fuming with impotent rage. "i wish the devil had you," he growled. she regarded him maliciously, with head tilted on one side, as a bird eyes a caterpillar it has speared. "hein!" she scoffed. "du den, vat?" he scowled. she was right; without her he was helpless. the judgment of the alley was unimpeachable. they were and remained "the french couple." [illustration: the mouth of the alley. _by permission of the century company._] cat alley's reception of madame klotz at first was not cordial. it was disposed to regard as a hostile act the circumstance that she kept a special holiday, of which nothing was known except from her statement that it referred to the fall of somebody or other whom she called the bastille, in suspicious proximity to the detested battle of the boyne; but when it was observed that she did nothing worse than dance upon the flags "_avec ze leetle bébé_" of the tenant in the basement, and torture her "dootch" husband with extra monkeys and gibes in honor of the day, unfavorable judgment was suspended, and it was agreed that without a doubt the "bastard" fell for cause; wherein the alley showed its sound historical judgment. by such moral pressure when it could, by force when it must, the original irish stock preserved the alley for its own quarrels, free from "foreign" embroilments. these quarrels were many and involved. when mrs. m'carthy was to be dispossessed, and insisted, in her cups, on killing the housekeeper as a necessary preliminary, a study of the causes that led to the feud developed the following normal condition: mrs. m'carthy had the housekeeper's place when mrs. gehegan was poor, and fed her "kids." as a reward, mrs. gehegan worked around and got the job away from her. now that it was mrs. m'carthy's turn to be poor, mrs. gehegan insisted upon putting her out. whereat, with righteous wrath, mrs. m'carthy proclaimed from the stoop: "many is the time mrs. gehegan had a load on, an' she went upstairs an' slept it off. i didn't. i used to show meself, i did, as a lady. i know ye're in there, mrs. gehegan. come out an' show yerself, an' i'ave the alley to judge betwixt us." to which mrs. gehegan prudently vouchsafed no answer. mrs. m'carthy had succeeded to the office of housekeeper upon the death of miss mahoney, an ancient spinster who had collected the rents since the days of "the riot," meaning the orange riot--an event from which the alley reckoned its time, as the ancients did from the olympian games. miss mahoney was a most exemplary and worthy old lady, thrifty to a fault. indeed, it was said when she was gone that she had literally starved herself to death to lay by money for the rainy day she was keeping a lookout for to the last. in this she was obeying her instincts; but they went counter to those of the alley, and the result was very bad. as an example, miss mahoney's life was a failure. when at her death it was discovered that she had bank-books representing a total of two thousand dollars, her nephew and only heir promptly knocked off work and proceeded to celebrate, which he did with such fervor that in two months he had run through it all and killed himself by his excesses. miss mahoney's was the first bank account in the alley, and, so far as i know, the last. from what i have said, it must not be supposed that fighting was the normal occupation of cat alley. it was rather its relaxation from unceasing toil and care, from which no to-morrow held promise of relief. there was a deal of good humor in it at most times. "scrapping" came naturally to the alley. when, as was sometimes the case, it was the complement of a wake, it was as the mirth of children who laugh in the dark because they are afraid. but once an occurrence of that sort scandalized the tenants. it was because of the violation of the monroe doctrine, to which, as i have said, the alley held most firmly, with severely local application. to mulberry street mott street was a foreign foe from which no interference was desired or long endured. a tenant in "the back" had died in the hospital of rheumatism, a term which in the slums sums up all of poverty's hardships, scant and poor food, damp rooms, and hard work, and the family had come home for the funeral. it was not a pleasant home-coming. the father in his day had been strict, and his severity had driven his girls to the street. they had landed in chinatown, with all that implies, one at a time; first the older and then the younger, whom the sister took under her wing and coached. she was very handsome, was the younger sister, with an innocent look in her blue eyes that her language belied, and smart, as her marriage-ring bore witness to. the alley, where the proprieties were held to tenaciously, observed it and forgave all the rest, even her "chink" husband. while her father was lying ill, she had spent a brief vacation in the alley. now that he was dead, her less successful sister came home, and with her a delegation of girls from chinatown. in their tawdry finery they walked in, sallow and bold, with mott street and the accursed pipe written all over them, defiant of public opinion, yet afraid to enter except in a body. the alley considered them from behind closed blinds, while the children stood by silently to see them pass. when one of them offered one of the "kids" a penny, he let it fall on the pavement, as if it were unclean. it was a sore thrust, and it hurt cruelly; but no one saw it in her face as she went in where the dead lay, with scorn and hatred as her offering. the alley had withheld audible comment with a tact that did it credit; but when at night mott street added its contingent of "fellows" to the mourners properly concerned in the wake, and they started a fight among themselves that was unauthorized by local sanction, its wrath was aroused, and it arose and bundled the whole concern out into the street with scant ceremony. there was never an invasion of the alley after that night. it enjoyed home rule undisturbed. withal, there was as much kindness of heart and neighborly charity in cat alley as in any little community up-town or down-town, or out of town, for that matter. it had its standards and its customs, which were to be observed; but underneath it all, and not very far down either, was a human fellowship that was capable of any sacrifice to help a friend in need. many was the widow with whom and with whose children the alley shared its daily bread, which was scanty enough, god knows, when death or other disaster had brought her to the jumping-off place. in twenty years i do not recall a suicide in the alley, or a case of suffering demanding the interference of the authorities, unless with such help as the hospital could give. the alley took care of its own, and tided them over the worst when it came to that. and death was not always the worst. i remember yet with a shudder a tragedy which i was just in time with the police to prevent. a laborer, who lived in the attic, had gone mad, poisoned by the stenches of the sewers in which he worked. for two nights he had been pacing the hallway, muttering incoherent things, and then fell to sharpening an axe, with his six children playing about--beautiful, brown-eyed girls they were, sweet and innocent little tots. in five minutes we should have been too late, for it appeared that the man's madness had taken on the homicidal tinge. they were better out of the world, he told us, as we carried him off to the hospital. when he was gone, the children came upon the alley, and loyally did it stand by them until a job was found for the mother by the local political boss. he got her appointed scrub-woman at the city hall, and the alley, always faithful, was solid for him ever after. organized charity might, and indeed did, provide groceries on the instalment plan. the tammany captain provided the means of pulling the family through and of bringing up the children, although there was not a vote in the family. it was not the first time i had met him and observed his plan of "keeping close" to the people. against it not the most carping reform critic could have found just ground of complaint. the charity of the alley was contagious. with the reporters' messenger boys, a harum-scarum lot, in "the front," the alley was not on good terms for any long stretch at a time. they made a racket at night, and had sport with "old man quinn," who was a victim of dropsy. he was "walking on dough," they asseverated, and paid no attention to the explanation of the alley that he had "kidney feet." but when the old man died and his wife was left penniless, i found some of them secretly contributing to her keep. it was not so long after that that another old pensioner of the alley, suddenly drawn into their cyclonic sport in the narrow passageway, fell and broke her arm. apparently no one in the lot was individually to blame. it was an unfortunate accident, and it deprived her of her poor means of earning the few pennies with which she eked out the charity of the alley. worse than that, it took from her hope after death, as it were. for years she had pinched and saved and denied herself to keep up a payment of twenty-five cents a week which insured her decent burial in consecrated ground. now that she could no longer work, the dreaded trench in the potter's field yawned to receive her. that was the blow that broke her down. she was put out by the landlord soon after the accident, as a hopeless tenant, and i thought that she had gone to the almshouse, when by chance i came upon her living quite happily in a tenement on the next block. "living" is hardly the word; she was really waiting to die, but waiting with a cheerful content that amazed me until she herself betrayed the secret of it. every week one of the messenger boys brought her out of his scanty wages the quarter that alike insured her peace of mind and the undisturbed rest of her body in its long sleep, which a life of toil had pictured to her as the greatest of earth's boons. death came to cat alley in varying forms, often enough as a welcome relief to those for whom it called, rarely without its dark riddle for those whom it left behind, to be answered without delay or long guessing. there were at one time three widows with little children in the alley, none of them over twenty-five. they had been married at fifteen or sixteen, and when they were called upon to face the world and fight its battles alone were yet young and inexperienced girls themselves. improvidence! yes. early marriages are at the bottom of much mischief among the poor. and yet perhaps these, and others like them, might have offered the homes from which they went out, as a valid defence. to their credit be it said that they accepted their lot bravely, and, with the help of the alley, pulled through. two of them married again, and made a bad job of it. second marriages seldom turned out well in the alley. they were a refuge of the women from work that was wearing their lives out, and gave them in exchange usually a tyrant who hastened the process. there never was any sentiment about it. "i don't know what i shall do," said one of the widows to me, when at last it was decreed that the tenements were to be pulled down, "unless i can find a man to take care of me. might get one that drinks? i would hammer him half to death." she did find her "man," only to have him on her hands too. it was the last straw. before the wreckers came around she was dead. the amazed indignation of the alley at the discovery of her second marriage, which till then had been kept secret, was beyond bounds. the supposed widow's neighbor across the hall, whom we knew in the front generally as "the fat one," was so stunned by the revelation that she did not recover in season to go to the funeral. she was never afterward the same. [illustration: the wrecking of cat alley. _by permission of the century company._] in the good old days when the world was right, the fat one had enjoyed the distinction of being the one tenant in cat alley whose growler never ran dry. it made no difference how strictly sunday law was observed toward the rest of the world, the fat one would set out from the alley with her growler in a basket,--this as a concession to the unnatural prejudices of a misguided community, not as an evasion, for she made a point of showing it to the policeman on the corner,--and return with it filled. her look of scornful triumph as she marched through the alley, and the backward toss of her head toward police headquarters, which said plainly: "ha! you thought you could! but you didn't, did you?" were the admiration of the alley. it allowed that she had met and downed roosevelt in a fair fight. but after the last funeral the fat one never again carried the growler. her spirit was broken. all things were coming to an end, the alley itself with them. one funeral i recall with a pleasure which the years have in no way dimmed. it was at a time before the king's daughters' tenement house committee was organized, when out-of-town friends used to send flowers to my office for the poor. the first notice i had of a death in the alley was when a delegation of children from the rear knocked and asked for daisies. there was something unnaturally solemn about them that prompted me to make inquiries, and then it came out that old mrs. walsh was dead and going on her long ride up to hart's island; for she was quite friendless, and the purse-strings of the alley were not long enough to save her from the potter's field. the city hearse was even then at the door, and they were carrying in the rough pine coffin. with the children the crippled old woman had been a favorite; she had always a kind word for them, and they paid her back in the way they knew she would have loved best. not even the coffin of the police sergeant who was a brother of the district leader was so gloriously decked out as old mrs. walsh's when she started on her last journey. the children stood in the passageway with their arms full of daisies, and gave the old soul a departing cheer; and though it was quite irregular, it was all right, for it was well meant, and cat alley knew it. they were much like other children, those of the alley. it was only in their later years that the alley and the growler set their stamp upon them. while they were small, they loved, like others of their kind, to play in the gutter, to splash in the sink about the hydrant, and to dance to the hand-organ that came regularly into the block, even though they sadly missed the monkey that was its chief attraction till the aldermen banished it in a cranky fit. dancing came naturally to them, too; certainly no one took the trouble to teach them. it was a pretty sight to see them stepping to the time on the broad flags at the mouth of the alley. not rarely they had for an appreciative audience the big chief himself, who looked down from his window, and the uniformed policeman at the door. even the commissioners deigned to smile upon the impromptu show in breathing-spells between their heavy labors in the cause of politics and pull. but the children took little notice of them; they were too happy in their play. they loved my flowers, too, with a genuine love that did not spring from the desire to get something for nothing, and the parades on italian feast-days that always came through the street. they took a fearsome delight in watching for the big dime museum giant, who lived around in elizabeth street, and who in his last days looked quite lean and hungry enough to send a thrill to any little boy's heart, though he had never cooked one and eaten him in his whole life, being quite a harmless and peaceable giant. and they loved trilby. [illustration: trilby. _by permission of the century company._] trilby was the dog. as far back as my memory reaches there was never another in cat alley. she arrived in the block one winter morning on a dead run, with a tin can tied to her stump of a tail, and with the mott street gang in hot pursuit. in her extremity she saw the mouth of the alley, dodged in, and was safe. the mott streeters would as soon have thought of following her into police headquarters as there. ever after she stayed. she took possession of the alley and of headquarters, where the reporters had their daily walk, as if they were hers by right of conquest, which in fact they were. with her whimsically grave countenance, in which all the cares of the vast domain she made it her daily duty to oversee were visibly reflected, she made herself a favorite with every one except the "beanery-man" on the corner, who denounced her angrily, when none of her friends were near, for coming in with his customers at lunch-time on purpose to have them feed her with his sugar, which was true. at regular hours, beginning with the opening of the department offices, she would make the round of the police building and call on all the officials, forgetting none. she rode up in the elevator and left it at the proper floors, waited in the anterooms with the rest when there was a crowd, and paid stated visits to the chief and the commissioners, who never omitted to receive her with a nod and a "hello, trilby!" no matter how pressing the business in hand. the gravity with which she listened to what went on, and wrinkled up her brow in an evident effort to understand, was comical to the last degree. she knew the fire alarm signals and when anything momentous was afoot. on the quiet days, when nothing was stirring, she would flock with the reporters on the stoop and sing. there never was such singing as trilby's. that was how she got her name. i tried a score of times to find out, but to this day i do not know whether it was pain or pleasure that was in her note. she had only one, but it made up in volume for what it lacked in range. standing in the circle of her friends, she would raise her head until her nose pointed straight toward the sky, and pour forth her melody with a look of such unutterable woe on her face that peals of laughter always wound up the performance; whereupon trilby would march off with an injured air, and hide herself in one of the offices, refusing to come out. poor trilby! with the passing away of the alley she seemed to lose her grip. she did not understand it. after wandering about aimlessly for a while, vainly seeking a home in the world, she finally moved over on the east side with one of the dispossessed tenants. but on all sundays and holidays, and once in a while in the middle of the week, she comes yet to inspect the old block in mulberry street and to join in a quartette with old friends. [illustration: old barney.] trilby and old barney were the two who stuck to the alley longest. barney was the star boarder. as everything about the place was misnamed, the alley itself included, so was he. his real name was michael, but the children called him barney, and the name stuck. when they were at odds, as they usually were, they shouted "barney bluebeard!" after him, and ran away and hid in trembling delight as he shook his key-ring at them, and showed his teeth with the evil leer which he reserved specially for them. it was reported in the alley that he was a woman-hater; hence the name. certain it is that he never would let one of the detested sex cross the threshold of his attic room on any pretext. if he caught one pointing for his aerie, he would block the way and bid her sternly begone. she seldom tarried long, for barney was not a pleasing object when he was in an ugly mood. as the years passed, and cobweb and dirt accumulated in his room, stories were told of fabulous wealth which he had concealed in the chinks of the wall and in broken crocks; and as he grew constantly shabbier and more crabbed, they were readily believed. barney carried his ring and filed keys all day, coining money, so the reasoning ran, and spent none; so he must be hiding it away. the alley hugged itself in the joyful sensation that it had a miser and his hoard in the cockloft. next to a ghost, for which the environment was too matter-of-fact, that was the thing for an alley to have. curiously enough, the fact that, summer and winter, the old man never missed early mass and always put a silver quarter--even a silver dollar, it was breathlessly whispered in the alley--in the contribution box, merely served to strengthen this belief. the fact was, i suspect, that the key-ring was the biggest end of the business old barney cultivated so assiduously. there were keys enough on it, and they rattled most persistently as he sent forth the strange whoop which no one ever was able to make out, but which was assumed to mean "keys! keys!" but he was far too feeble and tremulous to wield a file with effect. in his younger days he had wielded a bayonet in his country's defence. on the rare occasions when he could be made to talk, he would tell, with a smouldering gleam in his sunken eyes, how the twenty-third illinois volunteers had battled with the rebs weary nights and days without giving way a foot. the old man's bent back would straighten, and he would step firmly and proudly, at the recollection of how he and his comrades earned the name of the "heroes of lexington" in that memorable fight. but only for the moment. the dark looks that frightened the children returned soon to his face. it was all for nothing, he said. while he was fighting at the front he was robbed. his lieutenant, to whom he gave his money to send home, stole it and ran away. when he returned after three years there was nothing, nothing! at this point the old man always became incoherent. he spoke of money the government owed him and withheld. it was impossible to make out whether his grievance was real or imagined. when colonel grant came to mulberry street as a police commissioner, barney brightened up under a sudden idea. he might get justice now. once a week, through those two years, he washed himself, to the mute astonishment of the alley, and brushed up carefully, to go across and call on "the general's son" in order to lay his case before him. but he never got farther than the mulberry street door. on the steps he was regularly awestruck, and the old hero, who had never turned his back to the enemy, faltered and retreated. in the middle of the street he halted, faced front, and saluted the building with all the solemnity of a grenadier on parade, then went slowly back to his attic and to his unrighted grievance. it had been the talk of the neighborhood for years that the alley would have to go in the elm street widening which was to cut a swath through the block, right over the site upon which it stood; and at last notice was given about christmas time that the wreckers were coming. the alley was sold,--thirty dollars was all it brought,--and the old tenants moved away, and were scattered to the four winds. barney alone stayed. he flatly refused to budge. they tore down the church next door and the buildings on houston street, and filled what had been the yard, or court, of the tenements with débris that reached halfway to the roof, so that the old locksmith, if he wished to go out or in, must do so by way of the third-story window, over a perilous path of shaky timbers and sliding brick. he evidently considered it a kind of siege, and shut himself in his attic, bolting and barring the door, and making secret sorties by night for provisions. when the chimney fell down or was blown over, he punched a hole in the rear wall and stuck the stovepipe through that, where it blew defiance to the new houses springing up almost within arm's-reach of it. it suggested guns pointing from a fort, and perhaps it pleased the old man's soldier fancy. it certainly made smoke enough in his room, where he was fighting his battles over with himself, and occasionally with the janitor from the front, who climbed over the pile of bricks and in through the window to bring him water. when i visited him there one day, and, after giving the password, got behind the bolted door, i found him, the room, and everything else absolutely covered with soot, coal-black from roof to rafters. the password was "letter!" yelled out loud at the foot of the stairs. that would always bring him out, in the belief that the government had finally sent him the long-due money. barney was stubbornly defiant, he would stand by his guns to the end; but he was weakening physically under the combined effect of short rations and nightly alarms. it was clear that he could not stand it much longer. the wreckers cut it short one morning by ripping off the roof over his head before he was up. then, and only then, did he retreat. his exit was characterized by rather more haste than dignity. there had been a heavy fall of snow overnight, and barney slid down the jagged slope from his window, dragging his trunk with him, in imminent peril of breaking his aged bones. that day he disappeared from mulberry street. i thought he was gone for good, and through the grand army of the republic had set inquiries on foot to find what had become of him, when one day i saw him from my window, standing on the opposite side of the street, key-ring in hand, and looking fixedly at what had once been the passageway to the alley, but was now a barred gap between the houses, leading nowhere. he stood there long, gazing sadly at the gateway, at the children dancing to the italian's hand-organ, at trilby trying to look unconcerned on the stoop, and then went his way silently, a poor castaway, and i saw him no more. so cat alley, with all that belonged to it, passed out of my life. it had its faults, but it can at least be said of it, in extenuation, that it was very human. with them all it had a rude sense of justice that did not distinguish its early builders. when the work of tearing down had begun, i watched, one day, a troop of children having fun with a seesaw they had made of a plank laid across a lime barrel. the whole irish contingent rode the plank, all at once, with screams of delight. a ragged little girl from the despised "dago" colony watched them from the corner with hungry eyes. big jane, who was the leader by virtue of her thirteen years and her long reach, saw her and stopped the show. "here, mame," she said, pushing one of the smaller girls from the plank, "you get off an' let her ride. her mother was stabbed yesterday." and the little dago rode, and was made happy. chapter xiii justice to the boy sometimes, when i see my little boy hugging himself with delight at the near prospect of the kindergarten, i go back in memory forty years and more to the day when i was dragged, a howling captive, to school, as a punishment for being bad at home. i remember, as though it were yesterday, my progress up the street in the vengeful grasp of an exasperated servant, and my reception by the aged monster--most fitly named madame bruin--who kept the school. she asked no questions, but led me straightway to the cellar, where she plunged me into an empty barrel and put the lid on over me. applying her horn goggles to the bunghole, to my abject terror, she informed me, in a sepulchral voice, that that was the way bad boys were dealt with in school. when i ceased howling from sheer fright, she took me out and conducted me to the yard, where a big hog had a corner to itself. she bade me observe that one of its ears had been slit half its length. it was because the hog was lazy, and little boys who were that way minded--zip! she clipped a pair of tailor's shears close to my ear. it was my first lesson in school. i hated it from that hour. the barrel and the hog were never part of the curriculum in any american boy's school, i suppose; they seem too freakish to be credited to any but the demoniac ingenuity of my home ogre. but they stood for a comprehension of the office of school and teacher which was not patented by any day or land. it is not so long since the notion yet prevailed that the schools were principally to lock children up in for the convenience of their parents, that we should have entirely forgotten it. only the other day a clergyman from up the state came into my office to tell of a fine reform school they had in his town. they were very proud of it. "and how about the schools for the good boys in your town?" i asked, when i had heard him out. "are they anything to be proud of?" he stared. he guessed they were all right, he said, after some hesitation. but it was clear that he did not know. [illustration: the old.] [illustration: the new.] it is not necessary to go back forty years to find us in the metropolis upon the clergyman's platform, if not upon madame bruin's. a dozen or fifteen will do. they will bring us to the day when roof playgrounds were contemptuously left out of the estimates for an east side school, as "frills" that had nothing to do with education; when the board of health found but a single public school in more than sixscore that was so ventilated as to keep the children from being poisoned by foul air; when the authority of the talmud had to be invoked by the superintendent of school buildings to convince the president of the board of education, who happened to be a jew, that seventy-five or eighty pupils were far too many for one classroom; when a man who had been dead a year was appointed a school trustee of the third ward, under the mouldy old law surviving from the day when new york was a big village, and filled the office as well as if he had been alive, because there were no schools in his ward--it was the wholesale grocery district; when manual training and the kindergarten were yet the fads of yesterday, looked at askance; when fifty thousand children roamed the streets for whom there was no room in the schools, and the only defence of the school commissioners was that they "didn't know" there were so many; and when we mixed truants and thieves in a jail with entire unconcern. indeed, the jail filled the title rôle in the educational cast of that day. its inmates were well lodged and cared for, while the sanitary authorities twice condemned the essex market school across the way as wholly unfit for children to be in, but failed to catch the ear of the politician who ran things unhindered. when (in ) i denounced the "system" of enforcing--or not enforcing--the compulsory education law as a device to make thieves out of our children by turning over their training to the street, he protested angrily; but the experts of the tenement house commission found the charge fully borne out by the facts. they were certainly plain enough in the sight of us all, had we chosen to see. when at last we saw, we gave the politician a vacation for a season. to say that he was to blame for all the mischief would not be fair. we were to blame for leaving him in possession. he was only a link in the chain which our indifference had forged; but he was always and everywhere an obstruction to betterment,--sometimes, illogically, in spite of himself. successive tammany mayors had taken a stand for the public schools when it was clear that reform could not be delayed much longer; but they were helpless against a system of selfishness and stupidity of which they were the creatures, though they posed as its masters. they had to go with it as unfit, and upon the wave that swept out the last of the rubbish came reform. the committee of seventy took hold, the good government clubs, the tenement house commission, and the women of new york. five years we strove with the powers of darkness, and look now at the change! the new york school system is not yet the ideal one,--it may never be; but the jail, at least, has been cast out of the firm. we have a compulsory education law under which it is possible to punish the parent for the boy's truancy, as he ought to be if there was room in the school for the lad, and he let him drift. and the day cannot be delayed much longer now when every child shall find the latchstring out on the school door. we have had to put our hands deep into our pockets to get so far, and we shall have to put them in deeper yet a long way. but it is all right. we are beginning to see the true bearing of things. last week the board of estimate and apportionment appropriated six millions of dollars for new schools--exactly what the battleship _massachusetts_ cost all complete with guns and fittings, so they told me on board. battleships are all right when we need them, but even then it is the man behind the gun who tells, and that means the schoolmaster. the board of education asked for sixteen millions. they will get the other ten when we have caught our breath. since the beginning of [ ] we have built sixty-nine new public schools in manhattan and the bronx, at a cost of $ , , , exclusive of cost of sites, furnishings, heating, lighting, and ventilating the buildings, which would add two-thirds at least of that amount, making it a round twenty millions of dollars. and every one of the sixty-nine has its playground, which will by and by be free to all the neighborhood. the idea is at last working through that the schools belong to the people, and are primarily for the children and their parents; not mere vehicles of ward patronage, or for keeping an army of teachers in office and pay. [footnote : up to june, .] [illustration: public school no. , manhattan.] the silly old régime is dead. the ward trustee is gone with his friend the alderman, loudly proclaiming the collapse of our liberties in the day that saw the schools taken from "the people's" control. they were "the people." experts manage our children's education, which was supposed, in the old plan, to be the only thing that did not require any training. to superintend a brickyard demanded some knowledge, but anybody could run the public schools. it cost us an election to take that step. one of the tammany district leaders, who knew what he was talking about, said to me after it was all over: "i knew we would win. your bringing those foreigners here did the business. our people believe in home rule. we kept account of the teachers you brought from out of town, and who spent the money they made here out of town, and it got to be the talk among the tenement people in my ward that their daughters would have no more show to get to be teachers. that did the business. we figured the school vote in the city at forty-two thousand, and i knew we could not lose." the "foreigners" were teachers from massachusetts and other states, who had achieved a national reputation at their work. there lies upon my table a copy of the minutes of the board of education of january , , in which is underscored a report on a primary school in the bronx. "it is a wooden shanty," is the inspector's account, "heated by stoves, and is a regular tinder box; cellar wet, and under one classroom only. this building was erected in order, i believe, to determine whether or not there was a school population in the neighborhood to warrant the purchase of property to erect a school on." [illustration: letter h plan of public school no. , showing front on west th street.] that was the way then of taking a school census, and the result was the utter failure of the compulsory education law to compel anything. to-day we have a biennial census, ordained by law, which, when at last it gets into the hands of some one who can count,[ ] will tell us how many jacob beresheims are drifting upon the shoals of the street. and we have a truant school to keep them safe in. to it, says the law, no thief shall be committed. it is not yet five years since the burglar and the truant--which latter, having been refused admission to the school because there was not room for him, inconsequently was locked up for contracting idle ways--were herded in the juvenile asylum, and classified there in squads of those who were four feet, four feet seven, and over four feet seven! i am afraid i scandalized some good people during the fight for decency in this matter, by insisting that it ought to be considered a good mark for jacob that he despised such schools as were provided for him. but it was true. except for the risk of the burglar, the jail was preferable by far. the woman into whose hands the management of the truant school fell, made out, after little more than a year's experience, that of twenty-five hundred so-called incorrigibles, the barest handful--scarce sixty--were rightly so named, and even these a little longer and tighter grip might probably win over. for such a farm school is yet to be provided. the rest responded promptly to an appeal to their pride. she "made it a personal matter" with each of them, and the truant vanished; the boy was restored. the burglar, too, made it a personal matter in the old contact, and the result was two burglars for one. i have yet to find any one who has paid attention to this matter and is not of the opinion that the truant school strikes at the root of the problem of juvenile crime. after thirty years of close acquaintance with the child population of london, mr. andrew drew, chairman of the industrial committee of the school board, declared his conviction that "truancy is to be credited with nearly the whole of our juvenile criminality." but for years there seemed to be no way of convincing the new york school board that the two had anything to do with one another. even now it seems to be a case of one convinced against his will being "of the same opinion still," for, though the superintendent of schools speaks of that bar to the jail as preposterously inadequate, nothing is done to strengthen it. [footnote : after two attempts that were not shining successes, the politicians at albany and new york calmly dropped the matter, and for four years ignored the law. the superintendent of schools is at this writing (june, ) preparing to have the police take the child census, without which it is hard to see how he can know the extent of the problem he is wrestling with. half-day classes are a fair index of the number of those anxious to get in; but they tell us nothing of the dangerous class who shun the schools.] nothing on that tack. but there is a long leg and a short leg on the course, and i fancy superintendent snyder does the tacking on the long leg. mr. snyder builds new york's schools, and he does that which no other architect before his time ever did or tried; he "builds them beautiful." in him new york has one of those rare men who open windows for the soul of their time. literally, he found barracks where he is leaving palaces to the people. if any one thinks this is overmeasure of praise, let him look at the "letter h" school, now become a type, and see what he thinks of it. the idea suggested itself to him as meeting the demands of a site in the middle of a block, while he was poking about old paris on a much-needed vacation, and now it stands embodied in a dozen beautiful schools on manhattan island, copies, every one, of the handsomest of french palaces, the hôtel de cluny. i cannot see how it is possible to come nearer perfection in the building of a public school. there is not a dark corner in the whole structure, from the splendid gymnasium under the red-tiled roof to the indoor playground on the street floor, which, when thrown into one with the two yards that lie enclosed in the arms of the h, give the children nearly an acre of asphalted floor to romp on from street to street; for the building sets right through the block, with just such a front on the other street as it shows on this one. if there be those yet upon whom the notion grates that play and the looks of the school should be counted in as educational factors, why, let them hurry up and catch on. they are way behind. the play through which the child "first perceives moral relations" comes near being the biggest and strongest factor in it all to-day; and as for the five or ten thousand dollars put in for "the looks" of things where the slum had trodden every ideal and every atom of beauty into the dirt, i expect to live to see that prove the best investment a city ever made. we are getting the interest now in the new pride of the boy in "his school," and no wonder. when i think of the old allen street school, with its hard and ugly lines, where the gas had to be kept burning even on the brightest days, recitations suspended every half-hour, and the children made to practice calisthenics so that they should not catch cold while the windows were opened to let in fresh air; of the dark playground downstairs, with the rats keeping up such a racket that one could hardly hear himself speak at times; or of that other east side "playground" where the boys "weren't allowed to speak above a whisper," so as not to disturb those studying overhead, i fancy that i can make out both the cause and the cure of the boy's desperation. "we try to make our schools pleasant enough to hold the children," wrote the superintendent of schools in indianapolis to me once, and added that they had no truant problem worth bothering about. with the kindergarten and manual training firmly ingrafted upon the school course, as they are at last, and with it reaching out to enlist also the boy's play through playground and vacation schools, i shall be willing to turn the boy who will not come in over to the reformatory. they will not need to build a new wing to the jail for his safekeeping. [illustration: public school no. , the bronx.] all ways lead to rome. the reform in school building dates back, as does every other reform in new york, to the mulberry bend. it began there. the first school that departed from the soulless old tradition, to set beautiful pictures before the child's mind as well as dry figures on the slate, was built there. at the time i wanted it to stand in the park, hoping so to hasten the laying out of that; but although the small parks law expressly permitted the erection on park property of buildings for "the instruction of the people," the officials upon whom i pressed my scheme could not be made to understand that as including schools. perhaps they were right. i catechised thirty-one fourth ward girls in a sewing school, about that time, twenty-six of whom had attended the public schools of the district more than a year. one wore a badge earned for excellence in her studies. in those days every street corner was placarded with big posters of napoleon on a white horse riding through fire and smoke. there was one right across the street. yet only one of the thirty-one knew who napoleon was. she "thought she had heard of the gentleman before." it came out that the one impression she retained of what she had heard was that "the gentleman" had two wives, both at one time probably. they knew of washington that he was the first president of the united states, and cut down a cherry tree. they were sitting and sewing at the time almost on the identical spot on cherry hill where he lived when he held the office. to the question who ruled before washington the answer came promptly: no one; he was the first. they agreed reluctantly, upon further consideration, that there was probably "a king of america" before his day, and the irish damsels turned up their noses at the idea. the people of canada, they thought, were copper-colored. the same winter i was indignantly bidden to depart from a school in the fourth ward by a trustee who had heard that i had written a book about the slum and spoken of "his people" in it. those early steps in the reform path stumbled sadly over obstacles that showed what a hard pull we had ahead. i told in "the making of an american" how i fared when i complained that the allen street school was overrun with rats, and how i went out to catch one of them to prove to the city hall folk that i was not a liar, as they said. we won the fight for the medical inspection of the schools that has proved such a boon, against much opposition within the profession, from which we should have had only support. and this in face of evidence of a kind to convince anybody. i remember one of the exhibits. there had been a scarlet-fever epidemic on the lower west side, which the health inspectors finally traced to the public school of the district. a boy with the disease had been turned loose before the "peeling" was over, and had achieved phenomenal popularity in the classroom by a trick he had of pulling the skin from his fingers as one would skin a cat. the pieces he distributed as souvenirs among his comrades, who carried them proudly home to show to their admiring playmates who were not so lucky as to sit on the bench with the clever lad. the epidemic followed as a matter of course. but though the health department put through that reform, when it came to inspecting the eyes of the children, we lost. the cry that it would "interfere with private practice" defeated us. the fact was easily demonstrated that not only was ophthalmia rampant in the schools with its contagion, but that the pupils were made both near-sighted and stupid by the want of proper arrangement of their seats and of themselves in their classrooms. but self-interest prevailed. however, nothing is ever settled till it is settled right. i have before me the results of an examination of thirty-six public schools containing , pupils. it was made by order of the board of health this month (august, ), and ought to settle that matter for good. of the , , not less than had contagious eye-disease; were cases of operative trachoma, simple trachoma, and conjunctivitis. in one school in the most crowded district of the east side . per cent were so afflicted. no wonder the doctors "were horrified" at the showing. so was the president of the board of health, who told me to-day that he would leave no stone unturned until effective inspection of the school children by eye-specialists had been assured. so we go, step by step, ever forward. speaking of that reminds me of a mishap i had in the hester street school,--the one with the "frills" which the board of education cut off. i happened to pass it after school hours, and went in to see what sort of a playground the roof would have made. i met no one on the way, and, finding the scuttle open, climbed out and up the slant of the roof to the peak, where i sat musing over our lost chance, when the janitor came to close up. he must have thought i was a crazy man, and my explanation did not make it any better. he haled me down, and but for the fortunate chance that the policeman on the beat knew me, i should have been taken to the lockup as a dangerous lunatic--all for dreaming of a playground on the roof of a schoolhouse. [illustration: girls' playground on the roof.] janitor and board of commissioners to the contrary notwithstanding, the dream became real. there stands another school in hester street to-day within easy call, that has a roof playground where two thousand children dance under the harvest moon to the music of a brass band, as i shall tell you about hereafter--the joy of it to have that story to tell!--and all about are others like it, with more coming every year. to the indignant amazement of my captor, the janitor, his school has been thrown open to the children in the summer vacation, and in the winter they put a boys' club in to worry him. what further indignities there are in store for him, in this day of "frills," there is no telling. the superintendent of schools told me only yesterday that he was going to boston to look into new sources of worriment they have invented there. the world does move in spite of janitors. in two short years our school authorities advanced from the cautious proposition that it "was the sense" of the board of superintendents that the schoolhouses might well be used in the cause of education as neighborhood centres, etc., ( ), to the flat declaration that "every rational system of education should make provisions for play" ( ). and to cut off all chance of relapse into the old doubt whether "such things are educational," that laid so many of our hopes on the dusty shelf of the circumlocution office, the state legislature has expressly declared that the commonwealth will take the chance, which boards of education shunned, of a little amusement creeping in. the schools may be used for "purposes of recreation." to the janitor it must seem that the end of all things is at hand. so the schools and their playgrounds were thrown open to the children during the long vacation, with kindergarten teachers to amuse them, and vacation schools tempted the little ones from the street into the cool shade of the classrooms. they wrought in wood and iron, they sang and they played and studied nature,--out of a barrel, to be sure, that came twice a week from long island filled with "specimens"; but later on we took a hint from chicago, and let the children gather their own specimens on excursions around the bay and suburbs of the city. that was a tremendous success. and there is better still coming, as i shall show presently. it sometimes seems to me as if we were here face to face with the very thing we are seeking and know not how to find. the mere hint that money might be lacking to pay for the excursions set the st. andrew's brotherhood men on long island to devising schemes for inviting the school children out on trolley and shore trips. what if they all, the christian endeavor, the epworth league, and the other expressions of the same human desire to find the lost brother, who are looking about for something to try their young strength and enthusiasm on--what if they were to hitch on here and help pull the load that may get mired else? they need men and women in that work. mere paid teaching will never do it. if they can only get them, i think we may be standing upon the threshold of something which shall bring us nearer to a universal brotherhood than all the consecration and all the badges yet devised. i am thinking of the children and of the chance to take them at once out of the slum and into our hearts, while making of the public school the door to a house of citizenship in which we shall all dwell together in full understanding. without that door the house will never be what we planned. and there is the key, all ready-made, in the children. [illustration: the new idea: a stairway of public school no. .] the mere contact with nature, even out of a barrel, brought something to those starved child lives that struck a new note. sometimes it rang with a sharp and jarring sound. the boys in the hester street school could not be made to take an interest in the lesson on wheat until the teacher came to the effect of drought and a bad year on the farmer's pocket. then they understood. they knew the process. strikes cut into the earnings of hester street, small enough at the best of times, at frequent intervals, and the boys need not be told what a bad year means. no other kind ever occurs there. they learned the lesson on wheat in no time, after that. oftener it was a gentler note that piped timidly in the strange place. a barrel of wild roses came one day, instead of the expected "specimens," and these were given to the children. they took them greedily. "i wondered," said the teacher, "if it was more love of the flower, or of getting something for nothing, no matter what." but even if it were largely the latter, there was still the rose. nothing like it had come that way before, and without a doubt it taught its own lesson. the italian child might have jumped for it more eagerly, but its beauty was not wasted in jew-town, either. the baby kissed it, and it lay upon more than one wan cheek, and whispered, who knows what thought of hope and courage that were nearly gone. even in hester street the wild rose from the hedge was not wasted. the result of it all was wholesome and good, because it was common sense. the way to fight the slum in the children's lives is with sunlight and flowers and play, which their child hearts crave, if their eyes have never seen them. the teachers reported that the boys were easier to manage, more quiet, and played more fairly than before. the police reports showed that fewer were arrested or run over in the streets than in other years. a worse enemy was attacked than the trolley car or the truck. in the kindergarten at the hull house in chicago there hangs a picture of a harvest scene, with the man wiping his brow, and a woman resting at his feet. miss addams told me that a little girl with an old face picked it out among all the rest, and considered it long and gravely. "well," she said, when her inspection was finished, "he knocked her down, didn't he?" a two hours' argument for kindergartens or vacation schools could not have put it stronger or better. it is five seasons since the board of education took over the work begun by the association for improving the condition of the poor as an object lesson for us all, and i have before me the schedule for this summer's work, just begun. it embraces seventeen vacation schools in which the boys are taught basketry, weaving, chair-caning, sloyd, fret-sawing, and how to work in leather and iron, while the girls learn sewing, millinery, embroidering, knitting, and the domestic arts, besides sharing in the boys' work where they can. there are thirty-five school playgrounds with kindergarten and gymnasiums and games, and half a dozen of the play piers are used for the same purpose. in twelve open-air playgrounds and parks, teachers sent by the board of education lead the children's play, and in as many more public baths teach boys and girls to swim on alternate days. in crotona park, up in the bronx, under big spreading oaks and maples, athletic meets are held of boys from down-town and up-town schools in friendly rivalry, and the frog hollow gang, that wrecked railroad trains there in my recollection, is a bad memory. over at hudson-bank on the site of the park that is coming there, teams hired by the board of education are ploughing up the site of stryker's lane, and the young toughs of the west side who held that the world owed them a living and collected it as they could, are turning truck farmers. they are planting potatoes, and gardening, and learning the secret of life that the living is his who can earn it. the world "do move." no argument is needed now to persuade those who hold the purse strings that all this is "good business." instead, the mayor of the city is asking the board of education to tell him of more and better ways of putting the machinery to use. the city will foot the bill, if we will show them how. and we will show them how. [illustration: truck farming on the site of stryker's lane.] the last four years have set us fifty years ahead, and there is no doubling on that track now. where we had one kindergarten when i was put out of the fourth ward school by a trustee for daring to intrude there to find out what they were teaching, we have a hundred and fifteen at this writing in manhattan alone, and soon we shall have as many as five hundred that are part of the public school in the greater city. "the greatest blessing which the nineteenth century bequeathed to little children," superintendent maxwell calls the kindergarten, and since the children are our own to-morrow, he might have said to all of us, to the state. the kindergarten touch is upon the whole system of teaching. cooking, the only kind of temperance preaching that counts for anything in a school course, is taught in the girls' classes. a minister of justice declared in the belgian chamber that the nation was reverting to a new form of barbarism, which he described by the term "alcoholic barbarism," and pointed out as its first cause the "insufficiency of the food procurable by the working classes." he referred to the quality, not the quantity. the united states experts, who lately made a study of the living habits of the poor in new york, spoke of it as a common observation that "a not inconsiderable amount of the prevalent intemperance can be traced to poor food and unattractive home tables." the toasting-fork in jacob's sister's hand beats preaching in the campaign against the saloon, just as the boys' club beats the police club in fighting the gang. the cram and the jam are being crowded out as common-sense teaching steps in and takes their place, and the "three h's," the head, the heart, and the hand,--a whole boy,--are taking the place too long monopolized by the "three r's." there was need of it. it had seemed sometimes as if, in our anxiety lest he should not get enough, we were in danger of stuffing the boy to the point of making a hopeless dunce of him. it is a higher function of the school to teach principles than to impart facts merely. teaching the boy municipal politics and a thousand other things to make a good citizen of him, instead of so filling him with love of his country and pride in its traditions that he is bound to take the right stand when the time comes, is as though one were to attempt to put all the law of the state into its constitution to make it more binding. the result would be hopeless congestion and general uselessness. [illustration: doorway of public school no. .] it comes down to the teacher in the end, and there are ten thousand of them in our big city.[ ] to them, too, a day of deliverance has come. half the machine teaching, the wooden output of our public schools in the past, i believe was due to the practical isolation of the teachers between the tyranny of politics and the distrust of those who had good cause to fear the politician and his work. there was never a more saddening sight than that of the teachers standing together in an almost solid body to resist reform of the school system as an attack upon them. there was no pretence on their part that the schools did not need reform. they knew better. they fought for their places. throughout the fight no word came from them of the children's rights. they imagined that theirs were in danger, and they had no thought for anything else. we gathered then the ripe fruit of politics, and it will be a long while, i suppose, before we get the taste out of our mouths. but the grip of politics on our schools has been loosened, if not shaken off altogether, and the teacher's slavery is at an end, if she herself so wills it. once hardly thought worthy of a day laborer's hire, she ranks to-day with a policeman in pay and privilege. the day that sees her welcomed as an honored guest in every home with a child in school will break the last of her bonds, and do more for the schools and for us than any one thing i can think of. until that day comes the teachers, as a class apart, will have interests apart, or feel that they have, and will be bound to stand together to defend them; and they will work for pay. but for the real work of a teacher no one can ever pay her. [footnote : on may , , there were , class teachers in elementary schools in the greater new york, exclusive of principals and the non-teaching staffs, and of the high school teachers. with these, the total number was , , with a register of , pupils.] the day is coming. the windows of the schoolhouse have been thrown open, and life let in with the sunlight. the time may be not far distant when ours shall be schools "for discovering aptitude," in professor felix adler's wise plan. the problem is a vast one, even in its bulk; every year seats must be found on the school benches for twenty thousand additional children. in spite of all we have done, there are to-day in the greater city nearly thirty thousand children in half-day or part-time classes, waiting their chance. but that it can and will be solved no one can doubt. we have just _got_ to, that is all. in the solution the women of new york will have had no mean share. in the struggle for school reform they struck the telling blows, and the credit of the victory was justly theirs. the public education association, originally a woman's auxiliary to good government club e, has worked as energetically with the school authorities in the new plan as it fought to break down the old and secure decency. it has opened many windows for little souls by hanging schoolrooms with beautiful casts and pictures, and forged at the same time new and strong links in the chain that bound the boy all too feebly to the school. at a time when the demand of the boys of the east side for club room, which was in itself one of the healthiest signs of the day, had reached an exceedingly dangerous pass, the public education association broke ground that will yet prove the most fertile field of all. the raines law saloon, quick to discern in the new demand the gap that would divorce it by and by from the man, attempted to bridge it by inviting the boy in under its roof. occasionally the girl went along. a typical instance of how the scheme worked was brought to my attention at the time by the head worker of the college settlement. the back room of the saloon was given to the club free of charge, with the understanding that the boy members should "treat." as a means of raising the needed funds, the club hit upon the plan of fining members ten cents when they "got funny." to defeat this device of the devil some way must be found; but club room was scarce among the tenements. the good government clubs proposed to the board of education that it open the empty classrooms at night for the children's use. it was my privilege to plead their cause before the school board, and to obtain from it the necessary permission, after some hesitation and doubt as to whether "it was educational." the public education association assumed the responsibility for "the property," and the hester street school was opened. the property was not molested; only one window was broken that winter by a stray ball, and that was promptly paid for by those who broke it. but the boys who met there under miss winifred buck's management learned many a lesson of self-control and practical wisdom that proved "educational" in the highest degree. her plan is simplicity itself. through their play,--the meeting usually begins with a romp,--in quarters where there is not too much elbow-room, the boys learn the first lesson of respecting one another's rights. the subsequent business meeting puts them upon the fundamentals of civilized society, as it were. out of the debate of the question, do we want boys who swear, steal, gamble, and smoke cigarettes? grow convictions as to why these vices are wrong that put "the gang" in its proper light. punishment comes to appear, when administered by the boys themselves, a natural consequence of law-breaking, in defence of society; and the boy is won. he can thenceforward be trusted to work out his own salvation. if he does it occasionally with excessive unction, remember how recent was his conversion. "_resolved_, that wisdom is better than wealth," was rejected as a topic for discussion by one of the clubs, because "everybody knows it is." this was in the tenth ward. if temptation had come that way in the shape of a push-cart with pineapples--we are all human! anyway, they had learned the right. that was the beginning of a work of which shall, i hope, hear a good deal more hereafter. it is all in its infancy yet, this attempt on the part of the municipality to get the boys off the street and out of the reach of the saloon. a number of schools were thrown open, where the crowds were greatest, for evening play and for clubs, and sometimes they laid hold of the youngster and sometimes not. it was a question again of the man or the woman who was at the helm. one school i found that surged with a happy crowd. it was over at rivington and suffolk streets, no. . oh, how i wish they would soon stop this hopeless numbering of our schools, and call them after our great and good men, as superintendent maxwell pleads, so that "the name of every school may in itself be made a lesson in patriotism and good citizenship to its pupils." there they would be in their right place. one alderman got the idea during the strong reform administration, but they hitched the names to the new parks instead of the schools, and that turned out wrong. so they have the ham fish park for hamilton fish, the "sewer" park for william h. seward, the thomas jefferson park up-town which no one will ever call anything but the little italy park, and the good name of de witt clinton put to the bad use of spoiling beautiful "hudson-bank." only, the effort will be wasted. the old name will stick. how different if the new schools had been called after these statesmen! and what a chance to get their pupils interested! in the "alexander hamilton school," for instance, where "the grange" and his thirteen trees abide yet. [illustration: main entrance of public school no. .] but that is another story. i was thinking of the jackson pleasure club of boys from eleven to thirteen which i found in session in no. , and of its very instructive constitution. i am going to print it here entire for the instruction of some good people who don't understand. the boys got it all up themselves with the help of a copy of the united states constitution and the famous "stamp act." constitution of the jackson pleasure club evening recreation centre p. s. no. , new york city we the boys of the j. p. c. in order to form a perfect club, we establish justice insure domestic tranquillity provide for the common defence. we promote the general welfare and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our descendants to establish the constitution for the j. p. c. no boys can be members who are less than thirteen years and must be from the th grammar on. no member can be president or vice president unless months in club. all officers will keep their term six months. the officers can not commit a law until it is passed by the members. if it is an important one it will be passed by votes. by this i mean that if / of the members pass it is passed if / is passed it is not passed. several committees are appointed to look over these rules which seldom happen on the streets. if any member or officer is seen gambling, smoking or fighting a fine of $ . will be asked and must be paid the next meeting. special meetings will be held each month. meetings will be held at o'clock p.m. to p.m. no secrets or slang language or nicknames allowed or a fine of $. is asked. if any body recites a recitation and makes a mistake he is not to be laughed at or a fine of $. must be paid. if any member takes the laws into his own hands and interferes with the president or any other officers or walks up and down the meeting room or draws pictures on the boards a fine of $. will be paid. any one who is spoken to times about order will be put out for that meeting. amendment i. no member will be allowed to go on a stranger's roof, or a fine of $. will be asked. why not on a stranger's roof? because flying kites, up there the boys run across and interfere with the neighbor's pigeons, which is apt to make him wroth. so you see it is all in the interests of "domestic tranquillity and the common defence." they are not meaningless phrases, those big words, they are the boy's ideas of self-government, of a real democracy, struggling through in our sight. and suppose he does walk on rhetorical stilts, he has precedent and will show it to you. a nation learned to walk on them. who shall say they are not good enough for him? but to return to what i was speaking about: with the women to lead, the school has even turned the tables on the jail and invaded it bodily. for now nearly five years the public education association has kept school in the tombs, for the boys locked up there awaiting trial. of thirty-one pupils on this school register, when i examined it one day, twelve were charged with burglary, four with highway robbery, and three with murder. that was the gang run to earth at last. better late than never. the windows of their prison overlooked the spot where the gallows used to stand that cut short many a career such as they pursued. they were soberly attentive to their studies, which were of a severely practical turn. their teacher, mr. david willard, who was a resident of the university settlement in its old delancey street home has his own sound view of how to head off the hangman. daily and nightly he gathers about him, in the house on chrystie street where he makes his home, half the boys and girls of the neighborhood, whom he meets as their friend, on equal terms. mr. willard, though a young man, is one of the most unique personages in the city. he is now one of the probation officers, under the new law which seeks to save the young offender rather than to wreak vengeance upon him, and his influence for good is great. the house in chrystie street is known far and wide as "the children's house." they have their clubs there, and their games, of which willard is the heart and soul. "i never saw anything remarkable in him," said one of his old college professors to me; "if anything, he was rather a dull student." it seems, then, that even colleges are not always institutions for "discovering aptitude." it was reserved for chrystie street in willard's case. once a week another teacher comes to the tombs school, and tells the boys of our city's history, its famous buildings and great men, trying so to arouse their interest as a first step toward a citizen's pride. this one also is sent by a club of women, the city history club, which in five years has done strange things among the children. it sprang from the proposition of mrs. robert abbe that the man and the citizen has his birth in the boy, and that to love a thing one must know it first. the half-dozen classes that were started for the study of our city's history have swelled into many scores of times that number, with a small army of pupils. the pregnant fact was noted early by the teachers, that the immigrant boy easily outstrips in interest for his adopted home the native, who perchance turns up his nose at him, and later very likely complains of the "unscrupulousness" of the jew, who forged ahead of him in business as well. the classes meet in settlement, school, or church to hear about the deeds of the fathers, and, when they have listened and read, go with their teachers and see for themselves the church where washington worshipped, the graves where the great dead lie, the fields where they fought and bled. and when the little italian asks, with shining eyes, "which side were we on?" who can doubt that the lesson has sunk into a heart that will thenceforward beat more loyally for the city of his home? we have not any too much pride in our city, the best of us, and that is why we let it be run by every scalawag boss who comes along to rob us. in all the land there is no more historic building than fraunces' tavern, where washington bade good-by to his officers; but though the very chamber of commerce was organized there, the appeal of patriotic women has not availed to save it to the people as a great relic of the past. the last time i was in it a waiter, busy with a lot of longshoremen who were eating their lunch and drinking their beer in the "long room," had hung his dirty apron on a plaster bust of the father of his country that stood upon the counter about where he probably sat at the historic feast. my angry remonstrance brought only an uncomprehending stare for reply. [illustration: superintendent c. b. j. snyder, who builds our beautiful schools.] but in spite of the dullards, the new life i spoke of, the new sense of responsibility of our citizenship, is stirring. the people's institute draws nightly audiences to the great hall of the cooper institute for the discussion of present problems and social topics--audiences largely made up of workingmen more or less connected with the labor movement. the "people's club," an outgrowth of the institute, offers a home for the lonely wage-earner, man or woman, and more accept its offer every year. it has now nearly four hundred members, one fourth of them women. every night its rooms at east fourteenth street are filled. classes for study and recreation are organized right along. the people's university extension society invades the home, the nursery, the kindergarten, the club, wherever it can, with help and counsel to mothers with little children, to young men and to old. in a hundred ways those who but yesterday neither knew nor cared how the other half lived are reaching out and touching the people's life. the social settlements labor unceasingly, and where there was one a dozen years ago there are forty. down on the lower east side, the educational alliance conducts from the hebrew institute an energetic campaign among the jewish immigrants that reaches many thousands of souls, two-thirds of them children, every day in the week. more than threescore clubs hold meetings in the building on saturday and sunday. under the same roof the baron hirsch fund teaches the children of refugee jews the first elements of american citizenship, love for our language and our flag, and passes them on to the public schools within six months of their landing, the best material they receive from anywhere. so the boy is being got ready for dealing, in the years that are to come, with the other but not more difficult problems of setting his house to rights, and ridding it of the political gang which now misrepresents him and us. and justice to jacob is being evolved. not yet without obstruction and dragging of feet. the excellent home library plan that proved so wholesome in the poor quarters of boston has only lately caught on in new york, because of difficulty in securing the visitors upon whom the plan depends for its success.[ ] the same want has kept the boys' club from reaching the development that would apply the real test to it as a barrier against the slum. there are fifteen clubs for every winifred buck that is in sight. from the city history club, the charity organization society, from everywhere, comes the same complaint. the hardest thing in the world to give is still one's self. but it is all the time getting to be easier. there are daily more women and men who, thinking of the boy, can say, and do, with my friend of the college settlement, when an opportunity to enter a larger field was offered her, "no, i am content to stay here, to be ready for johnnie when he wants me." [footnote : the managers of the new york public library have found a way, and have maintained twenty-seven home libraries during the past year ( ): little cases of from fifteen to forty books entrusted to the care of some family in the tenement. miss adeline e. brown, who is in charge of the work, reports a growing enthusiasm for it. the librarian calls weekly. "we come very near to the needs of these families," she writes, "the visit meaning more to them than the books. in nearly every case we allow the books to be given out at any time by the child who glories in the honor of being librarian. in one wretched tenement, on the far east side, we are told that the case of books is taken down into the yard on sunday afternoon, and neighbors and lodgers have the use of them." it is satisfactory to know that the biggest of the home libraries is within stone's throw of corlear's hook, which the "hook gang" terrorized with rapine and murder within my recollection. miss brown adds that "the girls prefer bookcases with doors of glass, as they like to scrub it with sapolio, but the boys are more interested in the lock and key."] justice for the boy, and for his father. an itinerant jewish glazier, crying his wares, was beckoned into a stable by the foreman, and bidden to replace a lot of broken panes, enough nearly to exhaust his stock. when, after working half the day, he asked for his pay, he was driven from the place with jeers and vile words. raging and impotent, he went back to his poor tenement, cursing a world in which there was no justice for a poor man. if he had next been found ranting with anarchists against the social order, would you have blamed him? he found instead, in the legal aid society, a champion that pleaded his cause and compelled the stableman to pay him his wages. for a hundred thousand such--more shame to us--this society has meant all that freedom promised: justice to the poor man. it too has earned a place among the forces that are working out through the new education the brighter day, for it has taught the lesson which all the citizens of a free state need most to learn--respect for law. chapter xiv the band begins to play "nothing in this world of ours is settled until it is settled right." from the moment we began the fight for the children's play there was but one ending to that battle; but it did seem sometimes a long way off, never farther than when, just four months ago, the particular phase of it that had seemed to promise most was officially stamped as nonsense. the playgrounds on top of the big schoolhouses, which were to be the neighborhood roof-gardens of our fond imaginings, were "of little use," said the school committee that had them in charge. the people wouldn't go there. so, then, let them be given up. and a school commissioner with whom i argued the case on the way home responded indulgently that some of my notions "were regarded as utopian," however sincerely held. let me see, that was in may. the resolution i speak of had passed the committee on care of buildings on april .[ ] to-day is the th of august, and i have just come home from an evening spent on one of those identical school-roofs under the electric lamps, a veritable fairyland of delight. the music and the song and laughter of three thousand happy children ring in my ears yet. it was a long, laborious journey up all the flights of stairs to that roof, for i am not as young as i was and sometimes scant of breath; but none sweeter did i ever take save the one under the wild-rose hedge i told of in "the making of an american" when i went to claim my bride. ah! brethren, what are we that we should ever give up, or doubt the justice of his fight who bade us let the little ones come unto him and to clear the briers and thorns, that choked the path, from their way? [footnote : on the day it was published the newspapers reported the killing in the streets of three children by trucks.] seven years we hacked away at the briers in that path. it is so long since the state made it law that a playground should go with every public school, five since as secretary of the small parks committee i pleaded with the board of education to give the roof playground to the neighborhood after school hours. i remember that the question was asked who would keep order, and the answer, "the police will be glad to." i recalled without trouble the time when they had to establish patrol posts on the tenement roofs in defence against the roughs whom the street had trained to rebellion against law and order. but i was a police reporter; they were not. they didn't understand. the playschool came; the indoor playgrounds were thrown open evenings under the pressure they brought in their train. and at that point we took a day off, as it were, to congratulate one another on how wondrous smart and progressive we had been. the machinery we had started we let be, to run itself. it ran into the old rut. the janitor got it in tow, and presently we heard from the "play centres" that "the children didn't avail themselves" of their privileges. on the roof playground the janitor had turned the key. the committee on care of buildings spoke his mind: "they were of little use; too hot in summer and too cold in winter." we were invited to quit our fooling and resume business at the old stand of the three r's, and let it go with that. that was what schools were for. it takes time, you see, to grow an idea, as to grow a colt or a boy, to its full size. president burlingham, who in his day drew the bill that made it lawful to use the schools for neighborhood purposes other than the worship of those same three r's, went around with me one night to see what ailed the children who would not play. in the mulberry bend school the janitor had carefully removed the gymnastic apparatus the boys were aching for, and substituted four tables, around which they sat playing cards under the eye of a policeman. they were "educational" cards, with pictures of europe and asia and africa and america on, but it required only half a minute's observation to tell us that they were gambling--betting on which educational card would turn up next. what the city had provided was a course in scientific gambling with the policeman to see that it was done right. and over at market and monroe streets, where they have an acre or more of splendid asphalted floor--such a ball room!--and a matchless yard, the best in the city, twoscore little girls were pitifully cooped up in a corner, being _taught_ something, while outside a hundred clamored to get in, making periodic rushes at the door, only to encounter there a janitor's assistant with a big club and a roar like a bull to frighten them away. "orders," he told us. the yard was dark and dismal. that was the school by the way, whence the report came that they "hadn't availed themselves" of the opportunity to play. it helped, when that story was told. there is nothing in our day like the facts, and they came out that time. there was the roof-garden on the educational alliance building with its average of more than five thousand a day, young and old, last summer (a total of , for the season), in flat contradiction of the claim that the children "wouldn't go up on the roof." not, surely, if it was only to encounter a janitor with a club there. but a brass band now? there were a few professional shivers at that, but our experience with the one we set playing in the park on sunday, years ago, came to the rescue. when it had played its last piece to end and there burst forth as with one voice from the mighty throng, "praise god from whom all blessings flow!" some doubts were set at rest for all time. they were never sensible, but after that they were silly. so the janitor was bidden bring out his key. electric lights were strung. "we will save the money somewhere else," said mayor low. the experiment was made with five schools, all on the crowded east side. i was at dinner with friends at the university settlement, directly across from which, on the other corner, is one of the great new schools, no. , i think. we had got to the salad when through the open window there came a yell of exultation and triumph that made me fairly jump in my chair. below in the street a mighty mob of children and mothers had been for half an hour besieging the door of the schoolhouse. the yell signalized the opening of it by the policeman in charge. up the stairs surged the multitude. we could see them racing, climbing, toiling, according to their years, for the goal above where the band was tuning up. one little fellow with a trousers leg and a half, and a pair of suspenders and an undershirt as his only other garments, labored up the long flight, carrying his baby brother on his back. i watched them go clear up, catching glimpses of them at every turn, and then i went up after. i found them in a corner, propped against the wall, a look of the serenest bliss on their faces as they drank it all in. it was _their_ show at last. the band was playing "alabama," and fifteen hundred boys and girls were dancing, hopping, prancing to the tune, circling about and about while they sang and kept time to the music. when the chorus was reached, every voice was raised to its shrillest pitch: "way--down--yonder--in--the--cornfield." and for once in my life the suggestion of the fields and the woods did not seem hopelessly out of place in the tenth ward crowds. baby in its tired mother's lap looked on wide-eyed, out of the sweep of the human current. the band ceased playing, and the boys took up some game, dodging hither and thither in pursuit of a ball. how they did it will ever be a mystery to me. there did not seem to be room for another child, but they managed as if they had it all to themselves. there was no disorder; no one was hurt, or even knocked down, unless in the game, and that _was_ the game, so it was as it should be. right in the middle of it, the strains of "sunday afternoon," all east side children's favorite, burst forth, and out of the seeming confusion came rhythmic order as the whole body of children moved, singing, along the floor. down below, the deserted street--deserted for once in the day--had grown strangely still. the policeman nodded contentedly: "good business, indeed." this was a kind of roof patrol he could appreciate. nothing to do; less for to-morrow, for here they were not planning raids on the grocer's stock. they were happy, and when children are happy, they are safe, and so are the rest of us. it is the policeman's philosophy, and it is worth taking serious note of. a warning blast on a trumpet and the "star-spangled banner" floated out over the house-tops. the children ceased dancing: every boy's cap came off, and the chorus swelled loud and clear: "--in triumph shall wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave." the light shone upon the thousand upturned faces. scarce one in a hundred of them all that did not bear silent witness to persecution which had driven a whole people over the sea, without home, without flag. and now--my eyes filled with tears. i said it: i am getting old and silly. [illustration: the fellows and papa and mamma shall be invited in yet.] it was so at the still bigger school at hester and orchard streets. at the biggest of them all, and the finest, the same no. where the janitor's assistant "shooed" the children away with his club, the once dismal yard had been festooned with electric lamps that turned night into day, and about the band-stand danced nearly three thousand boys and girls to the strains of "money musk," glad to be alive and there. a ball-room forsooth! and it is going to be better still; for once the ice has been broken, there are new kinks coming in this dancing programme that is the dear dissipation of the east side. what is to hinder the girls, when the long winter days come, from inviting in the fellows, and papa and mamma, for a real dance that shall take the wind out of the sails of the dance-halls? nothing in all the world. nor even will there be anything to stop superintendent maxwell from taking a turn himself, as he said he would, or me either, if i haven't danced in thirty years. i just dare him to try. the man in charge of the ball-room at no. --i shall flatly refuse to call it a yard--said that he didn't believe in any other rule than order, and nearly took my breath away, for just then i had a vision of the club in the doorway; but it was only a vision. the club was not there. as he said it, he mounted the band-stand and waved the crowd to order with his speaking-trumpet. "a young lady has just lost her gold watch on the floor," he said. "it is here under your feet. bring it to me, the one who finds it." there was a curious movement of the crowd, as if every unit in it turned once about itself and bowed, and presently a shout of discovery went up. a little girl with a poor shawl pinned about her throat came forward with the watch. the manager waved his trumpet at me with a bright smile. "you see it works." the entire crowd fell in behind him in an ecstatic cake-walk, expressive of its joy and satisfaction, and so they went, around and around. on that very corner, just across the way, a dozen years ago, i gave a stockbroker a good blowing up for hammering his cellar door full of envious nails to prevent the children using it as a slide. it was all the playground they had. [illustration: the "slide" that was the children's only playground once.] on the way home i stopped at the first of all the public schools to acquire a roof playground, to see how they did it there. the janitor had been vanquished, but the pedagogue was in charge, and he had organized the life out of it all. the children sat around listless, and made little or no attempt to dance. a harassed teacher was vainly trying to form the girls into ranks for exercises of some kind. they held up their hands in desperate endeavor to get her ear, only to have them struck down impatiently, or to be summarily put out if they tried again. they did not want to exercise. they wanted to play. i tried to voice their grievance to the "doctor" who presided. "not at all," he said decisively; "there must be system, system!" "tommyrot!" said my chicago friend at my elbow, and i felt like saying "thank you!" i don't know but i did. they have good sense in chicago. jane addams is there. the doctor resumed his efforts to teach the boys something, having explained to me that downstairs, where they are when it rains, there were seven distinct echoes to bother the band. two girls "spieled" in the corner, a kind of dancing that is not favored in the playground. there had been none of that at the other places. the policeman eyed the show with a frown. so there was a fly in our ointment, after all. but for all that, the janitor is downed, his day dead. this of all things at last has been "settled right," and the path cleared for the children's feet, not in new york only, but everywhere and for all time. i, too, am glad to be alive in the time that saw it done. chapter xv "neighbor" the password truly, we live in a wonderful time. here have i been trying to bring up to date this account of the battle with the slum, and in the doing of it have been compelled, not once, but half a dozen times, to go back and wipe out what i had written because it no longer applied. the ink was not dry on the page that pleaded for the helpless ones who have to leave the hospital before they are fit to take up their battle with the world, so as to make room for others in instant need--one of the saddest of sights that has wrung the heart of the philanthropist these many years--when i read in my paper of the four million dollar gift to build a convalescents' home at once. i would rather be in that man's shoes than be the czar of all the russias. i would rather be blessed by the grateful heart of man or woman, who but just now was without hope, than have all the diamonds in the kimberley mines. yes, ours is the greatest of all times. since i started putting these pages in shape for the printer, the child labor committee and the tuberculosis committee have been formed to put up bars against the slum where it roamed unrestrained; the tenement house department has been organized and got under way, and the knell of the double-decker and the twenty-five-foot lot has been sounded. two hundred tenements are going up to-day under the new law, that are in all respects model buildings, as good as the city and suburban home company's houses, though built for revenue only. all over the greater city the libraries are rising which, when mr. carnegie's munificent plan has been worked out to the full, are to make, with the noble central edifice in bryant park, the greatest free library system of any day, with a princely fortune to back it.[ ] new bridges are spanning our rivers, tunnels are being bored, engineers are blasting a way for the city out of its bonds on crowded manhattan, devotion and high principle rule once more at the city hall, cuba is free, tammany is out; the boy is coming into his rights; the toughs of hell's kitchen have taken to farming on the site of stryker's lane, demolished and gone. [footnote : the astor, lenox, and tilden foundations represent a total of some seven millions of dollars. the great central library, erected by the city, is to cost five millions, and the fifty branches for which the city gives the sites and andrew carnegie the buildings, $ , , . the city's contribution for maintenance will be over half a million yearly.] and here upon my table lies a letter from the head-worker of the university settlement, which the postman brought half an hour ago, that lets more daylight in, it seems to me, than all the rest. he has been thinking, he writes, of how to yoke the public school and the social settlement together, and the conviction that comes to everybody who thinks to solve problems, has come to him, too, that the way to do a thing is to do it. so he proposes, since they need another house over at the west side branch, to acquire it by annexing the public school and turning "all the force and power that is in the branch into the bare walls of the school, there to develop a social spirit and an enthusiasm" among young and old that shall make of the school truly the neighborhood house and soul. and he asks us all to fall in. i say it lets daylight in, because we have all felt for some time that something like this was bound to come, only how was not clear yet. here is this immense need of a tenement house population of more than two million souls: something to take the place, as far as anything can, of the home that isn't there, a place to meet other than the saloon; a place for the young to do their courting--there is no room for it in the tenement, and the street is not the place for it, yet it has got to be done; a place to make their elders feel that they are men and women, something else than mere rent-paying units. why, it was this very need that gave birth to the social settlement among us, and we see now that with the old machinery it does not supply it and never can. "i can reach the people of just about two blocks about me here," said this same head worker of the same settlement to me an evening or two ago, "and that is all." but there are hundreds of blocks filled with hungry minds and souls. a hundred settlements would be needed where there is one. the churches could not meet the need. they ought to and some day they will, when we build the church down-town and the mission up-town. but now they can't. there are not enough of them, for one thing. they do try; for only the other day, when i went to tell the methodist ministers of it, and of how they ought to back up the effort to have the public school thrown open on sundays for concerts, lectures, and the like, after the first shock of surprise they pulled themselves together manfully and said that they would do it. they saw with me that it is a question, not of damaging the lord's day, but of wresting it from the devil, who has had it all this while over there on the east side, and on the west side too. all along the swarming streets with no church in sight, but a saloon on every corner, stand the big schoolhouses with their spacious halls, empty and silent and grim, waiting to have the soul breathed into them that alone can make their teaching effective for good citizenship. they belong to the people. why should they not be used by the people sunday and week-day and day and night, for whatever will serve their ends--if the janitor has a fit? now here come the social settlements with their plan of doing it. what claim have they to stand in the gap? this one, that they are there now, though they do not fill it. the gap has been too much for them. they need the help of those they came to succor quite as much as _they_ need them. i have no desire to find fault with any one who wants to help his neighbor. god forbid! i am not even a settlement worker. but when i read, as i did yesterday, a summing up of the meaning of settlements by three or four residents in such houses, and see education, reform politics, local improvements, legislation, characterized as the aim and objects of settlement work, i am afraid somebody is on the wrong track. those things are good, provided they spring naturally from the intellectual life that moves in and about the settlement house; indeed, unless they do, something has quite decidedly miscarried there. but they are not the object. when i pick up a report of one settlement and another, and find them filled with little essays on the people and their ways and manners, as if the settlement were same kind of a laboratory where they prepare human specimens for inspection and classification,--stick them on pins like bugs and hold them up and twirl them so as to let us have a good look,--then i know that somebody has wandered away off, and that _he knows he has_, for all he is making a brave show trying to persuade himself and us that it was worth the money. no use going into that farther. the fact is that we have all been groping. we saw the need and started to fill it, and in the strange surroundings we lost our bearings and the password. we got to be sociological instead of neighborly. it is not the same thing. [illustration: a cooking lesson in vacation school: the best temperance sermon.] here is the lost password: "neighbor". that is all there is to it. if a settlement isn't the neighbor of those it would reach, it is nothing at all. "a place," said the sub-warden of toynbee hall in the discussion i spoke of, and set it on even keel in an instant, "a place of good will rather than of good works." that is it. we had become strangers, had drifted apart, and the settlement came to introduce us to one another again, as it were, to remind us that we were neighbors. and because that was the one thing above all that was wanted, it became an instant success where it was not converted into a social experiment station; and even that could not kill it. if any one doubts that i have the right password, let him look for the proof in the organization this past month of a new "coöperative social settlement," to be carried on "in conjunction and association with the people in the neighborhood." not a new idea at all, only a fresh grip taken on the old one. it is sound enough and strong enough to set itself right if we will only let it. only last week dr. elliot of the hudson guild over in west twenty-sixth street told me of his boys' and their fathers' subscribing their savings with the hope of owning the guild house themselves. they had never let go their grip on the idea over there. they are of felix adler's flock. but take now the elements as we have them: this great and terrible longing for neighborliness where the home feeling is gone with the home; the five hundred school buildings in the metropolis that have already successfully been put to neighborhood use. it was nothing else that dr. leipziger did when he began his evening lectures in the schools to grown audiences a dozen years ago, and proudly pointed to a record of twenty-two thousand in attendance for the season. last winter nearly a million workingmen and their wives attended over three thousand lectures.[ ] dr. leipziger is now the strong advocate of opening the schools on the sabbath, as a kind of sunday opening we can all join in. of course he is; he has seen what it means. these factors, the need, the means, and then the settlement that is there to put the two together, as its own great opportunity--has it not a good claim? [footnote : the first year's record was lectures and , hearers. last winter ( - ) there were lectures in over places, and the total attendance was , . this winter there will be centres. it is satisfactory to know that churches and church houses fall in with the plan more and more where there are no schools to serve as halls.] experimenting with the school? well, what of it? _they_ can stand it. what else have we been doing the last half-dozen years or more, and what splendid results have we not to show for it? it is the spirit that calls every innovation frills, and boasts that we have got the finest schools in the world which blocks the way to progress. it cropped out at a meeting of settlement workers and schoolmen that had for its purpose a better understanding. in the meeting one gray-haired teacher arose and said that the schools as they are were good enough for his father, and therefore they were good enough for him. that teacher's place is on the shelf that has been provided now for those who have done good work in a day that is past. "vaudeville," sneered the last tammany mayor, when the east side asked for a playground for the children. "vaudeville for the masses killed rome." the masses responded by killing him politically. my father was a teacher, and it is because he was a good one and taught me that when growth ceases decay begins, that i am never going to be satisfied, no matter how good the schools get to be. i want them ever closer to the people's life, because upon that does that very life depend. turn back to what i said about the slum tenant and see what it means: in the slum only . per cent of native parentage. all but five in a hundred had either come over the sea, or else their parents had. nearly half ( . ) were ignorant, illiterate; for the whole city the percentage of illiteracy was only . . turn to the reformatory showing: of ten thousand and odd prisoners . utterly illiterate, or able to read and write only with difficulty. do you see how the whole battle with the slum is fought out in and around the public school? for in ignorance selfishness finds its opportunity, and the two together make the slum. the mere teaching is only a part of it. the school itself is a bigger--the meeting there of rich and poor. out of the public school comes, must come if we are to last, the real democracy that has our hope in keeping. i wish it were in my power to compel every father to send his boy to the public school; i would do it, and so perchance bring the school up to the top notch where it was lacking. the president of the united states to-day sets a splendid example to us all in letting his boys mingle with those who are to be their fellow-citizens by and by. it is precisely in the sundering of our society into classes that have little in common, _that are no longer neighbors_, that our peril lives. a people cannot work together for the good of the state if they are not on speaking terms. in the gap the slum grows up. that was one reason why i hailed with a shout the proposition of mr. schwab, the steel trust millionnaire, to take a regiment of boys down to staten island on an excursion every day in summer. let me see, i haven't told about that, i think. he had bought a large property down there, all beach and lake and field and woodland, and proposed to build a steamer with room for a thousand or two, and then take them down with a band of music on board, and give them a swim, a romp, and a jolly good time. as soon as he spoke to me about it, i said: yes! and hitch it to the public school somehow; make it part of the curriculum. no more nature study out of a barrel! take the whole school, teachers and all, and let them do their own gathering of specimens. so the children shall be under efficient control, and so the tired teacher shall get a chance too. but more than all, so it may befall that the boys themselves shall come to know one another better and that more of them shall get together; for what boy does not want a jolly good romp, and why should he not be mr. schwab's guest for the day, if he does count his dollars by millions? the working plan the board of education can be trusted to provide. i think it will do it gladly, once it understands. indeed, why should it not? no one thinks of surrendering the schools, but simply of enlisting the young enthusiasm that is looking for employment, and of a way of turning it to use, while the board is constantly calling for just that priceless personal element which money cannot buy and without which the schools will never reach their highest development. precedents there are in plenty. if not, we can make them. new york is the metropolis. in toledo the park commissioners take the public school boys sleigh-riding in winter. our park commissioner is ploughing up land for them to learn farming and gardening. it is all experimenting, and let us be glad we have got to that, if we do blunder once and again. the laboratory study, the bug business, we shall get rid of, and we shall get rid of some antediluvian ways that hamper our educational development yet. we shall find a way to make the schools centres of distribution in our library system as its projectors have hoped. just now it cannot be done, because it takes about a year for a book to pass the ten or twelve different kinds of censorship our sectarian zeal has erected about the school. we shall have the assembly halls thrown open, not only for dr. leipziger's lectures and sunday concerts (already one permit has been granted for the latter), but for trades-union meetings, and for political meetings, if i have my way. until we consider our politics quite good enough to be made welcome in the school, they won't be good enough for it. the day we do let them in, the saloon will lose its grip, and not much before. when the fathers and mothers meet under the school roof as in their neighborhood house, and the children have their games, their clubs, and their dances there--when the school, in short, takes the place in the life of the people in the crowded quarters which the saloon now monopolizes, there will no longer be a saloon question in politics; and that day the slum is beaten. [illustration: such a ball-room!] very likely i shall not find many to agree with me on this question of political meetings. non-partisan let them be then. so we shall more readily find our way out of the delusion that national politics have any place in municipal elections or affairs, a notion that has delayed the day of decency too long. we shall grow, along with the schools, and by and by our party politics will be clean enough to sit in the school seats too. and oh! by the way, as to those seats, is there any special virtue in the "dead-line" of straight rows that have come down to us from the time of the egyptians or farther back still? no. i would not lay impious hand on any hallowed tradition, educational or otherwise. but is it that? and why is it? it would be so much easier to make the school the people's hall and the boys' club, if those seats could be moved around in human fashion; they might come naturally into human shape in the doing of it. but, as i said, i wouldn't for the world--not for the world. only, why is the dead-line hallowed? i am willing to leave it to the board. we are singularly fortunate in having just now a mayor who will listen, a board of education that will act, and a superintendent of school buildings who can and will build schools to meet neighborhood needs--if we will make them plain. the last time i dropped into his office i found him busy, between tiffs with contractors, sketching an underground story for the schoolhouse, like the great hall of the cooper institute, that should at the same time serve the purpose of an assembly hall, and put the roof garden one story nearer the street. that was his answer to the cry of elevators. "we do not need municipal boys' club houses," said mayor low in vetoing the bill to build them last winter, "we have the schools." true! then let us have them used, and if the classroom is not the best kind of place for them, the experience of the settlements will show us what kind is. they carry on no end of such clubs. and let the board of education trustily leave the rest to superintendent snyder, who knows. isn't it enough to make a man believe the millennium has come, to find that there is at last some one who knows? not necessarily all at once. in a copy of _charities_ which just now came in (did i not say that it goes that way all the time?) i read that the chicago small parks commission has recommended nine neighborhood parks at a cost of a million dollars,--wise city of the winds! we waited till we had to pay a million for each park,--but that the playgrounds had been left to the board of education, which body was "not certain whether school funds may be spent for playgrounds apart from buildings." however, they are going to provide seventy-five school yards big enough to romp in, and the other trouble will be got over. in boston they are planning neighborhood entertainment as a proper function of the school. here we shall find for both school and settlement their proper places with one swoop. the kindergarten, manual training, and the cooking school, all experiments in their day, cried out as fads by some, have brought common sense in their train. when it rules the public school in our cities--i said it before--we can put off our armor; the battle with the slum will be over. [illustration: teaching the girls to swim: part of the public school course.] chapter xvi reform by humane touch i have sketched in outline the gains achieved in the metropolis since its conscience awoke. now, in closing this account, i am reminded of the story of an old irishman who died here a couple of years ago. patrick mullen was an honest blacksmith. he made guns for a living. he made them so well that one with his name on it was worth a good deal more than the market price of guns. other makers went to him with offers of money for the use of his stamp; but they never went twice. when sometimes a gun of very superior make was brought to him to finish, he would stamp it p. mullen, never patrick mullen. only to that which he himself had wrought did he give his honest name without reserve. when he died, judges and bishops and other great men crowded to his modest home by the east river, and wrote letters to the newspapers telling how proud they had been to call him friend. yet he was, and remained to the end, plain patrick mullen, blacksmith and gun-maker. in his life he supplied the answer to the sigh of dreamers in all days: when will the millennium come? it will come when every man is a patrick mullen at his own trade; not merely a p. mullen, but a patrick mullen. the millennium of municipal politics, when there shall be no slum to fight, will come when every citizen does his whole duty as a citizen, not before. as long as he "despises politics," and deputizes another to do it for him, whether that other wears the stamp of a croker or of a platt,--it matters little which,--we shall have the slum, and be put periodically to the trouble and the shame of draining it in the public sight. a citizen's duty is one thing that cannot be farmed out safely; and the slum is not limited by the rookeries of mulberry or ludlow streets. it has long roots that feed on the selfishness and dulness of fifth avenue quite as greedily as on the squalor of the sixth ward. the two are not nearly so far apart as they look. [illustration: athletic meets in crotona park.] i am not saying this because it is anything new, but because we have had, within the memory of us all, an illustration of its truth in municipal politics. waring and roosevelt were the patrick mullens of the reform administration which tammany replaced with her insolent platform, "to hell with reform!" it was not an ideal administration, but it can be said of it, at least, that it was up to the times it served. it made compromises with spoils politics, and they were wretched failures. it took waring and roosevelt on the other plan, on which they insisted, of divorcing politics from the public business, and they let in more light than even my small parks over on the east side. for they showed us where we stood and what was the matter with us. we believed in waring when he demonstrated the success of his plan for cleaning the streets; not before. when roosevelt announced his programme, of enforcing the excise law because it _was_ law, a howl arose that would have frightened a less resolute man from his purpose. but he went right on doing the duty he was sworn to do. and when, at the end of three months of clamor and abuse, we saw the spectacle of the saloon keepers formally resolving to help the police instead of hindering them; of the prison ward in bellevue hospital standing empty for three days at a time, an astonishing and unprecedented thing, which the warden could only attribute to the "prompt closing of the saloon at one a.m."; and of the police force recovering its lost self-respect,--we had found out more and greater things than whether the excise law was a good or a bad law. we understood what roosevelt meant when he insisted upon the "primary virtues" of honesty and courage in the conduct of public business. for the want of them in us, half the laws that touched our daily lives had became dead letters or vehicles of blackmail and oppression. it was worth something to have that lesson taught us in that way; to find out that simple, straightforward, honest dealing as between man and man is after all effective in politics as in gun-making. perhaps we have not mastered the lesson yet. but we have not discharged the teacher, either. courage, indeed! there were times during that stormy spell when it seemed as if we had grown wholly and hopelessly flabby as a people. all the outcry against the programme of order did not come from the lawless and the disorderly, by any means. ordinarily decent, conservative citizens joined in counselling moderation and virtual compromise with the lawbreakers--it was nothing else--to "avoid trouble." the old love of fair play had been whittled down by the jack-knife of all-pervading expediency to an anæmic desire to "hold the scales even," which is a favorite modern device of the devil for paralyzing action in men. you cannot hold the scales even in a moral issue. it inevitably results in the triumph of evil, which asks nothing better than the even chance to which it is not entitled. when the trouble in the police board had reached a point where it seemed impossible not to understand that roosevelt and his side were fighting a cold and treacherous conspiracy against the cause of good government, we had the spectacle of a christian endeavor society inviting the man who had hatched the plot, the bitter and relentless enemy whom the mayor had summoned to resign, and afterward did his best to remove as a fatal obstacle to reform,--inviting this man to come before it and speak of christian citizenship! it was a sight to make the bosses hug themselves with glee. for christian citizenship is their nightmare, and nothing is so cheering to them as evidence that those who profess it have no sense. apart from the moral bearings of it, what this question of enforcement of law means in the life of the poor was illustrated by testimony given before the police board under oath. a captain was on trial for allowing the policy swindle to go unchecked in his precinct. policy is a kind of penny lottery, with alleged daily drawings which never take place. the whole thing is a pestilent fraud, which is allowed to exist only because it pays heavy blackmail to the police and the politicians. expert witnesses testified that eight policy shops in the twenty-first ward, which they had visited, did a business averaging about thirty-two dollars a day each. the twenty-first is a poor irish tenement ward. the policy sharks were getting two hundred and fifty dollars or more a day of the hard-earned wages of those poor people, in sums of from one and two cents to a quarter, without making any return for it. the thing would seem incredible were it not too sadly familiar. the saloon keeper got his share of what was left, and rewarded his customer by posing as the "friend of the poor man" whenever his business was under scrutiny; i have yet in my office the record of a single week during the hottest of the fight between roosevelt and the saloons, as showing of what kind that friendship is. it embraces the destruction of eight homes by the demon of drunkenness; the suicide of four wives, the murder of two others by drunken husbands, the killing of a policeman in the street, and the torture of an aged woman by her rascal son, who "used to be a good boy till he took to liquor, when he became a perfect devil." in that rôle he finally beat her to death for giving shelter to some evicted fellow-tenants who else would have had to sleep in the street. nice friendly turn, wasn't it? and yet there was something to be said for the saloon keeper. he gave the man the refuge from his tenement which he needed. i say needed, purposely. there has been a good deal of talk in our day about the saloon as a social necessity. about all there is to that is that the saloon is there, and the necessity too. man is a social animal, whether he lives in a tenement or in a palace. but the palace has resources; the tenement has not. it is a good place to get away from at all times. the saloon is cheery and bright, and never far away. the man craving human companionship finds it there. he finds, too, in the saloon keeper one who understands his wants much better than the reformer who talks civil service in the meetings. "civil service" to him and his kind means yet a contrivance for keeping them out of a job. the saloon keeper knows the boss, if he is not himself the boss or his lieutenant, and can steer him to the man who will spend all day at the city hall, if need be, to get a job for a friend, and all night pulling wires to keep him in it, if trouble is brewing. mr. beecher used to say, when pleading for bright hymn tunes, that he didn't want the devil to have the monopoly of all the good music in the world. the saloon has had the monopoly up to date of all the cheer in the tenements. if its owner has made it pan out to his own advantage and the boss's, we at least have no just cause of complaint. we let him have the field all to himself. it is good to know that the day is coming when he will have a rival. model saloons may never be more than a dream in new york, but even now the first of a number of "social halls" is being planned by miss lillian wald of the nurses' settlement and her co-workers that shall give the east side the chance to eat and dance and make merry without the stigma of the bar upon it all. the first of the buildings will be opened within a year. as to this boss, of whom we hear so much, what manner of man is he? that depends on how you look at him. i have one in mind, a district boss, whom you would accept instantly as a type if i were to mention his name, which i shall not do for a reason which i fear will shock you: he and i are friends. in his private capacity i have real regard for him. as a politician and a boss i have none at all. i am aware that this is taking low ground in a discussion of this kind, but perhaps the reader will better understand the relations of his "district" to him, if i let him into mine. there is no political bond between us, of either district or party, just the reverse. it is purely personal. he was once a police justice,--at that time he kept a saloon,--and i have known few with more common sense, which happens to be the one quality especially needed in that office. up to the point where politics came in i could depend upon him entirely. at that point he let me know bluntly that he was in the habit of running his district to suit himself. the way he did it brought him under the just accusation of being guilty of every kind of rascality known to politics. when next our paths would cross each other, it would very likely be on some errand of mercy, to which his feet were always swift. i recall the distress of a dear and gentle lady at whose table i once took his part. she could not believe that there was any good in him; what he did must be done for effect. some time after that she wrote, asking me to look after an east side family that was in great trouble. it was during the severe cold spell of the winter of , and there was need of haste. i went over at once; but although i had lost no time, i found my friend the boss ahead of me. it was a real pleasure to me to be able to report to my correspondent that he had seen to their comfort, and to add that it was unpolitical charity altogether. the family was that of a jewish widow with a lot of little children. he is a roman catholic. there was not even a potential vote in the house, the children being all girls. they were not in his district, to boot; and as for effect, he was rather shamefaced at my catching him at it. i do not believe that a soul has ever heard of the case from him to this day. my friend is a tammany boss, and i shall not be accused of partiality for him on that account. during that same cold spell a politician of the other camp came into my office and gave me a hundred dollars to spend as i saw fit among the poor. his district was miles up-town, and he was most unwilling to disclose his identity, stipulating in the end that no one but i should know where the money came from. he was not seeking notoriety. the plight of the suffering had appealed to him, and he wanted to help where he could, that was all. now, i have not the least desire to glorify the boss in this. he is not glorious to me. he is simply human. often enough he is a coarse and brutal fellow, in his morals as in his politics. again, he may have some very engaging personal traits that bind his friends to him with the closest of ties. the poor man sees the friend, the charity, the power that is able and ready to help him in need; is it any wonder that he overlooks the source of this power, this plenty,--that he forgets the robbery in the robber who is "good to the poor"? anyhow, if anybody got robbed, it was "the rich." with the present ethical standards of the slum, it is easy to construct a scheme of social justice out of it that is very comforting all round, even to the boss himself, though he is in need of no sympathy or excuse. "politics," he will tell me in his philosophic moods, "is a game for profit. the city foots the bills." patriotism means to him working for the ticket that shall bring more profit. "i regard," he says, lighting his cigar, "a repeater as a shade off a murderer, but you are obliged to admit that in my trade he is a necessary evil." i am not obliged to do anything of the kind, but i can understand his way of looking at it. he simply has no political conscience. he has gratitude, loyalty to a friend,--that is part of his stock in trade,--fighting blood, plenty of it, all the good qualities of the savage; nothing more. and a savage he is, politically, with no soul above the dross. he would not rob a neighbor for the world; but he will steal from the city--though he does not call it by that name--without a tremor, and count it a good mark. when i tell him that, he waves his hand toward wall street as representative of the business community, and toward the office of his neighbor, the padrone, as representative of the railroads, and says with a laugh, "don't they all do it?" the boss believes in himself. it is one of his strong points. and he has experience to back him. in the fall of we shook off boss rule in new york, and set up housekeeping for ourselves. we kept it up three years, and then went back to the old style. i should judge that we did it because we were tired of too much virtue. perhaps we were not built to hold such a lot at once. besides, it is much easier to be ruled than to rule. that fall, after the election, when i was concerned about what would become of my small parks, of the health department in which i took such just pride, and of a dozen other things, i received one unvarying reply to my anxious question, or rather two. if it was the health department, i was told: "go to platt. he is the only man who can do it. he is a sensible man, and will see that it is protected." if small parks, it was: "go to croker. he will not allow the work to be stopped." a playgrounds bill was to be presented in the legislature, and everybody advised: "go to platt. he won't object, it is popular." and so on. my advisers were not politicians. they were business men, but recently honestly interested in reform. i was talking one day, with a gentleman of very wide reputation as a philanthropist, about the unhappy lot of the old fire-engine horses,--which, after lives of toil that deserve a better fate, are sold for a song to drag out a weary existence hauling some huckster's cart around,--and wishing that they might be pensioned off to live out their years on a farm, with enough to eat and a chance to roll in the grass. he was much interested, and promptly gave me this advice: "i tell you what you do. you go and see croker. he likes horses." no wonder the boss believes in himself. he would be less than human if he did not. and he is very human. i had voted on the day of the greater new york election,--the tammany election, as we learned to call it afterward,--in my home out in the borough of queens, and went over to the depot to catch the train for the city. on the platform were half a dozen of my neighbors, all business men, all "friends of reform." some of them were just down from breakfast. one i remember as introducing a resolution, in a meeting we had held, about the discourtesy of local politicians. he looked surprised when reminded that it was election day. "why, is it to-day?" he said. "they didn't send any carriage," said another regretfully. "i don't see what's the use," said the third; "the roads are just as bad as when we began talking about it." (we had been trying to mend them.) the fourth yawned and said: "i don't care. i have my business to attend to." and they took the train, which meant that they lost their votes. the tammany captain was busy hauling his voters by the cart-load to the polling place. over there stood a reform candidate who had been defeated in the primary, and puffed out his chest. "the politicians are afraid of me," he said. they slapped him on the back, as they went by, and told him that he was a devil of a fellow. so tammany came back. and four long years we swore at it. but i am afraid we swore at the wrong fellow. the real tammany is not the conscienceless rascal that plunders our treasury and fattens on our substance. that one is a mere counterfeit. it is the voter who waits for a carriage to take him to the polls; the man who "doesn't see what's the use"; the business man who says "business is business," and has no time to waste on voting; the citizen who "will wait to see how the cat jumps, because he doesn't want to throw his vote away"; the cowardly american who "doesn't want to antagonize" anybody; the fool who "washes his hands of politics." these are the real tammany, the men after the boss's own heart. for every one whose vote he buys, there are two of these who give him theirs for nothing. we shall get rid of him when these withdraw their support, when they become citizens of the patrick mullen stamp, as faithful at the polling place as he was at the forge; not before. there is as much work for reform at the top as at the bottom. the man in the slum votes according to his light, and the boss holds the candle. but the boss is in no real sense a leader. he follows instead, always as far behind the moral sentiment of the community as he thinks is safe. he has heard it said that a community will not be any better than its citizens, and that it will be just as good as they are, and he applies the saying to himself. he is no worse a boss than the town deserves. i can conceive of his taking credit to himself as some kind of a moral instrument by which the virtue of the community may be graded, though that is most unlikely. he does not bother himself with the morals of anything. but right here is his achilles heel. the man has no conscience. he cannot tell the signs of it in others. it always comes upon him unawares. reform to him simply means the "outs" fighting to get in. the real thing he will always underestimate. witness richard croker in the last election offering bishop potter, after his crushing letter to the mayor, to join him in purifying the city, and, when politely refused, setting up an "inquiry" of his own. the conclusion is irresistible that he thought the bishop either a fool or a politician playing for points. such a man is not the power he seems. he is formidable only in proportion to the amount of shaking it takes to rouse the community's conscience. the boss is like the measles, a distemper of a self-governing people's infancy. when we shall have come of age politically, he will have no terrors for us. meanwhile, being charged with the business of governing, which we left to him because we were too busy making money, he follows the track laid out for him, and makes the business pan out all that is in it. he fights when we want to discharge him. of course he does; no man likes to give up a good job. he will fight or bargain, as he sees his way clear. he will give us small parks, play piers, new schools, anything we ask, to keep his place, while trying to find out "the price" of this conscience which he does not understand. even to the half of his kingdom he will give, to be "in" on the new deal. he has done it before, and there is no reason that he can see why it should not be done again. and he will appeal to the people whom he is plundering to trust him because they know him. odd as it sounds, this is where he has his real hold. i have shown why this is so. to the poor people of his district the boss is a friend in need. he is one of them. he does not want to reform them; far from it. no doubt it is very ungrateful of them, but the poor people have no desire to be reformed. they do not think they need to be. they consider their moral standards quite as high as those of the rich, and resent being told that they are mistaken. the reformer comes to them from another world to tell them these things, and goes his way. the boss lives among them. he helped john to a job on the pipes in their hard winter, and got mike on the force. they know him as a good neighbor, and trust him to their harm. he drags their standard ever farther down. the question for those who are trying to help them is how to make them transfer their allegiance, and trust their real friends instead. it ought not be a difficult question to answer. any teacher could do it. he knows, if he knows anything, that the way to get and keep the children's confidence is to trust them, and let them know that they are trusted. they will almost always come up to the demand thus made upon them. preaching to them does little good; preaching at them still less. men, whether rich or poor, are much like children. the good in them is just as good, and the bad, in view of their enlarged opportunities for mischief, not so much worse, all considered. a vigorous optimism, a stout belief in one's fellow-man, is better equipment in a campaign for civic virtue than stacks of tracts and arguments, economic and moral. there is good bottom, even in the slum, for that kind of an anchor to get a grip on. some years ago i went to see a boxing match there had been much talk about. the hall was jammed with a rough and noisy crowd, hotly intent upon its favorite. his opponent, who hailed, i think, from somewhere in delaware, was greeted with hostile demonstrations as a "foreigner." but as the battle wore on, and he was seen to be fair and manly, while the new yorker struck one foul blow after another, the attitude of the crowd changed rapidly from enthusiastic approval of the favorite to scorn and contempt; and in the last round, when he knocked the delawarean over with a foul blow, the audience rose in a body and yelled to have the fight given to the "foreigner," until my blood tingled with pride. for the decision would leave it practically without a cent. it had staked all it had on the new yorker. "he is a good man," i heard on all sides, while the once favorite sneaked away without a friend. "good" meant fair and manly to that crowd. i thought, as i went to the office the next morning, that it ought to be easy to appeal to such a people with measures that were fair and just, if we could only get on common ground. but the only hint i got from my reform paper was an editorial denunciation of the brutality of boxing, on the same page that had an enthusiastic review of the college football season. i do not suppose it did any harm, for the paper was probably not read by one of the men it had set out to reform. but suppose it had been, how much would it have appealed to them? exactly the qualities of robust manliness which football is supposed to encourage in college students had been evoked by the trial of strength and skill which they had witnessed. as to the brutality, they knew that fifty young men are maimed or killed at football to one who fares ill in a boxing match. would it seem to them common sense, or cant and humbug? that is what it comes down to in the end: common sense and common honesty. common sense to steer us clear of the "sociology" reef that would make our cause ridiculous, on fifth avenue and in east broadway. i have no quarrel with the man who would do things by system and in order; but the man who would reduce men and women and children to mere items in his infallible system and classify and sub-classify them until they are as dried up as his theories, that man i will fight till i die. one throb of a human heart is worth a whole book of his stuff. common honesty to keep us afloat at all. if we worship as success mere money-getting, closing our eyes to the means, let us at least say it like the man who told me to-day that "after all, one has to admire bill devery; he's got the dough," devery was tammany's police chief. the man is entitled to his opinion, but if it gets hitched to the reform cart by mistake, the load is going to be spilled. it has been, more than once. a saving sense of humor might have avoided some of those pitfalls. i am seriously of the opinion that a professional humorist ought to be attached to every reform movement, to keep it from making itself ridiculous by either too great solemnity or too much conceit. as it is, the enemy sometimes employs him with effect. failing the adoption of that plan, i would recommend a decree of banishment against photographers, press-clippings men, and the rest of the congratulatory staff. why should the fact that a citizen has done a citizen's duty deserve to be celebrated in print and picture, as if something extraordinary had happened? the smoke of battle had not cleared away after the victory of reform in the fall of , before the citizens' committee and all the little sub-committees rushed pell-mell to the photographer's to get themselves on record as the men who did it. the spectacle might have inspired in the humorist the advice to get two sets made, while they were about it, one to serve by and by as an exhibit of the men who didn't; and, as the event proved, he would have been right. but it is easy to find fault, and on that tack we get no farther. those men did a great work, and they did it well. they built from the bottom and they built the foundation broad and strong. good schools, better homes, and a chance for the boy are good bricks to build with in such a structure as we are rearing. they last. just now we are laying another course; more than one, i hope. but even if it were different, we need not despair. let the enemy come back once more, it will not be to stay. it may be that, like moses and his followers, we of the present day shall see the promised land only from afar and with the eye of faith, because of our sins; that to a younger and sturdier to-morrow it shall be given to blaze the path of civic righteousness that was our dream. i like to think that it is so, and that that is the meaning of the coming of men like roosevelt and waring at this time with their simple appeal to the reason of honest men. unless i greatly err in reading the signs of the times, it is indeed so, and the day of the boss and of the slum is drawing to an end. our faith has felt the new impulse; rather, i should say, it has given it. the social movements, and that which we call politics, are but a reflection of what the people honestly believe, a chart of their aims and aspirations. charity in our day no longer means alms, but justice. the social settlements are substituting vital touch for the machine charity that reaped a crop of hate and beggary. charity organization--"conscience born of love" some one has well called it--is substituting its methods in high and low places for the senseless old ways. its champions are oftener found standing with organized labor for legislation to correct the people's wrongs, and when the two stand together nothing can resist them. through its teaching we are learning that our responsibility as citizens for a law does not cease with its enactment, but rather begins there. we are growing, in other words, to the stature of real citizenship. we are emerging from the kind of barbarism that dragged children to the jail and thrust them in among hardened criminals there, and that sat by helpless and saw the foundlings die in the infant hospital at the rate--really there was no rate; they practically all died, every one that was not immediately removed to a home and a mother. for four years now a joint committee of the state charities' aid association and the association for improving the condition of the poor has taken them off the city's hands and adopted them out, and in every hundred now eighty-nine live and grow up! after all, not even a jersey cow can take the place of a mother with a baby. and we are building a children's court that shall put an end to the other outrage, for boys taken there are let off on probation, to give them the chance under a different teaching from the slum's, which it denied them till now. [illustration: flag-drill in the "king's garden." the playground at the jacob a. riis house.] we have learned that we cannot pass off checks for human sympathy in settlement of our brotherhood arrears. the church, which once stood by indifferent, or uncomprehending, is hastening to enter the life of the people. i have told of how, in the memory of men yet living, one church, moving up-town away from the crowd, left its old mulberry street home to be converted into tenements that justly earned the name of "dens of death" in the health department's records, while another became the foulest lodging house in an unclean city, and of how it was a church corporation that owned the worst underground dive down-town in those bad old days, and turned a deaf ear to all remonstrances. the church was "angling for souls." but souls in this world live in bodies endowed with reason. the results of that kind of fishing were empty pews and cold hearts, and the conscience-stricken cry that went up, "what shall we do to lay hold of this great multitude that has slipped from us?" the years have passed and brought the answer. to-day we see churches of every denomination uniting in a systematic canvass of the city to get at the facts of the people's life of which they had ceased to be a part, pleading for parks, playgrounds, kindergartens, libraries, clubs, and better homes. there is a new and hearty sound to the word "brother" that is full of hope. the cry has been answered. the gap in the social body, between rich and poor, is no longer widening. we are certainly coming closer together. a dozen years ago, when the king's daughters lighted a christmas tree in gotham court, the children ran screaming from santa claus as from a "bogey man." here lately the boys in the hebrew institute's schools nearly broke the bank laying in supplies to do him honor. i do not mean that the jews are deserting to join the christian church. they are doing that which is better,--they are embracing its spirit; and they and we are the better for it. "the more i know of the other half," writes a friend to me, "the more i feel the great gulf that is fixed between us, and the more profoundly i grieve that this is the best that christian civilization has as yet been able to do toward a true social system." let my friend take heart. she herself has been busy in my sight all these years binding up the wounds. if that be the most a christian civilization has been able to do for the neighbor till now, who shall say that it is not also the greatest? "this do and thou shalt live," said the lord of him who showed mercy. that was the mark of the brotherhood. no, the gulf is not widening. it is only that we have taken soundings and know it, and in the doing of it we have come to know one another. the rest we may confidently leave with him who knows it all. god knows we waited long enough; and how close we were to one another all the while without knowing it! two or three years ago at christmas a clergyman, who lives out of town and has a houseful of children, asked me if i could not find for them a poor family in the city with children of about the same ages, whom they might visit and befriend. he worked every day in the office of a foreign mission in fifth avenue, and knew little of the life that moved about him in the city. i picked out a hungarian widow in an east side tenement, whose brave struggle to keep her little flock together had enlisted my sympathy and strong admiration. she was a cleaner in an office building; not until all the arrangements had been made did it occur to me to ask where. then it turned out that she was scrubbing floors in the missionary society's house, right at my friend's door. they had passed one another every day, each in need of the other, and each as far from the other as if oceans separated them instead of a doorstep four inches wide. looking back over the years that lie behind with their work, and forward to those that are coming, i see only cause for hope. as i write these last lines in a far-distant land, in the city of my birth, the children are playing under my window, and calling to one another with glad cries in my sweet mother-tongue, even as we did in the long ago. life and the world are before them, bright with the promise of morning. so to me seem the skies at home. not lightly do i say it, for i have known the toil of rough-hewing it on the pioneer line that turns men's hair gray; but i have seen also the reward of the toil. new york is the youngest of the world's great cities, barely yet out of knickerbockers. it may be that our century will yet see it as the greatest of them all. the task that is set it, the problem it has to solve and which it may not shirk, is the problem of civilization, of human progress, of a people's fitness for self-government, that is on trial among us. we shall solve it by the world-old formula of human sympathy, of humane touch. somewhere in these pages i have told of the woman in chicago who accounted herself the happiest woman alive because she had at last obtained a playground for her poor neighbors' children. "i have lived here for years," she said to me, "and struggled with principalities and powers, and have made up my mind that the most and the best i can do is to live right here with my people and smile with them,--keep smiling; weep when i must, but smile as long as i possibly can." and the tears shone in her gentle old eyes as she said it. when we have learned to smile and weep with the poor, we shall have mastered our problem. then the slum will have lost its grip and the boss his job. until then, while they are in possession, our business is to hold taut and take in slack right along, never letting go for a moment. * * * * * and now, having shown you the dark side of the city, which, after all, i love, with its great memories, its high courage, and its bright skies, as i love the little danish town where my cradle stood, let me, before i close this account of the struggle with evil, show you also its good heart by telling you "the unnecessary story of mrs. ben wah and her parrot." perchance it may help you to grasp better the meaning of the battle with the slum. it is for such as she and for such as "jim," whose story i told before, that we are fighting. chapter xvii the unnecessary story of mrs. ben wah and her parrot mrs. ben wah was dying. word came up from the district office of the charity organization society to tell me of it. would i come and see her before i went away? mrs. ben wah was an old charge of mine, the french canadian widow of an iroquois indian, whom, years before, i had unearthed in a hudson street tenement. i was just then making ready for a voyage across the ocean to the old home to see my own mother, and the thought of the aged woman who laid away her children long ago by the cold camp-fires of her tribe in canadian forests was a call not to be resisted. i went at once. the signs of illness were there in a notice tacked up on the wall, warning everybody to keep away when her attic should be still, until her friends could come from the charity office. it was a notion she had, mrs. mccutcheon, the district visitor, explained, that would not let her rest till her "paper" was made out. for her, born in the wilderness, death had no such terror as prying eyes. "them police fellows," she said, with the least touch of resentment in her gentle voice, "they might take my things and sell them to buy cigars to smoke." i suspect it was the cigar that grated harshly. it was ever to her a vulgar slur on her beloved pipe. in truth, the mere idea of mrs. ben wah smoking a cigar rouses in me impatient resentment. without her pipe she was not herself. i see her yet, stuffing it with approving forefinger, on the christmas day when i had found her with tobacco pouch empty, and pocket to boot, and nodding the quaint comment from her corner, "it's no disgrace to be poor, but it's sometimes very inconvenient." [illustration: mrs. ben wah.] there was something in the little attic room that spoke of the coming change louder than the warning paper. a half-finished mat, with its bundle of rags put carefully aside; the thirsty potato-vine on the fire-escape, which reached appealingly from its soap-box toward the window, as if in wondering search for the hands that had tended it so faithfully,--bore silent testimony that mrs. ben wah's work-day was over at last. it had been a long day--how long no one may ever know. "the winter of the big snow," or "the year when deer was scarce" on the gatineau, is not as good a guide to time-reckoning in the towns as in the woods, and mrs. ben wah knew no other. her thoughts dwelt among the memories of the past as she sat slowly nodding her turbaned head, idle for once. the very head-dress, arranged and smoothed with unusual care, was "notice," proceeding from a primitive human impulse. before the great mystery she "was ashamed and covered her head." the charity visitor told me what i had half guessed. beyond the fact that she was tired and had made up her mind to die, nothing ailed mrs. ben wah. but at her age, the doctor had said, it was enough; she would have her way. in faith, she was failing day by day. all that could be done was to make her last days as easy as might be. i talked to her of my travels, of the great salt water upon which i should journey many days; but her thoughts were in the lonely woods, and she did not understand. i told her of beautiful france, the language of which she spoke with a singularly sweet accent, and asked her if there was not something i might bring back to her to make her happy. as i talked on, a reminiscent smile came into her eyes and lingered there. it was evidently something that pleased her. by slow degrees we dragged the bashful confession out of her that there was yet one wish she had in this life. once upon a time, long, long ago, when, as a young woman, she had gone about peddling beads, she had seen a bird, such a splendid bird, big and green and beautiful, with a red turban, and that could talk. talk! as she recalled the glorious apparition, she became quite her old self again, and reached for her neglected pipe with trembling hands. if she could ever see that bird again--but she guessed it was long since gone. she was a young woman then, and now she was old, so old. she settled back in her chair, and let the half-lighted pipe go out. "poor old soul!" said mrs. mccutcheon, patting the wrinkled hand in her lap. her lips framed the word "parrot" across the room to me, and i nodded back. when we went out together it was settled between us that mrs. ben wah was to be doctored according to her own prescription, if it broke the rules of every school of medicine. i went straight back to the office and wrote in my newspaper that mrs. ben wah was sick and needed a parrot, a green one with a red tuft, and that she must have it right away. i told of her lonely life, and of how, on a christmas eve, years ago, i had first met her at the door of the charity organization society, laboring up the stairs with a big bundle done up in blue cheese-cloth, which she left in the office with the message that it was for those who were poorer than she. they were opening it when i came in. it contained a lot of little garments of blanket stuff, as they used to make them for the pappooses among her people in the far north. it was the very next day that i found her in her attic, penniless and without even the comfort of her pipe. like the widow of old, she had cast her mite into the treasury, even all she had. all this i told in my paper, and how she whose whole life had been kindness to others was now in need--in need of a companion to share her lonely life, of something with a voice, which would not come in and go away again, and leave her. and i begged that any one who had a green parrot with a red tuft would send it in at once. new york is a good town to live in. it has a heart. it no sooner knew that mrs. ben wah wanted a parrot than it hustled about to supply one at once. the morning mail brought stacks of letters, with offers of money to buy a parrot. they came from lawyers, business men, and bank presidents, men who pore over dry ledgers and drive sharp bargains on 'change, and are never supposed to give a thought to lonely widows pining away in poor attics. while they were being sorted, a poor little tramp song-bird flew in through the open window of the charities building in great haste, apparently in search of mrs. mccutcheon's room. its feathers were ruffled and its bangs awry, as if it had not had time to make its morning toilet, it had come in such haste to see if it would do. though it could not talk, it might at least sing to the sick old woman--sing of the silent forests with the silver lakes deep in their bosom, where the young bucks trailed the moose and the panther, and where she listened at the lodge door for their coming; and the song might bring back the smile to her wan lips. but though it was nearly green and had tousled top, it was not a parrot, and it would not do. the young women who write in the big books in the office caught it and put it in a cage to sing to them instead. in the midst of the commotion came the parrot itself, big and green, in a "stunning" cage. it was an amiable bird, despite its splendid get-up, and cocked its crimson head one side to have it scratched through the bars, and held up one claw, as if to shake hands. how to get it to mrs. ben wah's without the shock killing her was the problem that next presented itself. mrs. mccutcheon solved it by doing the cage up carefully in newspaper and taking it along herself. all the way down the bird passed muffled comments on the metropolitan railway service and on its captivity, to the considerable embarrassment of its keeper; but they reached the beach street tenement and mrs. ben wah's attic at last. there mrs. mccutcheon stowed it carefully away in a corner, while she busied herself about her aged friend. she was working slowly down through an address which she had designed to break the thing gently and by degrees, when the parrot, extending a feeler on its own hook, said "k-r-r-a-a!" behind its paper screen. mrs. ben wah sat up straight and looked fixedly at the corner. seeing the big bundle there, she went over and peered into it. she caught a quick breath and stared, wide-eyed. "where you get that bird?" she demanded of mrs. mccutcheon, faintly. "oh, that is mr. riis's bird," said that lady, sparring for time; "a friend gave it to him--" "where you take him?" mrs. ben wah gasped, her hand pressed against her feeble old heart. her friend saw, and gave right up. "i am not going to take it anywhere," she said. "i brought it for you. this is to be its home, and you are to be its mother, grandma, and its friend. you are to be always together from now on--always, and have a good time." with that she tore the paper from the cage. the parrot, after all, made the speech of the occasion. he considered the garret; the potato-field on the fire-escape, through which the sunlight came in, making a cheerful streak on the floor; mrs. ben wah and her turban; and his late carrier: then he climbed upon his stick, turned a somersault, and said, "here we are," or words to that effect. thereupon he held his head over to be scratched by mrs. ben wah in token of a compact of friendship then and there made. joy, after all, does not kill. mrs. ben wah wept long and silently, big, happy tears of gratitude. then she wiped them away, and went about her household cares as of old. the prescription had worked. the next day the "notice" vanished from the wall of the room, where there were now two voices for one. i came back from europe to find my old friend with a lighter step and a lighter heart than in many a day. the parrot had learned to speak canadian french to the extent of demanding his crackers and water in the lingo of the _habitant_. whether he will yet stretch his linguistic acquirements to the learning of iroquois i shall not say. it is at least possible. the two are inseparable. the last time i went to see them, no one answered my knock on the door-jamb. i raised the curtain that serves for a door, and looked in. mrs. ben wah was asleep upon the bed. perched upon her shoulder was the parrot, no longer constrained by the bars of a cage, with his head tucked snugly in her neck, asleep too. so i left them, and so i like to remember them always, comrades true. it happened that when i was in chicago last spring i told their story to a friend, a woman. "oh, write it!" she said. "you must!" and when i asked why, she replied, with feminine logic: "because it is so unnecessary. the barrel of flour doesn't stick out all over it." now i have done as she bade me. perhaps she was right. women know these things best. like my own city, they have hearts, and will understand the unnecessary story of mrs. ben wah and her parrot. index addams, miss j., chicago work, , . adler, professor f., reform work, - , , . air-shaft in tenements, tenants' uses and peril of, . alfred corning clark buildings, , . allen street-- children seeking "the commissioner" for justice, - . one-room houses, beginnings of, . school building, , . anderson, mrs. a. a., bath gift to city, . armenian christmas tree, contribution of poor children, . association for improving condition of the poor-- baths, public, . housing reform movement, . work of, . athletic meets, crotona park, . bacillus of the slum, . balkan peninsula, immigration from, . bands, roof playgrounds, - . barney of cat alley, - . baron hirsch fund, _see_ hirsch fund. baths, public-- anderson, mrs. a. a., gift, . association for improving condition of poor, work of, . free river baths, . hamilton fish park, tammany use of, - . lack of public baths scandal, . mott street bath, . plans for system of municipal baths, - . rivington street, . shower-baths for public schools, . battle row-- gang, easter service, - . improvement, . baxter street "dens of death," , . beds, mills houses, . beginning of the battle, - . bellevue, scandal during tammany government, . bend, _see_ mulberry bend. ben wah, mrs., and her parrot, story of, - . beresheim, jacob-- arrest for murder, . birth in tenement, . law-breaking, . life and environment, - . schooling neglected, . berlin death-rate, . big flat, mott street-- carriage factory in place of, . instance of reform still-born, . blacksmith, patrick mullen, - . bleeker street house, _see_ mills houses. b'nai b'rith "removal plan," . bone alley, destruction, - , . boss, character of, - . bottle alley, whyó gang headquarters, , . bowery lodging houses, _see_ lodging houses. boxing match, . boys-- clubs, _see that title_. crime, _see that title_. farm colony for young vagrants, , , . fathers' authority lost, - . future of--effect of political influences, - . gangs, _see that title_. increase of child crime, , - . military spirit, , . play, necessity of, . summer excursions, mr. schwab's proposition, - . type of east side boy, _see_ beresheim, jacob. "weakness not wickedness" reformatory verdict, . brass bands, school roof playgrounds, - . brick sandwiches, . british museum, stone arm exhibit, message of warning, - . bronx-- crotona park athletic meets, . primary school , condition, . brooklyn-- riverside tenements, , . weeks, l. s., murder, . bruin, madame, school punishments, - . buck, miss w., management of boys' clubs, , . buddensiek, tenement builder, imprisonment, - . building department, supervision of tenement lighting, etc., . byrnes, inspector--lodging houses as nurseries of crime, , . "cadets," tammany organization, . capmaker, polish, home in stanton street tenement, - . cat alley-- barney, - . charity of the alley, - . children of the alley, - . cosmopolitan population, - . dago eviction, . deaths and funerals, - . demolition, - . description and occupation, - . "fat one," , . french couple, - . irish population, , - . marriages, early, and second marriages, . mott street scrap, - . name, mystery as to origin, . tragedy averted, . trilby, - . walsh, mrs., funeral, - . widows, - . catherine street, condition before destruction, . cellars, park street, . census-- death-rate, _see that title_. school census, . charity of the poor, instances of, - , - , . charity organization society, tenement reform movement, , . chicago-- church, basement dwellers in neighborhood of, . hull house kindergarten, harvest picture incident, . parks, . playground, - , . school excursions, . slums, outlook, . child labor, east side, - , , . children-- boys, _see that title_. cat alley, - . clubs, _see that title_. increase of child crime, , - . landlords of tenements, greenwood story, . neglect of, - , . schools, _see that title_. tagging lost children proposed, . tenements as "infant slaughter houses," . children's aid society-- report as to condition and neglect of children, . rescue of boys, . cholera panic, , , . christmas trees-- armenian, contribution of poor children, . gotham court, . santa claus in the slums, , - . church federation, fifteenth assembly district-- baths, investigation, . educational agencies and saloons, - , . churches-- movement up-town, . neglect of the young, . reform movement attitude, , - . citizens' council of hygiene, report , . city and suburban homes company-- erection of model tenements, - . homewood plan, - . management, . city history club, work of, . cleaning the streets, colonel waring's work, - , - , . clubs-- buck, miss w., work of, , . east side boys' demand for club room, . gangs, _see that title_. good government clubs, _see that title_. jackson pleasure club, school no. , - . meeting, management of miss w. buck, . people's club, work of, . saloon room, . school classroom plan, - . willard, d., work of, - . college settlement, _see_ university settlement. colored people, _see_ negroes. committee of fifteen, evidence of tammany corruption, . consumers' league, work of, - . convalescents' home, gift for, . cooking classes, advantages of, - . cooper institute, educational work, . cottages, homewood plan, - . crime-- boys, _see that title_. child crime, increase of, , - . gangs, _see that title_. italian criminals discovered in mulberry street, - . lodging houses as "nurseries of crime," , . "weakness not wickedness," reformatory verdict, . [_see also_ murders _and_ robberies.] croker, r.-- abdication, . election of , . [_see also_ tammany.] crotona park athletic meets, . crowding, _see_ overcrowding. "cruller fire," tenement house, . cutting, r. f., erection of homes for working people, . dalmatia, immigration from, . dancing, school roof playgrounds, - . death-rates-- berlin, . double-deckers, lowest mortality, - . first ward, . five points "dens of death," . heat of summer , power of resistance, - . mott street barracks, . rear tenants scandal, . reduction, council of hygiene's judgment, . reform effects on, - . deaths in cat alley, - . death's thoroughfare, old church tenements, . democratic government imperilled by existence of slum, . demolition of dangerous property, , - , , - , - , - . "dens of death," , , . destitution encouraged by free lunch, lodging, etc., , . destruction of property, _see_ demolition. devil's money--campaign against tammany, , - . "discretion" clause, tenement building, , , , . disease--disclosures of tenement house exhibition, , - . dispossessed tenants, rehousing, - . doctor, woman doctor, dr. j. e. robbins, - . dog, trilby of cat alley, - . double-deckers-- cause of overcrowding, . description and condemnation by tenement house commission, - . doom of, - , , . elizabeth street, midnight inspection, - . mortality rate, lowest, - . solid block, . drunkards and slum homes, . "druv into decency," - . dwellings of the poor, _see_ tenements. eagle, ellis island, - . east river barge, winter lodgings, , - . east river park, sacred grass, . education, _see_ schools. education board, work of, - . educational alliance-- roof garden, . work among jews, . eldridge street tenement, unlighted halls, - . eleventh ward, overcrowding statistics, . elizabeth street-- giant, . midnight inspection of tenements, - . sewing "pants" at thirty cents a day, . elliot, dr., subscriptions for guild house, . ellis island eagle, - . elsing, mr., children of sunday-school, contribution to armenian christmas tree, . emigration, _see_ immigration. enforcement of the law, necessity of, , , , , . essex street, attempt to establish park, . excursions, mr. schwab's proposition, - . exhibition, tenement house, , effect of, - . experimenting with the school, - . eyes inspection, public school children, - . factory tenements, disapproval of, . farming-- farm colony for young vagrants, , , . jewish farming abilities, . truck farming on site of stryker's hill, . fat boiling in tenements, cause of fires, . "fat one" of cat alley, , . federal government slum inquiry, , , . fifteenth assembly district, _see_ church federation. fire-engine horses, fate of, . fires in tenement houses-- air-shaft, danger of, . "cruller fire," . non-enforcement of law as to fireproof material, - . first ward death-rate, . five points-- mortality rate, . wiping out in , wisconsin farmer's work, . flag, flying, value of, - . foreign population-- child labor and education, - . italians, _see that title_. jews, _see that title_. proportion, - . forest, r. w. de, chairman of tenement house commission of , . forsyth street tragedies, . foster, r., fight with tenement landlords, . fourth ward, examination of girls' school, - . fourth ward slum, . fraunces' tavern, historical association, . free lunch, lodging, etc., vagrancy encouraged by, , . french couple, cat alley, - . "frills," hester street roof playground, , , , . funerals-- cat alley, - . slum interest and excitement, . gambling, characteristic of italian immigrant, . gangs-- battle row, easter service, - . college settlement work, success of, - . genesis of, environment of boy's career, - . hook gang, . long island story, . whyó gang headquarters, , . women's work and success, . [_see also_ boys.] gehegan, mrs., of cat alley, . genesis of the gang, environments of boy's career, - . german destitution and charity, story of, - . giant, elizabeth street. . gibbon, quotation from vitruvius as to height of dwellings, . giddings, professor f. h., child labor investigation, . gilder tenement house commission, work of, , , , , , , , . golden gate association, kindergarten record, . good government clubs-- tammany condemnation of, . work of, - , , , , , . gotham court-- beginnings of reformation, - . christmas tree, . destruction of dangerous property, , . gould, dr. e. r. l., president of company for erection of homes for poor, , , , . government by the people imperilled by existence of slum, . government slum inquiry, , , . grand street, soap factories prohibited below, . grant, mayor, reform work, - . graveyard as playground, . great robbery, city treasury, - , . green dragon yard, london, - . gun-maker patrick mullen, - . hamilton fish park-- restoration, . uselessness of, - , . health board-- tammany negligence, , . tenement landlords, fights with, , . heat of summer , power of resistance, - . hebrew institute-- educational alliance work, . roof garden, - . hebrews, _see_ jews. hell's kitchen-- improvement, - . negro possession, desolate appearance, . helvetia house demolition, . hester street-- school-- club room, . nature studies, - . roof playground, , - . wheat lesson, . street-cleaning, . hewitt, a. s.-- chairman of advisory committee on small parks, . neglect of the children, . ten years reform theory, . hirsch fund-- educational work in hebrew institute, . new jersey, aid to jewish colonies, . holy terror park, . home libraries in the tenements, - . homes-- homewood cottage scheme, failure of, - . lack of home-life-- need of neighborliness, - . warning, - . new jersey, jewish colonies, - . new orange, scheme abandoned, . rallying points of civilization, . slum an enemy of, . homewood cottages, failure of scheme, - . hook gang, . horses, fire-engine, fate of, . hotels-- mills houses, _see that title_. stewart, a. t., failure of hotel, , - . woman's hotel for working women, need of, - . housing of the poor, _see_ tenements. "hudson-bank" park-- success of, . truck farming on site of stryker's lane, . hudson guild, subscriptions for guild house, . hull house kindergarten, chicago, harvest picture incident, . immigration-- city destination, mistake of, - . distribution necessary, , . ellis island eagle, - . inspection before embarkation at foreign port, , . italian statistics and incidents, - . jewish, - . naturalization papers, fraudulent, , , . restriction, enforcement of law, . school as means of enrolment, , . shutting the door problem, - . tammany slum politics, - , . irish people-- cat alley tenants, , - . eviction in tenements, - . italians-- cat alley, dago eviction, . charges of dirtiness and ignorance, - . child labor, . criminals discovered in mulberry street, - . elizabeth street tenements inspection, - . gambling, . home scene--sewing "pants," . immigration statistics and incidents, - . naturalization papers, fraudulent, and illegal registration, - . politics of the slum, - . underbidding the jew, . jackson pleasure club, school no. , - . jerome, w. t., campaign of , . jersey street, clearance and factory erections, - . jews-- charges against, at citizens, . educational work among, . farming abilities, . glazier, story of, . hebrew institute, _see that title_. immigrants, - . material for good citizens, - . new jersey colonies, - . orchard street, dwelling under stairs, . "removal plan" started by b'nai b'rith, . roof garden, hebrew institute, - . sweating, . tailors' quarrel, . jim and his mother, story of, - . juvenile asylum for burglars and truants, . kelly, mrs., and jim, story of, - . kerosene row demolition, . kerosene stoves, odor of tenements, . "kid"--battle row gang, easter service, - . kindergarten record, san francisco, . kindergarten system, benefit of, - . klotz, madame, of cat alley, . laundries of model tenement houses, . law, enforcement, , , , , . league for political education, reform work, . leipziger, dr., evening classes, . lexow disclosures, , , . libraries-- free library system, erection of buildings, . home libraries in the tenements, - . licensing of tenements, . lights in halls of tenements, non-enforcement of law, - . lodging houses-- competition of mills houses, . east river barge, winter lodgings, , - . mills houses, _see that title_. "nurseries of crime," , . police station lodging rooms, - , - . problem of, . london-- british museum exhibit, warning message, - . green dragon yard, - . ragged school, factory nuisance incident, . seven dials, reformation, "druv into decency," - . long island-- homewood plan, - . stewart house, failure of, - . lost children, tagging proposed, . low, mayor-- election, . reform government, school erections, . roof playgrounds, . m'carthy, mrs., of cat alley, . mahoney, miss, of cat alley, . market, colonel waring's scheme, . marriages in cat alley, . massachusetts-- demolition of dangerous houses, . tenement labor, registry system, . _massachusetts_, u.s.s., cost of, . medical inspection of schools, fight for, . menu, mills house, . meyer, d., thief, . meyer, f., murderer, . mike of poverty gap, - . mills, d. o., _see_ mills houses. mills houses-- beds, . business management, . erection of hotels, . fame and success of, , . housing capacity, . menu, . privileges of, . thieves, safety from, . mississippi river town, reservation of vacant land, . model tenements, erection and success of, - . mooney, william, founder of tammany, character of, . mortality rates, _see_ death-rates. mott street-- barracks-- death-rate, . destruction, , - . legal proceedings, , . bath, public, . big flat, _see that title_. cat alley scrap, - . trilby, gang in pursuit, . mulberry bend-- bottle alley, _see that title_. description, - . destruction, - , . campaign difficulties, - . cost of, . wrecked square-- accident to children, . nuisance, . effect of reform, - . italian criminals, nest of, - . night scenes, . old church tenements, . park-- appropriation lost, . completion and opening, . cost, . dedication, - . "keep off the grass," . school building reform, . whyó gang headquarters, , . mullen, patrick, story of, - . mullen's court, purchase for destruction, . murders-- beresheim, j., . forsythe street tragedy, . lodging houses, murders traced to, . meyer, f., . mike of poverty gap, - . weeks, l. s., . national consumers' league, work of, - . naturalization papers, fraudulent, , , . neckties, poverty gap, . negroes-- character as tenants, . model tenements for, . neighborliness, need of, - . nero, enactment as to height of buildings, . new jersey, jewish colonies, - . new orange, home-building attempt abandoned, . "nurseries of crime," lodging houses as, , . old church tenements, . one-room houses, beginnings of, . open spaces, _see_ parks and playgrounds. orchard street-- jews dwelling under stairs, . one-room houses, beginnings of, . outdoor recreation league-- "hudson-bank" park, . organization and object, . seward park gymnastic apparatus, . overcrowding-- battle against, - . double-deckers as cause of, . elizabeth street, midnight inspection, - . increase statistics, - . promoters of, high rents and low wages, . paddock, rev. r., evidence against tammany evil-doers, . palmerston, lord, advice as to checking an epidemic, . park avenue hotel for working girls, failure of, , - . parkhurst disclosures, , . park street, cellars, . parks and playgrounds-- advisory committee, action, - . chicago, - , , . crotona park, athletic meets, . east river park, sacred grass, . effect of, - , - . essex street, attempt to establish park, . gilder law, , . graveyard as playground, . hamilton fish park, _see that title_. hebrew institute, roof garden, - . holy terror park, . "hudson-bank," _see that title_. mulberry bend, _see that title_. naming of, - . outdoor recreation league, _see that title_. poverty gap playground, . proportion of park area down-town, . recreation piers, , , . rivington street, attempt to establish park, . roof playgrounds, _see that title_. school playgrounds, _see_ schools. seward park, _see that title_. small parks law, _see that title_. tammany neglect, , . tenement plots, , . thieves' alley site, . parrot of mrs. ben wah, story of, - . people's club, work of, . people's institute, educational work, . people's university extension society, work of, . piers, recreation piers, , , . playgrounds, _see_ parks and playgrounds. play piers, , , . police board conspiracy, . policemen, candidates' examination papers, - . police station lodging rooms, - , - . policy swindle, . polish capmaker, home in stanton street tenement, - . political education league, reform work, . political meetings in school buildings proposed, - . political tenements, , . poor, improvement, _see_ association for improving condition of the poor. population-- cat alley, - . census, _see that title_. charity of the poor, instances of, - , - , . death-rate, _see that title_. foreign population, _see that title_. increase statistics, - . inquiry by united states government, disclosures, . italians, _see that title_. jews, _see that title_. movement, . overcrowding, _see that title_. sweating, _see that title_. potter, bishop-- arraignment of tammany corruption, - . pro-cathedral, stanton street, , . religious organizations, . poverty gap-- improvement, - . mike, of poverty gap, - . neckties, . playground, . prague, picture of city, incident, . prison, _see_ tombs. prostitution, tammany organization, - . public baths, _see_ baths. public education association, reform work, , , . public schools, _see_ schools. push-cart men, colonel waring's market scheme, . quaker, builder of gotham court, . rear tenements, _see_ tenements. recreation piers, , , . recruiting thief, , . reformatory report on weak character of boys, . reform by humane touch, - . reform effects in thirteen years, - . reform programme, - . river baths, free, . riverside tenements built by a. t. white, , . rivington street-- bath-house, . mills houses, _see that title_. park, attempt to establish, . robberies-- great robbery, city treasury, - , . meyer, d., thief, . recruiting thief, , . tweed, thief, - , . robbins, dr. jane e., woman doctor in the slums, - . rome, slums of, - . roof gardens-- educational alliance building, . hebrew institute, - . roof playgrounds, public schools, , . brass bands, - . fight for, - . hester street school, , - . success of, - . roosevelt, theodore-- election as governor, . law enforcement, , , , . reform administration, , - . tenement house commission appointed, , . roosevelt street tenement, demolition of, . roses, hester street school, . st. andrew's brotherhood, school children excursion schemes, . saloons-- cheer and social life of tenements, - . club room for boys provided, . fight with roosevelt, record of week of crime, . sandwiches--brick sandwiches, . san francisco, kindergarten record, . santa claus in the slums, - . [_see also_ christmas trees.] scarlet fever epidemic traced to public school, . schools, public-- allen street building, , . appropriation for new schools, , . barrel and hog punishments, - . board of education, work of, - . bronx primary school, , condition of, . building, perfection of snyder schools, . census, . charges and facts, - . clubs, classroom opened for, - . compulsory education law, non-enforcement, . control, abolition of ward trustee, etc., , . cooking classes, - . excursion schemes, . experimenting, - . eyes inspection, - . fourth ward, examination of girls, - . hester street, _see that title_. immigrants, school as means of enrolment, , . kindergartens, benefit of, - . lack of schools, , . medical inspection fight, . mental befogment results, . nature lessons, - . neighborhood purposes, , - . number and naming of schools, , . playgrounds-- advisory committee report, - . roof playgrounds, _see that title_. political meetings in, suggested, - . public education association, reform work, , , . punishments in madame bruin's school, - . recreative purposes, . reform fight, - , , - . scarlet fever epidemic traced to public school, . seats, "dead-line," - . shower-baths, . social movement, use of the public school, - . sunday opening proposed, - . teachers' attitude to reform, - . "three h's" and "three r's," , . tombs, school for boys awaiting trial, , . tompkins square lodging house evening classes, . truant school, , , , . woman's work in reform, , , . schwab, mr., summer excursions for boys, - . settlement, _see_ university settlement. seven dials reformation, "druv into decency," - . seward park-- crowds at play, - . delay in promised park, . gymnastics, - . work started on, . sheds, tenants in, . shower-baths for public schools, . silver campaign, irish laborer story, . slaughter houses, rear tenements condemned as, , , . slovak immigration, . slums-- bacillus of the slum, . beginning of the battle, - . chicago outlook, . clubs, _see that title_. crime, _see that title_. democratic government imperilled by, . "druv into decency," - . funeral show, . inquiry by united states government, , , . italians, _see that title_. jews, _see that title_. making of the slum, . military band, , . parks, _see that title_. population, _see that title_. rome, - . schools, _see that title_. sensations and shows, . stroll through tenement-house neighborhood, - . sweating, _see that title_. tammany, _see that title_. tenements, _see that title_. tuberculosis, - , . small parks law, . advisory committee action, - . lost appropriation, . origin of, . smallpox epidemics, , , , . snyder, builder of schools, . soap factories prohibited below grand street, . social halls scheme, . social movement, use of the public school, - . soup--end of free soup, . stanton street-- polish capmaker, home of, - . pro-cathedral, , . stroll through neighborhood, . staten island, summer excursions for boys, mr. schwab's proposal, - . stewart, a. t., hotel, failure of, , - . street cleaning, colonel waring's work, - , - , . stryker's lane, truck farming, . sullivan street, condition before demolition, - . sunlight in tenements, assessment on, . summer, , power of resistance of heat, - . sunday opening of schools proposal, - . sweating-- consumers' league, work of, - . fight against, . growth of, . home work in tenements, - , - . italian underbidding jews, . jews, complaint against, . united garment workers of america, compact, , . swine and the cholera panic, , , . tagging lost children proposed, . tailors-- jewish quarrel, . sweating, _see that title_. tammany-- boss, character of, - . campaign of against, - . croker, r., _see that title_. election, , - . election night, slum scenes, . good government clubs condemned by, . hamilton fish park, use of people's baths, - . history of corruption and peculation, , , - . immigrants claimed by slum politics, - , . italian immigrant vote, - . mooney, william, character of, . parkhurst and lexow disclosures, , , . playgrounds policy, . prostitution organization, - . reform failures, . smallpox epidemics during government, , . tramp vote, . teachers, school reform attitude, - . tenants of the slums, _see_ population. tenement house commission-- appointment, , . gilder, _see that title_. "infant slaughter houses," . tenement house committee, volunteer, formation and work of, . tenement house department, creation of, - . tenement house exhibition, , effect of, - . tenements-- air-shaft, tenants' uses and peril of, . alfred corning clark buildings, , . buddensiek, tenement builder, imprisonment, - . building department supervision, . children, _see that title_. christmas trees, _see that title_. citizens' council of hygiene, report, , . city and suburban homes company, _see that title_. city control of building proposed, . death-rate, _see that title_. "dens of death," , . destruction, _see_ demolition. "discretion" clause in building laws, , , , . disease--disclosures of tenement house exhibition, , - . double-deckers, _see that title_. factory tenements, disapproval of, . filthy condition, landlord's excuse, . fires, _see that title_. first chapter in story of, . gilder commission, work of, , , , , , , , . halls, unlighted, - . health board fights, , . height and jerry-building, - . home libraries, - . increase in population and overcrowding, - . "infant slaughter houses," . irish people, _see that title_. italians, _see that title_. jews, _see that title_. kerosene stove, odor of, . landlord's profits, . licensing, . model tenements, erection and success of, - . negroes, _see that title_. one-room house, beginnings of, . open spaces, _see_ parks. opposition to improvement, - . overcrowding, _see that title_. parks, _see that title_. plans for improvements, . political tenements, , . population, _see that title_. rear tenements-- condemned as "slaughter houses," , , . death-rate scandal, - . demolition, . report of select committee of assembly, , - . rome, . standard of space for adults and children, . sunlight, assessment of value, . sweating, _see that title_. tenants, _see_ population. twenty-five-foot lot, doom of, , , . up-town and down-town, - . water supply, lack of, . [_see also_ slums.] thieves, _see_ robberies. thieves' alley demolition, , . tombs-- demolition, proposed preservation of gates, . school for boys awaiting trial, , . tweed, thief in, . tompkins square-- beresheim, jacob, _see that title_. evening classes failure, . tracy, dr. r. s., mortality records, . tramp vote, tammany's use of, . trilby of cat alley, - . trinity church, opposition as tenement-house landlord, . truant school, fight for, , , , . truck farming on site of stryker's lane, . trucks, street obstructions, disappearance, - , - . tuberculosis in the slums, - , . tweed, thief, - , . twenty-five-foot lot, doom of, , , . united garment workers of america, compact, , . united states government slum inquiry, , , . university extension society, work of, . university settlement-- social development and school movement, - . work with east side gang, . vagrancy-- crime, _see that title_. encouragement by free lunches, lodging, etc., , . farm colony for young vagrants proposed, , , . vitruvius, quotation as to height of dwellings, . walsh, mrs., funeral in cat alley, - . waring, colonel-- death, . market scheme, . mulberry street park dedication, . street-cleaning, - , , - , , . trucks, disappearance, - , - . water supply in tenements, lack of, . weeks, l. s., murder in brooklyn, . wheat lesson, hester street school, . white, a. t., riverside tenements, , . whitechapel, london, green dragon yard, - . whyó gang headquarters, , . widows in cat alley, - . willard, d., reform work among children, - . wisconsin farmer--battle with five points, - . woman doctor in the slums, dr. j. e. robbins, - . woman's hotel for working women, need of, - . woodbine, hirsch colony in new jersey, . wooster street barracks, . working people's dwellings, _see_ tenements. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) mary rose of mifflin by frances r. sterrett author of the "jam girl" and "up the road with sallie" illustrated by maginel wright enright [frontispiece: "'it's an e-normous house, isn't it!' she said in surprise"] new york grosset & dunlap publishers copyright, , by d. appleton and company to the memory of my father and my mother who made a very friendly place in this big world list of illustrations "'it's an e-normous house, isn't it!' she said in surprise" . . . . . . . . . _frontispiece_ "'you can't ever know, aunt kate, how splendid it is to wear skirts'" "shelves and birdcage had all disappeared" "'i haven't seen a canary bird for years,' she murmured" "'it's a squirrel! a really truly squirrel in this big city!'" "mary rose was perched on a chair across from him and was telling him of mifflin" "there on the wide window seat was the self-supporting cat" "'why didn't you come home before, mary rose?' miss thorley asked" mary rose of mifflin chapter i "it's there in every lease, plain as print," larry donovan insisted. "no childern, no dogs an' no cats. it's in every lease." "i don't care if it is!" kate donovan's face was as red as a poppy and she spoke with a determination that exactly matched her husband's. "you needn't think i'm goin' to turn away my own sister's only child? who should take care of her if i don't? tell me that, larry donovan, an' be ashamed of yourself for askin' me to send her away!" "sure, an' i'd like the little thing here as much as you, kate, dear," larry said soothingly, and in her heart mrs. donovan knew that he meant it. "but it isn't every day that a man picks up a job like this, janitor of a swell apartmen' buildin', an' if we take in a kid when the lease says plain as can be, no childern, no dogs an' no cats, i'll lose the job an' then how'll i put a roof over your heads an' bread in your stomachs? that's why i'm again' it." "a clever man like you'll find a way." mrs. donovan's confidence was both flattering and stimulating. if a woman expects her husband to do things he just has to do them. he has no choice. "don't you worry. you haven't been out of work since we were married 'cept the three months you was laid up with inflamm't'ry rheumatiz. the way i look at it is this: the good lord must have meant us to have mary rose or he wouldn't have taken her mother an' her father an' all her relations but us. seems if he didn't send us any of our own so we'd have plenty of room in our hearts an' home for her. she's a present to us straight from the lord." "that may be, kate," larry scratched his puzzled head. "but will the agents, will brown an' lawson look at it that way? the lease says----" "bother the lease!" mrs. donovan interrupted him impatiently. "what's the lease got to do with a slip of a girl who's been left an orphan down in mifflin?" "that's just what i'm tryin' to tell you." larry clung to his temper with all of his ten fingers, for it was irritating to have her refuse to understand. "if we took mary rose in here to live don't you s'pose all those up above," he jerked his thumb significantly toward the ceiling, "'d know it an' make trouble? god knows they make enough as it is. they're a queer lot of folks under this roof, kate, and that's no lie. folks--they're cranks!" explosively. "when one isn't findin' fault another is. when i've heat enough for ol' mrs. johnson it's too hot for mrs. bracken. mrs. schuneman on the first floor has too much hot water an' miss adams on the third too little. mrs. rawson won't stand for mrs. matchan's piano an' mrs. matchan kicks on mrs. rawson's sewin' machine. mr. jarvis never gets his newspaper an' mrs. lewis al'ys gets two. mrs. willoughby jumps on me if a pin drops in the hall. she can't stand no noise since her mother died. she don't do nothin' but cry. i don't blame her man for stayin' away. i'd as soon be married to a fountain. when they can't find anythin' else to jaw me about they take the laundries. an' selfish! there isn't one can see beyond the reach of his fingers. i used to think that folks were put into the world to be friendly an' helpful to each other but i've learned different." he sighed and shook his head helplessly. "mrs. bracken on the first floor has lived here as long as we have, two years nex' october, an' i've yet to hear her give a friendly word to anyone in the house. when little miss smith up on the third was sick las' winter did her nex' door neighbor lend a hand? she did not. she was just worried stiff for fear she'd catch somethin'. she gave me no peace till miss smith was out of the house an' into a hospital. peace! i've forgot there was such a word. they won't stand for any kid in the house when the lease says no childern, no dogs an' no cats." "you can't tell me anythin' about _them_!" mrs. donovan agreed with pleasant promptness. it is always agreeable to have one's estimate of human nature endorsed. "an' the most of 'em look like thunder clouds when you meet 'em. ain't it queer, larry, how few folks look happy when a smile's 'bout the cheapest thing a body can wear? an' it never goes out of style. i know i never get tired seein' one on old or young. all folks can't be rich nor han'some but most of us could look pleasant if we thought so, seems if. i want to tell that to little miss macy every time i see her, but i know full well she'd say i was impudent, so i keep my mouth shut. maybe the tenants won't stand for a child in the house. they haven't wit to see that the lord had his good reasons when he invented the fam'ly. but there's some way. there must be! an' we've got to find it, larry donovan. are you goin' to wash mrs. rawson's windows today?" she changed the subject abruptly. "she called me up twice yesterday to see they needed it, as if i had nothin' to do but traipse aroun' after her." larry understood exactly how she felt. he had been called up more than twice to see the windows and had promised to clean them within twenty-four hours. before he went away he patted his wife's shoulder and said again: "it isn't that i don't want the little thing here, kate. she'd be good for both of us. it's bad for folks to grow old 'thout young ones growin' up around 'em, but a job's a job. it wouldn't be easy for a man to get another as good as this at this time of year. see the home it gives you." he looked proudly around the pleasant basement living-room. open doors led into the dining-room and hall from which more doors opened into kitchen and sleeping-rooms. there was a small room at the end of the hall in which mrs. donovan kept her sewing machine but for which, in the last twenty-four hours, she had found another use. the apartment was very comfortable and mrs. donovan kept it as neat as wax. there was never any dust on her floors if the fault-finding tenants did say there was in the halls. mrs. donovan was proud of her home also, but she frowned as she glanced about her. "there's plenty of room for one more," she grumbled. "that little room beyond ours is just the place for a child. but go on, larry, we'll think of a way. we've got to! it shan't ever be said that kate donovan turned away her only sister's only child. do you mind when mary married sam crocker? it was thought to be a big step up for the daughter of an irish carpenter to marry a crocker, the son of ol' judge crocker an' a lawyer himself. seems if there never was a prettier girl than mary an' she was happy till she died. an' now sam's dead, too. he wasn't the man his father was. he couldn't keep money an' he couldn't earn it. mary used to feel sorry for me, larry, because you weren't a crocker, but if she could see us now an', seems if, i believe she can, she mus' be glad i got a good honest hard workin' irishman. you've a good job an' a little money in the bank. you don't owe no man a penny. that's more'n sam crocker could ever say an' tell the truth!" for two years larry donovan had been the proud janitor of the washington apartment house. he had moved in before the building was fairly completed and felt that it belonged to him quite as much as to the owner, whose name he did not know, for all business was transacted through the rental agents, brown and lawson. it was an attractive building. the center of the red brick front, with its rather ornate entrance, was pushed back some ten feet. the rectangular space that was left was neatly bisected by the cement walk. on either side were grassy squares, like pocket handkerchiefs, man's size, with clumps of shrubbery in the corners for monograms. the washington was long and broad and low, not more than three stories high, but it had an air of comfort and also of pretension that was lacking in many of the taller apartment houses whose shoulders it could not begin to touch. under the low roof were some twenty apartments of different sizes and the occupant of each was bound by lease not to introduce a child nor a cat nor a dog. no one showed the least desire to introduce any one of the three but each went his way and insisted on his full rights with a selfish disregard of the rights and conveniences of others in a way that at first had made larry donovan's mouth pop wide open in amazement. even now that he was used to it he was often surprised. and to the washington with its lease forbidding children and pets had come a letter from mifflin telling of the sudden death of mrs. donovan's brother-in-law. samuel crocker had been an unsuccessful man, as the world counts success, and had left nothing behind him but his little daughter, mary rose. "it's her age that's again' her," thought mrs. donovan, when she was alone. "if she were a couple of years older there couldn't be any objection. well, for the lan's sakes!" her face broke into a broad grin. "there isn't any reason why we should--nobody need ever know," she murmured cryptically. ten minutes later she was busy in the little room at the end of the hall. when larry came back he stumbled over the machine she had pushed out of her way. "hullo," he said. "what's up?" mrs. donovan lifted a smiling face. "i'm gettin' ready." "for what?" he asked stupidly. "for my niece, mary rose crocker." she turned around and stood before him, a scrub-cloth in her hand. larry frowned. "i thought we'd finished with that, kate. i told you about the leases. you'll have to board mary rose in mifflin or send her to a convent." "board!" the scrub-doth, a very banner of defiance, was waved an inch in front of his nose. "board out my own niece, a kid of eleven? i think i see myself, larry donovan. an' aren't you ashamed to have such thoughts, you, a decent man? a little thing that needs a mother's care. an' who should give it to her but me, her own aunt? the lord had his plans when he took away all her other relations an' i ain't one to interfere." "it means the loss of my job," objected larry sullenly. "it does not." there was another flourish of the scrub-cloth. "listen to me, larry donovan. is there anyone in this house 't knows how old mary rose is? does mrs. bracken or that crosspatch miss adams or the weepin' willow, mrs. willoughby, know she isn't eleven? who's to tell 'em if we keep our mouths shut? it ain't none of their business though, seems if, there isn't one that'd be beyond makin' it their business. i'll grant you that. your old lease, more shame to it, says childern ain't allowed here. mary rose is a child but if she takes after her mother's fam'ly, an' i know in my heart she does, she'll be a big up-standin' girl, a girl anyone 'd take for fourteen. maybe fifteen. why, when her mother was twelve she weighed a hundred an' twenty-five pounds. i've known women of fifty that didn't weigh that!" triumphantly. "don't you worry, larry, dear. i've got it all planned out. there's the clothes your sister left here when she an' ella went west las' fall. ella was fourteen an' her clothes 'll just fit mary rose or i miss my guess. they'll make her look every minute of fourteen. an' a girl of fourteen isn't a child. why, the state that's again' child labor lets a girl of fourteen go to work if she can get a permit, so we've got the law on our side. you see how easy it is, larry?" she beamed with pride at the solution she had found for the problem that had tormented her ever since the letter had come from mifflin. "do you mean you're goin' to tell lies about your own niece?" demanded larry incredulously. mrs. donovan looked at him sadly. "why should i tell lies?" she asked sweetly. "sure, it's no lie to say mary rose is goin' on fourteen. i ain't denyin' it'll be some time before she gets to fourteen but she's goin' on fourteen more'n she is on ten. if the tenants take a wrong meaning from my words is it my fault? no, larry," firmly. "i wouldn't tell lies for nobody an' i wouldn't let mary rose tell lies. we al'ys had our mouths well scoured out with soft soap when we didn't tell the truth. but it ain't no lie to say a child's goin' on fourteen when she is." chapter ii a taxicab stopped before the washington apartment house and a slim boyish little figure hopped out and stared up at the roof of the long red brick building that towered so far above. "it's an e-normous house, isn't it!" she said in surprise. "here, mary rose." a hand reached out a basket and then a birdcage. "i'll go in with you." "you're awfully good, mrs. black." mary rose looked at her with loving admiration. "of course, i'd have come here all right by myself for daddy always said there was a special providence to look after children and fools and that was why we were so well taken care of, but it certainly did make it pleasant for me to have you come all the way." "it certainly made it pleasant for me," mrs. black said, and it had. mary rose was so enthusiastic on this, her first trip away from mifflin, that she had amused mrs. black, who had made the journey to waloo so many times that it had become nothing but a necessary bore. she was sorry that they had arrived at mary rose's destination. "now, where do we find your aunt?" she, too, looked up at the red brick building that faced them so proudly. "my uncle larry's the janitor of this splendid mansion!" mary rose told her joyously, although there was a trace of awe in her birdlike voice. the mansion seemed so very, very large to her. "is janitor the same as owner, mrs. black? it's--it's----" she drew a deep breath as if she found it difficult to say what it was. "it's wonderful! there isn't one house in all mifflin so big and grand, is there? it looks more," she cocked her head on one side, "like the new masonic temple on main street than anybody's home." "so it does," agreed mrs. black, leading the way into the vestibule, where she found a bell labeled "janitor." when kate donovan answered it she saw a pleasant-faced, smartly clad woman with a child in a neat, if shabby, boy's suit of blue serge, belted blouse over shrunken knickerbockers. she knew at once that they had come to look at the vacant apartment on the second floor. "an i'll have to tell her we don't have no childern here," she said to herself, and she sighed. "i wish larry had a place in a house that was overrun with childern. seems if i hate to tell her how it is." but the pleasant-faced smartly clad woman smiled at her as no prospective tenant had ever smiled and asked sweetly: "is this mrs. donovan?" before kate donovan could admit it the boyish little figure ran to her. "my aunt kate! i know it is. it's my aunt kate!" "my soul an' body!" murmured the startled mrs. donovan, staring stupidly at the child embracing her knees. "i brought your little niece," began mrs. black. "niece!" gasped mrs. donovan in astonishment, for the figure at her knees did not look like any niece she had ever seen. "sure, it's a boy!" the little face upturned to her broke into a radiant smile. "that's what everyone says. but i'm not a boy, i'm not! am i, mrs. black? i'm a girl and my name's mary rose and i'm almost eleven----" "h-sh, h-sh, dearie!" mrs. donovan's hand slipped over the red lips and she sent a quick glance over her shoulder. bewildered and surprised as she was she realized that her niece's age was not to be shouted out in the vestibule of the washington in any such joyous fashion. "my soul an' body," she murmured again as she looked at the sturdy little figure in knickerbockers. "you're mary rose crocker?" she asked doubtfully. she almost hoped she wasn't. "mary rose crocker," repeated the red lips and the knickerbockered legs jumped up and down. "my soul an' body!" mrs. donovan murmured helplessly. "will you come down to my rooms, ma'am," she said to mrs. black, as she tried to remember her manners and not think how she was to tell larry the truth. why, this child was undersized rather than over. her mother might have weighed a hundred and twenty-five pounds when she was twelve but mary rose couldn't weigh seventy. dear, dear, why couldn't she just as well have been bigger? but after one glance at the glowing little face, kate donovan would have lost almost everything rather than her right to take care of diminutive mary rose. mrs. black smiled at her. she liked her honest good-natured face. it was a shining door-plate for the big heart behind it. she had been rather worried over mary rose's only living relative, for she was fond of mary rose and wanted her to have a real home. "thank you, but i fear i must go on. our train was a little late. i am glad to have met you and if you like mary rose half as much as i do you will think you are a lucky woman to have her always with you. good-by, mary rose. thank you for coming with me." mary rose threw her arms about her friend. "thank you for bringing me," she whispered. "have you everything? her trunk is at the station and she has the check," she explained to mrs. donovan. "good-by." and with another kiss for mary rose she was gone. they could hear the purr of the taxicab as it dashed up the street. mary rose drew a deep breath. "it's very pleasant to get to the end of a journey," she began a trifle tremulously. mary rose was beginning to feel a bit forlorn at being left alone with an aunt she had never seen before. "mrs. black's a very kind lady and she brought me here in a taxicab. it's very pleasant riding in a taxicab." "i've no doubt it is," remarked mrs. donovan, who knew taxicabs only by sight. "now, mary rose, we'll go down to my rooms. is this your canary?" she looked oddly at the bird-cage. "yes, that's jennie lind. i couldn't leave her behind and mrs. black said you'd be sure to have room for her, for all she needs is a window to hang in and everybody has at least one window. your house is very large, isn't it?" admiringly. "it makes me think of a palace, although it is something like the new masonic temple in mifflin. do you live in the cellar?" she asked in astonishment as her aunt led the way down the basement stairs. "i've never lived in a cellar before. in mifflin our cellar had only room for jellies and pickles and a closet for vegetables, turnips and parsnips, you know." "this isn't a cellar," she was told rather sharply. "it's a basement." "oh!" mary rose tried to see the difference between a cellar and a basement and had little difficulty, for nothing could have been more different from the little mifflin cellar with its swinging shelf for preserves and pickles, its dark closet for vegetables, than aunt kate's basement apartment. the sun streamed into the windows, only half of which were below the level of the street, and the rooms looked very bright and pleasant to tired mary rose. "it's--it's very pleasant," she said. "but do you always live down here?" she couldn't understand why her aunt should choose rooms in the cellar when she had such a large house. her aunt did not answer her but asked a question of her own. "mary rose, what makes you dress like that, like a boy?" she couldn't imagine why. mary rose regarded her small person with a blush and a frown. "i know. isn't it horrid? i'd lots rather wear girls' clothes, but you see these saved washing, and lena, who took care of daddy and me, made a fuss about the washing almost every week, so daddy said boys' clothes were pleasanter than arguments. aunt kate," her voice was tragic, "i'm 'most eleven years old and i haven't ever had a white dress with a blue sash in all my life. i never even had a hair ribbon!" "my soul an' body!" murmured aunt kate, and derived no more satisfaction from the exclamation than she had the other times she had used it. "don't you think boys should wear boys' clothes and girls girls' clothes, aunt kate? of course, if you have to think of the washing, too, i won't say a word and i'll try to be happy in these. but i do hate them. i think little girls' clothes are beautiful. all my life i've wanted a white dress with lace on it and a blue sash. gladys evans has one. she wore it at the church social. i spoke a piece and i had to wear these ugly clothes. it hurt my pride awful but daddy said that was because i didn't look at it right, that if i had the right kind of an eye i'd see washing in a white dress instead of beauty. but i guess it's hard to see right when you haven't ever had anything but boys' clothes. oh, aunt kate!" she put her arms around her aunt. "i do think that it is good of you to want me to live with you. you're the only relation i have out of heaven. i don't quite understand about that, when gladys evans has four sisters and a brother and three aunts and two uncles and a pair of grandfathers and even one grandmother. it doesn't seem just fair, does it? but i think you're nicer than all of hers put together. one of her aunts is cross-eyed and another lives in california and one of her uncles is stingy," she whispered. "you--you're beautiful!" and she hugged her again. mrs. donovan dropped weakly into a chair and her arms went around mary rose. she had never realized how empty they had been until they enclosed mary rose. "you didn't say anything about bringing my friends with me," went on mary rose happily, "but of course i couldn't leave jenny lind and george washington behind. george washington has the same name as your house," she gurgled. "wouldn't you like to see him?" she slipped from her aunt's arms to the chair where she had put her basket. there had been sundry angry upheavals of the cover but it was tightly tied with a stout string. mrs. donovan had scarcely noticed it. she had been too bewildered to see anything but mary rose. mary rose untied the basket cover but before she could raise it a big maltese cat had pushed it aside and jumped to the floor and stood stretching himself in front of mrs. donovan's horrified eyes. "mary rose!" she cried. it was all she could say. "isn't he a beauty?" mary rose turned shining eyes to her as she patted her pet. "i've had him ever since he was a weeny kitten. mrs. campbell gave him to me when i had the tonsilitis. we adore each other. you see his mother is dead and so is mine. we're both orphans." and she caught the orphaned george washington to her and hugged him. "i've a dog, too, but i left him in mifflin." "thank god for that," murmured mrs. donovan under her breath. "his name is solomon," went on mary rose. "he was such a wise little puppy that daddy said he should have a wise name. the superintendent of schools made out a list for me and i copied each one on a separate piece of paper and let the puppy take his choice. he took solomon and daddy said he showed his sense for solomon was the very wisest of all. but that shows just how smart solomon was even as a puppy. jimmie bronson's taking care of him until i send for him. he said he'd just as soon i never sent, but of course i will as soon as i can. do you see jenny lind, george washington?" she took the cat's head in her hands and turned it to the cage in which jenny lind hopped restlessly. "they aren't the friends i'd like them to be," she explained almost apologetically to her aunt. "sometimes it worries me. dear me, i wish i could have a talk with noah! don't you often wonder how he managed in the ark? it must have been hard with cats and mice and snakes and birds and lions and people. daddy thought noah must have been a fine animal tamer, like the one in the circus gladys evans' father took us to, only better, of course. don't you think you'll like george washington?" she asked timidly, rather puzzled by her aunt's silence. "he's a beautiful cat," gulped mrs. donovan, who was more puzzled than mary rose. what should she do? what could she do? she took both mary rose and george washington in her arms. "listen to me, mary rose, for a minute. you know your uncle larry is janitor of this building?" "it's a fine building," admiringly. "he must be awful rich." "he isn't rich at all," hurriedly. "if he was he wouldn't be a janitor. a janitor is the man who takes care of it----" "oh," mary rose was frankly disappointed. "i thought he owned it." "you see other folks live here, lots of them, an' the man who owns it won't let them have any cats or dogs," she hesitated, she hated to say it, "or childern in it. it's in the lease. a lease is the same as a law." "won't have any cats or dogs or children!" mary rose's voice was shrill with astonishment and her eyes were as big as saucers. "why, everybody has children! they always have had. don't you remember, even adam and eve? in mifflin everyone has children." "it's different in waloo. you see the man who owns this house thinks childern are noisy an' destructive." she tried her best to find an excuse for the unknown owner. "he doesn't know, of course. he's probably a cross old bachelor." "but i'm a child," wailed mary rose suddenly. "wha-what are you going to do with me?" her face whitened. her aunt put her hand under the little chin and turned mary rose's startled face up so that the two pairs of eyes looked directly into each other. "you're not a child, mary rose. you're a great big girl goin' on fourteen. don't ever forget that. if anyone asks you how old you are you just tell 'em you're goin' on fourteen. that's what you are, you know." "yes," doubtfully. "but i have to go to eleven first and then to twelve and thirteen----" "waloo folks don't care about that," her aunt interrupted quickly. "they don't care to hear about any but the fourteen. don't you ever forget." "i won't," promised mary rose solemnly, too puzzled just then to think it out. "but what about george washington? he's just a cat." she looked dubiously at george washington and shook her head. nothing could be made of him but a cat. "an orphan cat!" she added firmly. "i know, dearie." aunt kate's arms tightened around her. "an' i hate to ask you to give him up. i know you love him but if you keep him here it may mean that your uncle will lose his job an' if he did that there wouldn't be any roof over our heads nor bread for our stomachs." "oh!" mary rose stared at her. "would that cross old bachelor owner make him not be janitor?" her aunt nodded. "we'll have to find someone to take care of him--just for a while," she added quickly as she saw two big tears in mary rose's blue eyes. "some day, please god, we'll have a home where we can have him with us." mary rose stood very still, trying in vain to understand this strange world to which she had come, a world where children and cats and dogs were not considered precious and desirable. suddenly a bell rang. "that's mrs. rawson," murmured aunt kate. "i'll bet she wants me to run up an' look at her windows again. i'll be right back, mary rose," she promised as she hurried away to answer the insistent jangle of mrs. rawson's bell. chapter iii left alone, mary rose caught george washington to her heart and stood staring about the room. she shook her head. this might be a beautiful palace but she was very much afraid that she was not going to like it. she walked slowly into the next room and then to the kitchen, whose windows faced the alley. across the driveway she could see a broad open space, the yard of a rambling old-fashioned house. a man was cleaning an automobile and through the open window mary rose could hear his cheery whistle. there was something about the old-fashioned house and the spacious yard that reminded mary rose of mifflin, where people loved children and had pets. the puzzled frown left her face, and clutching george washington closer she went out of the back door and across the alley. "if you please," she said, her heart beating so fast that she was almost choked, "would you take a cat to board?" she had to say it a second time before the man heard her. he looked up in surprise. he had a frank, pleasant face with twinkling eyes and mary rose liked him at once. "hullo, brother," he said, quite as cordially as a mifflin man would have spoken. "and where did you drop from?" "i didn't drop," answered literal mary rose. "i came across the alley," and she nodded toward the big apartment house. it now turned a white brick face to her. mary rose almost forgot her errand when she saw that. in mifflin houses were the same color all the way around. "why--why, it's two-faced!" she cried. "the front is all red and now the back is all white. it's just like an enchanted palace." "it is an enchanted palace," grumbled the man. mary rose flew to his side. "oh, is there a princess there? a beautiful princess?" she begged. the man colored under the tan the sun and wind had spread over his face. "there is," he admitted, "a most beautiful princess." "and a witch?" insisted mary rose. "a wicked witch?" the color flew into her face also. "the wickedest witch that could ever enslave a beautiful princess. her darned old name is independence!" mary rose did not understand and she thought it was an odd name for a witch but she wished to know more. "and is the prince there?" she demanded thirstily. the man's face turned redder than before. "the prince is here," he said sadly. "right here. and he might as well be in jericho," he added under his breath. "i've heard the presbyterian minister speak of jericho but i never read of it in any fairy-tale. oh, dear! i hope the prince won't go there. i want him to stay here and rescue the pretty princess from that wicked witch in-independence," she stumbled over the unfamiliar word. the man looked at her. he had to look away down to find her, for he was tall, over six feet, and mary rose was not much more than half that, but when he finally did find her mary rose was amazed to see the look of determination that came into his sunburned face. "he'll do it," he said, half under his breath. "it's all very well for a girl to be independent, but she needn't be so darned independent that she won't listen to a word a man says." "i don't think i understand," mary rose ventured to say when there was a long pause. her new friend laughed. "no, of course, you don't." he put his hands on her shoulders. "as man to man," he said, "the modern girl is getting to be almost too much of a problem for the modern man. i don't suppose you understand that, either. but wait ten or fifteen years and you will. godfrey! i feel sorry for you. if they keep on as they've started what will they be in ten years? did you say you were living over there?" he looked toward the white wall. mary rose nodded her yellow head. "i thought perhaps you might like to take a cat to board. an orphan cat," she explained pityingly. jerry longworthy swallowed a laugh when he saw that there was real trouble in her face. "suppose you climb into the car and tell me why you're looking for a boarding place for an orphan cat?" mary rose smiled radiantly as she obeyed and, with george washington cuddled against her, she told him all about it. "my uncle larry," she began very importantly, "is the janitor of that wonderful two-faced palace." "is he, indeed," remarked jerry longworthy, lighting his pipe. "but he doesn't own it. at first i thought he did. i used to live in mifflin, where there aren't any houses like that. every family has its own house. some of them are little but mrs. black's is as big as yours. she brought me to waloo and we had a taxicab all the way." "all the way!" mr. jerry showed a proper amount of astonishment. "that was a treat." "it was to me," simply. "there aren't any taxicabs in mifflin, just one old hack that was made before the war, mr. day said, and that's a very long time ago." "it is," agreed mr. jerry. "longer than either you or i can remember. i expect you are all of ten years old?" "i'm older than that." she would have told him how much older but she remembered what aunt kate had said. "i'm going on fourteen." it sounded so aged that she felt quite important. "and my name is mary rose crocker." "mary rose?" he lifted his eyebrows, and mary rose knew at once that he was thinking that boys' clothes and girls' names do not usually go together. she flushed. "i wear them to save washing," she said with a certain dignity as she touched the shrunken knickerbockers. "girls' clothes are a lot of trouble. lena said they weren't worth it." "i'm sure she's right. you're only a little ahead of the style. all girls'll be wearing them soon, no doubt. they're that independent. how old is the orphan george?" he changed a subject that was evidently so painful to mary rose. "he's 'most five. i got him when i had tonsilitis, when i was six," unconsciously betraying to anyone who could add five to six the secret aunt kate had begged her to keep. "and we've never been separated a whole day. but now," she swallowed the lump in her throat and went on bravely, "you see the owner of that palace won't have any children nor any dogs nor any cats in it." "i know." mr. jerry seemed to know everything. "what are you going to do?" "if we kept him uncle larry would lose the janitor and we wouldn't have a roof over our heads nor bread for our stomachs, so i thought if i could find a pleasant place for him to board near by i could see him often. i couldn't give him away, for aunt kate says perhaps the lord'll give us a real home some day where we can all be together. when i saw your house it made me think of mifflin and i wondered if you had a cat and if you hadn't if you would like to board one?" her face was painfully serious as she lifted it to jerry longworthy. "well," he considered the question gravely. "can you pay his board?" "i've a dollar and forty-three cents. the forty-three cents i saved and the dollar mr. black gave me when he took me to the train in mifflin. how much should a cat's board be?" anxiously. "how much milk does he drink? milk's seven cents a quart in waloo." "oh, not more than a quart a day," eagerly. "and he's almost too fat now." "a quart a day would be seven times seven----" "i know. i know all my tables up to twelve times twelve. that would be forty-nine cents. do you think fifty cents would be enough?" "i should think fifty cents a week very good board for a cat. suppose we go in and see what my aunt mary has to say." his aunt mary proved to be a plump lady with a round rosy face, who agreed with mary rose that children and cats and dogs were most desirable additions to a family. she seemed quite glad to take george washington as a boarder and thought that fifty cents a week was enough to charge as long as mary rose solemnly promised to come over every day and help take care of him. mary rose promised most solemnly. "i'm so glad." she beamed on mr. jerry and his aunt mary and hugged george washington. "it's a great relief to find a pleasant boarding place. i can pay for two weeks, almost three weeks now," she offered. mr. jerry started to speak but his aunt mary shook her head and he shut his mouth with the words inside. "we don't take board in advance for a cat," said his aunt mary in a way that told mary rose such a thing was never done. "in fact, we've never taken a cat to board before. i think it will be more satisfactory if we wait until the end of the week, when we can tell just how much milk he will drink," she added soberly. "he's awfully greedy." mary rose looked sadly at the greedy george washington. "but he's always had all he wanted. i can't tell you how much obliged i am and i'll come over every day. it's awfully good of you to take him when you haven't any other boarders." "i'd take you, too, if i could," mr. jerry's aunt mary murmured as she went to get a ginger cooky. "i'm going to find the beautiful princess," mary rose told mr. jerry, when she said good-by to him a few minutes later. "and when i do shall i tell her that the prince is not going to jericho?" "do," he said and his face went all red again. "tell her that he's going to stay right here on the job, that he will never give her up." "never give her up," repeated mary rose. she tried to say it as firmly as he had said it and she waved her hand as she went across the alley and into the back door of the washington, with a most delicious thrill at entering such a two-faced building. mr. jerry looked after her and frowned. then he shook his fist at the washington. "you are an enchanted palace," he told it sternly. "if it weren't for doggone places like you, girls would have to stay at home. they couldn't go out in the world and grow so independent that they think work is the biggest thing in creation. oh, godfrey! it isn't normal for any girl to like a job better than a perfectly good man. when i think of elizabeth thorley wasting herself on advertisements for bingham and henderson's sickening jams when she might be making a heaven for me it sends my temperature up until i'm afraid of spontaneous combustion. she wouldn't care if i did blow up and turn to ashes. she wouldn't care what happened to me so long as she could send out a new poster for peach marmalade. she wants to live her own life and not be tied down to a man or a home," he groaned. "darn these feministic ideas, anyway! i wish i had been my own grandfather. the girl he wanted wasn't on any old factory payroll." he had been in love with elizabeth thorley ever since one night, almost a year ago, when he had looked across a room and seen her red-brown hair, her oval face with its uplifted pointed chin, and met her laughing eyes. he had held her gaze for the fraction of a moment and in that time his heart had stopped beating. when it began again the world was a very different place to him. but, alas, it was not a different place to her. she had suffered no magical change by the short interchange of glances. they had been the best of friends. they had a certain similarity of tastes and interests, for he was an architect and she was an advertising artist. but when he asked for more than friendship she tilted her white chin a bit higher and told him frankly that she was not the type of girl to want or think of marriage; that all she wished was her work and she thanked her lucky stars every night of her life that she had enough of it to be independent. "marriage to me is a many-headed dragon," she said. "it eats up a girl's individuality, her ambitions, her talents. oh, yes, it does! i've seen it too many times not to know, and i want to keep elizabeth thorley's personality for her as long as she lives. i shan't merge it in that of any man." she valued his friendship; she would like to keep it always, she added, but she did not want his love. she did not want any man's love. that was why mr. jerry shook his fist at the white face of the washington and swore that he loathed the idea of feminine independence, loathed it from the very bottom of his heart. "why, mary rose, wherever have you been?" demanded startled mrs. donovan, when mary rose, a trifle breathless and minus george washington, slipped into the basement flat. "i've been lookin' everywhere for you." "i'm sorry but i just had to find a boarding place for george washington. oh, aunt kate, do you suppose there's any way a girl like me can earn fifty cents every week?" chapter iv when larry donovan saw his niece she had changed her shabby boy's suit of blue serge for the clothes that ella murphy had outgrown. ella had astonished and disgusted her mother by lengthening herself, in a single night, it seemed to the outraged mrs. murphy, to such an extent that a new outfit was necessary. "it may be well enough for asparagus and tulips to grow like that, but it's all wrong for a girl," she had said resentfully. "i just wish the power that lengthened her had to find her dresses and petticoats and things to make her decent to go to the grandmother that's never seen her. here i am, all but ready to start, an' i have to get her new clothes. childern may be a blessing, there's folks that say they are, but there's times i can't see anything but the worry and the expense of 'em." so the lengthened ella's discarded garments had been left behind for mrs. donovan to dispose of. they had been packed away and forgotten until mary rose arrived and reminded her aunt kate that a perfectly good outfit for a girl of fourteen was in one of her closets. fortunately ella had been slim as well as tall and the middy blouse that mrs. donovan tried on mary rose did not look too much as if it had been made for her grandmother. the bright plaid skirt trailed on the floor but aunt kate turned back the hem which still left the skirt hanging considerably below mary rose's shabby shoe tops, much to her delight. she hung over the machine, her tongue clattering an unwearied accompaniment to the whir of the wheel, as mrs. donovan sewed the basted hem. "did you know there was an enchanted princess in your house, aunt kate?" she demanded excitedly. mrs. donovan had not known it and her surprise made her break her thread. when mary rose had explained she grunted something. "you mean the girl that mr. longworthy's crazy about? she's up above an' won't have nothin' to do with men. 'i don't want nothin' in my life but my work,' says she to me, herself. that's all very well for now but let her wait a few years an' she'll sing a different tune or i miss my guess. she ain't enchanted, mary rose, she's just pig-headed an' young." mary rose was disappointed. "mr. jerry said she was under the spell of the wicked witch, independence," she insisted. "wasn't it good of him to take george washington to board? it's such a relief to have found a pleasant place so near. i'm sure they'll be friendly to him." mrs. donovan mentally planned to slip across the alley and see mr. jerry and his aunt mary herself about george washington's board as she looked into the earnest little face so near her own. "sure, they will," she said above the whir of the machine. "but you mustn't make friends of everyone you meet, mary rose. a city isn't like the country. i suppose you knew everyone in mifflin?" "everyone," with an emphatic shake of her head. "animals and vegetables as well as people. and everyone knew me." "well, it won't be that way in waloo," mrs. donovan explained. "no one knows you an' you don't know anyone. you mustn't go makin' up to strangers. a little girl can't tell who's good an' who's bad." "she can if she has the right kind of an eye," mary rose told her eagerly. "daddy said so over and over again. he said the good lord never made bad people because it would be a waste of time and dust when he could just as well make them good. and if you had the right kind of an eye you could see that there was good in every single person. daddy said i had the right kind. mine's blue but it isn't in the color, for his eyes were brown and they were right, too. it's something," she hesitated as she tried to explain what was so very dear and simple to her. "it's something to do with the inside and your heart. i shouldn't wonder, aunt kate, if you had the right kind. isn't it easier for you to see that people are kind and good than it is to see them bad?" it wasn't for aunt kate. a two-years' residence in the basement of the washington had about convinced her that all human nature was sour but she disliked to tell mary rose so when mary rose so plainly expected her to agree that the world was inhabited by a superior sort of angel. she snipped her threads and drew the plaid skirt from under the needle. mary rose fairly squealed with delight when she was in the white middy blouse and the skirt flapped about her ankles in such a very grown-up manner. mary rose's yellow hair had always been bobbed but no one had seen that it was trimmed before she left mifflin and it hung in rather straight lanky locks about her elfish face. some of the locks were long enough to be drawn under one of ella's discarded red hair ribbons and aunt kate pinned back the others. the result was a very different mary rose from the one who had jumped out of the taxicab a few hours ago. she climbed on a chair and looked at her reflection in the mirror of her aunt's bureau. "i do think it's too lovely!" she cried rapturously. "you can't ever know, aunt kate, how splendid it is to wear skirts. sometimes," she whispered confidentially, "i used to wonder if i really was a girl. you don't think it will make too much washing?" anxiously. "i shouldn't want to be a burden to you. but i do love this skirt! i wish gladys evans could see me!" [illustration: "'you can't ever know, aunt kate, how splendid it is to wear skirts.'"] she was still admiring her new clothes in the mirror when her uncle larry came in. "hullo," he said in a loud cheery voice. "who's this? kate, mrs. bracken wants to see you." mary rose tore her eyes from the fascinating reflection in the mirror that she could scarcely believe was herself, and looked at the big broad-shouldered man in the doorway. he had been frowning but the frown slipped away from his forehead when he gazed into mary rose's blue eyes, so that he looked very kind and friendly. mary rose jumped from the chair and ran over to him. "i'm mary rose," she said a bit shyly. this unknown uncle was so big and strong and he was janitor of this strange two-faced palace. a janitor sounded powerful and important even if aunt kate had explained that he wasn't, so that mary rose felt a little shy with him. "mary rose, eh?" he picked her up and raised her in his arms until her face was on a level with his. "sure, i think you're more of a rose than a mary," he added as he kissed the face that was as pink as any flower. her arms met around his neck. "that's because i'm so happy to be with you and aunt kate," she whispered. "you know, after daddy went to heaven there wasn't anyone in the whole world that belonged to me in mifflin but george washington, and my dog that jimmie bronson borrowed, and jenny lind, and now to have a great big uncle and a beautiful aunt of my very own m-makes me very happy." "who's george washington?" asked uncle larry as he found a chair and sat down with her in his arms. mary rose told him about her cat, which was boarding across the alley, and uncle larry thought to himself that he would go over and make sure that the cat was all right. it was a thundering shame the child couldn't have her pet with her. he'd like to tell the owner of the washington a few things if he knew who he was and if there was no fear of losing his job. "and jenny lind," mary rose was saying eagerly. "i must show you jenny lind." she slipped down and ran into the next room to come back with a birdcage. "aunt kate says i may keep her here because there isn't one word in that law about canary birds." "no, thank god, there isn't," said uncle larry. "the old grouch must have forgotten about them." he admired jenny lind as much as mary rose could wish. "the real jenny lind was a girl with a bird in her throat," mary rose explained as she leaned against his knee. "my own grandfather heard it and he told daddy and daddy told me that to hear her sing made a man think he was in heaven. so when mrs. lenox gave me this beautiful bird for my very own, of course, i named her jenny lind. mrs. lenox called her cleopatra. wasn't that a silly name for a bird? mrs. lenox must have liked it or she wouldn't have given it to anything. isn't it the luckiest thing that everyone hasn't the same likes? just suppose everyone had been like my father and my mother and all the little girls were named mary rose? i think it's the most beautiful name in the entire dictionary, but gladys evans in mifflin said it was common. she counted up and she knew seven marys, with her grandmother and old mrs. wilcox, who's deaf and half blind, and four roses. but there wasn't one mary rose!" triumphantly. "and that made all the difference in the world. my daddy chose the mary because he said there wasn't a better name for a little girl to have for her own and my little mother chose the rose because she said i was just like a flower when she saw me first. don't you like it, uncle larry?" "i do!" uncle larry could not have told her how much he liked it, but as he listened to her chatter he wondered how on earth kate was going to make the tenants of the washington think the child was fourteen. "and i like your name," mary rose was kind enough to say. "and aunt kate's, too," she added, as aunt kate came back from her interview with mrs. bracken. "her girl's gone," she said in answer to uncle larry's question. "i don't wonder. that's the fourth in three weeks. seems if she only stays home long enough to hire an' discharge 'em. she heard i had a niece with me an' she wants her to go up every mornin' an' wash the dishes till she gets another girl. so, mary rose, if you really want to earn money to pay for george washington's board, here's a chance." "oh!" mary rose slid to the floor and clapped her hands. "i do think this is the most wonderful world that ever was. i just wish for something and then i have it." "that'll happen just so long as you wish for what you can get," aunt kate told her. when mary rose was tucked in bed, where she told aunt kate she felt like a long green pickle in a glass jar because she never had slept in a cellar--a basement--before, and they always had pickles in their cellar, aunt kate explained to her husband about mrs. bracken. "i couldn't say anythin', but, of course, she'd come. mrs. bracken had the nerve to tell me she knew mary rose wasn't a child for childern weren't allowed in the buildin'. what was i to do, larry donovan, but say she'd wash her dirty old dishes? it won't hurt mary rose an' i'll give her a hand if she needs it. isn't it a pity though that mary rose couldn't have taken more after her mother's fam'ly? seems if i never saw such a small eleven-year-old as she is." chapter v enveloped in a blue and white checked gingham apron of her aunt's, mary rose washed mrs. bracken's dishes. mrs. donovan had brought her up to the apartment and mary rose had looked curiously around the rather bare and empty halls. there was something in the atmosphere of them that made her catch mrs. donovan by the hand. "it feels like the presbyterian church in the middle of the week," she whispered. "it doesn't seem as if anyone really lived here, aunt kate." "you'll find folks live here," mrs. donovan said grimly as she unlocked the bracken door. "we don't ever get a chance to forget 'em." mrs. bracken had gone out with her husband and there was no one in the apartment that seemed so big and grand to mary rose's unsophisticated eyes. but aunt kate sniffed at the untidy kitchen and living-room. "seems if it was just about as important for a woman to make a home as a club," she said under her breath as she picked up papers and straightened chairs in the living-room. she found the dish pan and showed mary rose what to do. "i know how to wash dishes, aunt kate." mary rose was in a fever to begin. "i washed them for lena and no one could be more particular than she was. we got our hot water out of a kettle instead of a pipe." she watched with interest the water run steaming from the faucet. "wouldn't it be grand if mrs. bracken had a little girl so we could wash dishes together? i don't mind doing them all by myself a bit, aunt kate. i'm glad to do it. i know there's nothing so splendid as a girl being useful. daddy told me that and mr. mann, the minister, and gladys evans' grandmother and all the other grown-uppers. but i think the grandest part is to earn george washington's board. it's splendid to have someone besides yourself to work for," she added with a very adult air. she sang to herself as she worked, after aunt kate had left her. "where have you been, billie boy, billie boy? where have you been, charming billie? i've been to see my wife, she's the treasure of my life, she's a young thing and can't leave her mother." it was lena's favorite song and it had many verses. mary rose sang them all with gusto. "if i didn't make a noise i'd be scared of the quiet," she thought. "i never was in a home that was so little like a home. it's because there isn't anything alive in it. there isn't even a lady washington geranium." she was astonished that there wasn't, for in mifflin pots of geraniums and other plants were always to be seen in sunny windows. "it gives you a hollow feeling--not empty for bread and butter but for people," she decided. mary rose had never lived where there were no live things. "dogs and cats and birds help to make you feel friendly toward all the world. and so do plants. i guess that's true of all the things god made," she thought as she hung up the dish pan on the nail aunt kate had pointed out. she stood in the doorway, looking back at the clean and tidy kitchen with considerable satisfaction. she had done it all herself and it would have pleased even the critical lena. a door across the hall opened suddenly and mary rose swung around and looked into the curious face of an elderly woman who was almost as broad as she was tall. her round face wore a scowl and the corners of her mouth turned straight down. "good morning," mary rose said in the neighborly fashion that was in vogue in mifflin. "h-m." the fat lady eyed her over gold spectacles. "can't mrs. bracken get a full-grown girl to do her work? i thought she was against child labor." she laughed unpleasantly. "i'm not working regular," mary rose said quickly, with a blush because she was not so large as the fat lady thought she should be. "i'm mrs. donovan's niece and i've just come from mifflin. i'm only washing mrs. bracken's dishes until she gets another girl, so i can earn money to pay for george washington's board." "george washington's board?" echoed the fat lady. "come here, mina," she called over her shoulder, "and listen to this child. who's george washington?" she was frankly curious and so was the maid, who had joined her. "he's my cat. i've had him ever since i had tonsilitis. aunt kate says the law won't let him live here with me, so i'm boarding him over there." and she nodded in the direction of the alley and the hospitable mr. jerry. "cats here? i should say not!" exclaimed mrs. schuneman. she watched mary rose as she carefully locked the door of the bracken apartment. the child puzzled her and when mrs. schuneman was puzzled over anything or anyone she had to find out all about them. she had nothing else to do. once she had been an active harassed woman, busy with the problem of how she was to support herself and her two daughters, but just when the problem seemed about to be too much for her to solve a brother died and left her money enough to live comfortably for the remainder of her life. she had moved from the crowded downtown rooms to the more pretentious washington and tried to think that she was happier for the change, but really she was very lonely and discontented. miss louise schuneman was too busy with church work and miss lottie schuneman had a bridge club four afternoons a week and went to the matinee and the moving picture shows the other afternoons, so that neither of them was a companion for their mother. mrs. schuneman had nothing to do but wonder about the neighbors she did not know and tell her maid how much admired her daughters were and how hard she had worked herself until the good god had seen fit to take her brother from his packing plant. "if you're the janitor's niece you can come in and clean up the mess the plumber made on my floor. it isn't the place of the girl i pay wages to, to clean up the dirt the workmen make." "isn't it?" mary rose did not know and she followed mrs. schuneman into the living-room. "what a pleasant room," she said, when she crossed the threshold, for the sun streamed in through the windows in a way that made even a rather garish decoration seem attractive. mrs. schuneman's grim face relaxed a trifle. "it ought to be pretty," she grumbled. "it cost enough but it don't suit louise. and lottie don't like the rug. she says it's too red. but i like red," she snapped. "it's a thankless task to try and please girls who think they know more than their old mother." "there is a lot of red in it." mary rose had to admit that much. "but red is a cheerful color. it makes you feel very warm and comfortable." "it isn't cheerful to my girls. they won't stay at home, always away, and their old mother left alone. when they were little i gave them all the time i could spare from my work and now they leave me by myself. they think because i have a girl to cook and wash i don't need them." mary rose did not understand and she stood there, just beyond the threshold, uncertainly. but if she did not understand why mrs. schuneman's daughters did not stay in the room with the red tug, she realized that mrs. schuneman was lonely. "it's too bad you haven't a pet," she suggested. "a dog or a cat is a lot of company. why--" a sudden thought came to her. "just wait a minute. i'll be right back," she called as she ran out of the room. before mrs. schuneman fairly realized that she had gone she was back with jenny lind in her cage. "i thought perhaps you might like to have jenny lind spend the day with you," she said breathlessly. "she isn't just the same as a grown up daughter, but she's lots of company and she sings--she sings," she was rather at a loss to tell how well jenny lind could sing, "like a seraphim! they sing in the bible and sound so grand i've always wanted to hear one though i know there isn't a seraphim that could sing sweeter than jenny lind. you can put the cage in that window. she loves the sunshine and she'll sing and sing until you forget you are lonely." "my gracious me!" murmured mrs. schuneman, staring from the eager face to the sleek yellow bird. "i haven't had a canary since i was a girl in my father's house." "uncle larry said the law doesn't say you can't have birds here. it's cats and dogs and children." "yes, yes. i know." mrs. schuneman walked up to the cage and looked at jenny lind, who looked at her with her bright bead-like eyes before she burst into joyous song. "now, why didn't i think of a canary?" mrs. schuneman demanded sharply. "there isn't any reason why i shouldn't have one." "you're perfectly welcome to jenny lind until you get one of your own." mary rose was delighted to have jenny lind received so cordially. "she'll be glad to spend the day with you. she's a very friendly bird." "i'll be glad to have her. perhaps you'll stay, too." mrs. schuneman surprised herself more than she did mary rose by the invitation that popped so suddenly from her mouth. she had never asked anyone in the washington to spend the day with her before. "tell me where you came from and what's your name and how old you are?" "i came from mifflin and my name's mary rose crocker and i'm almost el--i mean i'm going on fourteen." she remembered the secret she had with aunt kate just in time. a second more and it would have been too late. mrs. schuneman regarded her over the gold spectacles. "going on fourteen?" she repeated. "you're very small for your age. why, when my lottie was fourteen she would have made two of you." mary rose squirmed. the unjust criticism was very hard to bear. she just had to murmur faintly that it would be some time before she would reach fourteen. "h-m, i thought so." mrs. schuneman looked very wise, as if she understood perfectly and there is no doubt that she understood more than mary rose. "well, well," she said, while mary rose, scarlet and mortified, stood twisting the corner of aunt kate's apron. "i--i hope you won't tell," she said hurriedly, her eyes on the red rug, "because it's something of a secret on account of the law for this house. i don't understand exactly but aunt kate does." "i've no doubt she does." the corners of mrs. schuneman's mouth were pulled down farther than they had been and she looked very, very stern until jenny lind broke into joyous song again, when the corners of mrs. schuneman's mouth tilted up, slightly. "well, well," she said again, but not quite so crossly. "so long as you behave yourself and aren't a nuisance i shan't say a word. where i lived before my brother left me his money there were more children than a body could count. such a noise and confusion all the time. i was glad to get away from them and come up here where there couldn't be any children----" "nor any dogs nor cats," murmured mary rose sadly. "but maybe that's why the place hasn't seemed like home to me." "of course it is." mary rose knew. "i never heard of a home without children. there wasn't one in all mifflin." she tried to imagine such a thing but she couldn't do it. "it wouldn't be a home," she decided emphatically. mrs. schuneman regarded her curiously before she gave herself another surprise. "suppose you go and ask your aunt if you can go out with me and find a bird? i believe you would choose a good one. louise and lottie can make a fuss if they want to but i never said a word when they bought a phonograph and a bird will be more company for an old lady than a machine." they had a wonderful time finding a canary. they visited several shops where birds of many kinds were offered for sale. mary rose quite lost her heart to a great red and green poll parrot with fierce red-rimmed eyes. "you'd never be lonesome if you had him," she whispered. "he could really talk to you." "damn! damn! damn!" remarked poll parrot pleasantly, as if to show that he really could talk. "polly wants a cracker. oh, damn! damn! fools and idiots! damn!" "it isn't conversation i care for. it's too much like having a man around again." mrs. schuneman was quite shocked. after they had made their choice and had a bird in a neat little wooden cage and had bought a fine brass cage for a permanent home they stopped at a confectioner's for a sundae. mary rose's cheeks were as pink as pink as they sat at the little table and ate ice cream and discussed a name for the new member of the schuneman family. they finally agreed on germania in deference to mrs. schuneman's love for her native country and mary rose's firm belief that a bird's name should be suggestive of music. "and i've heard that lots of music was made in germany," she said. altogether it was a very pleasant afternoon and they went back to the washington very happily. mrs. schuneman carried germania in the temporary wooden cage and mary rose proudly bore the brass cage. as they went up the steps a man brushed past them. he was tall and thin and had a nervous irritable manner that one felt as well as saw. mary rose locked up and smiled politely. "good afternoon," she said. the tall thin man did not answer her. he did not even look at her but hurried on up the stairs. "that's mr. wells," mrs. schuneman explained in a hoarse whisper that must have followed mr. wells up the stairs and caught him at the first landing. "he's an awful grouch. he's over the brackens, but if lottie is entertaining one of her bridge clubs and he's at home he's sure to send his jap man down to ask her to make less noise. i've never spoken to him in my life. i don't see how you dared." "i always spoke to people in mifflin." mary rose couldn't understand why she shouldn't speak to people in waloo. "folks don't speak to folks in waloo unless they've been introduced," mrs. schuneman told her gloomily. "the good god knows i've had to learn that. and you're too young to know good from bad," she began, as aunt kate had, but mary rose interrupted her to explain that she could, that she had the right kind of an eye, and he tried to tell her what the right kind of an eye was. "you look through your heart with it," vaguely. "i don't understand just how for your eyes are here," she touched her face, "and your heart's here," and her hand tapped her small chest. "but that's what daddy said. he called it the friendly eye. being friendly to people, he said, was as if you had a candle in your heart and the light shines through your eyes. oh, mrs. schuneman, i do believe germania is going to like it here." for germania was twittering as if she did find her new home to her liking. they had scarcely transferred germania from the wooden cage to the shining brass one and hung it in the window when miss lottie schuneman came in. mary rose looked at her eagerly. could she be the enchanted princess mr. jerry had spoken of? but miss lottie was short and plump like her mother and her face was round and rosy. she did not bear the faintest resemblance to any princess mary rose had ever read of. it was disappointing. "what have you there?" miss lottie asked at once. "you can't have pets in this flat, you know." "you can have canary birds," mary rose told her quickly. "uncle larry said the law never spoke of them." "uncle larry said that, did he?" miss lottie began but her mother broke in with an eagerness that was very different from the querulous way in which she usually spoke: "i've got to have something alive here to keep me company. you don't know how lonesome it is for a woman to have nothing to do when she's been as busy as i was. there isn't anyone for me to talk to but mina, and she's paid to work, not to listen. you and louise bought a phonograph. i guess i can have a bird if i want one." "my word!" miss lottie put her hands on her hips and stared at her mother. she laughed softly, indulgently. "sure, you can have a bird if you want one. but don't let it wake me up mornings." "wouldn't you just as soon be wakened by a bird singing as a steam radiator sizzling?" asked mary rose. "unless you live all by yourself on a desert island you've got to be wakened by some kind of a noise. i think a bird singing is just about the most beautiful noise that ever was." "so do i," agreed mrs. schuneman. "and you needn't worry, lottie schuneman. i don't complain of your phonograph nights, i leave that to mr. wells, and you needn't find fault with my bird mornings." "i'm not finding fault, far be it from me; only when mr. wells sends down word that your new pet is a nuisance you can answer him yourself." "how could anyone say a bird was a nuisance?" mary rose was shocked. "why, it can't be that late!" for the dock on the mantel called out five times and she looked at it in wide-eyed amazement. never had an afternoon run away any faster. "i must go. i've had a perfectly wonderful time, mrs. schuneman, and i hope that germania will be happy with you in her new home." there was a wistful note in her voice that reminded mrs. schuneman that mary rose had recently come to a new home. she patted mary rose on the shoulder and told her to come again. "come whenever you like. i'm alone most of the time and you can be free with me," meaningly. "my tongue isn't hung in the middle to wag at both ends." "you can't have a kid running in and out all the time," objected miss lottie, when mary rose had gone. mrs. schuneman stopped snapping her fingers at germania and looked at her daughter. "there isn't much about this house that you let me have as i want it. you took me away from my old friends and brought me up here where it's so stylish i don't know a soul. i wonder i haven't lost my voice, i've so little chance to use it. we've been here for seven months now and though there's dozens and dozens of people pass my door every night and morning, there's not one of them ever stops. the janitor and his wife are the only ones i can talk to and i have to find fault to get them up here. you and louise are out all day. you don't stay here." "you don't have to stay here, either," yawned miss lottie. she had heard all that before, very, very often. "we've told you a million times to go out." "where'll i go?" asked her mother sharply. "where'll i go? i can't run about the streets and the stores six days in the week. a woman's got to be home some time and if i find that child amuses me i'm going to have her here when i want her. you needn't say another word, lottie schuneman. so long as i pay the bills i'll have something to say about my own house." "i was only telling you the kid might be a nuisance," muttered miss lottie. "and i was telling you i'd do as you do, choose my own friends. that child's the only soul that has ever looked at me in a friendly way since i came to this house and i'm going to see her when i want to." mrs. donovan could scarcely believe her ears when mary rose poured out the story of the afternoon. "old lady schuneman's been crosser than two sticks ever since she came here. maybe it is because she's lonesome, i dunno. seems if a canary won't do much for her but, for the land's sakes, mary rose, don't put one in every flat." "wouldn't that be grand!" mary rose stopped paring potatoes for supper to look at her aunt with admiration. "it would be like living inside an organ, wouldn't it. i think it would be perfectly lovely." chapter vi when mary rose went up to mrs. bracken's the next morning she took jenny lind with her and placed the cage on the kitchen table. "i can't bear to be alone," she had explained to aunt kate. "if i don't have a friend with me i feel as if i was shut up in a dark closet." first mary rose went into the big living-room and picked up papers, straightened the chairs and raised the shades as she had seen her aunt do the day before. it was a very splendid room to mary rose but there was something about it that made her frown as she stood in the doorway. "it needs something. even the chairs don't look as if they really knew each other. it doesn't feel as if people ever had a good time in it." she shook her head and thought of the shabby sitting-room in mifflin--not big enough to swing a cat in, daddy had said--where she and daddy and jenny lind and george washington and solomon and lena had been crowded together. everyone had had good times there. she winked back a tear as she went down the hall. she glanced in at an open door and stopped short as she found that she was looking into the black eyes of a woman on the bed. "are you mrs. donovan's niece?" the woman said faintly. "come in. gracious, but you're small for your age! you washed up very nicely yesterday. i didn't close my eyes last night and i'm not feeling well today, so i'm not going to get up for a while. i wish you would tell your uncle that mrs. matchan can't practice this morning. i must get some sleep. what's that in the kitchen?" she demanded as she heard a happy chirp-chirp. "that's jenny lind." mary rose was all sympathy for this lovely lady who could not sleep. for a moment she had thought that she might be the enchanted princess but if she was mrs. bracken she was a married lady and mary rose had never heard of a married princess. all the princesses she knew ceased to exist when they began to live happily ever after. "jenny lind?" asked mrs. bracken. "my canary. i brought her for company. i never was in a house by myself and it's lonely if you're only going on fourteen," faltered mary rose, fully conscious that mrs. bracken did not care for canaries. "well, i can't have her in my kitchen. she makes me nervous. put her out in the hall and shut the bedroom door. when you have washed the dishes i may let you make a cup of tea." and she closed the black eyes which had looked at mary rose in such a chilly way. mary rose went out on tiptoe. she meant to close the door softly but she was so indignant that it would slam. put her jenny lind out in the hall where cats could get her? she would not. even if cats were forbidden to enter the washington some cat might not know the law and slip in. she would take no risk. she nodded encouragingly at the bird as she looked about the kitchen. near the sink was an open cupboard with three shelves, broad and high enough to hold a birdcage. she would put the cage on the lowest shelf and then if mrs. bracken came out, she would push the door shut. "you'd better go to sleep too, jenny lind," she cautioned in a low voice. "the lady doesn't like you. she thinks you're noisy." she did not tell jenny lind what she thought of the lady, but shut her lips firmly and began her work. she did not sing that morning. she did not even look up to smile and nod to jenny lind, but kept her eyes on her dishes, her lips pressed into an indignant red button. suddenly there was a whir--a rattle--and she did look up to see that the cupboard had vanished. shelves and birdcage had all disappeared. nothing was left but a vacant space and an open door. mary rose dropped the dish she held. fortunately it was a kitchen bowl, but it would have been the same if it had been one of the best cups. [illustration: "shelves and birdcage had all disappeared."] "why--why!" gasped mary rose. she tried to put her head in the space where the shelves had been to see where jenny lind had gone. "jenny lind!" she shrieked suddenly. she could not help it. if your pet canary was suddenly snatched from you by some mysterious power, i rather fancy you would shriek, too. "jenny lind!" the crash of the kitchen bowl or mary rose's astonished shriek brought mrs. bracken from her bed. she stood in the doorway, one hand clutching the kimono she had thrown around her. "you must be more quiet," she said crossly. "how can i sleep when you are making such a noise? and if you break any more dishes i shall have to charge you for them. it's pure carelessness." "it's jenny lind," gulped mary rose, too frightened to think of dishes. and she tried to make mrs. bracken understand that jenny lind had been there, in that hole in the wall, and that now--oh, where was she? mrs. bracken shrugged her shoulders. "it's the dumbwaiter," she yawned. "your bird has gone up to mr. wells or possibly higher. if it's mr. wells i don't suppose you'll see the bird again. he's a very peculiar man." mary rose did not wait to hear another word. with aunt kate's big blue and white checked apron on, the dish mop in her hand, and a great fear in her heart, she dashed up the stairs and pounded on the door of the apartment above. mr. wells came himself and if he had looked cross and forbidding the night before he looked a thousand times crosser and more forbidding now. indeed, he exactly fulfilled mary rose's idea of an ogre. "please don't hurt jenny lind," sobbed mary rose, as soon as she could gather breath to speak. "i'll take her right away." "hurt who? who's jenny lind?" growled the ogre. "my bird! my jenny lind! she came up to your house with a dumbwaiter." mary rose hadn't the faintest idea of what a dumbwaiter was and it sounded horrible to her. "please, please, give her to me at once!" she fairly danced in her impatience. she would have rushed into the apartment but mr. wells stood in the doorway. "the dumbwaiter?" mary rose had never heard a more unfriendly voice. he called to someone behind him and a japanese man came and peered under mr. wells' arm as he held it against the frame of the door. "sako has taken nothing from the dumbwaiter this morning," mr. wells said very coldly after he had exchanged a few words with his servant. "but if you have lost your bird it is only what you must expect. pets are not allowed in this house." and he scowled fiercely enough to frighten anyone but the owner of a lost canary. "they are if they're not children nor cats nor dogs," insisted tearful mary rose. "uncle larry said the law never says one word about birds. oh, are you quite sure jenny lind isn't in your house?" she wailed. "i told you we have taken nothing from the dumbwaiter," impatiently. he thought he was wonderfully patient with the child. he could have ordered her out of the building at once. "your bird may have gone up to the next floor." "perhaps she has." mary rose was on the stairs before he finished the sentence. "i'm sorry for bothering you," she called back, "but if one of your family was lost i rather think you'd try to find her." her voice rang out shrill and clear and it was such an unexpected sound in the washington, where children's voices were forbidden, that old mrs. johnson opened her door in a spasm of curiosity. she closed it abruptly when she met the cold unfriendly glance of mr. wells' black eyes, and shook in her shoes. four doors faced mary rose when she reached the third floor. she knocked on all of them not to waste time. two doors remained firmly closed. the other two opened simultaneously. in one stood a girl with yellow hair and blue eyes and in the other was a young man who promptly changed the morose expression he had put on when he rose for a pleasanter one as he glanced across at miss blanche carter before he even looked at mary rose. miss carter looked at mary rose first and then at mr. robert strahan. "oh, please," mary rose was almost, if not quite, in tears, "have you seen jenny lind?" they stared at her. the only jenny lind they had ever heard of had been quietly in her grave for many years. they looked at each other. mr. strahan added a satisfied grin to his pleasant expression, for he had wished to know miss carter ever since he had met her on the stairs the day after he had moved into the washington, but fate had refused to bring them together. he determined to make the most of this rare opportunity as he kindly questioned mary rose. "who is jenny lind?" "my canary," sobbed mary rose. "i put her on the shelf in mrs. bracken's kitchen and she--she disappeared!" "cats," suggested mr. strahan with a very knowing glance for miss carter. mary rose shook her head. "cats aren't allowed here. it was a dumbwaiter, mrs. bracken said." her voice was filled with anguish. how hateful city life was! "oh! i thought it was the milkman." miss carter turned and ran into her flat, mary rose at her heels. after a moment's hesitation, in which he called himself a bashful idiot, mr. strahan deserted his doorway for his neighbor's. on the top shelf of a cupboard like that which had been in mrs. bracken's kitchen mary rose saw a bottle of milk. she groaned. but miss carter gave a pull somewhere and sent it higher. there on the lower shelf, swinging unconcernedly in her cage, was jenny lind. mary rose gave a joyous shriek. "i thought i'd never see her again. i can't thank you, but i'll remember you as long as i live. i--i feel as if you'd saved her life." she shivered as she remembered the snap of mr. wells' black eyes, the click of his heavy jaw, when he had said that pets were not allowed in the building. "what is all this excitement?" questioned a soft voice behind them, and mary rose whirled around and stared at another girl. now that her anxiety in regard to jenny lind was relieved, mary rose had time to think of other things. she brushed the tears from her eyes, and her face was wreathed with a dewy smile as she asked eagerly: "please, which--which of you is the enchanted princess?" one of them must be. she knew it by a funny prickle down her back. both girls laughed, the yellow-haired one and the brown. "princesses aren't enchanted now." miss carter pulled a lock of mary rose's yellow hair. "they have their eyes too wide open." "but mr. jerry said there was, that in this very house was a most beautiful princess who was under the spell of a wicked witch. he said the old witch's name was independence." her words fairly ran over each other, she was so afraid something would happen before she could deliver mr. jerry's message to the princess. "and he said to tell the princess that the prince wasn't ever going to jericho, but was going to stay right here on the job." miss carter looked significantly at the brown-haired girl. "that message isn't for me," she told mary rose. "independence and i are strangers. i can't bear the thing. i quite agree with mr. jerry that she is an old witch. isn't someone a picture, bess," she asked, "with her birdcage and checked apron?" "she surely is." the impatient frown that had marred miss thorley's face at the mere mention of mr. jerry's name slipped away. "i must paint her. she'll make a fine ad. who are you, honey?" and mary rose told them who she was and how she had come from mifflin to make her home with aunt kate and uncle larry in the cellar-basement, she meant; and how she had had to board out george washington and had taken jenny lind to mrs. bracken's for company while she earned money to pay for george washington's board. "by jinks, what a jolly story," murmured mr. strahan who still clung to his neighbor's doorway and his opportunity. the two girls looked at him and the three smiled involuntarily. "i must go back and finish the dishes," mary rose announced suddenly. "mrs. bracken won't like it if i stay away any longer. i'm sorry i bothered you," she smiled tremulously. "but i just had to find jenny lind. thank you for your trouble. good-by." "come and see us again?" the invitation came in a chorus. mary rose stopped abruptly. "is that an honest and true invitation?" she asked doubtfully. "aunt kate said i mustn't ever be a nuisance to the tenements because children aren't allowed here. i'm not a child, she said, because i'm going on fourteen, but i had to promise to be careful of the tenements." "bless the baby," murmured miss carter as she and mr. strahan stood in the hall and watched mary rose's head go down, down. "i thought children were barred?" asked mr. strahan quickly, he was so afraid that miss carter would disappear also. "i thought pets were barred, too. she's a quaint little thing. i suppose she is homesick. a city apartment house is not like a home in a small town," she said, as if she knew, and she sighed. "it is not!" he agreed with her emphatically. he had come from a small town himself and he knew. "i think i'll make a little story out of this. i'm a newspaper man, you know, and there isn't anything a city editor likes better than he does a human interest story. i have a hunch that there is a lot of human interest in that kid." "i fancy you are right. i'm a librarian myself, and i should be at my library this blessed moment. i'd far rather go down and help mary rose," and she laughed scornfully because she had such simple tastes. he looked as if he admired them. "if you feel that way you surely aren't under the spell of that wicked witch independence that mary rose talks of." there was nothing scornful in his laugh. it held so little scorn and so much admiration that she flushed. "independence!" she shrugged her shoulders. "i learned long ago that independence is just another word for loneliness. my friend, miss thorley, doesn't agree with me. we have very warm arguments over it." "they haven't been warm enough to disturb me. you're very quiet neighbors. doesn't the very quiet get on your nerves sometimes? it's something just to hear people, when you are alone and have no one to talk to." "lonely! you?" she was astonished. "i don't see how a young man could be lonely." evidently her idea of masculine life was a merry round of social pleasure. his laugh was a trifle bitter. "a man can be lonely for exactly the same reason a girl can," he asserted. "i've lived here for three months, and this is the first time i've spoken to you." the color deepened in her cheeks. "i suppose i shouldn't be talking to you now but--mary rose--and we are neighbors. one does get so suspicious living with suspicious people," apologetically. "please don't be suspicious of me. i'm the most harmless man in waloo. i'm too busy hanging on to my job to be dangerous. i propose a vote of thanks to mary rose for bringing us together. all in favor say aye. the ayes have it." he held out his hand. she laughed consciously, but after a second she gave him her fingers. "it is pleasant to be able to speak to one's neighbors," she admitted with a hint of formality that in some way pleased mr. strahan. mary rose stopped at mr. wells' door as she went downstairs. it would be but friendly to tell him that jenny lind was found, he must be anxious. but she hesitated before she rapped on the door, very gently this time. mr. wells had not lost any of his grimness when he opened it. he had on his hat and he looked to mary rose's startled eyes as tall as the steeple of the presbyterian church in mifflin. "well, what now?" he snapped. mary rose caught her breath. "i thought you would like to know that jenny lind is safe." she lifted the cage so that he could see for himself how safe and comfortable jenny lind was. "she was on the lowest shelf of the dumbwaiter. the enchanted princess's milk bottle was on the top shelf." and she chuckled. now that she was no longer frightened, jenny lind's adventure seemed a joke. it was not a joke to mr. wells. "a city apartment house is no place for pets--or children," he said and shut the door. mary rose stared at the mahogany panels. "crosspatch," she whispered. and then she said it louder, "crosspatch!" the door opened as if by magic and mr. wells came out and shut it behind him. "did you say anything?" he asked coldly. mary rose was too startled and too honest not to tell the truth. "i said crosspatch," she faltered and waited bravely for the deluge. the two looked at each other. the tall man with the nervous, irritable face and the little girl with the birdcage in her hand. she did not say that she had called him a crosspatch, and kindly discretion whispered in mr. wells' ear that it would be wise to leave well enough alone. without another word he stalked by mary rose down the stairs. mary rose followed meekly. "it's a lucky thing, jenny lind, that you were not on his dumbwaiter. he's not what i call a very friendly man," she murmured. she told mr. jerry all about it that afternoon when she ran over to see how george washington was doing as a boarder. mr. jerry watched her curiously. "poor little kid," he thought. "she's up against it for fair with a cold-blooded bunch like that." he was very sympathetic and kind and quite enthusiastic over his new boarder. he cheered mary rose amazingly and lifted her to the seventh heaven of delight when he suggested that she should ride downtown with him in the automobile when he went for his aunt mary. "you may take jenny lind and george washington with you," he was good enough to say. mary rose's dancing feet moved in a more sedate measure. "i think jenny lind has had ride enough for one day. and george washington likes his four feet better than he does an automobile. he won't mind if we leave him behind." "then you may sit on the front seat with me," mr. jerry promised. "it's very exciting living in the city," sighed mary rose, when she was on the front seat beside him. "i've been here only three days and see all that's happened. oh, there's the lady who found jenny lind--and the enchanted princess, too!" she cried as they passed miss thorley and miss carter. "isn't that the enchanted princess, mr. jerry?" she twisted around so that she could look into his face. he colored and his eyes seemed to darken as he spoke to the two girls. miss thorley nodded curtly, but miss carter waved a friendly hand. "my," sighed mary rose, "if i were a prince i wouldn't let any old witch independence keep her enchanted." "i wonder how you would prevent it," muttered mr. jerry under his breath. "saying and doing, mary rose, are two very separate and distinct things." "i know." mary rose felt quite capable of discussing the subject. "mr. mann, the presbyterian minister in mifflin, preached a whole sermon about that. he said the lord didn't ever give you what you want right off quick. you had to work for it, and the more precious it was the harder you had to work. i should think that a beautiful princess would be the most precious thing a prince could work for, shouldn't you?" mr. jerry took his hand from the wheel to squeeze mary rose's brown fingers. "i should!" he said solemnly. "i do, mary rose, i do!" chapter vii strange as the washington seemed to mary rose, it was not very different from any other large city apartment house where people lived side by side for months, for years, sometimes, without becoming acquainted. it was not worth while, some said; neighbors change too often. you don't know who people are, others thought. in such close quarters one cannot afford to know undesirable people. the advantage of an apartment house is that you don't have to know your neighbors, murmured a third group. consequently the tenants came and went and one could count on a hand and have fingers to spare, the few who exchanged greetings when they met on the stairs. this was an appalling state of affairs to country-bred mary rose, who had been brought up in a friendly atmosphere. in mifflin everyone knew everyone and was interested in what happened. when joy came to a neighbor there was general rejoicing, and when sorrow touched a family there was a universal sympathy, while the little between pleasures and perplexities lost nothing and gained considerably by the knowledge that they were shared with others. mary rose was intensely interested in this new phase of life, if she could not understand it. it amazed her when she counted how many people were over her small head. "in mifflin i didn't have anyone but god and the angels," she told aunt kate, "but here there's the schunemans and the rawsons and the blakes and mr. jarvis and miss adams and mrs. matchan and miss proctor and mr. wilcox and his friend. in mifflin we lived side by side, you know, and not up and down. we ought all to be friends when we live so close together, shouldn't we?" wistfully. aunt kate tried her best to tell her that they were all friends, but she couldn't do it. "what's the good of tellin' her folks are friendly when they don't look friendly? seems if a body can't frown with her face an' smile with her heart at the same time. an' frowns are just as catchin' as germs. you naturally don't pat a growlin' dog an' so you don't smile at a frownin' person. i've al'ys seen more frowns 'n smiles in the washington." but mary rose did her best to make friends, because that was what she had done always and because that was the only way she knew how to live. and one by one her unconscious little efforts to unlock the gates of reserve that suspicion and indifference and consciousness had placed over the hearts and lips of the people she was thrown with began to make some impression. even mrs. willoughby, who had wept ever since her mother died, smiled when she saw the little girl in the checked apron that was so much too big for her, with her birdcage in her hand, and forgot to complain of the unusual noise in the hall. mary rose smiled, too, and when mrs. willoughby spoke of jenny lind, mary rose offered to loan her bird. "she'll make you feel happier," she said. "she did me, when my daddy went to be with my little mother in heaven. jenny lind can't talk," she admitted regretfully, "but she can sing and she's--she's so friendly!" and mr. willoughby came down that very night and thanked the donovans for the loan of jenny lind and for what mary rose had said and done. larry donovan and his wife looked at each other after he had gone. it was not often that they were thanked by a tenant. miss adams would have died before she would have confessed to anyone but mary rose that she hated waloo, she hated the washington. mary rose looked at her with wide open eyes, too astonished to be shocked that anyone could hate a world that was as beautiful and as full of wonderful surprises as mary rose found this world to be. "i don't see how you can be lonesome when there are people above you and below you and in front of you and behind you and right across from you. why, you're almost entirely surrounded by neighbors," she cried, as if miss adams could not be almost entirely surrounded by anything more desirable. "there are almost as many people in this house as there are in the presbyterian church in mifflin and no one was ever lonely there except on week days. don't you like your neighbors?" "i don't know them," confessed miss adams, mournfully. "you don't know the people who live right next door to you!" mary rose had never heard of such a situation. "why, when the jenkses moved from prairieville mrs. mullins, who'd never set eyes on one of them before, took over a pan of hot gingerbread so she could get acquainted right away. of course the people here are all moved in, but you could borrow an egg or a cup of molasses, couldn't you? and take it back right away. that would give you two excuses to call." "i couldn't do that." miss adams shivered at the mere thought. "it isn't that i care to know any of them, mary rose, only--it makes me so mad that i don't!" with a sudden burst of honesty. "couldn't you ask about a pattern or what to do for a cold in the head or how to get red ants off of a plant? but you haven't any plants. wouldn't you feel more friendly if you had a beautiful pink geranium growing in your window?" "there isn't sun enough in this flat to keep a geranium alive," grumbled miss adams, who seemed determined to be lonely and faultfinding. mary rose sighed. "of course, no one can have the sun all the time," she said gently, as if to excuse old sol for not lingering longer in miss adams' small apartment. "i'll let you have jenny lind for a while tomorrow," she suggested after a moment of frowning thought. "she'll cheer you up." miss adams wanted to refuse to be cheered by jenny lind, but she had not the courage, and when mary rose brought the bird the next morning she brought also a small glass dish filled with pebbles on which rested a little green bulb. "inside it is a japanese lily," she said, and there was both pride and awe in her voice. "don't you wonder how god ever folded it up in such a small package? mr. jerry's aunt mary was going to throw it away. she said it was too late, that it ought to have been planted months ago, but i said wouldn't she please give it a chance. my daddy used to say that was all people needed, just a chance. mrs. mullins had one in mifflin, i mean a lily, and it didn't need hardly any sun. it just grew and grew. you can sit beside it in the window and pretend you're a japanese queen. don't you think it's fun to pretend? and imagine? it's almost the same as having everything you want. i've imagined i was a queen on a throne and the whale that swallowed jonah--he must have been so surprised--and a circus rider and an angel with a harp and a pussy willow. i don't know which i liked the best. it helps a lot when things go wrong to imagine they're right. you'll like to see the japanese lily come out of its bulb, won't you?" miss adams was polite enough to say she would, although she frowned at the glass dish as she set it in the window. if mary rose had seen as much of the world as she had, she wouldn't think that to imagine a thing was the same as having it. "i'll tell mr. jerry's aunt mary you're much obliged," mary rose suggested when she left. another day miss proctor found her leaning against the door of the apartment she shared with mrs. matchan, listening entranced to the music that mrs. matchan was making with her ten fingers and her piano. "isn't it beautiful?" mary rose looked up with shining eyes, not at all abashed at being discovered listening. "it's better than any circus band i ever heard. it's like jenny lind when the sun is shining and she has had a leaf of fresh lettuce. it makes me feel in my heart like soda water feels in my nose, all prickly and light," vaguely. "it's--it's wonderful! take this place," she moved generously away from the crack that miss proctor might put her ear to it. "you can hear better. when i grow up i want to play just like that." mary rose always wanted to do what other people could do. "do you?" miss proctor looked at her and forgot that she had considered children unmitigated nuisances. she actually opened the door. "come in," she said, "and tell mrs. matchan that you like her music." and the result of mary rose's attempt to put in words the feeling she had in her heart that was like soda water in her nose, was that mrs. matchan went down to the donovans' and asked if she might be permitted--permitted--to give mary rose music lessons. "you could have knocked me down with the pin feather of a chicken," aunt kate told uncle larry. "i supposed, of course, she'd come tearin' down to find fault with mrs. rawson for runnin' her sewin' machine last night an' i was all ready to tell her that each of us has some rights, but no, it was to offer to give mary rose lessons on her piano. she says the child's got talent an' feelin' an' she'd like to see how she'd express them. she had to tell me twice before i could take it in. it isn't often that folks come down here to give a favor. seems if they only find the way when they want to complain. i never knew mrs. matchan to do anythin' for anybody before an' we've lived under the same roof for most two years now." she had another surprise when bob strahan tramped down the basement stairs with a big box of annie keller chocolates under his arm. he solemnly presented the candy to mary rose. "in payment of a debt," he explained gravely when aunt kate and uncle larry stared and mary rose giggled. "she helped me with a very important bit of work," he added, although the addition did not make the matter any clearer to the donovans nor to mary rose. "you bet she helped me," he told miss carter when he went up and met her in the lower hall. they had encountered each other on the stairs several times since the day of jenny lind's adventure and had made the amazing discovery that they had formerly lived within fifteen miles of each other and had many mutual friends. "if it hadn't been for mary rose, i wouldn't be on the staff of the waloo _gazette_ today. they're cutting off heads down there, and i'm sure mine was slated to go, but the chief's strong for human interest stuff, especially kid stuff. he says that every living being, however hard his outside shell is now, was once a kid, and sometime the kid stuff will get to him for the sake of old times. mary rose and the cat she's boarding out saved my neck and i'm still a man with a job." "that's splendid." miss carter tried to speak with enthusiasm, but she could not look enthusiastic. she was tired and discontented with life; all the sparkle had gone out of her face. bob strahan saw it and was sorry. "say," he said impulsively. "i've two tickets for a show in my pocket this minute. you've known me over forty-eight hours. is that long enough to make it proper for you to go with me? i'll give you the names of the banker and the minister in my old home town and you can call them up on the long distance for references." "the idea!" a bit of sparkle crept back into miss carter's face and she laughed. "louis blodgett's chum doesn't need any reference. louis has told me quite a little about you," significantly. "it seems perfectly ridiculous that you were living right next door and i never knew it." "and you might not know it now if it hadn't been for mary rose and that canary of hers. gee! i'm glad i took her that box of chocolates." chapter viii with jenny lind's cage in her hand, mary rose knocked at miss thorley's door. "we've come to have our pictures taken," she told miss carter, when she opened it. "the princess, i mean the other lady," she colored pinkly as miss carter laughed, "said we were to advertise mr. bingham henderson's jam." mary rose always made a careful explanation. "if she would like two birds i'm almost sure that mrs. schuneman would loan her germania." "do you want two birds, bess?" called miss carter, and miss thorley came in. she wore a faded blue smock over her crash gown and looked more beautiful than before to mary rose's admiring eyes. "i think i have two birds," she laughed, and patted mary rose's head and snapped her fingers at jenny lind. "but don't tell me old lady grouch is so human as to have a canary." "old lady grouch?" mary rose did not know whom she meant. "schuneman, is that her name?" absently. miss thorley was studying mary rose from behind half shut eyes. just how should she pose her? "oh, but she isn't grouchy!" mary rose flew to the defense of her new friend. "she was just lonesome. now that she has germania for company, she is very, very pleasant. i go to see her every day." miss thorley shrugged her shoulders. "every one to their taste. stand here, mary rose, so that the sun will fall on that yellow mop of yours. would your heart break if i took off that hair ribbon? i'd rather your hair was loose." "aunt kate put it there," doubtfully. "i'll put it back before aunt kate sees you. now, just hold jenny lind's cage under one arm and these under the other." she handed her a couple of blue and white jars, labeled with big letters--"henderson-bingham. jam manufacturers." "can you hold another? don't say yes if you can't, for it is tiresome to pose when you're not used to it. now then, how is that, blanche? isn't she ducky? you know it's moving day, mary rose, and you won't trust anyone but yourself to move what you like best, your bird and your jam." "i just did move," proudly, "from mifflin to waloo." "exactly. quaint, isn't she?" miss thorley murmured to miss carter. "how old are you, mary rose?" before mary rose could stammer that she was going on fourteen miss carter broke in to say that she was off. "be good to mary rose," she begged. "and, mary rose, when you are tired, say so. miss thorley will forget all about you when she is interested in the picture and she'll let you stand there until you drop. i know. you have a hard pose with your arms like that and when you are tired be sure and say so." "oh, run along, blanche, and leave us alone," miss thorley said impatiently as she got her drawing board and brushes and sat down beside the little table that held her paints. miss carter only waited to make a face at mary rose before she shut the door and left the artist and her model together. neither spoke for a few moments. mary rose was too interested in watching miss thorley's wonderful fingers and miss thorley was too intent on her work for conversation. at last mary rose could keep still no longer. "are you really an enchanted princess?" she asked eagerly. "i should scarcely call myself that, mary rose. a working woman is the way i say it." "then what did mr. jerry mean? don't you think he is an awfully nice man? he makes me think of alvin lewis in mifflin, only alvin isn't quite so stylish. he is a clerk in the drug store in mifflin and he was real pleasant. when gladys and i only had a nickel he'd let us have a glass of ice cream soda with two spoons. he was such a pleasant man. but what did mr. jerry mean," she returned to her mutton with a suddenness that made miss thorley blur a line, "when he said you were under the spell of the wicked witch independence?" "how should i know?" and miss thorley frowned in a way that made mary rose wish she wouldn't. it quite spoiled her face to frown with it. "what is independence?" mary rose frowned, too. as aunt kate had said, frowns were contagious. mary rose had caught one now in a flash. miss thorley took up a handful of brushes and regarded them intently before she said slowly: "independence is the greatest thing in the world, mary rose. it means that i can live as i choose, where i choose, that i can pay my own bills, buy my own clothes and food, that i can do exactly as i please and as i think best. the independence of women is the most wonderful thing in this wonderful age." mary rose looked puzzled. mr. jerry had not spoken of it as if it were such a wonderful thing. she looked around the pretty room with its simple furnishings and then at miss thorley. "does it mean you aren't ever going to be married?" she asked doubtfully. in mifflin all the girls as big as miss thorley meant to be married. "it means exactly that." miss thorley's pretty lips were pressed closer together. "work, mary rose, is the most important thing in life." but mary rose was horrified. "aren't you ever going to make a home for a family?" she cried. she couldn't believe that was what miss thorley meant and she dropped a jam jar. "you don't have to stop work to do it," she cried eagerly and helpfully after she had retrieved the jar. "mrs. evans, she's gladys' mother, says she'd think the millennium was here if she didn't have any work to do. she has five children at home and three in the cemetery." miss thorley shuddered. "she can cook and sew and sweep and play the piano and she belongs to the woman's club and the missionary society and the revolution daughters and the presbyterian church. you don't ever have to stop working to make a home for a family," she repeated with a nod of encouragement to miss thorley who looked disgusted instead of pleased as mary rose had expected she would look. "that isn't the kind of work i care for," and she shrugged her shoulders. "i should think your mrs. evans would die." "she hasn't time to die," mary rose told her seriously. "she's too busy taking care of mr. evans and her family and helping other people. she's a fine woman, everyone said in mifflin. when i grow up i want to be just like her," emphatically. "oh, mary rose! you want to be something besides a drudge. women have other things to do now but cook and sew and look after crying babies." "babies don't cry unless there's a pin sticking into them or they have the colic, and, anyway, i think babies are the dearest things god ever made. i'd like to have twelve when i grow up, six boys and six girls. i don't ever want an only child. it's too lonesome. don't you ever get lonesome, miss thorley?" "i have my work," miss thorley told her briefly. mary rose watched her at her work. she admired miss thorley's swift, sure strokes, but she drew a sigh that came from the tips of her shabby shoes as she murmured: "all the same i don't understand just what mr. jerry meant." miss thorley did not answer, unless a frown could be considered an answer. she painted for perhaps five minutes longer, but her strokes were not so swift nor so sure. at last she threw down her brushes as if she hated herself for doing it, but realized she could do nothing else. "mary rose," she said crossly. even mary rose could see that she was not pleased with something. "i don't feel like painting today. it's too warm or something. if i could find a little girl about," she looked critically at mary rose, "about ten years old, i think i'd ask her to go out to the lake with me." "oh!" mary rose forgot that she was posing and dropped both jam jars. she almost dropped jenny lind, too. she remembered aunt kate's request as she clung to the cage. "would one going on fourteen be too old?" her voice trembled and her heart beat fast for fear miss thorley would say that was far too old. "if she should be a long, long time, perhaps three years, before she got to fourteen?" miss thorley's face was as sober as a judge's as she considered this. "well," she said at last very slowly, "one going on fourteen might do. run and ask your aunt and i'll meet you downstairs." mary rose obeyed after she had hugged miss thorley. "you're an angel," she exclaimed fervently, "a regular seraphim and cherubim angel, if you are independent." she almost fell down the stairs and made such a racket that a door on the second floor opened promptly. mary rose caught her breath. she was afraid to see whose door was ajar. if that cross mr. wells should catch her she was afraid to think what he might do. but it was not mr. wells' door that had opened, nor mr. wells' face that looked at her. an elderly woman stood staring at her impatiently. "dearie me!" she was saying, "i thought the house was falling down." "no, ma'am." mary rose was very apologetic. "i just stumbled a teeny bit. you see i'm in such a hurry because miss thorley's going to take me to the lake and i must carry jenny lind downstairs and tell aunt kate and be at the front door in a jiffy." she would have darted on but the elderly lady put out a wrinkled hand and caught mary rose's blue and white checked apron. "who's jenny lind?" she demanded. "this is jenny lind." mary rose held up the cage. "the best bird that ever had feathers. she came with me from mifflin and miss thorley's painting our picture for mr. henderson bingham." the old lady looked at jenny lind in a strange way. "i haven't seen a canary bird for years," she murmured, more to herself than to mary rose. [illustration: "'i haven't seen a canary bird for years,' she murmured."] mary rose answered her impulsively as she usually answered people. "would you like to have her visit you until i come back? i'm not going to take her with us. she wouldn't be any trouble. she's used to visiting. all you have to do is to let her have a chair or a table to sit on." she offered the cage generously. the old lady seemed to hesitate. she looked like gladys' grandmother, only not so comfortable, mary rose thought. at last she held out her hand. "i declare i don't know but i will let you leave it with me. i'm all alone, and even a bird is company." "jenny lind's splendid company. shall i put her on the table for you? there! i'll run up before supper and get her. and don't you worry, because uncle larry said the law doesn't say one word about birds." and before startled mother johnson could ask her what she meant by the law, she ran off, stumbling down the two flights of stairs to the basement. only the special providence that looks after children saved her. aunt kate was in the kitchen and she exclaimed in surprise when she heard that mary rose was going to the lake with miss thorley and had left jenny lind to spend the afternoon with the grandmother on the second floor. "my soul an' body!" she said. "whatever will you do next!" mary rose saw mr. jerry in his car in the alley and ran to the open window to tell him of the pleasure that was in store for her. "mr. jerry! oh, mr. jerry! i'm going to the lake with the enchanted princess. don't you wish you were me?" mr. jerry waved his hand as he smiled and nodded, but mary rose did not wait to hear whether he would like to change places with her, for she had to slip out of the plaid skirt and middy blouse into a white frock that aunt kate had shortened. "isn't it the luckiest thing that ella had so many beautiful clothes!" she said breathlessly. "i shouldn't want to go out with miss thorley in that horrid boys' suit." she was ready first, and as she waited in the lower hall she talked to mrs. schuneman about germania. miss thorley found them together when she came down, looking exactly like a princess to mary rose, in her white linen skirt and lingerie blouse and with a big black hat all a-bloom with pink roses on her red-brown head. "i was ready first," mary rose cried happily, "but i didn't mind waiting, for i was talking to a friend, to mrs. schuneman. she has germania, you know. this is my friend, miss thorley, mrs. schuneman." she introduced them politely. miss thorley nodded carelessly, but even a careless glance told her that there was not the sign of a grouch on mrs. schuneman's fat red face that day. indeed, it quite beamed with friendliness as she hoped that they would have a good time. "you see, she's very pleasant when you know her," mary rose explained as they walked over to the street car. "that's why it's so important to know people. if you don't really know them, you might often think they were grouchy when they aren't." chapter ix lake nokomis was on the outskirts of waloo and was a popular pleasure resort for waloo people from june until september. a band played in the pavilion, there was a moving picture show, a merry-go-round with a wheezy organ, a roller coaster and many other amusement features, as well as several ice-cream parlors. there was always a crowd drifting from one place to another, and mary rose fairly danced with delight when she and miss thorley became a part of the good-natured throng. they were standing beside the enclosure in which the fat shetland ponies waited for the children who were fortunate enough to possess a nickel to pay for a ride on their broad backs or a drive in a roomy carriage, when mary rose saw mr. jerry. she had sadly refused miss thorley's invitation to ride because she did not wish to leave her alone, and miss thorley would not ride one of the ponies nor drive in one of the carriages. "there's mr. jerry!" squealed mary rose when she saw him. she could scarcely believe her eyes, but she waved her hand. "he's the man who boards my cat, you know," she explained to miss thorley. "and he's very pleasant and friendly, just like a mifflin man." miss thorley looked first surprised and then displeased and then she frowned and shrugged her shoulders as if she did not really care whether mr. jerry was there or not. she gave him rather a curt greeting when he joined them with a cheery: "hullo, mary rose. are you thinking of a canter in the park?" there was nothing curt in the greeting mary rose gave him. she smiled enchantingly and slipped her hand into his. "we're just watching the ponies. aren't they loves? miss thorley thinks they are too small for her to ride, but i don't see how she can be sure unless she tries. do you know mr. jerry, miss thorley? he's making such a comfortable home for george washington. she didn't feel like painting today," she explained to mr. jerry, "so we came out for a change. oh, i do just love that blackest pony, but no one seems to choose him!" she pointed an eager finger to the corner where the blackest and fattest pony stood neglected. "suppose you choose him. i've money to treat a lady friend to a ride." and he made a pleasant jingle with the coins in his pocket. "miss thorley invited me, but i didn't like to leave her alone. would you stay with her, mr. jerry? it would be real friendly of you to me and the pony, for if i don't take him i'm afraid no one will, and he'll feel so sad when he goes home tonight. will you take good care of miss thorley, mr. jerry?" "i will," promised mr. jerry emphatically, although miss thorley exclaimed hurriedly that she could take care of herself. he found a bench from which they could watch mary rose as she made the black pony happy and rode around the ring, prouder than any peacock. "funny kid, isn't she?" remarked mr. jerry, realizing that if there was to be any conversation between them he would have to begin. "i wish you could have seen her when she came over with her cat to ask if we would take the beast to board. who's the owner of that joint of yours? i'd like to tell him what i think of him for separating a homesick little girl from her pet." "it would be rather a nuisance if the place was overrun with cats and dogs and children," miss thorley said coldly. "there wouldn't be much peace or comfort in the house." "the peace and comfort you've had don't seem to agree with all of you," remarked mr. jerry pleasantly. "i've seen some of your neighbors who look as if they needed a big dose of noise and discomfort." "you must mean mr. wells. he does have rather a touch-me-not, speak-to-me-never manner. and the fuss he makes if there is any noise in the place after ten o'clock! imagine him with a cat or a bird." the picture her imagination made was so impossible that she laughed. mr. jerry drew a contented sigh and ventured to move a trifle nearer. he started to say something and then changed his mind. he wouldn't say anything just then that might bring back that distant expression to her face. he knew very well how cold and forbidding she could be. so instead of saying what he wished to say he talked of mary rose and george washington, and she listened and smiled and made holes in the turf with her parasol, but never once did she speak of the conversation she had had with mary rose which had caused her to throw down her brushes and treat herself to a holiday. mary rose's face was an incandescent light as, with a good-by pat for the blackest pony, she ran back to them. "i felt like a queen!" she cried. "it was splendid. oh, won't you have a ride?" she looked from one to the other. "i'll pay. i'm making lots of money. you needn't worry another minute about george washington's board," she told mr. jerry. "it's as good as paid." he laughed. "i won't worry and i shan't ride the ponies. my legs are too long. i'd have to tie double knots in them to keep them off the ground. but i'll take a turn on the merry-go-round with you." he nodded toward that attractive circle of animals as it went around and around to the accompaniment of the wheezy organ. "i dare you to come with us." he looked straight at miss thorley. "oh, please!" mary rose clapped her hands. "you will, won't you, miss thorley? you needn't be afraid," she whispered. "i'm sure he's strong enough to hold you on." miss thorley looked anything but afraid as she frowned at the merry-go-round and at mr. jerry impartially. but when she met mary rose's eyes, filled with a great hunger for merry-go-rounds, she laughed softly and told mr. jerry that, of course, she wouldn't take a dare, she never had and she never would, and she thought she'd choose the giraffe because his long neck gave a rider so much to cling to. it was not easy for mary rose to choose a mount. each animal seemed so very desirable that she sighed as she finally selected an ostrich for the same reason that she had taken the black pony. "i haven't seen a single person ride him and i expect he feels neglected." but when they mounted the merry-go-round miss thorley stepped into a gay little sleigh drawn by two fat polar bears. after he had seen mary rose properly astride the neglected ostrich mr. jerry took the seat beside miss thorley. "i promised mary rose that i wouldn't let you fall out," he said, as if that could be the only reason he would ride beside her. much to mary rose's amazement, miss thorley was satisfied with one ride, although mr. jerry very handsomely offered them a turn on each animal. mary rose could not resist such an invitation and one by one she rode on a giraffe, a camel, and a lion. "mercy, mercy, mary rose!" miss thorley said at last. "you must stop. your head will be completely turned. and we must go home." "won't you ride back with me?" asked mr. jerry. "i have the car. if you will, we have time for a sundae first." mary rose's heart all but stopped beating as she waited for miss thorley to say they would. it didn't seem possible that anyone, even an independent woman, could refuse such an alluring invitation. but grown-ups were queer. mary rose had found that out long, long ago. she did not hesitate for even the fraction of a second when miss thorley turned and left the decision to her. a moment later they were in the ice cream parlor that was like a cool green cave after the heat and the light outside. mary rose chose a chocolate sundae and she giggled as she looked at the rich brown sauce. "when i was little, nothing but a baby," she said, "i thought that it was the yellow in the eggs i ate that made my hair yellow. do you suppose if i ate lots and lots of chocolate, i'd ever have hair as brown as miss thorley's. isn't it beautiful, mr. jerry?" "very beautiful!" mr. jerry agreed as heartily as she could wish. miss thorley flushed uncomfortably under the admiration of mr. jerry and mary rose. "mary rose," she said hurriedly, "don't you know you shouldn't make personal remarks?" "eh?" mary rose's attention was centered in the well she was making in her ice cream for the chocolate syrup. "you shouldn't talk of people's hair and eyes." the rebuke was far more feeble than miss thorley had meant it to be. "you shouldn't!" mary rose was so surprised that she left the well half made. "why, in mifflin when we liked the way a friend looked we always told them." miss thorley pushed away her sundae. "mary rose, if you say mifflin again, i'll scream." mary rose's cheeks turned as pink as miss thorley's cheeks had turned. "that's what aunt kate says sometimes, but if you like a place the way i like mifflin you just have to talk about it. it's--it's in your heart." "talk about it to me, mary rose," mr. jerry offered kindly. "it doesn't make me cross to hear of a place where people are kind and friendly. my conscience is perfectly clear." he spoke as if he were very proud of his clear conscience. miss thorley pushed back her chair. "it doesn't make me cross," she said, "only----" they waited courteously to hear what would follow "only," but nothing ever did. miss thorley just jumped up and said instead that really they must go. mr. jerry's eyes twinkled as he agreed with her. it was far more pleasant riding to town in mr. jerry's automobile than it would have been in the crowded street car. mary rose called miss thorley's attention to the crowd as she snuggled close to her in the spacious tonneau. "i'm playing it's mine," she whispered, "and that mr. jerry is my own driver. wouldn't it be fun to drive with him forever and ever?" mr. jerry heard her and sharpened his ears for the answer. "you'd get tired riding forever with anyone, mary rose. there is only one thing that people never get tired of." "what's that?" mary rose hungered to hear. "work." mr. jerry sniffed. they could hear him in the tonneau. mary rose shook her head. "gladys' mother did. she said she had never had enough fun to know whether she would get tired of it or not, but she'd had plenty of chance to know there were some things she never wanted to see again, and one of them was work and the other was the red and black plaid silk dress that the dressmaker spoiled." mr. jerry chuckled on the front seat and after a second miss thorley laughed, too. "mary rose," she said very distinctly, "i'll have to give you a broader vision. you have entirely too narrow an outlook." "what's that, miss thorley? what's a broader vision?" mary rose couldn't imagine. it was mr. jerry who answered. "in this particular case, mary rose, it's seeing far too much for one and not enough for two." as they rolled up to the washington miss carter came down the street with bob strahan whom she had met on the car. it was amazing, now that they were on speaking terms, how often they met. bob strahan stopped to open the door of the automobile and help miss thorley out, and mary rose proudly introduced mr. jerry who boarded her cat. they all laughed and talked together for a few minutes and then mary rose hopped from the back seat to the front. "i'll go around and see george washington, if you don't mind," she said. "hasn't it been just the loveliest afternoon, the kind you're always hoping for but never really expect to have," with a sigh of rapture. she patted mr. jerry's arm lovingly. "isn't miss thorley a darling! she told me all about that independence. it isn't a witch as you thought, mr. jerry, it's something about wanting to pay her own bills and live alone. i don't understand it," she frowned, "but that's what she said." mr. jerry frowned too, as he turned into the alley. "she doesn't know," he said briefly. "take it from me, mary rose, that independence is an old witch, and she's enchanted more girls than you could count." mary rose looked doubtful. "if miss thorley really is enchanted," she suggested, "we must find something to break the spell. i told her she wouldn't have to stop work to make a home for a family, mr. jerry," she whispered encouragingly. "did you?" mr. jerry laughed. "what did she say?" mary rose knit her small brows before she answered. "i don't think she just agreed with me, but i'll explain it to her again." chapter x when mary rose ran up to get jenny lind young mrs. johnson met her at the door and smiled pleasantly. "you're the little girl for the canary?" she said. "i was wondering--mother johnson seems to have taken a fancy to you--and i wondered if you would go out for a little walk with her every morning. i'll pay you ten cents a day." mary rose's eyes popped open. in mifflin little girls were expected to do what they were asked to do and were never paid for such tasks. "why, of course, i'd be glad to," she said promptly. "that will be splendid. you see she won't go by herself and i have my own engagements. the doctor said she must have some exercise," sighed mrs. johnson, as if the doctor had made a most unreasonable demand. "suppose you come up tomorrow about eleven? that will give you time for a good walk before lunch." "i'll soon be making money enough to send for solomon," mary rose told mrs. donovan, her voice trembling with excitement. "there's ten cents a day from grandma johnson and ten cents from mrs. bracken for washing the breakfast dishes and a quarter from miss thorley. why, aunt kate, i never thought there was so much money in the world as what i'm going to earn by myself!" aunt kate laughed as she hugged her. "there's no one in the house can be cross to her," she told uncle larry proudly. promptly at eleven o'clock the next morning mary rose was waiting for mother johnson who grumbled and fussed before she could be persuaded to take the walk the doctor had recommended. but, once outside, the sky was so blue, the air so pleasant, and mary rose so sociable that her face grew less peevish. "where shall we go?" mary rose paused at the corner. "you see i'm a stranger here. in mifflin i knew the way everywhere. aunt kate said there was a little park over this street. perhaps it would be pleasant there?" mother johnson said grumpily that it made little difference to her, all she wanted was to have her walk over and be home again. "but you'll feel better after your exercise," promised mary rose. "i should think you'd love to be outdoors. your home is very pretty, but it isn't like the outdoors, you know. did you ever see the sky so blue? it looks as if it was made out of the very silk that was in miss lucy miller's bridesmaid's dress. it was the most beautiful dress miss lena carlson ever made. miss lena goes out sewing for a dollar and a half a day." and she described the wedding at which miss lucy miller had worn the frock made by the dollar and a half a day seamstress with an enthusiasm that was undimmed by mother johnson's lack of interest. from the wedding and miss lucy it was but a step to other mifflin happenings. they found themselves in the park before they knew it. "it's something like the cemetery in mifflin," mary rose said after she had looked about. "of course, there aren't any graves but there is a monument and seats. do you want to sit down? oh, do look, grandma! do look," and she pulled the black sleeve beside her. since she had come to waloo mother johnson had not been called grandma and she had missed the grandchildren she had left behind more than she realized. mary rose had called most of the older women in mifflin grandma--grandma robinson and grandma smith. it was a friendly little custom that was in vogue there and so she had unhesitatingly called old mrs. johnson grandma. mrs. johnson was so surprised that she had nothing to say when mary rose pulled her to a bench and pointed a trembling finger at a little brownish-grayish animal which stood up in the grass and looked at them with bright eyes. "do you see what that is?" mary rose's voice shook. "it's a squirrel! a really truly squirrel in this big city! here, squirrelly, squirrelly," she snapped her fingers. "i wish i had something to feed you!" despairingly as the squirrel ran away. [illustration: "'it's a squirrel! a really truly squirrel in this big city!'"] grandma johnson had her purse in the bag she carried and she opened it and took out five cents. "here," she said crossly, "go and get something to feed him with if that's what you're crying for." mary rose straightened herself and threw her arms around grandma johnson's knees. "why--why!" she gasped, "i do think you are a regular fairy godmother!" grandma johnson had been called several names since she had been in the washington. once she had heard hilda in the kitchen speak of her as "the old hen" and had almost had apoplexy. and larry donovan had muttered that she was "an old crank" which was what one might expect of a mannerless janitor but no one had ever called her a fairy godmother. it sounded rather pleasant. she actually smiled as mary rose ran over to the popcorn wagon on the corner and came back with a bag of peanuts. "what wouldn't i give if tom had a girl like that!" she sighed. "but then he'd have to move. children aren't allowed in the washington." mary rose insisted on an exact division of the nuts. "you want to feed them just as much as i do." she hadn't a doubt of that. "so you must have half. when the squirrel sees how many we have perhaps he'll bring his brothers and sisters and have a squirrel party," she giggled. indeed, it did seem as if the squirrel had sent out invitations when he saw the heap of nuts that mary rose and grandma johnson had beside them for, one after another, other squirrels came until half a dozen clustered around them. they were very tame. one even climbed up mary rose's arm for the nut she held between her lips and grandma johnson lured another to her shoulder. "aren't they ducks?" mary rose demanded. a red poppy blossomed in each of her cheeks and her eyes were lit with candles. "i do believe the lord sent them here to be pets for people who live in houses where there's a law against dogs and cats and children. i think it was--it was wonderful in him! don't you? shall we come every day and feed them? then they'll really get acquainted with us and we'll be friends. oh, i'm so glad that i know you--that we know each other!" she threw her arms around the startled grandma johnson and gave her another hug. they met mrs. schuneman on the steps when they went home and mary rose had to stop and tell her the wonderful news, that the lord had put pets in the park for people who couldn't have them in their homes. she introduced grandma johnson and mrs. schuneman, who had looked at each other furtively when they had met in the halls but who had never spoken until now. "it's just as well not to make friends with the people who live in the same apartment house you do," young mrs. johnson had told grandma when she came to make her home with her son. "you can't tell who they are." "you can tell they are human beings," mother johnson had muttered but that was not enough for her daughter-in-law and the older woman had been too depressed by the strangeness of everything about her to make friends for herself. she even hesitated now when mary rose's inquiry after the health of germania brought an invitation to step in and see how much at home germania was. but in mary rose's opinion one could not refuse such an invitation and she drew grandma johnson in to admire and to exclaim over germania, who did seem very contented. they had a very pleasant little visit and mrs. schuneman eagerly asked them both to come again. mother johnson gathered courage to say she would, she'd be glad to. "haven't we had a gorgeous time?" mary rose asked as they went up the stairs. "i think it's very kind of you to let me go walking with you. i'm so glad the doctor said you needed exercise." and grandma johnson smiled and patted the small shoulder. there was not a trace of the old peevishness on her face which was like a withered apple. "i don't know but i'm glad, too, mary rose. i'll see you tomorrow." "you certainly will. won't the squirrels be glad to see us? good-by." she ran down the stairs with the ten cents in her hand. the coin dropped on the landing and rolled away. she was looking for it when mr. wells came up and almost walked over her. mary rose was on her feet in a flash. "good morning," she said politely. "i'm looking for the dime i dropped. i earned it walking with grandma johnson. we had the grandest time in the park. did you know that there are pets there for people who can't have them in their homes? they're squirrels and the lord put them there. oh, here's my dime. good-by." and she ran on while mr. wells stood and stared after her as if he thought he or she had lost their wits and he was not sure which. he went on up and met larry donovan. "donovan," he said sharply. "i thought children were not allowed in this building?" "no more they are, mr. wells," larry tried to speak pleasantly. "there's a clause in every lease that says so." "then why do you allow a child to run all over the place?" mr. wells wanted to know and he scowled fiercely. larry straightened himself and a dull red crept up into his face. "if you mean my niece by your remarks," he said stiffly, "she isn't a child. she's--she's," he stumbled, "she's goin' on fourteen." "she has a long time to go before she ever reaches fourteen," grimly. "do brown and lawson know you have a child living with you?" "they do not." larry's tone was as short and crisp as pie crust. "h-m," was all mr. wells said to that but he looked at larry before he went into his apartment and slammed the door. "the ol' chimpanzee 'll tell brown an' lawson," uncle larry told aunt kate when he came down and found her in the bedroom. "that's what he'll do. he's goin' to complain about mary rose." aunt kate stared at him. "an' what'll you do, larry donovan? what'll you do then?" "i'll tell them they know what they can do if they don't like it," he answered gruffly. "i've been a good man for the place. i've kept the peace with the tenants though, god knows, it's been no easy job. i've kept the bills down an' made a lot of the repairs myself an' if brown an' lawson want to fire me just because my niece, my wife's niece, an inoffensive little kid, is livin' with us why they can fire. that's what they can do. i'd be ashamed to stay an' work for them." "larry," mrs. donovan put her arms around her husband and kissed him. "larry donovan, i'm that proud of you i can't see!" and she put her hand over her wet eyes. "then you like to have mary rose here?" "i'll tell you the truth, kate, dear. the little thing has made herself necessary to me. that's what she's done. we got along all right without her but that was because we didn't know what it was to have a kid in the house. no, sir, mary rose is one of the fam'ly and she stays with the fam'ly. she's good for the tenants, too. see what she's done for mrs. willoughby an' mrs. schuneman. the ol' lady called me in to hear her bird sing this very morning. an' mrs. bracken, who's so busy club workin' for other folks she hasn't any time for her home, tells me mary rose is the biggest kind of a help to her. i thought she was goin' to jaw me about fixin' that back window 't sticks a bit. i should have fixed it before but it clean slipped my mind, an' i up an' asked her how mary rose was doing. she forgot the window to talk about the kid. 'ain't she small for her age?' says she. 'i guess you don't know much about childern,' says i. 'mary rose's as big as she should be!' 'when i was fourteen,' says she, 'i weighed a hunderd an' ten poun's.' 'that's a good weight for a growing girl,' says i. 'i don't believe you weigh much more'n that now, mrs. bracken,' says i. and that ended it. she weighs a hunderd an' thirty if she weighs a pound. an' then there's the johnsons. young mrs. johnson said this morning that it would be a blessed relief if mary rose'd get the ol' lady out every day. i guess there's a place for her here all right, whether ol' wells sees it or not." "wouldn't it be just as well for you to tell brown an' lawson your story first?" asked mrs. donovan. "of course, when it's a tenant again' a janitor the janitor don't stand much show. but if you tell the agents that your wife's niece, a girl goin' on fourteen, is staying with you an' makin' herself useful to the tenants they won't come here with a lot of confusin' questions when mr. wells has had his say. seems if it was the one who spoke first who gets the mos' attention. haven't you any errand that could take you down there the first thing in the mornin'?" larry laughed scornfully. "i have that. i can al'ys find a complaint to carry if i'm so minded. i guess you're right an' it won't do no harm to get our side in first. where's mary rose now?" "she's gone over to mr. jerry's. the cat's board's overdue." evidently aunt kate thought that overdue board was a laughing matter for she chuckled. "mary rose was horrified when she remembered she'd forgotten to pay but i said mr. jerry 'd understand that she wasn't used to business. so long as she paid in the end a little waiting wouldn't matter." mr. jerry had just driven into the garage when the delinquent mary rose slipped in at the back gate. "hullo, mary rose," he called cheerily. "i've come to pay george washington's board," importantly. "i'm ashamed i'm late but i forgot. i'm not used to business," she apologized, mortification dyeing her cheeks pink. "that's all right. but if it's board you're going to pay we'd better go in and see my aunt mary." his aunt mary looked mildly surprised when mary rose announced that she had come to pay george washington's board and she was sorry she was late. aunt mary pursed her lips in a way that made mary rose quake until she remembered that she was earning a lot of money and it really didn't matter if the board was more than fifty cents. and george washington did have an awful appetite. mr. jerry's aunt mary was saying so. "that cat is perfectly hollow. it's amazing the milk he drinks. he has been here a little over a week, mary rose," again mortification painted mary rose's cheeks, "and in that time he has caught five mice. it is impossible to estimate the damage that five mice would have done if they hadn't been caught so i figure that george washington has earned his own board." "why, george washington!" mary rose could scarcely grasp this but when she did she caught the cat to her in a rapturous hug. "isn't he the very smartest cat? why, he's self-supporting, isn't he?" and she hugged him again. "if he keeps on earning his board i can send for solomon. i don't suppose you would want to board a dog, too? i think i'd almost feel as if i were in heaven to have my animal friends with me again." "what kind of dog is solomon?" mr. jerry asked carelessly. "i've been thinking of buying a dog but perhaps i could rent old sol." "mr. jerry! i'd be glad to let you have him for his board. he's splendid, a real fox terrier, and that clever. he can do lots of tricks. you couldn't help but love him. he's so affectionate and friendly." "it was a fox terrier that i thought of buying. then we can consider that settled, mary rose. you send for sol as soon as you please and i'll board him for the use of him. i think he would look well on the front seat of the car." mary rose had jumped to her feet and, with george washington still in her arms, she threw herself on mr. jerry in a perfect spasm of delighted gratitude that brought tears to the eyes of both of them for george washington was not accustomed to being squeezed between a young man and a little girl. "what a--what a splendid man you are!" cried mary rose. "you're like king arthur and robin hood, always succoring the friendless though i'm not friendless when i have you and your aunt mary and all the people over there." she nodded across at the white face of the washington. "all the people?" questioned mr. jerry. he had heard of some of them who did not act friendly. "well, perhaps not all--yet," amended mary rose. "i do like to be friends with people, mr. jerry. it gives you such a comfortable feeling inside. when you're not friends it's just as if you had the stomachache and the headache at the same time." mr. jerry's aunt mary brought in some cookies and three glasses of ginger ale, all sparkling and frosty. "it's a party," beamed mary rose. "i've always thought the world was full of nice people and now i know it. aunt kate's forever telling me that i'm too little to know the good from the bad but i tell her there isn't any bad, that the lord wouldn't waste his time and dust, and anyway i have the right kind of an eye. i showed that when i made friends with you and mr. jerry." when she left she hesitated at the gate. "would it be a bother if i brought a friend over to see george washington?" she ventured. "i'd like miss thorley to meet him and then perhaps she'd paint his picture." "i should think she would," promptly agreed mr. jerry. "he's a cat who deserves to have his portrait painted. bring over any friends you wish, mary rose," hospitably, "but let me know first so george washington will be home. sometimes i take him out with me," gravely. mary rose gazed at him with adoration. "i don't believe i could have found a better boarding place for him, not if i had searched all waloo. i'll let you know, mr. jerry, just as soon as i know myself." chapter xi but before mary rose could write the letter that would tell jimmie bronson that she was now financially able to maintain her animal friends she had a big surprise. the day had been warm and sultry, the sort that makes every nerve disagreeably alive and brings to the surface all the unpleasant little traits that in cooler weather one can keep hidden. "old general humidity hasn't shirked his job a minute to-day," bob strahan told miss carter as they left the car and walked up the block to the washington together. in front of them sauntered a boy with a dog at his heels. the boy was a sturdy young fellow of perhaps fourteen, very shabby as to clothes but very dauntless as to manner. the dog was a fox terrier with one black spot over his left eye like a patch. bob strahan whistled and snapped his fingers at him. "i've always meant to have a fox terrier some day," he told miss carter. "they're so intelligent." but this particular fox terrier, while he wagged his tail and looked around to see who whistled, kept close to the heels of the boy who looked carefully at the houses as if in search of one. when he came to the washington he stood and stared up at the long brick wall with its many windows peering so curiously down at him, much as mary rose had stared less than a month before. "well, young man," bob strahan said pleasantly, "is there anyone here you wish to see?" "gee," exclaimed the boy with a fervor that seemed to come from his dusty heels, "i hadn't any idea it would be such a big place!" "it isn't a cottage," agreed bob strahan amiably, "nor yet a bungalow. but a roof has to be some size to cover a couple of dozen families. what particular family are you interested in, may i ask?" he stooped to pat the black-eyed fox terrier as it sniffed his ankles. "some dog!" he told the boy. down the street came mary rose and miss thorley. mary rose had been to the bakery for rolls for supper and had met miss thorley on the corner. the little group by the steps of the washington could hear her voice before they saw her and the boy swung around and listened. "i used to think that if i wasn't a human being, made in the image of god, i'd like to be the milkman's horse in mifflin," he heard mary rose say and he chuckled. "why, mary rose?" laughed miss thorley. "because it was so friendly to go from house to house every morning with milk for the babies and cream for the coffee. everyone in mifflin was a friend to old whiteface. why--why!" she broke her story short to stand still and stare at the boy and the dog, who were both staring at her. the boy's face was one broad grin and the dog's tail was wagging frantically. "why, solomon crocker! it's never you! oh, solomon!" as he darted to her. "i've missed you more than tongue could tell. it seems a hundred thousand years since we were together. jimmie bronson, however did you know that i'd made arrangements for solomon to come to waloo?" "i didn't know but i wanted to leave mifflin and i couldn't let old sol stay alone. you know aunt nora died just after you left and there wasn't any home for me any more. i wanted to see the world so i thought i'd bring the pup and if you didn't want him i'd be glad to keep him. he's a dandy dog and he's valuable. he's helped to more than pay our way." he jingled the contents of his pocket so that they could hear how solomon had helped. "how did he do that, jimmie? i'm sorry about your aunt nora but now you have one more friend in heaven and you've lots left on earth. he's got heaps of friends right here, hasn't he?" she looked at bob strahan and the two girls for confirmation of her words. "we're all friends in waloo. but how did solomon help you to earn your way?" jimmie laughed sheepishly. "i've taught him a lot of new tricks. he's a smart dog and learned like lightning. folks were glad to see him perform. i never asked for pay but they always gave me something. i could have sold him half a dozen times for big money but he's your dog, mary rose, so i brought him right along." "show us his new tricks," begged mary rose. "show them to us this minute." so miss thorley and miss carter, with mary rose between them, and bob strahan sat down on the broad front steps and watched jimmie bronson put solomon through his repertoire. mrs. schuneman and lottie joined them and from their windows mrs. bracken and mrs. willoughby watched the performance. solomon really was a clever dog and jimmie had been an excellent teacher so that the entertainment was very creditable. they were all so interested in it that they never saw an addition to their number until a harsh strident voice sounded beside them. it made mary rose jump and mrs. bracken and mrs. willoughby suddenly left their windows. "mein lieber gott!" mrs. schuneman rose involuntarily and heavily to her feet. "it's mr. wells!" "what's this? what's this?" lightning flashed from mr. wells' eyes and thunder rumbled in his voice. no wonder everyone was startled. "dogs aren't allowed here. where's donovan? he shouldn't allow such a nuisance. run along, boy, and take your dog with you. you aren't allowed here!" "it isn't his dog." mary rose ran in front of him. "it's my dog and he's come all the way from mifflin. i wish you'd been here earlier so you could see how smart he is," timidly. "he knows such a lot of funny tricks. jimmie, will you have him do that one--" "your dog!" interrupted mr. wells, with a snort, and his fiery eyes seemed to bore a hole right through mary rose, who was trying desperately to remember that she had the right kind of eye and could see nothing but good in the cross old man in front of her. "you know very well that dogs are not allowed in this house. take him away, boy, and don't let me see either of you again." "oh!" mary rose's heart was full of indignation. so were her eyes. she was too hurt to be afraid. "aren't you ashamed of yourself, a great big man like you to talk that way to a poor little dog who has come all the way from mifflin expecting to find friends here? he's my dog and--" but mr. wells would not let her finish. "you can't keep him here," he snarled. he was furious at being spoken to in such a fashion by a janitor's child and before a group of young people who did their best to look serious. "you haven't any business here yourself. children and dogs are forbidden in this building." mrs. donovan had come to the basement window just in time to hear this angry outburst and she called hastily: "mary rose! mary rose!" mary rose never heard her. "why are you always picking at me?" she demanded of mr. wells. "i'm only a little girl and you're a big man but never once since i came to waloo have you looked as if you wanted to be friends with me. i don't mean to be impudent but you--you do make it very hard for me to like you." her lip quivered and she turned quickly and hid her face against miss thorley's white skirt. miss thorley's arm went around her and a thrill of emotion rarely intense ran over the older girl. when she spoke her voice was strange even to herself: "really, mr. wells, this is all very unnecessary. you have not been annoyed by mary rose or her pets. i think you can trust to her and to the donovans--" "oh, you can!" mary rose's face came out again and she was so eager to assure him that he could that she forgot how rude it is to interrupt. "you shan't ever see solomon unless you look out of one of the windows in the white-faced wall. he's going to live with mr. jerry. i've made all the arrangements. i never meant you to be bothered with him. but i do wish you'd like him. he's a very friendly dog," wistfully. "he'd like you to like him." mr. wells looked at the friendly dog who wanted to be liked, and at mary rose, before his eyes swept the older group. there was not the faintest trace of a smile on the faces of miss thorley and miss carter, but there was more than a trace on the countenance of bob strahan. "i don't like dogs!" the grin made him say with a snap. "i won't have one here!" and he went up the steps and slammed the screen door behind him. "mercy, mercy!" feebly murmured mr. strahan. "you might think he owned the whole works. my rent comes due every month, just as his does." at her window aunt kate wrung her hands and thought sadly how comfortable they were in the basement of the washington. mr. wells would never rest now until he had larry discharged. she knew he wouldn't. he would never overlook the fact that mary rose had talked back to him on the very steps of the washington. she could not blame mary rose, the child had had provocation enough, goodness knows, but she wished--she wished--oh, how fervently she wished that mr. wells had never been born! mary rose looked sadly after the retreating figure which looked as friendly and unbending as a poker. "he won't ever forget i called him a crosspatch," she said sadly and she blushed. "what!" there was an astonished chorus. how had she dared? it did not sound like mary rose. "i did!" the color in her cheeks deepened painfully. "i never meant to but the words were in my mind and so they slipped out of my mouth. come on, jimmie, we'll take solomon over to mr. jerry's. he'll be glad to see him. he's a human being." "i think i'll go, too," suggested bob strahan who scented a story. "have you seen george washington, the self-supporting cat?" he asked miss thorley and miss carter. "all of you come," begged mary rose, glowing happily again. "mr. jerry'd be glad to have you and there's plenty of room in the back yard. i'd like to have you see my cat. isn't it wonderful that george washington and solomon are self-supporting? that's being independent, isn't it, miss thorley? will you come?" she caught her hand and drew her to her feet. miss thorley hesitated. if george washington had been boarding with anyone but jerry longworthy she would have gone at once but jerry longworthy was very apt to forget that she preferred work to love. if she went to his back yard he would be sure to think that her coming was an inch and proceed to make an ell out of it. it would be far wiser to stay away. so she shook her head. "not now, mary rose," she said gently. "some other time." after a quick glance at her face mary rose did not tease but went off with the others. they found mr. jerry in the back yard. he looked beyond them as if he found the party too small but as no one followed to complete it he gave his attention to solomon and pronounced him something of a dog. when jimmie had put him through his tricks again mr. jerry gravely shook hands with both boy and dog. "you've been a fine teacher," he said to jimmie. "i congratulate you." jimmie's face was as scarlet as the poppies in mr. jerry's aunt mary's garden. "oh, go on!" he murmured in delighted embarrassment. "just think, they walked all the way from mifflin!" exclaimed mary rose in a voice of awe. "it took an automobile and a train and a taxicab to bring me." "well, i didn't have money for an auto nor a train nor a taxi," grinned jimmie, "so sol and i walked. not all the way. folks gave us a lift now and then." "of course they did. you'd be sure to find friends," mary rose told him jubilantly. "that's the beautiful part of traveling. you find friends everywhere." "sure!" jimmie winked at mr. jerry and bob strahan. "i found one friend so glad to see me that he had me arrested." "why, jimmie bronson!" mary rose's eyes were as large as the largest kind of saucers. "what for? was solomon arrested, too?" she looked reprovingly at her dog. jimmie chuckled. "i told you i had more than one chance to sell the brute," with a loving kick at solomon. "and one man was so mad when i told him 'nothing doing' that he had me arrested. said i had stolen the dog from him. you see there's some class to old sol but there isn't much to me. the judge didn't know which of us was lying until i told him that sol was a trick dog and would the man who was trying to put one over on me run through his tricks to show they had worked together. the cuss turned green and stammered that he wasn't no animal tamer. the judge gave me a chance and we had a great performance in the courtroom. when it was over the judge said he guessed if i'd had solomon long enough to teach him so much the man, if he was the owner, should have found him before. he fined the other chap a greenback and gave it to me. we had beefsteak and potatoes for supper instead of going to jail, didn't we, old sport?" "good for you!" mr. jerry gave him a comradely slap on the shoulder. bob strahan nodded significantly to miss carter. "didn't i say i'd get a story out of this?" he whispered. "what are you going to do now, jimmie?" asked mary rose. "you aren't going back to mifflin?" no, jimmie wasn't going back to mifflin. he thought, rather vaguely, he'd stay in waloo and see the world. there must be something there for a boy to do if he were strong and willing. "oh, there is! isn't there?" mary rose looked appealingly from mr. jerry to bob strahan. "sure, there is," mr. jerry told her heartily. he asked for further particulars. just what would jimmie like to do? had he any plans? jimmie hadn't any plans just at present beyond food and shelter but in ten years or so he hoped to be an electrician. of course, that couldn't be until he was a man. in the meantime he'd take anything and if he could get a job that would let him go to school he'd be about the happiest kid in the world. "you can get that kind of job," bob strahan told him easily. "i'll write a little story about your trip and your arrest for the _gazette_ and i'll bet you'll have a lot of jobs offered you." "and until you do you can stay here. there's a little room up there," mr. jerry nodded toward his attic, "that would just about fit a boy of your size. do you know anything about autos? have you ever met a lawn mower? i guess i can find work for you until you get a regular job." every freckle on jimmie's freckled face glowed gratefully. mary rose jumped up and down. "mr. jerry!" she began in a choked voice. she ran to him and hid her face against his hand. "first you took my cat," she gasped chokingly, "and then you took my dog and now my friend from mifflin. i--i don't believe a friendlier man ever lived!" "mary rose!" it was aunt kate's voice from the back door of the washington. "bring your friend in to supper." aunt kate knew that, under the circumstances, she had no business to ask a boy into the house but she felt desperately that now it did not matter what she did and it would please mary rose. "well, mary rose," bob strahan pulled her hair as they trooped back to the washington, leaving solomon jumping frantically at mr. jerry's snapping fingers, "are you happy now?" mary rose's face clouded. "half of me's happy and half of me isn't," she confessed in a low voice. "it makes me mad not to be friends with everybody and i can't honestly feel that mr. wells and i are friends." chapter xii mr. bracken found one morning, when he had reached his office, that he had forgotten some important papers. he went home at noon to get them. he let himself into the apartment and walked directly into the living-room. he stopped with an exclamation of surprise for on the broad davenport was a little girl fast asleep. one of her arms was thrown protectingly about a brass cage in which a bird swung lazily. "well, upon my word!" muttered mr. bracken. he looked about to be sure he was in the right apartment. he had been away from home and had not met mary rose. the words, low as they were uttered, reached mary rose's ear and she opened her eyes. when she saw a tall man staring somewhat frowningly at her she sat up suddenly. "i--i hope you're mr. bracken, mrs. bracken's husband?" she said. there was a tremble in her voice as she slipped from the davenport and bobbed a curtsy. there was a shake in her knees, also. suppose this strange man should be a burglar? the thought was enough to make the voice and knees of any little girl tremble and shake. but the strange man nodded curtly and mary rose laughed tremulously. "i thought perhaps you were a burglar," she confessed at once. "i never knew a real burglar but i see now you don't look a bit like one. if i hadn't been so sleepy i'd have seen it at once for i've the right kind of an eye, the kind that can see the good in people. i think you have, too, because your eyes are just the same color my daddy's were and he had the right kind. gracious! i should just think he had!" "never mind about eyes," mr. bracken said impatiently. "what are you doing here?" "i'll tell you," she blushed. "i came up to wash the dishes, as i do every morning for mrs. bracken, and i left the key on the outside and the wind slammed the door shut. i couldn't open it. i thought i'd have to wait until mrs. bracken came home to let me out. i didn't dare make a noise for fear i'd disturb mr. wells. i must have gone to sleep for i never heard you come in. i live in the cellar with my aunt kate and uncle larry. at first i felt like a green cucumber pickle because in mifflin, where i used to live, there wasn't anything in our cellar but a swinging shelf for pickles and jellies and a person couldn't ever feel like a glass of plum jelly, could they? so i felt like a cucumber pickle but now i don't mind it at all. i love to live in the cellar. there's everything in getting used to things, isn't there? i like it here now pretty well for i've lots of friends. mrs. schuneman and germania and mrs. johnson, the grandma one. we go to the park every day and feed her pet squirrel. the lord keeps it there because she can't have any pets but canary birds in houses like this. there's a law against it, uncle larry said. and there's miss thorley, the enchanted princess, who's painting my picture for mr. bingham henderson's jam to tell people how good it is. she gave me some once, apricot. we only had strawberry and raspberry and plum and grape and apple butter in mifflin. i used to stir the apple butter for lena. you have to stir it all the time or it burns. it makes your arm awful tired but it's good for the muscle. feel mine!" she clenched her small arm and held it out so that mr. bracken could feel her muscles. he murmured: "i'll be darned!" in a dazed sort of a way as he felt her muscle, and mary rose went on sociably. "and there's mrs. bracken. she said i washed her dishes better than a full-sized girl. and now there's you. have you had any lunch?" she demanded suddenly. "shall i get you some?" she wanted to know when he had admitted that he hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast. "mrs. bracken wouldn't like it if i let you go away hungry. it won't take a minute. you just keep an eye on jenny lind." and she put jenny lind on the table at his elbow before she flew to the kitchen. mr. bracken stood and stared at jenny lind and then at the door through which mary rose had disappeared. "well, i'll be darned!" he said again. he went to his desk and found his important papers. he did not intend to stay for lunch but when mary rose flew back to demand hurriedly whether he liked his eggs fried or boiled he told her boiled. a postponed meeting brought mrs. bracken home that day several hours before she had planned. she stopped on the threshold in astonishment when she heard voices and laughter in the rear of her apartment. she hurried back with pursed lips and frowning face for both laugh and voice had sounded young. if mary rose were making free with her things she would give mary rose a good big piece of her mind and then she would present mrs. donovan with an equal portion. she went through the dining-room and into the kitchen to find joseph bracken--_joseph bracken_--sitting at the kitchen table eating boiled eggs and drinking tea. mary rose was perched on a chair across from him and was telling him of mifflin. jenny lind's cage was between them. [illustration: "mary rose was perched on a chair across from him and was telling him of mifflin."] "why--why," gasped mrs. bracken. she could not say another word. she forgot all about the big piece of her mind that she was going to give mary rose and stood there staring with bulging eyes. mary rose jumped to the floor. "here's mrs. bracken!" she cried in delight. "isn't it a pity we didn't know she was coming? i could just as well have boiled another egg. but there's plenty of tea. it's like a party, isn't it? except that we haven't any birthday candles. in mifflin i always had candles on my birthday cake because daddy said a birthday should be like a candle, a light to guide you into the new year. shall i boil an egg for you, mrs. bracken?" mrs. bracken sat down suddenly in the chair mary rose had vacated and murmured helplessly: "well, upon my word!" "that's what i said," smiled mr. bracken, which wasn't exactly true although the words he had used meant the same thing, "when i came home and found a girl and a bird on the davenport." "i locked myself in," mary rose explained with a shamed face. "i was careless and left the key on the outside. mr. bracken should have scolded me but he didn't. we've been the best friends and had the nicest time together and now it's going to be nicer because you're here." she beamed on first one and then the other as she bustled about finding a plate and a knife and fork, making the toast that mrs. bracken thought she would prefer to bread and all the time talking in a friendly fashion. she never doubted that what interested her would interest others. at first mrs. bracken regarded her helplessly, as mr. bracken had done, but gradually the look of irritation disappeared and at last a smile took its place. it was strange to share a lunch of boiled eggs and tea on the kitchen table with joseph bracken. she had not done that since they were first married and were moving into their first home. she hadn't thought of it for years but now it was oddly pleasant to remember the little details of a time before she had been absorbed by clubs and he by business. neither she nor mr. bracken had much to say but mary rose talked enough for three. she waited on them with a solicitude that forced them to eat and when they had finished she sent them into the other room. "i'll wash up. it won't take me a minute." so, because she told them to, mr. and mrs. bracken drifted into the other room and left her alone with jenny lind. mr. bracken did not take his hat and mutter that he would be back for dinner. he walked over to the window and stood looking down the street. at last he turned around and looked at his wife who was sitting on the davenport as if she were tired. "elsie," he said abruptly, "what ever became of your niece?" she looked up in surprise. "you mean harriet white? she's living with the norrises in prairieville." "wouldn't you like to have her here?" he asked suddenly. "it doesn't seem just right--decent--to let strangers look after your own relations." her eyes opened wider. he had never seemed to think whether it was decent or not until now. "but we can't have her here. that was the trouble after her mother died. children aren't allowed in the house and we didn't want to move." "how old is she?" "thirteen or fourteen. i'm not just sure which." "a girl of thirteen isn't a child. send for her, elsie, and if anyone objects, we can move. but i guess a tenant means something to a landlord and there won't be any objections. we need her, elsie, as much as she needs us. we need someone young with us. that kid," he nodded toward the kitchen where mary rose was lustily singing the many verses of "where have you been, billy boy?" "has made me realize what we are missing. why she fussed around me as if--as if," he colored slightly, "as if i were her father. no, it isn't anything new. i've been thinking for some time that we aren't getting all we should out of life. you give your time and strength to clubs and i give mine to business and what does it amount to? what are we working for? abstract people aren't the same as your own flesh and blood. what we need is something to bring us together and if hattie white is anything like that kid she'll keep us good and busy." mrs. bracken slipped across the room and put her hand on his arm. "i'll be glad to send for her, joe. i haven't felt just right to leave her with the whites but i thought you didn't want her and i told myself that my first duty was to you. i'll write today. no, i'll go for her, if you don't mind." "that's a good girl." his arm slipped around her waist. out in the kitchen mary rose brought her song to an abrupt close. she thrust her head in the doorway. "i'm all through. didn't i say it wouldn't take a jiffy? it's been very pleasant but aunt kate'll be wondering where i am and so will grandma johnson. good-by." "good-by," they chorused. "come again," they added, as if they couldn't help but speak the hospitable words. "i shall," mary rose called back. "sure, i'll come again." chapter xiii "and mr. jerry said that if you weren't so much of an angel you'd be a splendid artist or if you weren't so much of an artist you'd be a splendid angel. it sounds queer the way i say it but i know he meant it for a compliment." mary rose and jenny lind were posing for the jam poster. it was almost finished and mary rose was sinfully proud of it. miss thorley frowned and refused to say what she thought of mr. jerry's compliment. mary rose frowned, also. "you don't like mr. jerry very much, do you?" she ventured to ask. "i'm too busy to know whether i do or not." miss thorley half closed her eyes and looked at mary rose in the funny way she did when she was painting. "my work takes all of my time. chin up, mary rose." "yes'm." mary rose tilted her chin a little higher. "you aren't under any obligation to think of him, of course, but if your cat was boarding with him and he had borrowed your dog you'd just have to keep him in your mind and heart. and he's worth thinking of. he's a very fine young man. everyone says so. jimmie adores him and he hasn't known him a week. you've known him lots longer than that, haven't you?" she spoke as if she could not understand how jimmie could be so much more clever. it must be on account of the spell that old independence had put upon miss thorley. there couldn't be any other reason for not liking mr. jerry. he was so altogether likeable. mary rose sighed at life's complications. "i just love mr. jerry myself. i can't help it," she went on more slowly. "i wish you did, too," wistfully. "it's much more pleasant when the people you love will love each other. it gives you such a comfortable feeling as if you didn't care if heaven was so far away. i do think this world would be almost as wonderful as heaven if everyone would love everyone else." "there is no doubt of that," miss thorley absently agreed with her. "then will you try and love my friends?" eagerly. she almost lost her pose in her eagerness. "i'll love yours. every one! i will! i can because i have a big heart. did you know that the more you put into a heart the more it will hold? it's the hearts that haven't anyone in them that are so little and hard. i think hearts must be like balloons. you can blow and blow and blow into balloons and there's always room for some more breath." "unless they break. balloons break, mary rose, and so do hearts." mary rose looked incredulous. "mine never did. and anyway i'd rather have my heart break from being too full than get hard because it didn't have anyone in it. i'd like to have the very biggest heart in the whole world!" she cried ambitiously. "big enough to hold mr. wells? did you know he was ill, mary rose? his jap came up last night and asked miss carter not to play on the piano because mr. wells wasn't well and didn't wish to be disturbed." miss thorley's lip curled disdainfully. "mr. wells sick?" mary rose was much concerned. "what's the matter?" miss thorley shook her head. "haven't you been down to ask?" mary rose always had been sent to ask in mifflin. "gracious, no! i shouldn't dare. he'd probably bite my head off." "he couldn't bite your head off if he was sick. it doesn't seem real neighborly, miss thorley. and you are neighbors. you live right over his head. i expect he has dyspepsia and that's the reason he looked so--" she hesitated over a word, "unfriendly. why when mr. lewis, he's the postmaster in mifflin, had dyspepsia mrs. lewis didn't dare say her soul was her own. mr. lewis couldn't be cross to people when they came for their mail so he saved it all for mrs. lewis. that doesn't seem quite fair, does it, for people to be pleasant to outsiders and save their bad temper for their homes?" "it isn't fair but i rather think it's human." mary rose shook her head. "sometimes i think that human and disagreeable mean the same thing because people all say the bad things we do are human. where did we learn them, miss thorley? the lord made us all good because it wouldn't have paid him to make us bad. where do you suppose mr. lewis learned to snap and mr. wells to scold and you to frown?" miss thorley certainly did have a frown. it ran right across her pretty forehead when she said: "bless me! child, how do i know? that's enough for one day." she put the drawing board on the table and stretched herself luxuriously. "try and be on time tomorrow, mary rose, and i think we can finish it." "yes'm." mary rose stared at the drawing which was a very wonderful thing to her. "don't you believe mr. bingham henderson 'll be pleased with it? it's a beautiful picture of jenny lind." "it's a beautiful picture of you, if i do say it," laughed the artist. mary rose drew closer until she could whisper into miss thorley's ear. "i wish mr. jerry could see it." miss thorley rose abruptly and pushed her away. "he can. he'll have lots of opportunity to see it when it is on the back of a magazine. run along, now. skip!" she fairly pushed mary rose out of the door before she could say anything more about mr. jerry. sometimes it seemed to mary rose that miss thorley was afraid to hear about mr. jerry. she went down the stairs slowly and hesitated when she came to mr. wells' door. she knew she should stop and inquire how he was. it would have been a terrible breach of good manners in mifflin not to ask after a sick neighbor, but mr. wells had not been like any neighbor mary rose had ever known. nevertheless he was a neighbor. she tossed her head and ventured closer to the door. there was no answer when she knocked timidly and she tried again. the door was slightly ajar and when her second knock brought no response she ventured to push it open an inch. mr. wells might be all alone and need someone. she would just slip in and see. if he didn't she could slip out again. there was a chilly deserted feeling in the hall that made mary rose shiver. she hurried through softly as if in the presence of something that oppressed her. when she reached the door of the living-room she stopped and looked across into the amazed eyes of mr. wells, who was lying on the broad couch. "oh!" mary rose refused to be frightened away by his scowl. "i'm so glad you're able to be up. you are better, aren't you? i was worried when miss thorley said you were sick and i just stopped to inquire. in mifflin when anyone was sick we always went with chicken broth or cup custard or a new magazine. why, when lily thompson had tonsilitis she had eleven different things sent in one day. i helped her eat the eating ones." "how did you get in?" growled mr. wells for all the world like the big bear in the story of goldilocks. mary rose had to think what a splendid big bear he would make. "the door was open. i knocked but no one came. i was afraid you might want something. has your japanese gentleman gone to the drug store? isn't it lonely for you all by yourself? i was going to ask aunt kate to make you some beef tea but perhaps you'd rather have jenny lind stay with you. she's splendid company and i'd be glad to loan her to you." she crossed the room to put the cage down beside mr. wells. jenny lind began to sing immediately as if to show mr. wells what splendid company she could be. mr. wells raised himself on his elbow and shook a threatening fist at the canary. "take that damn bird away!" he shouted. his face was red and mary rose was sure she could see flames darting from his eyes. "yes, sir! yes, sir!" she snatched jenny lind at once. "i s-suppose she is too noisy for you yet. mrs. mason didn't like her when she had the nerves. but you shouldn't be alone. it's bad for you. i'm sure you need friendly company. oh, i know the very thing!" and before the astonished and indignant invalid could say a word she had dashed out of the room. he could hear her stumble in the hall but he did not hear her exclaim hurriedly when a door across the way opened: "oh, mrs. rawson, will you take jenny lind for a minute? i'll be right back for her." she pushed the hook of the cage into the hands of the startled mrs. rawson and flew down the stairs. she was back in an incredibly short time with a small glass globe that she carried very carefully. her face shone as she tiptoed in and placed it on the table beside the invalid. "there!" she said proudly. "there! the perfect pets for the sickroom. when you said jenny lind was too disturbing i remembered that mr. jerry's aunt mary had these two little goldfish. wasn't it lucky? she was glad to loan them to you and hopes you'll find them pleasant friends. they won't be any care at all. i'll come up every day and feed them if you don't feel well enough. i'd like to. aren't they beautiful? do you suppose all the fish in heaven are like that, all gold and glisteny? won't you just love to watch them? they can't sing or make any noise to annoy you. they'll be splendid company." "god bless my soul!" murmured mr. wells helplessly, when he could find breath to murmur anything. he stared at her as if he really had never seen her before. an exclamation, like the pop of a gun, made them look at the doorway where sako was staring at them as if he could not believe his eyes. "sako!" shouted mr. wells, angrily. "why did you leave the door open when you went out?" "wasn't it lucky he did?" asked mary rose, standing before him and rocking on her heels and toes as she often did when she was pleased. "i might never have come in, if he hadn't. if there's anything i can do for you, mr. wells, any time, don't you hesitate to ask me. just send the japanese gentleman right down. i live in the cellar, i mean the basement, with aunt kate and uncle larry and we'll all be only too glad to do anything to help you get well. it's horrid to be sick. you look better, i think," critically, and indeed he was not at all pale how. he had so much color in his face that he was almost purple. "i must go now and get jenny lind. i left her with mrs. rawson. i expect she thought i was crazy," with a giggle as she remembered mrs. rawson's amazed face. "i'll bet she did!" mr. wells stared after her as if he, too, thought mary rose was crazy. she turned in the doorway to wave her hand to him and he watched her out of sight. then he looked at the goldfish. he had half a mind to tell sako to throw them out. what did he want with a couple of damned goldfish? the child was a nuisance, an unmitigated nuisance. children always were. that was why he lived in the washington where they were forbidden. he would have to ask the agents what they meant by letting the place be overrun with children when there was a clause in every lease forbidding it. mary rose might be a friendly little soul, she might mean well, but she was an unmitigated nuisance. the lord only knew what she would do next if she remained in the building. and she had dared to talk back to him in front of people. no, he would see that the lease was lived up to. it was his right. if he demanded protection against mary rose, an impudent interfering chit, he fumed, the agents would have to protect him. "sako!" he called sharply. "take these damned goldfish down to the donovans. and tell donovan to keep his niece at home. i won't have her here!" chapter xiv through bob strahan, jimmie obtained a paper route. mr. jerry's aunt mary insisted that was work enough for him at present. "a growing boy has to have plenty of time to eat and sleep," she said, "and no one is using that attic bedroom." "you can earn your board taking care of the lawn and lending a hand with the car. the paper route 'll stand you in for clothes and spending money," suggested mr. jerry. "might as well take it easy while you can." "he's a prince, that's what he is!" jimmie told mary rose somewhat chokingly, when she came over to see how george washington and solomon and jimmie were doing. "i never knew such a man." "didn't you?" mary rose was surprised. "mr. jerry is splendid but there are lots and lots of splendid people in the world, jimmie bronson." "oh, are there!" snorted jimmie. "well, i haven't seen so many of them, and that's straight. judging from what i saw and heard that first day i was in waloo, you've run across at least one of the other sort, too." mary rose blushed. her inability to make friends with mr. wells annoyed her. "he's got dyspepsia," she said, as if that were an excuse. "to tell you the truth, jimmie bronson, when i first came here i nearly died. i had an awful time remembering that daddy said when there were so many people in the world there were friends for everybody. the people were so different and it was so funny to have them live up and down instead of side by side. at first i thought i'd never get used to it but i did. and i have lots of friends here now. but waloo isn't mifflin." and she sighed because it wasn't. "mifflin!" jeered jimmie. "mifflin! you can be mighty good and glad it isn't. i don't know where you got your idea of mifflin, mary rose, for it's about the deadest one-horse town i ever ran across. and the people. huh! a collection of boneheads." "why, jimmie bronson!" gasped mary rose. "mifflin's the friendliest town--" "friendly!" jimmie elevated his nose at the word. "prying, interfering, gossiping! that's what it is. i guess i know. you're all wrong, mary rose, all wrong. if you should go back you'd see. you're nothing but a kid. you don't know. but take it from me you've got entirely the wrong idea of your native town. if mifflin was what you think it was do you imagine solomon and i would have left? no, siree! we'd have stayed and been part of the happy crowd. but it isn't. honest! it's dead and narrow and one-horse and the people are boneheads." mary rose could not believe it. she stared at him and her lip quivered. "jimmie," she said at last and her voice was very low and shaky, "is that what you want me to think of mifflin? it's always been a wonderful place to me. you see i was born there and no other city, no matter how grand it is, can be my birthplace. it doesn't seem as if i could be all wrong about it. and the people! daddy always said people's hearts were friendly and in mifflin their faces were friendly, too. yes, they were, jimmie bronson, when i lived there. perhaps they have changed. it's a long time since i left." jimmie gave a whoop. "long time! it isn't two months. and it would take more than sixty days to put that sour look on old mr. mallow's face. he nearly ate me up alive when i asked for a job after aunt nora died. no, mary rose, you're wrong, all wrong, about mifflin. there isn't any place in this whole world that's like what you think that old burg is." "isn't there, jimmie?" mary rose was very troubled. "is that what i'm really to believe?" there was a quiver in her voice that made james bronson turn and look at her. he flushed all over his freckled face, to the very roots of his red hair. he even put out his tanned hand and patted mary rose's arm. "no, mary rose," he said slowly. "i guess you're right. you're always looking for friends and so you'll find them. you keep on being a silly simp and thinking of mifflin as the new jerusalem and perhaps it'll grow into one." "it would if everyone thought it would," mary rose insisted and the troubled look slipped away from her face. "if people feel friendly they'll find friends." "and she believes it," jimmie told mr. jerry when they were cleaning the car together that evening. "gosh, aren't girl kids queer! i couldn't tell her the truth but i guess i know mifflin better than she does." "i'm glad you didn't tell her the truth, jim." mr. jerry lighted his pipe and gave jimmie the hose. "she'll learn soon enough." "of course she will," agreed jimmie. "she's just got to find out that folks aren't going up and down the streets holding out the glad hand. that's what i say, mr. jerry, if people feel so friendly inside why don't they show it outside? gee whiz!" he stopped to squeeze the water out of the big sponge. "wouldn't it be a great old world if they did, if folks were what mary rose thinks they are?" "it would. and as every little bit added to what there is makes a little bit more you could help the good time along by feeling a bit more friendly to the world yourself, james," advised mr. jerry, stepping off to look at the car. "mary rose is right when she says that smiles are just as catching as frowns. take it from me that it never makes a bad thing any worse by thinking that it is better than it is." jimmie bronson's opinion of mifflin bothered mary rose and she discussed it with everyone. it was not until they had all agreed with her that people and places are what you think they are that she felt comfortable again. "i knew i was right all the time," she told aunt kate. "if folks were really what she thinks they are, what a snap we'd have," aunt kate said to uncle larry, after mary rose had gone to bed. "to be honest i'll have to admit that the atmosphere's a mite pleasanter here but whether that's because of mary rose or because i haven't seen quite so much of the tenants--i never do in summer--i can't say. seems if she does have the faculty of bringing out the kind side of folks. if i hadn't seen it with my own eyes i never would have believed that mrs. rawson would have loaned her machine to mrs. matchan or that mrs. matchan would condescend to borrow it. land, the rows they've had over that machine and that piano! perhaps there is somethin' in thinkin' folks are friendly. what do you say, larry?" "what's thinkin' done for old wells?" asked uncle larry. "he's worse'n ever. take my word for it, kate, he'll make trouble for us. you might as well begin to pack." chapter xv mrs. donovan looked with admiration at the sheer linen blouse that miss thorley handed her. "sure, i'll do it up for you the very best i know how an' seems if you can't expect a body to do more than that. if all of us who are in the world just did our best it would be a different place than it is, now wouldn't it? what's ailin' you, miss thorley? seems if you don't look so hearty as you did. don't you work too hard. it's what you have in your heart more'n what you have in your pocketbook that makes happiness. a pretty young thing like you hain't no business to be thinkin' of jam all the time. i hear you're makin' oodles of money drawin' pictures for mr. bingham henderson but let me tell you, my girl, you can't make good red blood no matter how much money you have. there's only one can do that." "who's that, aunt kate?" mary rose hungered for the information, as she leaned against the table. "who can make good red blood?" "god almighty, honey, an' he's the only one. land, i remember jim peaslie took a dozen raw eggs a day, a quart of cream an' beefsteak so raw it dripped blood but he couldn't make none of those red corpuskles an' so there wasn't nothin' for him to do but die an' he died. a body can't live without plenty of red corpuskles an' by that same token, a girl has got to have somethin' beside work. that's gospel true, miss thorley. my ol' father used to say you robbed the ol' when you took pleasures from the young an', seems if, that's gospel true, too. land, if i hadn't had good times when i was a girl to remember sometimes i'd go crazy. layin' up pleasant memories is what everyone can do an' it means as much as money in the bank. this is pretty lace on your waist, miss thorley. i dunno as i ever saw just this pattern." "it's imported," miss thorley told her listlessly as she lingered in the cosy kitchen. she was pale and her eyes were dull. she was tired, she told herself impatiently. the summer had been hot and she had worked hard. it irritated her that the keen eyes of mrs. donovan saw that she was not happy but how could she be happy when she had so many things to annoy her? she should be happy, she was independent, she had work, the two things that had seemed so necessary to happiness but recently she had been conscious of a desire for something more. it made her furious to be restless and discontented and so listless and colorless that people noticed it. mrs. donovan snorted at the imported lace. "that's it. girls nowadays think 't fine clothes 'll make 'em happy. an imported waist costs more'n one made in waloo an' it keeps a girl strong enough to work for the silk stockin's she's got to have," she said with scorn. "i don't wonder there's so many bach'lors when i figure how much money it costs now to dress a girl." "is that why men are bachelors?" asked astonished mary rose. "mr. jerry is a bachelor, his aunt mary told him so right in front of me. she doesn't like it in him. and mr. strahan's one and jimmie bronson and mr. wells and mr. jarvis. why, what a lot of bachelors are right under this very roof!" "that's just it," laughed mrs. donovan. "'stead of havin' so many bach'lor flats in waloo there oughta be more fam'ly cottages." "there's mr. jerry now." mary rose ran to the window to wave her hand to her friend as he drove his car up the alley. solomon was with him and he looked quite as well on the front seat as mr. jerry had hoped he would. "i could have asked him if that was why he was a bachelor if he hadn't gone away." miss thorley crossed the kitchen and stood beside her. she saw the automobile turn the corner and disappear down the cross street. "mary rose," she suddenly put her arm around the small shoulders beside her. "do you know i've never seen george washington." "you haven't?" mary rose twisted around and looked up into her face. "oh, you must see him. he's such a wonderful cat. but i can't bring him here. it's against the law, you know. would you--oh, would you!--come across the alley and see him in his boarding house? you know he's only a cat," she explained slowly as if she were afraid that miss thorley might expect to find george washington something more. "but he's wonderful just the same. he earns his own board, every single drop. mr. jerry's aunt mary said so." miss thorley and aunt kate smiled at each other above mary rose's yellow head. "i've never seen a self-supporting cat," miss thorley laughed. "i should love to meet george washington." she did not understand why she would love to meet him now, why she wished to go across to jerry longworthy's back yard, when until that afternoon nothing could have induced her to go there. "come on." mary rose put out an eager hand and miss thorley took it in hers. they were halfway across the alley when mary rose stopped. "i forgot," she said, and her face was troubled. "i promised to let mr. jerry know when you'd come." "it's too late to tell him now. we saw him go off in the car." miss thorley did not explain that that was the reason she was willing to call on george washington. "i shall be very busy after today, mary rose. i might not be able to come again for several weeks." "is that so?" mary rose looked less doubtful. "perhaps i can explain that to mr. jerry." she led the way into mr. jerry's spacious yard. "i expect george washington's inside," she said when they failed to find him outside. "run in and bring him out," suggested miss thorley, sitting down in one of the wicker chairs that were under the big apple tree that had lived there ever since waloo had been some man's farm. mary rose disappeared but before miss thorley had looked half over the yard she was back. "he's asleep," she said in a loud whisper. "do come in and see him. he looks perfectly beautiful with a fern at his head and a bunch of asters at his feet. please, come." she took miss thorley's hand and tried to pull her to her feet. miss thorley did not wish to go into the house. she had had no intention of doing more than to slip into the yard for a moment. now that she was there she felt uncomfortably conscious. but mr. jerry was away, she had seen him go with her own eyes. it would be interesting to see his home. or perhaps the picture mary rose had described, a sleeping cat with a fern at his head and asters at his feet, was alluring. whichever it was she allowed mary rose to lead her in at the side door, through the dining-room that seemed far too large for only mr. jerry and his aunt mary, into the big living-room that had begun life as a front and back parlor. there on the wide window seat was the self-supporting cat, george washington himself, with a fern spreading its feathery fronds above his head and a cluster of red asters in a brass bowl at his tall. george washington had calculated the amount of space between the jardinière and the bowl to a nicety. there was not the fraction of an inch to spare. [illustration: "there on the wide window seat was the self-supporting cat."] "there!" mary rose pointed a proud finger as she stopped before the window. "he is a beauty," miss thorley was honest enough to say. her sense of color was delighted at the play of sunshine on george washington's gray overcoat which had caught a warm glow from the red asters. "wake him up, mary rose. you really can't see a cat asleep any more than you can a baby." "shall i?" mary rose would never in the world have disturbed a sleeping baby and for the same reason she hesitated before a sleeping cat. and while she hesitated mr. jerry's aunt mary came in and their voices woke george washington. he sprang up, artfully eluding bowl and ferns, and stood in the sunlight stretching himself. he looked at mary rose and at miss thorley and at mr. jerry's aunt mary with his calm yellow eyes. "that's a lot better than waking him," mary rose clapped her hands. "i can't bear to waken anyone for fear of interrupting a dream. sometimes," she went on thoughtfully, "i'd give most anything to know what's inside of george washington's mind. he looks so wise. isn't he splendid?" she asked miss thorley, who had flushed uncomfortably when mr. jerry's aunt mary came in and who now was standing rather stiffly conscious, wishing with all her heart she had never come. mary rose caught her cat and brought him to miss thorley. "you tell her how self-supporting he is?" she asked mr. jerry's aunt mary in a voice that reeked with pride. "i think i can tell that story better than aunt mary." and lo and behold, there was mr. jerry himself in the doorway, an unusual color in his brown cheeks, a reproachful look in his eye. miss thorley's face had more color than usual, also, as she bowed coldly, but mary rose flew to take his hand. "i'm so glad you came back. we saw you drive away but we had to come now for miss thorley's going to be so awfully busy that she couldn't come for weeks and weeks." "is she?" mr. jerry looked oddly at miss thorley, but miss thorley refused to look at him. "the best laid plans of mice and men," he said meaningly and paused until mary rose squeezed his hand. "are you telling her about george washington?" she whispered. he laughed and after a moment a faint smile lifted the corners of miss thorley's lips. mr. jerry drew a sigh of relief and sat down. "that's better," he said. "no, mary rose, i was not just then referring to george washington, but i can assure you that he is untiringly on the job. he brought a dead mouse to me at six o'clock this morning. at six o'clock!" impressively. "i thought i had the nightmare when i opened my eyes and saw old george standing there with a mouse in his mouth. he's working overtime. he should take a rest. he'll injure his health if he attends too strictly to business, mary rose." "i know." mary rose nodded a wise head. "too much work doesn't make good red blood. aunt kate was just telling us, wasn't she, miss thorley, that all the money you make won't buy good times nor red blood. she was telling us that very thing not ten minutes ago." mary rose was overjoyed to hear mr. jerry confirm what aunt kate had said. now, of course, miss thorley would have to believe that it was true. "your aunt kate is a very wise, wise woman. it's a pity others can't see it." he sighed and looked at miss thorley, who stroked george washington's gray overcoat and refused to lift her eyes to meet his. "if they could they'd have old heads on young shoulders, perhaps," suggested mary rose. "you wouldn't like that, would you? just suppose mrs. schuneman's head was on miss thorley's shoulders. how would you like that?" "i shouldn't like it at all. i shouldn't want any head on miss thorley's shoulders but her very own. it suits me there--perfectly." mr. jerry eyed miss thorley rather critically and screwed his eyes half shut as miss thorley did when she was looking at the model she was painting, and his voice was as firm as a voice could be. "even to have her as wise as your aunt kate i shouldn't want her to have mrs. schuneman's head." "and just suppose you had mr. wells' head and he had yours?" giggled mary rose. mr. jerry tweaked her pink ear. "mr. wells wouldn't keep my head for a minute. perhaps it is just as well to leave heads where they are." "i used to want to change mine," mary rose confided to them soberly. "you know i've millions of freckles and my hair's as straight as a string. nobody ever thinks i'm pretty like gladys. one day mrs. evans told me that pretty is as pretty does and for almost a week i did my best to do pretty, the very prettiest i knew how. but no one ever stopped and said, 'what a beautiful child,' as they do when they see gladys. gladys is afraid of dogs and she screams when she sees a mouse. she's even afraid of her tables. so i tried to think i had more real good times by being brave instead of beautiful. oh!" she broke off with a squeal of delight, for mr. jerry's aunt mary brought in a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of little cakes gay with white and pink frosting. "oh, miss thorley! aren't you glad now that you came?" chapter xvi long before school began mary rose had established an acquaintance, if not a friendship, with all the people who lived in the washington. not only did she know them herself, but she was the means of many of them knowing others. mrs. schuneman and mrs. johnson often went to the park together now to feed the squirrels which mary rose was firmly convinced the lord had placed there for those who could not have pets in their homes. mrs. matchan had promised to play at one of mrs. bracken's club meetings and mrs. rawson and her machine were making garments for the children's ward of the new hospital in which mrs. willoughby had become interested. until mary rose came neither miss adams nor mrs. smith knew that the other was a slave to the crochet hook. mary rose arranged an exchange of patterns and when a pineapple border proved too complicated to be worked out alone she brought expert aid and miss adams no longer hated the washington. it was mary rose who discovered that old mr. jarvis and young mr. wilcox were graduates of the same college and that mr. blake's grandfather and mrs. bracken's grandmother had once sung in the same church choir. miss carter and bob strahan were often seen strolling together and more than once they had transported mary rose to the seventh heaven of delight by taking her to a moving picture show. mary rose's friendliness had had an effect with the maids as well as the mistresses. when she had found mrs. johnson's hilda crying because she didn't know anyone in waloo and was so homesick and lonesome she didn't think she'd stay, mary rose went down and asked mrs. schuneman's mina if she wouldn't please be a little friendly to a new friend of hers. mina had stared at her with her big china blue eyes and said she wouldn't do it for anyone else, but since mary rose had come mrs. schuneman had let up a little on her everlasting nagging, so she felt she owed her a favor and she'd go up that very evening. it was mary rose who soothed ida at mrs. rawson's when she took it into her head that she could not work in the same building with a japanese. "you're a norwegian, aren't you, ida? so you're a foreigner just as mr. sako is. i suppose he thinks norwegians are just as strange as you think japanese. countries are like families, i guess; you think your own is the best in the world. but i don't believe that god was so good to the norwegians that he made them the best. he had to divide the good things just as i do when i have any candy. i give some to aunt kate and some to uncle larry and once i gave a chocolate to you, ida. i wish you'd try and be polite to mr. sako. you don't need to be intimate friends if you don't want to. just think what a splendid chance you have to learn about japan." ida had stared at her as lena had done, but she told mrs. rawson that she'd changed her mind and she wouldn't leave on account of any jap, she wouldn't be driven away by any yellow man. she guessed that norwegians were as good as japanese any day. there were many things that puzzled mary rose but almost as many that pleased her. "i've enjoyed living in waloo," she told mr. jerry one evening as they sat under the apple tree. "i didn't think i would at first. i thought i'd die to have to live in a place where there couldn't be any children nor any pets, but everyone's so friendly i mean--almost every one. i do think the lord did just right when he made people instead of stopping, as he might have done, with horses and lions and monkeys. did you ever think how strange it would be if there wasn't any you nor any miss thorley nor any mrs. schuneman nor any mr. wells," she spoke the last name in a whisper, "but just animals and vegetables and birds? sometimes i can't understand how the lord ever did think of making so many different things. i suppose it was just because he was the lord. that's what aunt kate said when i asked her. but i shall be glad to go to school, mr. jerry, because then i'll know some children. you know in mifflin i played almost all the time with children, gladys and mary mallow and lucy norris and harry mann and lots of others, but here i don't seem to know anyone but grown-ups. they're very nice grown-ups. i just love you, mr. jerry, and your aunt mary and the enchanted princess! do you think you'll ever be able to break the spell of that wicked witch independence?" anxiously. "you know i don't think she's just happy. aunt kate doesn't either. she thinks it's red corpuscles but i really believe it's that independence. we must do something, mr. jerry. and i love miss carter and mr. strahan and mrs. schuneman and grandma johnson and everybody else. isn't a heart the biggest thing? mine has room for jenny lind and george washington and solomon and all the other pets i ever had or ever will have and for all the people that were made. it's--it's--" she frowned--"very elastic, isn't it? you have an elastic one, too, mr. jerry, or you'd never have taken in george washington and solomon and jimmie bronson. you're a bachelor, aren't you?" mr. jerry looked quite dazed as he attempted to keep up with mary rose's subjects. he sighed as he acknowledged that he was a bachelor. "is it because when you look at a girl you see how much she costs?" mary rose had worried over that. "because really miss thorley doesn't cost so much. she told aunt kate she didn't. she said appearances were deceitful and the most costly looking girls were often the cheapest. of course, you needn't tell me if you don't want to," remembering, alas, too late, that miss thorley had told her that one should not ask personal questions. she drew a deep sigh. "i'm so full, just so plumb full of questions i've got to spill some of them out once in a while." "to be sure you have!" mr. jerry was the most understanding person. "when i was your age i was nothing but a walking question." "weren't you?" admiringly. "and did people answer your questions? they usually say to me, 'run along, child, i'm busy' or 'never mind that now, you'll know soon enough.' it's a very, very puzzling world, isn't it, with so many things you don't understand. that's another reason i'm so glad to go to school. the day after the day after the day after tomorrow, mr. jerry, my aunt kate's going to take me. i've never been to a city school so i can imagine it's just like a palace with gold seats for the children and thrones for the teachers who are all fairy princesses with beautiful golden hair and white satin dresses." "mary rose! oh, mary rose!" mr. jerry regarded her sadly. "you are a living proof that anticipation is greater than any old participation. i'm only doing you a kindness when i tell you that there is not a golden seat for any child in the lincoln school. there isn't even one throne. and if you don't have an old witch for a teacher instead of a golden-haired fairy i'm a goat. i tell you this for your own good, mary rose, believe me." mary rose shook her head until her hair refused to stay in the ribbon aunt kate had tied on it. "all the same i'm going to believe in the golden seats. they are pleasant things to think of." it was the next day that she was in the hall with jenny lind. they had been calling on mrs. schuneman and germania and had had a pleasant time. mary rose had eaten two pieces of coffee cake and drunk a glass of ginger ale and jenny lind had had a crumb of coffee cake which seemed to be all she cared for. mrs. schuneman had told mary rose a great secret, that lottie was going to be married to the brother of one of her bridge-playing friends and that mary rose might come to the wedding. mary rose was so excited she could scarcely speak. she had never been to a wedding in all of her "going on fourteen" years. "i've been to three funerals and a revival meeting--" ecstasy made her voice tremble--"but i've never been to a wedding. gladys went to one and she said it was grand. her grandmother cried all the time and her grandfather blew his nose six times. gladys counted. oh, mrs. schuneman, will miss lottie really invite me? it would be something," and she clasped her hands as she stood in front of mrs. schuneman, "for me to remember all of my life!" "sure, she'll invite you, you and jenny lind. she can hang in the window with germania and sing for the bride." mary rose threw herself against mrs. schuneman. "i wouldn't exchange you for cinderella's godmother!" she half sobbed. "i'd rather go to a wedding than have a dozen pumpkin coaches. jenny lind and i can't tell you how obliged we are." she was in a whirl of excitement as she shut the door. she heard her name called softly from above and looking up she saw miss carter's face smiling down at her from the third floor. "oh, mary rose, honey," came the soft whisper. "there's a package there for me, parcel post. you know they don't come up. will you bring it to me? i'm not dressed to go down. do, there's a love!" mary rose ran into the vestibule and found a parcel addressed to miss blanche carter. it was rather a large package and mary rose's arms were not so long as they would be some day. she looked dubiously from the package to jenny lind. "you'll just have to stay by yourself a minute, jenny lind. it's lucky for you that the law doesn't let the cats come into this house." she put the cage on the flat top of the newel post and, taking miss carter's package in her arms, she went up as fast as she could. she had to tell miss carter of lottie schuneman's wedding and of the invitation that she and jenny lind were to receive, and miss carter had to open the parcel and show the contents to mary rose, so that it was several minutes instead of one before mary rose ran downstairs. the newel post was empty. there was no bird cage with a yellow canary, on it. mary rose couldn't believe there wasn't and looked again. she was frightened. "jenny lind!" she called. "jenny lind!" perhaps someone had taken the cage to tease her. perhaps there had been a new law and birds were not allowed in the house. perhaps a cat had slipped in regardless of the fact that cats were forbidden. but no cat could have carried the cage out of the front door. mary rose wrung her hands in horror and ran to knock at mrs. schuneman's door. mrs. schuneman cried out in dismay. "why didn't you leave her with me?" "i didn't want to bother you when you'd been so kind," faltered mary rose. "where can she be? perhaps uncle larry took her home." but neither uncle larry nor aunt kate had taken jenny lind to the basement flat. aunt kate shook her head when mary rose told what had happened and followed her up to look at the empty newel post. she could only suggest feebly that someone must have taken the bird. "for a joke," she added when she saw mary rose's frightened face. "a nice kind of a joke to frighten a child to death," grunted mrs. schuneman. "here, mary rose, we'll knock on every door and ask. i'll go with you and if anyone is playing a joke they'll stop when they see me." she looked quite grim enough to frighten any joker as they went from door to door. but no one had seen jenny lind. no one had heard of her. mrs. johnson and grandma johnson and mrs. rawson and mrs. willoughby came out on the second-floor landing and said what a shame it was, and on the third floor mrs. matchan and miss adams and miss proctor and miss carter talked together and tried to comfort mary rose. but all the talking on all three floors did not bring jenny lind back. mary rose pressed her face close to aunt kate and tried not to cry and to believe the conscience-stricken miss carter when she said that jenny lind was all right, they'd find her before mary rose could say jack robinson. "she's all i had here of my very own," hiccoughed mary rose; "i had to board out my cat and loan my dog. i've had her for years and years. it doesn't seem just fair for anyone to take her from me." "you can have germania," promised mrs. schuneman, to the surprise of all who heard her. "i'll be busy with the wedding and won't have time to take care of her," she added kindly so that mary rose would think it was a favor to take her bird. "but germania's yours and jenny lind was--was mine. they can't ever be the same, though i'm much obliged, mrs. schuneman. oh, where can she be, aunt kate? where can she be?" "yes, where can she be?" repeated grandma johnson helplessly. "we'll advertise," promised bob strahan, who had come in and heard the sad story of jenny lind's disappearance. "just you keep a stiff upper lip, mary rose. we'll find your bird." they were all talking at once and advising mary rose to keep her upper lip stiff when mr. wells slammed the door behind him. he stopped when he saw the group around the newel post. "what's the matter?" he scowled, and his voice was like the bark of a dog to mrs. donovan's nervous ear. "what's the matter?" it was mrs. schuneman who told him. she had never dared to speak to him before. he looked oddly from one to the other and last of all at mary rose whose upper lip just wouldn't stay stiff. "it is only what you should expect," he said, as he went on up the stairs. "pets are not allowed in this building." "i wish grouches weren't," muttered bob strahan to miss carter, who was almost as tearful as mary rose. "brute!" she answered. "if he had been here i should think he had something to do with jenny lind's disappearance." "that jap of his was here," suggested bob strahan, but no one paid any attention to him then. "come down with me, dearie," whispered aunt kate, whose ruddy cheeks had lost their color under the cold stare of mr. wells. "we mustn't make any disturbance here. come down an' tell uncle larry. p'rhaps he can help us." "it's not--not knowing where she is or what's happened to her," mary rose gulped. "if she was well and comfortable i'd--i'd try to be resigned, but when i don't know, aunt kate! when i don't know!" "nothing has happened to her," bob strahan said promptly. "no one would hurt jenny lind. she is a valuable bird. i expect she was stolen and we'll find her at a bird store. the thief would be sure to sell her right away, before he was caught. i'll look up the bird shops." "do!" begged miss carter, who wished from the very bottom of her heart that she had never asked mary rose to bring up her parcel post package. "i have half a mind to go with you." "be generous and have a whole mind. poor little kid," he looked after mary rose as aunt kate half carried her down. "it's a thundering shame. lord! i'm almost ready to think old grouch wells did have a hand in this. did you see his face? he's had it in for mary rose ever since she came." aunt kate sat down in the big rocker and drew mary rose close to her heart. "don't you fret yourself, mary rose," she said with her lips against mary rose's tear-stained face. "we'll find jenny lind. sure, we'll find her. just you pretend she's gone for a visit. you've loaned her to 'most everyone in the buildin', just you pretend she's loaned now." "it's easy enough to pretend when you don't have to, aunt kate, but it isn't so easy when you know the truth," sobbed mary rose. when uncle larry heard what had happened he shut his jaws with a click and a stern look came into his mild blue eyes. "of course someone took her," he said, patting mary rose's shoulder with a comforting hand. "but don't you worry, mary rose. a janitor can go into any flat in this building, so if someone is hiding her for fun or meanness i'll find out. an' if it's anyone outside, well, what are the police for if not to help folks? i'll just speak to officer murphy to be on the safe side." he seemed so helpful and confident that mary rose stopped crying and tried to feel confident, also. "perhaps someone in the house did take her for company, but i think it would have been more polite if they'd said something to me," she murmured. "it's more likely that one of the old cranks thought the bird was a nuisance and wrung its neck," frowned uncle larry when he spoke to aunt kate alone. he did not seem half so confident as when he had spoken to mary rose. "there are folks not so many miles away who'd not stop to think whether they broke a kid's heart or not so long as they had their way. i declare, kate, i'm 'most sorry you didn't leave her in mifflin. from all she says folks were kind to her there." "well, i'm not sorry!" aunt kate's voice was emphatic. "it breaks my heart to have her hurt, but we'll just have to keep remindin' her of what she has left, although it seems if it was little enough. first her mother an' then her father, her cat put out to board an' her dog the same as given away, an' now her bird's stolen. you might almost think that providence was pickin' on the little thing." chapter xvii jerry longworthy went up the steps of the washington and eyed the long row of mail boxes that ran down two sides of the vestibule, until he came to one whose card read, "miss elizabeth thorley, miss blanche carter." he touched the bell beneath. "is miss thorley in? this is jerry longworthy. i want to speak to you about mary rose." "oh, do come up!" the voice was very eager and hospitable as it came swiftly down the tube, and mr. jerry obeyed it almost as swiftly. miss thorley met him in the hall on the third floor. she wore a little lingerie frock of white voile, tucked and inset with lace and girdled with pink satin. it was collarless and her hair was done high on her head so that little locks escaped from the pins and rested on her white neck. she looked about eighteen as she greeted mr. jerry. he held her hand much longer than she thought was necessary and she flushed as she drew it from him. he looked around the big pleasant room as if he were glad to be in it. "it's a long time since i was here," he said in a low voice, not as if he meant to say it but as if he had to. it seemed long to her now, too, and when she answered, it was as mr. jerry had spoken, as if the words came of their own will. "it is a long time." if aunt kate had seen her then she would not have worried over any lack of red "corpuskles." a goodly number of them slipped into miss thorley's face and dyed it pinker than her girdle. a flame was lighted in mr. jerry's eyes and he stepped quickly forward. she shrank back behind the high morris chair and he stopped suddenly. "long enough to prove to you that love is the biggest thing in the world?" he asked gently, but there was a tremble in his voice that thrilled her down to her very heels. "oh, my dear, has it? work and independence are all well enough but they can't take the place of love." his eyes watched her hungrily, but as the color left her cheeks as quickly as it had come and she shook her head, he went on more slowly and there was no longer a wistful tremble in his voice to thrill her to her heels. "you remember the night when you offered me friendship instead of love and i scornfully refused the half loaf?" she nodded almost mechanically, her eyes on her fingers as they pleated a fold of her frock. "well, i've changed my mind. mary rose has shown me that friends may have a big place in one's life and if you can't give me anything more i'm going to be satisfied with your friendship. may i have that?" he held out his hand. "oh!" it was a startled little gasp and it was a startled little glance that she gave him. "is--is that what you came for?" if his ears had been sharper he would have caught a tiny note of disappointment in the question as if she had expected him to ask for more. "it isn't what i came for," he acknowledged honestly. "but i wanted to tell you so you wouldn't keep on avoiding me as if i had the plague. the other afternoon you wouldn't have come over if you had thought i would be back?" a red banner in each cheek convicted her. "we're neighbors and friends of mary rose," he went on slowly, "so we'll doubtless meet more or less and i'd like to feel that you trust me, that we are friends. but, honestly, i came tonight to talk of mary rose." she would be glad to talk of mary rose, glad to talk of anyone but herself, and she left the morris chair that had proved such a safe shelter and took a gaily cushioned wicker one on the other side of the room. "isn't it a shame?" she asked a bit breathlessly. "i can't imagine how anyone who has seen that ducky child with her birdcage could have had the heart to steal her canary." "surely you don't think anyone who knew her took jenny lind?" he was astonished. "everyone says that mr. wells has acted very oddly. and mary rose told me herself that he swore at jenny lind. he's as hard as nails, you can see it in his face. i've heard that he has complained to brown and lawson that the leases are not lived up to and that there is a child in the house. when you put two and two together you can't make much but four out of the result." "the old murderer!" scowled mr. jerry. "if that's true i'd like--i'd like----" "so would i!" miss thorley agreed with him heartily. "jim said something of the sort, but i told him he was crazy. he said he was going up the fire escape and see if he couldn't find the bird in wells' flat, but i laughed at him. i didn't know the old man had complained of mary rose. of mary rose!" he repeated, as if he could not understand how anyone could complain of mary rose. mary rose had been a joy to him ever since he had looked up from his car and seen her standing there in the boys' blue serge and with george washington in her arms. miss thorley nodded. "i'd hate to think what this house would be without her. she seems to have warmed it from the top to the basement. perhaps you won't understand when i say it's as if she had humanized it. i'd hate to have it overrun with children!" hastily as she caught the sudden flash of mr. jerry's eyes. "but mary rose--mary rose is different." "why don't you tenants get up a petition of some kind? it wouldn't do any harm to let the owner know that the rest of you are strong for the donovans and mary rose." "no one knows who the owner is. all business is transacted through the agents." "the agents know," wisely. "it won't do any harm and it might do some good. the complaints of one tenant won't weigh as much as the requests of a dozen, believe me." miss thorley drew her black brows together until they formed a line across her white forehead. "i believe you're right," she said after a pause. "i'll ask mr. strahan to write one and we'll have all the tenants sign it. but that won't bring back the canary," forlornly. "no, it won't bring back the canary," he repeated. "we'll have to get another pet for mary rose, one that she may have in the flat. no, not a canary. that wouldn't do at all. but i thought perhaps some goldfish. she loves to watch a couple aunt mary has. once she borrowed them." "i know, for company for mr. wells when he was ill." "goldfish would give her something to think of until school opens. after that she'll have enough to do to keep her occupied." miss thorley looked at him with surprise. "do you know, that's really very thoughtful. i've been trying to think what i could do and i couldn't get beyond another bird. i had sense enough to see that that would never do." "no, another bird wouldn't do. and tomorrow--i wondered if tomorrow you and mary rose wouldn't go off for the day in the car with aunt mary and me? we might run down to blue heron lake for dinner. mary rose loves to motor." "why not take your aunt and mary rose? i'm afraid i----" "nothing doing!" he interrupted firmly. "can't you trust me?" he looked her straight in the eyes as he asked. "i swear i won't say a word of love. we're friends now, you know, not--not lovers. and mary rose adores you. she'd go through fire and water for you. honest, she wouldn't be contented with me and aunt mary, but i know it would be all right if you were along." she hesitated and bit her lip before she finally shrugged her shoulders and said: "oh, very well. i'll go for mary rose." "i knew you would. i knew you'd see the big sister, the humanitarian philanthropic friendly side of it." there was more than the hint of a twinkle in his eyes. "and one more thing." mr. jerry firmly believed in striking the iron before it had any chance to cool. "they have goldfish for sale over at the drug store on twenty-eighth street. won't you walk over with me and help pick out a few? i'd like mary rose to find them when she wakes up in the morning." she did not hesitate over this request. perhaps she realized what a very persuasive way he had, for she laughed softly. "i'll go. i'd do more than that for mary rose." on the way they met miss carter and bob strahan returning from a fruitless quest among the bird stores. but if they had not found jenny lind they had explained the situation to the proprietors of the shops and each of them had promised on his word of honor to telephone to mr. strahan the very minute that a canary was offered for sale. the four went together to the drug store and after the globe had been bought and they had selected the half-dozen fish that were to live in it, they loitered at a little table over their ice cream. "gosh!" suddenly exclaimed bob strahan. "i'm glad i'm not built on the plans and specifications that produced old wells. i shouldn't want the theft of a kid's canary on my conscience." "he will insist that mr. wells knows all about it," miss carter said mournfully. she could not help but feel that she was to blame. if she hadn't asked mary rose to bring up the parcel post package jenny lind might never have disappeared. "why?" asked mr. jerry curiously. "because!" miss carter and bob strahan made the rather unsatisfactory explanation a duet. chapter xviii when mary rose opened her eyes the next morning the very first thing she saw was the glass globe in which flashing sunbeams seemed to dart. "why--why!" cried amazed mary rose, and she sat bolt upright. aunt kate heard her and came in. "do you like them, honey? mr. jerry and miss thorley brought them in last night. mr. jerry said you liked his aunt's goldfish, so he was sure you'd like some of your own." "did he?" all the gladness slipped from her face and voice as she remembered the pet she had lost. "you know, aunt kate, last night i just about decided i'd never have another pet. i'm--i'm so unlucky with them." her lip quivered. "i don't seem to be able to keep one thing that really belongs to me." "nonsense!" aunt kate took her in her arms and kissed her. "you'll keep me and your uncle larry. you can't lose us. aren't they pretty?" she tapped the glass globe. "seems if a body'd never get tired of lookin' at 'em. but get dressed, dearie. breakfas's most ready an' mr. jerry wants you to go out to blue heron lake in his motor car. his aunt an' miss thorley are goin' too. you're to be away all day an' have your dinner at a big hotel." not eighteen hours before mary rose would have danced and clapped her hands at such a delectable prospect, but now she lay back on her pillow and looked at her aunt. two big tears gathered in her eyes. "i can't go. suppose we'd hear something from jenny lind." "as if i wouldn't be here, an' your uncle larry. an' jimmie bronson's goin' to keep an eye on the cat an' dog. to be sure you're goin', dearie. put your clothes on. your breakfas's near ready an' your uncle's starvin'." and to avoid any further argument she bustled away. mary rose lay and watched the goldfish for another sixty seconds and the big tears dropped from her eyes to her pillow. but even if her heart was broken she had to admire those flashes of gold in the clear water. "they're so--so beautiful." she was surprised to find herself laughing when one fish pushed against another. she had thought she never would laugh again. she turned and hid her face. "no matter how beautiful they are i shan't ever, forget you, jenny lind," she promised. "ever! i'm not the forgetting kind of a person and i'll never stop trying to find you. may the good lord take care of you now and evermore. amen." it wasn't exactly a prayer but it comforted mary rose as if it had been. she slipped out of bed and began to dress soberly and slowly instead of singing and hurriedly as usual. when she had combed her hair and washed her face and hands she went into her closet and came out with the detested boys' suit of faded blue serge. her red lips were pressed into a firm line as she put it on. "my soul an' body!" exclaimed astonished aunt kate when she came in with the coffeepot and saw a boyish little figure in the doorway. mary rose ran to her. "i was so proud of wearing girls' clothes that maybe that was the reason jenny lind was taken from me," she explained in a whisper. "i just hate these, aunt kate. i despise them! but i'm going to wear them. you know proud people are punished, the bible says so, and i was as proud--as proud as the proudest. that's the way i've thought it out and that's why i put on this hateful suit this morning." "i think you're wrong, mary rose," began aunt kate, while uncle larry put down the colored supplement that he had been holding out so enticingly to look at his niece, who appeared smaller than ever in the shabby blouse and shrunken knickers. "you haven't had so much to be proud of, a few of ella's old clothes. but if you feel better in those, why, wear 'em. where's your goldfish? don't you want to show 'em to your uncle? miss thorley an' mr. jerry'll understand," she said as mary rose ran to bring the goldfish. "an' i hate to argue with her today. she can wear those now, but tomorrow she'll put on proper girls' clothes to go to school. i don't care what brown an' lawson or anyone else says. you hain't heard anythin' from them, have you?" "nothin' yet, but it won't be good news when it comes. we'll have to move, kate. ol' wells has seen to that an' after last night i don't care so much. if honest faithful work don't count for anythin' here i dunno as i want to stay. i can find another job. it won't be as easy as this. this was just velvet for a man like me." "well, if they have the nerve to fire you just because you're givin' a home to an orphan niece i hope mr. strahan writes it all over the front of his paper. i'd like to see it in big red letters an' then maybe the owner an' mr. wells'd be ashamed of themselves." "s-sh! s-sh!" cautioned uncle larry but not quickly enough, for aunt kate's voice was shrill and excited and mary rose in her little room heard every word. she stood and looked about her bewildered. it wasn't possible that anyone, even the owner of the washington, would take her uncle larry's work from him just because a little girl was living with him? aunt kate must be mistaken or perhaps she had misunderstood. she often found herself mistaken in her ideas of what grown people meant. she tried to think she was now as she took the globe and carried it carefully into the dining-room and placed it on the table where the sunlight fell on the fish and polished their golden scales. "that's what i call a han'some present," admired uncle larry in the same hearty voice mary rose usually heard from him. she looked up quickly. he wouldn't speak like that if he were going to lose his work. she hadn't understood. that was it. children often didn't understand grown people. "they are beautiful," she said softly. "i wasn't very welcoming to them at first because i was afraid mr. jerry meant them to take the place of darling jenny lind and nothing can do that--fish nor dogs nor cats nor squirrels nor anything. but when i watched them swim i found they could have a place of their very own and so i'm very glad now to have them." "of course you are. but eat your breakfas', child, or mr. jerry'll be callin' for you before you're ready." that was a wonderful sunday to mary rose. she sat on the front seat beside mr. jerry and as neither of them felt much like talking they enjoyed the silence. mile after mile was left behind them and when they began to pass through small towns and villages mary rose sat up straighter. "they're like mifflin, only different," she murmured vaguely. when they came to a little white meetinghouse standing all by itself near the road mr. jerry's aunt mary asked him to stop and let them go to church. "it seems as if it would be rather pleasant to go to a simple service such as they must have here," she suggested. "i'll put it to a vote," mr. jerry offered obligingly. "mary rose, what do you say?" "oh, let's!" she begged. "and i'll pretend i'm sitting with gladys in the evans pew and that mr. mann is preaching." mr. jerry stopped the car by the roadside and they all stepped out. "what a doggone idiot i was," mr. jerry whispered to miss thorley as they followed his aunt mary and mary rose; "i might just as well have taken the kid to mifflin as to blue heron lake, but i never thought of it." "this is better," miss thorley told him with pleasing promptness. "mifflin would have reminded her of jenny lind. you can take her there some other day." "will you go, too?" eagerly. "i'll go any day you say." but she only smiled over her shoulder as she went up the steps and into the meetinghouse. a quiet peaceful hour followed and when the service was over mary rose slipped one hand around mr. jerry's fingers and gave the other to miss thorley. "i feel a lot better," she said. "i think it was awfully kind of that minister to preach about sparrows. jenny lind isn't a sparrow but she's a bird and when the lord looks after sparrows so carefully i'm sure he'd keep an eye on a canary." she was more like her old self as they went on, faster now, because, as mr. jerry explained, they had to make up the time they had spent in church and if they didn't reach the hotel at blue heron lake in time for dinner all the chicken breasts and legs would be eaten and there would be nothing left for them but backbones and necks. "that's all gladys ever has," mary rose told him importantly. "you see they have such a big family that all the other pieces are gone before it is her turn to be helped. she used to love to come to dinner at our house so she could have a wishbone. when her grandmother dies she'll have a leg." "my gracious!" murmured mr. jerry's aunt mary. "my word!" giggled miss thorley. fortunately they reached the hotel in time to have their choice of chicken and everyone was glad to see that mary rose was hungry and seemed to enjoy her dinner. after dinner they went for a ride on the lake in a launch and then they sat in the shade of a dump of linden trees and watched the bathers. "why didn't i tell you to bring your bathing suits?" mr. jerry asked suddenly. "what a dolt i was not to think of it." "you're not a dolt!" mary rose said indignantly, although she hadn't the faintest idea what a dolt was. "and i couldn't have brought one for i haven't one. and anyway i wouldn't care to make too merry today." her face clouded as she remembered why she did not wish to be too merry. it was long, long after her bedtime when the car stopped in front of the washington and it was a very sleepy tired little girl who was taken into uncle larry's strong arms. "i've had such a wonderful time," she murmured, half asleep. "uncle larry, have you found jenny lind? we don't have to worry about her any more because i know now the lord has his eye on her." uncle larry looked over her head to mr. jerry. "i can't thank you, sir," he said in a hushed voice, "but you've been a kind friend to the little girl today." "she's such a darling one has to be kind to her." miss thorley answered for mr. jerry and blushed when she realized it. "don't you bother, mr. donovan. i'm like mary rose, i know everything will be all right." "i hope so, miss thorley. thank you again, sir." and he went in with mary rose asleep in his arms. "i can't thank you, either." miss thorley held out her hand to mr. jerry after she had said good night to his aunt mary. "i've had a perfect day and it was mighty good of you to plan it for mary rose." he took her hand in both of his. "it was mighty good of you to come with mary rose and me. and we're going to be friends, now, real friends?" he asked gently. she caught her breath and looked at him quickly. "y-es," she said slowly. "of course, we'll be friends. i--i'm glad you are willing to be friends." mr. jerry laughed oddly. "i've learned about the value of that half loaf. good night." chapter xix nothing had been heard of jenny lind. jimmie bronson had made a surreptitious visit to mr. wells' apartment and had escaped only "by the skin of his teeth," he assured mr. jerry. "i didn't get any further than the window before that jap caught me and i didn't see any birdcage. but i shan't give up, mr. longworthy. i'll find that canary yet!" everybody seemed more anxious now than mary rose. she was so confident that the lord had his eye on the missing jenny lind that she almost stopped worrying. aunt kate resolutely refused to allow her to go to the lincoln school in the blue serge suit. "you'll wear proper clothes or you don't stir a step," she said sternly. "an' if you don't go to school the truant officer'll come here an' like enough i'll be arrested for not sendin' you. if you don't want your poor aunt to go to jail you'll stand up an' put on this dress i bought 'specially for you." she had not been able to resist a sale of children's clothes at the big store and had bought three dresses for an eleven-year-old girl. she brought one out that morning, a blue and green and red plaid gingham with a white collar and a black patent leather belt. mary rose was speechless with admiration when she saw it. but if she had been so proud of ella's old clothes that she had to be punished, what would she be in this ducky dress? "i can't trust myself in it, aunt kate. it's too beautiful. it's fine enough for a princess." but after aunt kate had explained that if mary rose did not wear the dress she might have to go to jail mary rose had no choice. she would have to wear the frock and go to school and try her very hardest not to be proud. she had only to think of jenny lind to humble her spirit. she was very sedate as she walked with aunt kate. it did not seem possible that at last she was going to enter the big school building with towers and battlements enough for a fortress. "it is like a castle. i don't care what mr. jerry said," she told aunt kate as they went up the steps and into the principal's office where a pleasant-faced middle-aged lady looked questioningly at mary rose and asked how old she was. from force of habit aunt kate said hastily: "goin' on fourteen." "fourteen!" the principal was plainly astonished. "she's very small for her age. and backward if she is only in the sixth grade. she should be in high school at fourteen. has she been ill?" backward! it was bad enough to be called small for her age, but to be told that she was stupid was more than mary rose could bear in silence. she opened her mouth to explain and then she remembered that she had promised she would mortify her pride so she said never a word, although she thought she would burst at having to keep quiet. but aunt kate's pride was also touched and she stammered hurriedly that she should have said her niece was going on eleven. "that sounds more normal." and the principal smiled as she led the way into a big sunny room full of children. mary rose drew a sigh of relief when she saw the teacher. mr. jerry was all wrong about her, for she was not an old witch. she was as pretty a young woman as any child could wish to have for a teacher. she smiled at mary rose in a very friendly fashion and found her a seat beside a little girl with wonderful long yellow curls. it was delightful to be with children again and mary rose's face rivaled the sun. aunt kate had a strange ache in her heart as she watched her. mary rose would make friends here, friends of her own age, and she would miss her. but that was the way of the world, she thought philosophically. when she was quite convinced that mary rose was happy and contented and could find her way home alone she left the school. mrs. bracken called to her from her window as she passed and she went in to be introduced to mrs. bracken's niece, harriet white. "she is going to live with us," mrs. bracken explained, her arm around harriet's waist. "isn't she a big girl for thirteen? i meant to be back yesterday so she could start in school today, but we were delayed. i was just telling her there was another little girl, mary rose, in the building." mrs. donovan looked almost enviously at harriet white who was thirteen and who appeared at least two years older. how easy everything would have been if mary rose had been as large. she sighed and then smiled, for she knew that she would not change small mary rose for big harriet white if she had the chance. she gazed pleasantly at mrs. bracken, whose face seemed to have found a new expression in prairieville, and said from the very depths of her heart: "if you enjoy her half as much as we enjoy our niece you'll consider yourself a lucky woman to have her." "i know i'm a lucky woman," mrs. bracken answered heartily. "i never realized what made this building seem almost depressing until mary rose came into it. what is this mrs. schuneman tells me about mary rose's bird? i'm so sorry. she was so attached to jenny lind. do you really think that mr. wells had anything to do with it?" "oh, mrs. bracken, how could any man with a heart steal a child's pet bird!" mrs. donovan tried her best to be discreet as she told the story. "of course, we all know that mr. wells is queer," mrs. bracken remarked when she finished. "mrs. schuneman said she understood that he had complained to brown and lawson, but don't you worry, mrs. donovan. mr. wells is not the only tenant and i rather think the rest of us will have something to say. if he objects to harriet mr. bracken will tell him quite plainly what he thinks. and there are others. we all like mr. donovan. he's a good janitor, willing and pleasant, and we won't let him be discharged without a protest. perhaps i shouldn't tell you, but mr. strahan has written out a petition to send to the owner and everyone in the building will sign it, i know, except perhaps mr. wells." and she laughed as if mr. wells' not signing the petition was a joke. "one against twenty won't have much influence." mrs. donovan put out her hand and touched mrs. bracken's white fingers, something she would not have dared to do two months earlier. "thank you for telling me that. larry's tried, i know, and it isn't easy to please so many people. we don't know who the owner is so we can only talk to the agents, but a petition signed by everybody ought to prove to them that mary rose isn't a nuisance." "anything but a nuisance!" insisted mrs. bracken. chapter xx mary rose had decided to write a letter. the more she thought of what she had heard her aunt kate say to her uncle larry that sunday morning the less she liked it. she would write to the owner of the washington, to the man who made laws so that children and cats and dogs were not allowed in his house, and tell him just how it was; and then, why, of course, he would say it was all right, that uncle larry could stay and she could stay, and everything would be as it was except for jenny lind. her lip quivered as she tried hard to remember that the lord had his eye on jenny lind. she had a box of paper of her own with cunning kewpie figures across the top of each sheet. miss carter had given it to her one day when mary rose told her of a letter she had received from gladys. the letter to the owner of the washington was not as easy to write as the answer to gladys' note had been. she screwed her face into a frowning knot as she tried to think what it was best for her to say. dear mr. owner: [that much was easy.] this letter is from mary rose crocker, who lives in the cellar of your washington house. i mean the basement. we call them cellars in mifflin where i used to live, but in waloo they are basements. uncle larry said you have a law that won't let children live in your house. i don't understand that, for there have always been children. adam and eve had them and most everybody but george washington. he never did. is that why you named your house after him? my mother died when i was a tweenty baby and my father is in heaven with her, too, and i had to leave solomon, he's my dog, in mifflin and board out my cat, but he's self-supporting now and my bird has been stolen, so there isn't anyone but just me in the cellar. i mean basement. aunt kate and uncle larry are my only relatives on earth and if i don't live with them i'll have to go to an orphan's home, which i shouldn't like at all. but if you won't let uncle larry keep his job and me, too, of course i'll have to go. i'll try and not make any noise and be quiet and good if you'll please let me stay and please, please, i'm getting less of a child every day. when i came i was going on eleven and now i'm almost going on twelve, for my birthday is in two months. aunt kate doesn't know i'm writing to you. neither does uncle larry. i thought of it all myself when i heard uncle larry tell aunt kate you were going to take his job away if i lived with them. i know i shouldn't have listened, but i did. perhaps you've never been an orphan and don't know what it means to have all your parents in heaven when gladys evans has twenty-seven relations here on earth. but i shall be much obliged if you won't take uncle larry's job away from him and if you'll let me live with him. god bless you and me. your obedient servant and friend, mary rose crocker. it was a long letter and quite covered two sheets of kewpie paper. there were many blots and more misspelled words. mary rose frowned as she looked at it. it was the best she could do. she was uncertain how to get it to the owner and she did not wish to ask her uncle. mr. jerry could tell her. he knew everything. and holding the closely written sheets in her hand she ran across the alley. fortunately mr. jerry was alone under the apple tree. she handed him the letter and watched his face anxiously while he read it. "is it all right?" she begged. she had george washington cuddled in her arms and hid her face against his soft fur coat as she asked. "i know the words aren't spelled right but i'm only in the sixth grade. perhaps i should have put that in? but is the meaning right?" mr. jerry coughed twice before he answered. "just right, mary rose. exactly right! i couldn't have done it better and i've been to college. write on the envelope: 'to the owner of the washington' and i'll take it over to the agents myself." "oh, will you!" mary rose had been puzzled how to get it to the agents. she decided then and there that she would never be puzzled over anything again. mr. jerry could do everything. first he had taken her cat and then her dog and her friend from mifflin and now her letter. her heart was filled with a passionate devotion to him as she laughed tremulously. she was both proud and happy to possess such a resourceful friend. "don't you think mr. owner sounds a little more respectful? you see," her voice shook, for it meant so much to her, "i don't know him at all. i've never had any chance to make friends with him." with mr. jerry's fountain pen she wrote carefully: "mr. owner of the washington." then she folded the letter smoothly and dropped a kiss on it before she put it in the envelope. "just for friendliness," she said when she met mr. jerry's eyes and she blushed. even her ears turned into pink roses. he caught her in his arms and hugged her. "mary rose," he said and his voice was not quite clear, "you're absolutely the friendliest soul i know!" "that's what i try to be, mr. jerry." her arm slipped up about his neck. "daddy said i was to be friendly and the friendlier i was the easier it would be." chapter xxi mary rose loved her school. it was too delightful to be with children again and she made new friends rapidly. after supper she liked to run up to the third floor and tell miss thorley and miss carter what a wonderful day she had had and they always seemed glad to hear. she often found mr. strahan there and generally there were grapes or pears or peaches or candy to nibble while she told her tale. mr. strahan had written a lot of stories out of mary rose's experiences and he grinned with delight as he heard her talk of school. he saw her as a mine of human interest tales. "if it hadn't been for her i'd never have kept my job this summer," he told miss carter and miss thorley, one night after mary rose had gone. "the old man liked the stuff she told me and it gave me a chance to show what i could do. i've a regular run now and a regular salary." he looked across at miss carter and colored a bit. "my foot's on the ladder now for keeps." miss carter laughed and colored a bit, too, as she hoped that his foot was there "for keeps." miss thorley caught the exchange of glances with an odd little contraction of her heart. was that the way the wind was blowing? funny she hadn't noticed anything before. if blanche went away she would be left alone--alone with her work and her independence. she shivered involuntarily. once that had been all she wanted. why didn't they satisfy her now? they should satisfy her. she'd work harder than ever on jam advertisements and when she had saved a lot of money she'd go to new york and get a big position and some people would have to admit that it would have been a waste to tie her down to a humdrum--what was it mary rose had said?--"home for a family." her lip curled with scorn. mary rose was only a child. she didn't know that homes and families were not the most important things in the world. someone else had told her what was the most important, but she would not think of him. she just would not. and anyway all he wanted now was friendship. men were so constant. her nose tilted. she felt so much more scorn than a curled lip could express that her nose had to tilt. but until she could save a lot of money and go to new york she would stay right there in the washington and listen to mary rose's experiences at the lincoln school. "it isn't like the school at mifflin one bit, but i like it just the same. and i've made a lot of new friends. i never realized how you needed friends your own age until today. i've managed very well and been happy until--until," she gulped as she remembered what had happened to make her unhappy, "the other day, but it's such fun to have friends your own size. there's that girl at mrs. bracken's. she's older and bigger than i am, but mrs. bracken said we could be friends and there isn't as much difference as there is between me and grandma johnson. and we're friends. there's a boy with only one leg in my class," importantly. "he's going to tell me how he lost the other one tomorrow. and a girl, anna paulovitch. isn't that a funny name? she was born in o-odessa, russia. i never knew anyone who was born in russia before. it's very interesting. do you know," her voice dropped to a whisper, "that two years ago she lost all of her hair. she was sick and it disappeared until now there isn't even a single solitary hair on any part of her head. it's as bare, as bare," she looked about for a comparison but could not find one that would suit her, "as anything could be bare. it's very strange." "and does she go to school without any hair?" asked bob strahan, trying to visualize anna paulovitch's bare pate. "oh, no! you can't go to school without hair. so last summer anna picked berries for a farmer and saved every penny and soon she had enough to buy a wig. her own hair was black and she hated it. she always wanted yellow curls and so when she bought her wig she bought long yellow curls. they're perfectly beautiful. you'd never guess they didn't grow on her own head. she showed me because i'm her friend. we're in the same number class." "ye gods! long yellow curls on a swart-faced black-eyed russian." bob strahan laughed at the combination. miss carter looked at him reproachfully as she swung the conversation to the safe subject of mrs. bracken's niece. "i wonder what mr. wells will have to say about her?" she asked. "he can't steal her canary for she hasn't one," muttered bob strahan. mary rose caught the words, low as they were uttered. "you don't think mr. wells has my jenny lind?" she was so astonished that her eyes popped as far open as they could pop. "he hates birds. he told me so himself when i offered to lend her to him. and we're friends. not friends like us but sort of friends. i'm sure he didn't take her," she insisted. "i must go now. aunt kate said i could only stay a minute. good night." "i wish i could be as sure of old wells as she is," bob strahan said when the door closed behind her. mary rose hesitated as she came to mr. wells' door. she did not believe that he had taken jenny lind and if he heard that people thought he had, he would be so hurt and grieved. she would have to stop and tell him that she didn't believe it, anyway, not for a moment, and if he wanted to borrow her goldfish any time, he could. she'd be glad to loan them to him. that would show how she trusted him. she knocked rather timidly. mr. wells, himself, opened the door. "what d'you want?" he demanded gruffly. he had a letter in his hand and he made mary rose feel as if she had interrupted very important business. "i just stopped to tell you that no matter what other people say i know you didn't steal jenny lind," she stammered. "steal jenny lind!" he thundered. his face was one black frown. "who said i did? come in." he motioned toward the living-room. "everybody's saying so," faltered mary rose. "but i know you better than they do. you couldn't steal the only pet a little orphan girl had, could you?" mr. wells opened his mouth twice before he could say a word and then he only grunted a sentence that mary rose could not understand. he threw the letter he held on the table. an enclosure dropped from it and mary rose saw that there were kewpies across the top of the paper. she recognized the writing also. "why--why!" she stammered. she was so surprised that she could scarcely speak at all. "that's my letter, the one i wrote to the owner of this very house." a dull red crept up mr. wells' face into his grizzled hair. "yes, i know," he rumbled. "i'm a lawyer and the owner is a client of mine. he gave it to me so i could advise him what to do." "and what will you advise?" asked mary rose after a breathless silence. her heart was beating so fast that she was almost choked. "have you read it?" "yes, i've read it." "uncle larry and aunt kate don't know i wrote it. i just had to because if uncle larry loses his job it's all my fault. not all mine really for it wasn't exactly my fault that my mother died when i was six months old and that daddy went to heaven in june so there was no one left to take care of me but aunt kate. i've tried to be good," she resolutely winked back a tear, "and not make trouble. mrs. schuneman and mrs. bracken and mr. bracken and mrs. johnson and mrs. rawson and miss thorley and miss carter and mr. strahan like me awfully. they said so. i wish you'd please speak to them before you give your advice. will you?" eagerly. the frown on mr. wells' face grew very black and threatening. it made mary rose's little heart jump right into her mouth and she shut her white teeth tight so that it wouldn't jump out. "it's--it's awfully rude of me to speak of it," she went on in a low shamed voice. "i shouldn't remind you, i know, but you are under an obligation to me. i was neighborly when you were sick. i brought you the goldfish. it isn't much that i ask, just for you to speak to the tenements. if they say i'm a nuisance, why i won't say another word because it's the law, but i _am_ getting bigger every day, now. please, promise me just that much?" and mr. wells promised. he couldn't very well refuse. mary rose caught his hand and hugged it to her thumping little heart. "you're a kind, kind man," she said. "i know you are. i don't care what people say. and you'll see i'm treated fair? that's all i ask, mr. wells, honest it is! just for the owner to be fair. good night. i'm going to tell everyone you didn't steal jenny lind." chapter xxii there was a short story in the waloo _gazette_ the next evening that would have interested mary rose very much if she had read it. it was one of the little incidents that have both a pathetic and a humorous appeal and it was very well written. it told of a little black-haired swarthy-skinned girl who had always longed for long yellow curls. when illness robbed her of the hated, black locks she had resolutely set to work to earn money to buy a wig that she might return to school. all summer she worked under the hot sun, picking berries for a neighboring farmer, her bald head covered with a ragged straw hat, and when the last berry was gathered and she had the required sum she had triumphantly purchased the long yellow curls she had craved always. and now, prouder than any queen, she was attending the lincoln school. it was the sort of story that a city editor likes for it brings shoals of letters with offers of help, to the newspaper office, and proves in a most practical way that it has been read. usually mary rose was home from school by four o'clock for at half-past three her room was dismissed and it never took her more than half an hour to say good-by to her numerous new friends and dawdle home. but the afternoon after the story of the yellow-curls appeared in the _gazette_, mary rose was not at home at four o'clock. she was not at home at half-past four. mrs. donovan looked uneasily at the clock. it was not like mary rose to be so dilatory. at a quarter to five mrs. donovan put on her hat and walked up the street. she would go and meet mary rose. perhaps the child had been kept after school, perhaps she had stopped to play in spite of the fact that she had been told she must come straight home from school always. mrs. donovan walked the six blocks to the lincoln school without seeing as much as the hem of mary rose's gingham skirt. the big school building loomed up in front of her silent and forlorn. she stared at it before she went up the steps and tried to open the door. it was locked. then mary rose had not been kept after school. where could she be? she might have gone home a different way so as to walk with one of her new friends. of course, she was safe at home by now. mrs. donovan retraced her steps very hurriedly but she found no mary rose in the basement flat. it was so strange that she was worried. where could the child be? suddenly she laughed unsteadily. what a fool she was. to be sure, mary rose had stopped to see mrs. schuneman or to exchange experiences with harriet white who was now attending the lincoln school, too. she ran up to the first floor to knock at mrs. schuneman's door and say breathlessly that she wanted to speak to mary rose at once. mrs. schuneman heard her and followed mina. "mary rose isn't here, mrs. donovan," she said. "hasn't the little minx come home yet?" "no, she hasn't!" mrs. donovan was most unpleasantly disappointed. "i don't understand it. i've told her again and again that she was to come straight home as soon as school was out. then she could go out to play. but she was to come home first." "perhaps she's over to mrs. bracken's?" suggested mrs. schuneman and she followed mrs. donovan across the hall. but mary rose was not at mrs. bracken's. neither was she in any other apartment in the washington. mrs. donovan's ruddy face lost its color. "she can't be lost," she said, expecting mrs. schuneman promptly to agree with her that mary rose could not be lost. "she's big enough to know where she lives if she is only ten." she did not care now if everybody knew how old mary rose really was. "of course, she isn't lost," everyone told her soothingly. "she knows where she belongs. perhaps she is over at longworthys'?" but neither mr. jerry nor his aunt mary had seen mary rose that day. jimmie bronson, who came in while mrs. donovan was inquiring, had not seen her since noon. mrs. donovan was very uneasy as she went home. "the little thing's that friendly and honest herself she thinks everyone else is friendly. she don't know anythin' about city folks. i wish she'd come," she told mrs. schuneman who came down to hear if mary rose had been found. "you remember that girl over on sixth avenue who was kidnapped last--" began mrs. schuneman and clapped her hand over her mouth, hoping mrs. donovan had not heard. but she had heard and her face whitened. the minutes dragged slowly by and mary rose did not come home. larry donovan was downtown and was late, also. when he did come in he could not understand at first that mary rose was missing. "she's in the house somewhere," he insisted, "with miss carter or old lady johnson." "i've inquired at every flat in the building," half sobbed mrs. donovan. "i can't imagine where she is." "who's her teacher?" asked bob strahan. "do you know her name? i'll telephone and ask her if she knows whether mary rose went off with any of the kids." mrs. donovan stopped twisting a corner of her white apron. "her teacher's name is choate, isabel choate. but i dunno where she lives," she wailed. "the directory does," bob strahan said encouragingly. "and so, i'm sure, does the telephone book." he had no difficulty in getting miss choate on the telephone, but the teacher only remembered that mary rose had left the building when the other children did. she had seen her go out of the school yard with a group of boys and girls. who were they? she was sorry but she did not remember. they had not impressed her. she had noticed no one but mary rose, who had such a strong personality one had to notice her. she did hope that nothing had happened to her and she, too, remembered the little girl who had been kidnapped over on sixth avenue. "of course, nothing has happened to her," bob strahan said hurriedly. "she'll turn up all right." he told mrs. donovan the same thing when he went back and reported the result of his interview. "what shall i do?" mrs. donovan was twisting the corners of her apron into hard knots and her mouth twitched with nervousness. "she's never been out so late as this since she came to waloo. an' she's all alone! i'll never forgive myself if anythin's happened to her." "we'll go over to the police station," suggested mr. jerry. "what did she wear, mrs. donovan? the police will want a description of her clothes." mrs. donovan sobbed as she described the blue and red and green gingham frock with the white collar and black patent leather belt that had been mary rose's pride. "we'll call up the hospitals, too," mr. jerry said to bob strahan as they drove to the police station in his car. "it's just possible that she has been hurt, an automobile or something, and taken to a hospital if she was knocked unconscious she couldn't very well tell who she was." "gee!" exclaimed big-eyed white-faced jimmie bronson, who had jumped into the tonneau and was standing with his hands on the back of the front seat, "i hope mary rose wasn't knocked insensible!" the police had heard nothing of any little girl who answered to the description of mary rose but a careful note was made of what mr. jerry and bob strahan had to say of her disappearance. there had been no report of any accident in the district and no child had been kidnapped so far as the police knew. mr. jerry and bob strahan were disappointed. they felt baffled. it didn't seem possible that a little girl could have disappeared so completely as mary rose had disappeared. when they drove back to the washington, jimmie was not with them. he was going to make a few inquiries on his own hook, he told the two men. "no news is good news, mrs. donovan," mr. jerry insisted. "mary rose is all right. no one could harm her." "i wish i could believe that." mrs. donovan had lost control of herself and was sobbing bitterly. "here it is after ten o'clock an' we don't know where the little thing is. seems if bad luck was taggin' her. it isn't a week since her bird was stolen and now--" she shuddered and hid her face in her apron. "nothing's happened to her," repeated mrs. schuneman with a poor attempt at firmness. "nothing could happen to a child like mary rose. it's when you're looking for trouble that trouble comes, mrs. donovan, and mary rose never looked for trouble. she was too busy looking for friends." "that's what she always said," exclaimed grandma johnson; "that the pleasant things come to the people who are looking for pleasant things but, land! see what's happened to her and if anyone ever looked for pleasantness it was mary rose. why she even looked for it in us!" and she laughed harshly. "and she found it, too," mrs. schuneman declared quickly. "yes, she did. she looked deep enough to find the pleasantness we didn't know was there because we'd covered it up with so much disagreeableness. i'm not ashamed to admit that she made me see that so long as you live in a world with other people you owe some obligation to be agreeable to them. if each of us did our share, as mary rose was always asking us to do, we'd find this world a friendlier place than it is." "she must have said that to me a hundred times," sniffled miss adams. "i knew she was right all the time but i wouldn't say so." "it's easy to get out of the habit of being friendly in the city," murmured mrs. matchan. "it's different in the country." "i guess it's much the same, city or country. if she hadn't found germania for me i'd have been in an asylum by now," asserted mrs. schuneman. "there i was all by myself and while a bird isn't a human being, it's a lot of company. and it's through germania and mary rose that i've got acquainted with all of you." "if it hadn't been for mary rose i doubt if mr. bracken would have asked me to go for harriet," mrs. bracken said in a low voice. it seemed as if each of them had something to say of what mary rose had done for her. mary rose's friendly nature, her undaunted belief in the friendliness of people and of the world in which she lived had made those whose lives she had touched develop friendliness also. the dozen people gathered in the donovan living-room said so, quite frankly. suddenly the clock struck eleven times. mrs. donovan burst into a perfect storm of tears. "she should have been in her bed hours ago!" she sobbed. "an' where is she? where's mary rose?" "sh--sh!" there was a step on the stairs. it seemed as if everyone stopped breathing to listen. chapter xxiii larry donovan jumped to the door. but it was mr. wells' grim face that appeared in the circle of light and his grimmer voice that asked harshly: "what's the matter? what's all this disturbance through the building, donovan? every door is open and there's a general turmoil." they faced him indignantly, fellow tenants and janitor. each had had some experience with him that had been more unpleasant than pleasant. all of them knew that he disliked mary rose, that he had complained to the agents because she lived in the basement with the donovans. each of them resented the selfishness that had brought him down to make another complaint when all of them were so worried and anxious. it was bob strahan who put some of this feeling into words. "no doubt you'll be glad to hear that mary rose, the little girl who has been such a nuisance to you, has disappeared?" he said sarcastically. mr. wells looked at him from under his shaggy eyebrows. "what do you mean?" he snapped. "what do you mean?" everyone tried to tell him at once but mrs. donovan who was sobbing in her apron and could not speak. mr. wells looked at her oddly. "nonsense!" he said when the story was clear to him. "she's locked herself in somewhere as she did once before." he had heard of the time the wind had slammed mrs. bracken's door and shut mary rose inside. "she's fallen asleep." "we've been in every flat but yours," larry donovan told him dully. "everyone but mine?" repeated mr. wells. "well, she wouldn't go there." then he remembered that mary rose had been there in a neighborly desire to be kind to him when he was ill, in a friendly wish to tell him of her belief in him when he was under suspicion, and he colored painfully. for all he knew she might be there now. she had a habit of going when and where she pleased. that was what made her such a nuisance in his eyes. "you can come and see for yourself," he said sharply. "so far as i know there's no one there. sako is out and i've just come in." they trooped eagerly after him up the stairs to the second floor, and he had an unpleasant feeling that they expected to find mary rose locked in his apartment, a prisoner by his orders. hadn't mary rose herself told him that he was suspected of doing cruel things? well, he didn't care what they thought, he muttered to himself as he put his key in the lock. but he did care. cross and crusty as he was, he was human, and deep in the hearts of all human beings is the desire to have people think well of them. it was the first time any of them but the donovans had been in the apartment. mr. wells threw open doors to closets and pantries. he even scornfully opened drawers and cupboards. "make a thorough search while you're about it," he snarled. under the sink in the kitchen bob strahan caught a bright gleam. he stooped down and picked up a piece of heavy brass wire. it had been broken at both ends and was twisted and bent. bob strahan stared at it and whistled softly. "what is it?" miss carter ran across to him. he drew her aside and showed her the brass 'wire. "do you see that? it's the kind of wire that bird cages are made of." "oh!" miss carter stared at him. she couldn't believe it. she turned and stared at mr. wells as he stood so contemptuously and watched his neighbors. there was a sneer on his face. "i w-wouldn't have believed that anyone would be so despicable!" "he's been a selfish brute, always finding fault with everyone and everything. you might almost think he was the darned old owner himself," muttered bob strahan. "he wouldn't make himself so disagreeable if he was the owner." miss carter nodded a wise head. "he'd be too anxious to please his tenants. no, it's just because he's so selfish and disagreeable and," she looked at the broken wire and thought of friendly jenny lind, "brutal!" "you're quite sure the child is not here?" they heard mr. wells say in a voice that was as sarcastic as a voice could be, and there was a most unpleasant glare in the cold black eyes. "quite convinced that i haven't hidden her away to fatten for my breakfast?" "mr. wells! mr. wells!" began mrs. donovan indignantly but her spirit died and she cried instead--quite involuntarily you may be sure: "oh, mary rose said there was sure to be good in you if we'd look for it." it seemed to miss carter that a black screen was drawn over mr. wells' face. he said not a word but walked to the door and threw it wide open. one by one his neighbors went out. no one said anything; there seemed to be nothing to say. "good night." mr. wells spoke with cold, almost ominous, curtesy and he would have shut the door in their faces if he had not caught the pitying look in a girl's eyes. a dull red crept into his face. involuntarily he stepped toward elizabeth thorley. "if you hear anything of the child let me know," he said as if the words were forced from him, and then he slammed the door behind him. as they went down the stairs miss carter dropped behind the others. so did bob strahan. as he waited for her he saw her dab her eyes with her handkerchief and he put out his hand and touched her arm. "look here," he spoke sharply. "that won't do. mary rose is all right, you know." and he gave her a little shake. "i'd like to see that for myself, that she is all right." she dabbed her eyes again with the damp little square of linen. he put a hand on each shoulder and looked directly into her tear-wet eyes. "listen to me. i shan't go to bed until i do know that she's all right. i couldn't sleep. mary rose has done too much for me. when i think--lord!--when she came here i was a friendless young cuss hanging on to a job by the skin of my teeth and now--you know i used to be crazy to know you when i met you in the hall and on the stairs and it was mary rose, bless her heart! and her canary who made it possible for us to be friends. i can't forget that and i'll find her." she looked up and there was a light in her eyes that caused his hands to tighten on her shoulders. "you know i love you, honey," he said quickly. "i think i've always loved you and ever since i got a real grip on my job i've wanted to tell you. if you could care half as much for me as i do for you i'd--i'd--" he stopped before he told her what he would do for she had lifted her face and he had seen there that she did care, as much as he did. he stooped and kissed her. she kissed him also and clung to him for a moment before she pushed him away. "we--we shouldn't be thinking of ourselves now," her voice trembled. "we must think of mary rose." chapter xxiv mrs. donovan cried bitterly as she went down the stairs and larry put his arm around her. "there, there, kate," he said. "crying won't help any." "if we could only do somethin', larry!" she wrung her hands. "if we could only do somethin'! it seems awful just to have to wait an' wait. i--i can't bear it." "i'll call up the morning paper." bob strahan and miss carter had slipped down behind the rest and no one noticed that they came in hand in hand. "it won't do any harm to run a little story about mary rose and then if she has strayed in anywhere or been found people will know where to take her." "the mornin' paper!" cried mrs. donovan. "i can't wait for the mornin' paper. i want her now!" the three men looked at each other and shook their heads. she might have to wait longer than for the morning paper to have news of mary rose. they felt so helpless. they had followed every clew, they had the assistance of the entire police force, but they had discovered nothing. they knew no more about mary rose than they knew when they had first discovered that she had disappeared. miss thorley put her arms around mrs. donovan and tried to sooth her. all the red "corpuskles" had left her face now and her eyes had a strained frightened expression. it startled mr. jerry to see her show so much emotion. usually she let one see very plainly that she was interested in only her own affairs. tonight she had forgotten herself in a sweet sympathy for mrs. donovan and in her anxiety for her little friend. it made mr. jerry's heart thump to hear her speak to mrs. donovan so gently and so tenderly. it made him more determined to do something. he was just about to suggest that he should telephone to mifflin although he was positive that mary rose had not run away, when he heard a child's laugh on the street above them. kate donovan heard it, too, and pushed miss thorley from her. "it's mary rose!" she cried. "thank god! it's mary rose!" before she could reach the door a burly policeman stood on the threshold. he held a bundle in his arms that struggled to reach the floor. jimmie bronson stumbled wearily behind them. "here's a very tired little girl for you," the policeman said, as he dropped mary rose into mrs. donovan's hungry arms. "mary rose! mary rose!" mrs. donovan was so happy that she cried and cried. the tears fell on mary rose's face. "where have you been? where have you been?" "yes, mary rose, where have you been?" demanded an eager chorus. the tears had rushed to miss thorley's eyes also and when she discovered that, she discovered also that the hand with which she would have wiped them away was held fast in the firm grasp of jerry longworthy. how it had found its way there she never knew. she snatched it from him, her face aflame, and there were no longer tears in her eyes. mary rose hugged her aunt and beamed on her friends. her eyes were like stars. "how glad you'll be to hear what i've found!" she cried jubilantly. "i've been in the most wonderful place, a big flat building like this, only not so grand, but it has children! and pets, too! dogs and cats! it has, uncle larry! i've seen them with my own eyes. lots and lots of children! babies and all kinds!" her cheeks were scarlet. "i couldn't believe it myself at first but anna paulovitch said it was true and that it had always been like that. i asked her all about it so i could tell you, uncle larry, and you could tell the owner of the washington. he can't know!" "never mind that, mary rose." aunt kate gave her a shake. "i want to know where you've been. why didn't you come straight home from school as i've told you to, time an' again? you've frightened us all to death stayin' away so long." mary rose looked regretfully at the people she had frightened to death and then she smiled radiantly. "well, you see it was this way. you know there was a story in the newspaper last night about anna paulovitch's bald head and when she went to school the boys made fun of her and teased her to show them if she really was bald. it hurt her feelings dreadfully and she was afraid to go home alone so i said i'd go with her. it's a long way from here but i'm glad i went because i helped my friend and i found jenny lind." "you found jenny lind!" everyone was as astonished as mary rose could wish. bob strahan and miss carter looked at each other and bob dropped the piece of brass wire he had found in mr. wells' kitchen. "yes, i did. isn't it just like a fairy story? you see if you do a kind thing a kind thing's done to you. i've told all of you that and you wouldn't believe me but now you've got to. anna paulovitch lives in this big friendly house i was telling you about. it isn't splendid and beautiful like this but it is friendly and there are a lot of children and pets. the law lets them live there. i didn't suppose there was a house like that in all waloo! anna's mother goes out washing and her father's dead like mine. she has seven brothers and sisters that mrs. paulovitch has to find clothes and bread for. it's a good deal for one woman she said and i think it is, too. and right across the hall from the paulovitch's, just like across the hall from mrs. bracken's to mrs. schuneman's, lives john kalich. he's a messenger boy and his sister becky's been in bed for seven years. she's nine now and johnny's crazy about her. he came here with a message and when he saw jenny lind all by herself in the hall he thought how much becky would like her. and becky did like her. she hadn't ever seen a canary bird before. i told her she could borrow jenny lind for a while longer though i did want to bring her home tonight. but i thought, aunt kate, that since george washington's supporting himself and i haven't spent the money i earned washing mrs. bracken's dishes and playing with the squirrels with grandma johnson i'd buy a bird for becky for her very own. i'm going to let her keep jenny lind until then. it seems as if i was always lending jenny lind, doesn't it? aunt kate," she stopped suddenly and looked appealingly at her aunt. "i'm so hungry! can't i have some supper?" "haven't you had any?" aunt kate was horrified. "i couldn't eat any at mrs. paulovitch's because she only had enough to go around once and anyway i don't think i care for russian cooking, bread and lard. i'm an american, you know, and that's why i like american cooking best." miss thorley leaned over and took mary rose as aunt kate jumped up murmuring: "bread an' lard! my soul an' body!" "why didn't you come home before, mary rose?" miss thorley asked when she had mary rose cuddled in her arms. she couldn't remember when she had held a child before. it was odd but she had suddenly found that she wanted to hold mary rose. [illustration: "'why didn't you come home before, mary rose?' miss thorley asked."] "i got lost." mary rose blushed with shame. "i thought i was so smart i could come right home but i turned the wrong corner. i was away over on the other side of waloo when a kind lady found me and put me on a street car and gave me a nickel and told the conductor to keep his eye on me. but i forgot to tell her it was east twenty-sixth street and she sent me west. and then jimmie found me." "good for you, james!" mr. jerry reached over to slap jimmie on the back. "how did you do that?" "i was just looking round," jimmie answered vaguely. "i couldn't sit down and do nothing with mary rose lost. i had to look till she was found and i was lucky and ran across her. gee, mary rose, but you did give me a scare! i was afraid you'd been kidnapped!" "you know, mary rose, i told you always to come straight home from school," called aunt kate from the kitchen. "i know," in a shamed voice. "and i always did until today, and today--why, i didn't. but i found jenny lind and i've made lots of new friends. mr. strahan," she peered around at bob strahan, "how did that story of anna's curls get into the newspaper? did you write it?" bob strahan blushed until he was redder than any tomato that ever ripened. "yes, mary rose, i did," he acknowledged. "i thought it was a dandy little story of a brave girl and that it would be good for people to read." "of course, you didn't know that it would hurt anna paulovitch's feelings. she says she can't ever hold up her head again but i told her she hadn't done anything to be ashamed of and i'd stand by her." "i'll stand by her, too!" bob strahan promised quickly. he had never thought of a story but as a story. the consequences it might have had not occurred to him. "and a lot of other people will stand by her. you should see the letters that came to the office to day with offers of help for anna and her mother." "did they!" mary rose was delighted. "then mrs. paulovitch won't have to work so hard. oh, miss thorley," she drew the red-brown head down so that she could whisper in a pink ear, "if you could just talk to anna's mother for a minute you'd know you wouldn't have to stop work to make a home for a family. she says it takes more than one pair of hands no matter how busy you keep them. will you go with me when i take the bird to becky and talk to mrs. paulovitch?" "perhaps i will," stammered miss thorley, as she kissed the eager little face, feeling that the room was suddenly filled with jerry longworthy's eyes. "oh," mary rose jumped down and stood looking from one to the other, "but i am glad to be home again! it does seem a hundred years since i had my dinner. i don't think any girl ever had such a nice home or such nice friends as i have and it's just because i have a friendly heart!" chapter xxv when mary rose went to school the next morning mrs. donovan had half a mind to walk with her and make sure that she arrived there safely. after the day before it seemed to her that many dangers might lie in wait for mary rose and mrs. donovan had discovered that mary rose was very rare and precious. she watched her from the window and her eyes opened wide in astonishment when she saw mary rose stop and wait for mr. wells. he looked twice as grim and twice as cross as he had ever looked before to mrs. donovan as he came down the steps. but it was no wonder that he looked grim and cross. his experience of the night before, when he learned how his neighbors regarded him, could not have been pleasant. a cold shiver ran the full length of mrs. donovan's spine as she remembered that experience. if she had had any hope of remaining in the cozy basement flat and keeping mary rose, it vanished at the sight of that scowling face. mr. wells would surely insist on having larry discharged. she just knew he would. even mary rose's staunch and friendly soul was a bit daunted by mr. wells' very unfriendly appearance but she tried to speak to him as usual. "good morning, sir." he looked down at her and his shaggy brows drew nearer together. mary rose had thought he could not look crosser but he managed to look considerably crosser as he grunted: "so you're back?" it almost sounded as if he wished she hadn't come back. she blushed. "did you hear that i was lost? i was so ashamed. i thought i could find my way anywhere in waloo just as i could in mifflin. but you couldn't get lost in mifflin, no matter how hard you tried. you'd be sure to find yourself in the cemetery or at the post office or the lumber yard." she looked up at the cross face and ventured a smile. "you'll be glad to hear that i've found jenny lind," she said joyfully. "i knew all the time you hadn't borrowed her and i guess now other people will be sorry they thought you stole her." she laughed and nodded to let him see how very glad she was that his innocence was proved. mr. wells was too amazed to add anything to his scowl. "you've found your bird?" he asked stupidly. "yes, i have. i'll tell you all about it. are you going my way? usually i go up the other street, that's the shortest, but today i'm going over this way to meet anna paulovitch and walk with her so the boys won't tease her." and she told him about anna paulovitch and her yellow curls which had led to the discovery of jenny lind. "and i'm going to buy becky a bird of her own with the money i've earned, because i don't have to pay a cent of board for george washington. he's self-supporting, you know. isn't it wonderful to be self-supporting? mrs. paulovitch has seven children and only one of them can earn anything. he's mickey and he sells papers after school. if i were a gentleman and bought papers i'd always buy them of mickey," she hinted delicately. "the other paulovitches who are over six have to go to school. it takes a lot of washing to make bread enough for them but mr. strahan thinks he has found friends to help anna. aren't you glad you were born in america instead of russia?" she told him why he should be glad as they walked along. he looked down at her curiously out of the tail of his eye but he said never a word. indeed, mary rose gave him little opportunity for speech as she had so much to say. when they reached the corner where anna paulovitch waited across the street like a stolid figure of patience, mary rose waved her hand. anna paulovitch responded like a semaphore. "that's anna! that's anna paulovitch," mary rose said eagerly. "isn't her hair beautiful?" mary rose admired the long yellow curls immensely. "it seems a pity they couldn't have grown on her own head when she would have appreciated it so but i expect the lord knew best. i'm awfully glad i met you so that i could tell you about jenny lind. you don't have to worry another minute for everyone knows now that you never touched her." "here, wait a minute!" never had mr. wells' voice been gruffer nor his frown blacker. "how much is a canary? can you get one for this?" he took a bill from his pocket and offered it to mary rose. "mr. wells!" mary rose took his hand and squeezed it. "that's a lot. i'm sure you can get a splendid bird." "well, get one then," snapped mr. wells. "you mean for becky?" mary rose could scarcely believe her two small ears. "i'll be glad to." she regarded him with an admiration that should have made him feel enveloped in a soft warm mantle. "i'll tell her it's a present from a kind gentleman who wants to be her friend. sometime i'll take you to see her. what shall we name her bird? you think and i'll think and then tonight we can choose. it must have something to do with music, you know. good-by." she squeezed his hand again and started across the street but ran back. "i forgot to tell you something that's most important," she said in a low voice. "did you ever imagine there would be a flat-house right here in waloo where the law lets children live? the paulovitchs live in one. they do really. i saw them! and cats and dogs, too. i did! it wasn't like the washington but it was a flat-house. it seemed such a friendly place. i thought you didn't know and now you can tell your friend who owns the washington. i don't suppose he knows either. you haven't heard anything from him about me, have you?" she looked up wistfully. "i'd--i'd hate to have to go away to an orphan's home now," she whispered and there were tears in her blue eyes. he looked down at her and coughed before he answered. "no, i haven't heard anything." "if you see him today will you tell him of that friendly house i was telling you about? that there are flat-houses in waloo where children can live? it might make him willing to let them live in his house. and please!" she clung to his hand, "please tell him that i'm growing older every single day i live!" chapter xxvi that very afternoon mr. jerry and mary rose bought a canary for becky and paid for it with the five-dollar bill that mr. wells had given mary rose. mr. jerry insisted that that particular bill should have been framed and mary rose insisted that mr. wells had said it was to buy a canary. she could not understand why mr. jerry had laughed nor why he said: "oh, very well. but honestly, mary rose, it should be framed." he took mary rose and the new canary in his car to the flat-building that allowed children to live in it. becky wept with joy when she was told that the bird was to be her own. john was at home and he blushed and stammered as he tried to explain to mr. jerry that he hadn't meant any harm to anyone, cross his heart if he had! but as soon as he saw jenny lind he had thought what company she would be for becky. and mr. jerry kindly said he understood perfectly and that if john ever wanted any advice or help he was to come straight to him. "you see it's a very friendly house," mary rose whispered as she and mr. jerry went down the long flights of stairs. "see how many children there are!" mr. jerry looked about him. there were, indeed, many children of assorted nationalities and sizes. there could not have been a greater contrast to the orderly and clean, if childless, washington. "it's undoubtedly friendly, mary rose," agreed mr. jerry. "and there are lots of children but there are also lots of smells." she crinkled her small nose. "i expect that's russian," she suggested. on their way home they passed bingham and henderson's big jam factory and mary rose caught a glimpse of miss thorley waiting for a street car. when she called mr. jerry's attention to the enchanted princess he deftly inserted his automobile between miss thorley and the approaching car. "room for one more passenger here," he said with a grin. "and the fare will be even cheaper." "do come with us, miss thorley!" begged mary rose. "see, here's jenny lind. you'll want to speak to her. and there's such lots of room right here with us. isn't there, mr. jerry?" "scads of room. i don't see how you can hesitate." and he looked at the crowded street car where people were standing on the platform and the conductor was calling impatiently: "move up in front!" miss thorley looked also. the street car was not so inviting as the automobile. prejudiced as she was she had to admit that. she laughed. "oh, very well," she said. mr. jerry jumped out and triumphantly robbed the street car company of a fare. he helped miss thorley in beside mary rose and jenny lind. "you see there's lots of room," mary rose fairly bubbled with joy. "just as mr. jerry said. aren't you glad to see jenny lind again? i can't see that she has changed a feather." "we'll leave her at the house and then run out to nokomis for a breath of air. that friendly flat of the paulovitch's has almost strangled me. i have a great yearning for wide open spaces," mr. jerry told miss thorley over mary rose's head. they left jenny lind with aunt kate and drove along the boulevards and around the lake. "isn't it a beautiful world?" asked mary rose suddenly. "i just love it and everybody in it! don't you, mr. jerry?" "i won't go so far as to say i love everybody but i certainly do love you, mary rose," he told her with pleasing promptness. "and miss thorley, too?" demanded mary rose, jealously afraid that miss thorley might feel hurt if she were excluded from mr. jerry's affections. "she's the enchanted princess, you know," she reminded him in a whisper. "you must love her." mr. jerry was so silent that mary rose pinched his arm. "sure, i love miss thorley," he said then, very hurriedly. "and she loves you, don't you, miss thorley?" mary rose pinched miss thorley's arm to remind her that something was expected of her, also. there was a longer pause. mary rose had to pinch miss thorley's arm a second time and mr. jerry, himself, had to ask her in a funny shaky sort of a voice: "do you, bess? do you?" miss thorley tried to frown and look away but she was not able to take her eyes from the two faces, the man's and the little girl's, which looked at her with such imploring eagerness. and what she saw in those two faces made her heart give a great throb. in a flash she knew, and knew beyond a doubt, that at last she could answer the question that had been tormenting her for over half a year. long, long before that she had learned that everything one has in this world must be paid for and the question that had caused her to lose her red "corpuskles" had been whether she was willing to pay the price or whether she would go without the love and happiness and companionship that were offered to her. she flushed adorably as she met mr. jerry's anxious eyes. "i--i don't want to," she said with rueful honesty and then the words came in a hurried rush, "but i'm--i'm afraid i do! it's all your fault, mary rose." and she hid her pink cheeks in mary rose's yellow hair. "my fault!" mary rose was surprised and puzzled and a wee bit hurt. she did not understand how she could be to blame. but mr. jerry understood and with a quick exclamation he stopped the car. and there, behind a great clump of tall lilac bushes, he put his arms around them both. he kissed them both, too, mary rose first and hurriedly and then miss thorley, second and lingeringly. "you dear--you darling!" he said to miss thorley and his breath came quickly and his eyes shone. he kissed her again. "you dearest! i've been the most patient lover on the footstool. thank god, i was patient and just wouldn't be discouraged!" mary rose caught his sleeve. "are you the prince, mr. jerry?" she wanted to know and her eyes shone, too. "and is the spell broken? have you driven away the old witch independence? what did it?" mr. jerry smiled at her flushed face. his own face was flushed and it had a wonderful radiance to mary rose as she looked up at him. "love did it, mary rose." he squeezed her hand. "love for you and love for me. love's the only thing that can break old independence's spell." "independence isn't a wicked witch, mary rose," interrupted miss thorley, who was squeezing mary rose's other hand. "isn't she?" mary rose was doubtful. mr. jerry had said she was a most wicked witch. "a wicked witch would never make a girl brave and strong and self----" "self-supporting like george washington," mary rose broke in jubilantly. "self-supporting," miss thorley accepted the word with a smile, "and keep her safe and busy until her prince came and she could be a real help to him. independence isn't a wicked witch, mary rose. she's a girl's good fairy." "is she, mr. jerry?" mary rose had to have that theory indorsed before she could be quite sure. "is she?" "i expect she is," mr. jerry handsomely admitted. "perhaps i've been mistaken in the old girl. anyway we're friends now, good friends. and, mary rose," he went on grandly, "ask me what you will and you shall have it, even to the half of my kingdom. i can't give you the whole of it because the other half, the half that includes me, is now the property of the most beautiful princess in the world." the most beautiful princess in the world laughed in a funny choked sort of a way and she hugged mary rose. "you see, honey girl," she said, and mary rose loved her voice now that the enchantment was broken and she could hear how soft and sweet it was, "we own him together, you and i." mary rose looked at their joint property with awe and admiration. "do we?" it scarcely seemed possible. "aren't we the lucky girls!" chapter xxvii never did a five-passenger automobile hold more happiness than that car of mr. jerry's as it was driven slowly back to the washington that wonderful september evening. and never did the washington look more pleasant. a little group of tenants, mrs. schuneman, mrs. willoughby, mrs. matchan and miss carter, were standing out in front talking of what had happened the night before. mary rose waved her hand to them and to bob strahan, who was hurrying up the street. "say!" he called. "i've found out who owns the washington. it's old wells!" "mr. wells!" they stared from him up to the windows of mr. wells' apartments which were wide open. "yep! i had to dig up some stuff over at the building inspector's and ran plump against the fact that the owner of the washington has always been horace j. wells. no wonder he acted as if he owned it." "but he told me he was a friend of the owner," objected mary rose, when she understood. "i guess he isn't a friend to anyone but himself," murmured bob strahan. mary rose sat there in the car and tried to think it out. if mr. wells really did own this strange two-faced building why hadn't he told her so when she had asked him to plead for her? she supposed that he had made up his mind that she would have to leave, that the law never would let children live there, and hated to tell her. mary rose felt as if a black cloud had fallen over this day that had been so happy and she winked rapidly to keep the tears from her eyes. she even tried to wave her hand to aunt kate when she came to the window. contrary to custom aunt kate did not wave back but ran out. she had a letter in her hand and looked very, very much pleased. "you've heard good news, mrs. donovan. who's died and left you a million?" asked bob strahan. "your face looks like a christmas tree, all decorated and lighted." "have you?" mary rose asked and she jumped from the car and stood beside her aunt. "have you heard good news, aunt kate? has anyone left you a million?" aunt kate stooped and put her arms around mary rose. "it's worth more 'n a million to me, mary rose. i've had the best of news. larry's had a letter from brown an' lawson." she stood up and looked from one to the other of the people who had gathered around her. there were tears in her eyes. "they say we can keep mary rose. that so long as the tenants are willin' an' because she's gettin' older every day they won't insist on the rule of the house bein' enforced. they say mary rose can stay as long as we want to keep her." "hurrah for mary rose!" cried bob strahan and he flung his hat into the air. "hurrah for mary rose!" echoed jimmie bronson, who had run around the corner to stand grinning at mary rose. mary rose stood quite still and stared at her aunt. her blue eyes were very large and as bright as stars. "i can stay," she said softly, almost unbelievingly. "i can really stay? oh, where's mr. wells! where is mr. wells! i want to tell him this very minute how much obliged i am. oh, there he is!" for mr. wells had actually come up the street and was about to slip grumblingly past the little group that blocked the walk. mary rose ran to him. "i can't thank you," she said in a trembling voice, although the radiance in her face should have thanked anyone. "but i do think you are the very friendliest man that god ever made!" friendly! mr. wells actually blushed. he tried to frown but the attempt was a wretched failure for mary rose had dropped a soft kiss on the hand she had clasped. "see that you do what i promised the owner you'd do," he grunted, making a failure, also, of his attempt to speak crossly. "see that you grow older every day." "oh, i will!" promised mary rose. "i will!" she repeated firmly and she squeezed his hand as she looked up at the big red brick building that could now be her home. the spell had been removed from it, too. there were tears in her blue eyes as she dropped mr. wells' hand and put out her arms as if she would take them all into her embrace. her face was like a flower, lifted to the sun, as she cried from the very depths of her happy, grateful heart: "i--i just knew this beautiful world would be full of friends if i felt friendly!" page images generously made available by kentuckiana digital library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustration. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) images of the original pages are available through kentuckiana digital library. see http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;xc= &idno=b - - &view=toc the angel of the tenement by george madden martin [illustration] new york bonnell, silver & co. copyright by bonnell, silver & co., . contents. chapter page i. the advent of the angel ii. the entertainers of the angel iii. introduces the little major iv. the angel becomes a fairy v. the angel rescues mr. tomlin vi. the major superintends the angel's education vii. miss ruth makes the acquaintance of old g. a. r. viii. the angel meets an old friend ix. mary carew is tempted x. the major obeys orders xi. tells of the tenement's christmas the angel of the tenement. chapter i. the advent of the angel. the ladies of the tenement felt that it was a matter concerning the reputation of the house. therefore on this particular hot july morning they were gathered in the apartment of miss mary carew and miss norma bonkowski, if one small and dingy room may be so designated, and were putting the matter under discussion. miss carew, tall, bony, and more commonly known to the tenement as miss c'rew, of somewhat tart and acrid temper, being pressed for her version of the story, paused in her awkward and intent efforts at soothing the beautiful, fair-haired child upon her lap and explained that she was stepping out her door that morning with her water-bucket, thinking to get breakfast ready before miss bonkowski awoke, when a child's frightened crying startled her, coming from a room across the hall which for some weeks had been for rent. "at that," continued miss carew, moved to unwonted loquacity, and patting the child industriously while she addressed the circle of listening ladies, "at that, 'sure as life!' says i, and stepped across and opened the door, an' there, settin' on this shawl, its eyes big like it had jus' waked up, an' cryin' like to break its heart, was this here baby. i picked her right up an' come an' woke norma, but it's nothin' we can make out, 'ceptin' she's been in that there room all night." many were the murmurs and ejaculations from the circle of wondering ladies, while miss bonkowski, a frowzy-headed lady in soiled shirt waist and shabby skirt, with a small waist and shoulders disproportionately broad; and with, moreover, a dab of paint upon each high-boned cheek,--nothing daunted by previous failures, leaned forward and putting a somewhat soiled finger beneath the child's pretty chin, inquired persuasively, "and isn't the darling going to tell its norma its name?" miss bonkowski spoke airily and as if delivering a part. but this the good ladies forgave, for was not this same miss norma the flower that shed an odor of distinction over the social blossoming of the whole tenement? was not miss bonkowski a chorus lady at the garden opera house? so her audience looked on approvingly while miss norma snapped her fingers and chirruped to the baby encouragingly. "and what is the darling's name?" she repeated. the little one, her pitiful sobbing momentarily arrested, regarded miss bonkowski with grave wonder. "didn't a know i are angel?" she returned in egotistical surprise. "sure an' it's the truth she's spakin', fer it's the picter of an angel she is," cried mrs. o'malligan, she of the first-floor front, who added a tidy sum to her husband's earnings by taking in washing, and in consequence of the size of these united incomes, no less than that of her big heart, was regarded with much respect by the tenement, "just look at the swate face of her, would ye, an' the loikes of her illegant gown!" "won't it tell its norma where it came from? who brought the dearie here and left it in the naughty room? tell its norma," continued miss bonkowski, on her knees upon the bare and dirty floor, and eyeing the dainty embroidery and examining the quality of the fine white dress while she coaxed. "yosie brought angel--" the child began, then as if the full realization of the strangeness of it all returned at mention of that familiar name, the baby turned her back on norma and pulling at mary carew's dress imperatively, gazed up into that lady's thin, sharp face, "angel wants her mamma,--take angel to her mamma," she commanded, even while her baby chin was quivering and the big eyes winking to keep back the tears. "sure an' it shall go to its mammy," returned mrs o'malligan soothingly, "an' whir was it ye left her, me angel?" "yes, tell its norma where it left its mamma," murmured miss bonkowski coaxingly. "yosie bring angel way a way," explained the baby obediently. "yosie say angel be a good girl and her come yite back. where yosie,--angel wants yosie to come now," and the plaintive little voice broke into a sob, as the child looked from one to the other of the circle beseechingly. the ladies exchanged pitying glances while the persevering miss norma rattled an empty spool in a tin cup violently to distract the baby's thoughts. "and how old is angel?" she continued. again the tears were checked, while the grave, disapproving surprise which miss bonkowski's ignorance seemed to call forth, once more overspread the small face, "didn't a know her are three?" she returned reprovingly, reaching for the improvised and alluring plaything. "yes, yes," murmured miss bonkowski apologetically, "angel is three years old, of course, a great, big girl." "a gwate, big girl," repeated the baby, nodding her pretty head approvingly, "that what yosie say," then with abrupt change of tone, "where her breakfast, her wants her milk!" "an' she shall have it, sure," cried mrs. o'malligan promptly, and retired out the door with heavy haste, while miss bonkowski hospitably turned to bring forth what the apartment could boast in the way of breakfast. meanwhile the other ladies withdrew to the one window of the small room to discuss the situation. "that's it, i'm sure," one was saying, while she twisted up her back hair afresh, "for my man, he says he saw a woman pass our door yesterday afternoon, kinder late, an' go on up steps with a young 'un in her arms. he never seen her come back, he says, but mis' tomlin here, she says, she seen a woman dressed nice, come down afterwards seemin' in a hurry, but she didn't have no child, didn't you say, mis' tomlin?" thus appealed to, timid little mrs. tomlin shifted her wan-faced, fretting baby from one arm to the other and asserted the statement to be quite true. "an'ther case of desartion," pronounced mrs. o'malligan, having returned meanwhile with a cup filled with a thin blue liquid known to the tenement as _milk_, "a plain case of desartion, an' whut's to be done about it, i niver can say!" "done!" cried miss bonkowski, on her knees before mary and the child, crumbling some bread into the milk, "and what are the police for but just such cases?" the other ladies glanced apprehensively at mrs. o'malligan, that lady's bitter hatred of these guardians of the public welfare being well known, since that day when three small o'malligans were taken in the act of relieving a passing italian gentleman of a part of his stock of bananas. mrs. o'malligan had paid their fines in the city court, had thrashed them around as many times as her hot irish temper had rekindled at the memory, but had never forgiven the police for the disgrace to the family of o'malligan. and being the well-to-do personage of the tenement, it should be remarked that mrs. o'malligan's sentiments were generally deferred to, if not always echoed by her neighbors. "an' is it the polace ye'd be a-callin' in?" she burst forth volubly, reproach and indignation written upon the round red face she turned upon miss norma, "the polace? an' would ye be turnin' over the darlin' to the loikes of thim, to be locked up along with thaves an' murtherers afore night?" and, as a chorus of assenting murmurs greeted her, with her broad, flat foot thrust forward and hands upon her ample hips, mrs. o'malligan hurried on. "the polace is it ye say? an' who but these same polace, i ask ye, was it, gettin' this tiniment,--as has always held it's head up respectable,--a-gettin' this tiniment in the noospapers last winter along of that case of small-pox, an' puttin' a yellow flag out, an afther that nobody a-willin' to give me their washin', an miss c'rew here as could get no pants to make, an' yerself, miss norma, darlint, an' no disrespect to you a-spakin' out so bold, a-layin' idle because of no thayater a-willin' to have ye. an' wasn't it thim same polace crathurs, too, i'm askin' ye, as took our rainwather cistern away along of the fevers breakin' out, they made bold to say, the desaivin' crathers,--an' me a-niver havin' me washin' white a-since, for ye'll aisy see why, usin' the muddy wather as comes from that hydranth yirselves!" mrs. o'malligan glanced around triumphantly, shook her head and hurried on. "an' agin, there's little joey. who was it but the polace as come arristin' the feyther of the boy for batin' of his own wife, and him sint up for a year, an' she a-dyin' along of bein' weakly an' nobody to support her, an' joey left in this very tiniment an orphan child! don't ye be a-callin' in no polace for the loikes of this swate angel choild, miss norma darlint, don't ye be doin' it! an' the most of thim once foine irish gintlemen, bad luck to the loikes of thim!" mrs. o'malligan paused,--she was obliged to,--for breath, whereupon miss bonkowski very amiably hastened to declare she meant no harm, having absolutely no knowledge of the class whatever, "except," with arch humor, "as presented on the stage, where, as everybody who had seen them there knew, they were harmless enough, goodness knows!" and the airy chorus lady shrugged her shoulders and smiled at her own bit of pleasantry. "but for the matter of that, i still think something ought to be done, and what other means can we find for restoring the lost innocent?" and miss norma tossed her frizzled blonde head, quite enjoying, if the truth be told, the touch of romance about the affair. for once she seemed to be meeting, in real life, a situation worthy of the boards of the garden opera house, in whose stage vernacular a missing child was always a "lost innocent." "if we do not call on the police, mrs. o'malligan, how are we to ever find the child's mother?" here mary carew looked up, and there was something like a metallic click about mary's hard, dry tones as she spoke, for the years she had spent in making jeans pantaloons at one dollar and a half a dozen had not been calculated to sweeten her tones to mellowness, nor to induce her to regard human nature with charity. "don't you understand?" she said bluntly, "all the huntin' in the world ain't goin' to find a mother what don't mean to be found?" "but what makes you so sure she don't?" persisted miss bonkowski, letting the child take possession of spoon and cup, and quite revelling in the further touch of the dramatic developing in the situation. unconsciously mary pressed the child to her as she spoke. "it's as plain as everything else that's wrong and hard in this world," she said, and each word clicked itself off with metallic sharpness and decision, "the mother brought the child here late yesterday, waited until it was asleep in the room over there, then went off and left it. why she chose this here particular tenement we don't know and likely never will, though i ain't no doubt myself there's a reason. it ain't a pretty story or easy to understand but it's common enough, and you'll find that mother never means to be found, an' in as big a city as this 'n', tain't no use to try." "i will not--cannot--believe it," murmured norma--in her best stage tones. then she turned again to the child. "and how did it come here, dearie? has baby a papa--where is baby's papa?" the little one rattled the tin spoon around the sides of the cup. "papa bye," she returned chasing a solitary crumb intently. "yosie sick, mamma sick, tante sick, but angel, her ain't sick when she come way a way on--on--" a worried look flitted over the flushed little face, and she looked up at norma expectantly as if expecting her to supply the missing word, "on,--angel come way a way on--_vaisseau_--" at last with baby glee she brought the word forth triumphantly, "papa bye and angel and mamma and tante and yosie come way a way on _vaisseau_!" "you see," said mary carew, looking at norma, and the others shook their heads sadly. miss bonkowski accepted the situation. "though what a vasso is, or a tante either, is beyond me to say," she murmured. "but what is goin' to be done with her, then?" ventured little mrs. tomlin, holding her own baby closer as she spoke. there was a pause which nobody seemed to care to break, during which more than one of the women saw the child on mary's knee through dim eyes which turned the golden hair into a halo of dazzling brightness. then norma got up and began to clear away the remains of breakfast and to clatter the crockery from stove and table together for washing, while mary carew, avoiding the others' glances, busied herself by awkwardly wiping the child's mouth and chin with a corner of her own faded cotton dress. submitting as if the process was a matter of course, the baby gazed meanwhile into mary's colorless, bony and unlovely face. perhaps the childish eyes found something behind its hardness not visible to older and less divining insight, for one soft hand forthwith stole up to the hollow cheek, while the other pulled at the worn sleeve for attention. "what a name?" the clear little voice lisped inquiringly. poor mary looked embarrassed, but awkwardly lent herself to the caress as if, in spite of her shamefacedness, she found it not unpleasant. the baby's eyes regarded her with sad surprise. "a got no name, poor--poor--a got no name," then she broke forth, and as if quite overcome with the mournfulness of mary's condition, the little head burrowed back into the hollow of the supporting arm, that she might the better gaze up and study the face of this object for pity and wonder. poor mary carew--would that some one of the hundreds of un-mothered and unloved little ones in the great city had but found it out sooner--her starved heart had been hungering all her life, and now her arms closed about the child. "i reckon i'll keep her till somebody comes for her," she said with a kind of defiance, as if ashamed of her own weakness, "it'll only mean," with a grim touch of humor in her voice, "it'll only mean a few more jean pantaloons a week to make any how." "we'll share her keep between us alike, mary carew," declared norma, haughtily, with a real, not an affected toss, of the frizzed head now, "what is your charge, is mine too, i'd have you know!" "sure, an' we'll all do a part for the name of the house," said mrs. o'malligan, "an' be proud." and the other ladies agreeing to this more or less warmly, the matter was considered as settled. "an' as them as left her know where she is," said mary carew, the click quite decided again in her tones, "if they want her, they know where to come and get her--but--you hear to what i say, norma, they'll never come!" chapter ii. the entertainers of the angel. it was one thing for the good ladies of the tenement to settle the matter thus, but another entirely for the high-spirited, passionate little stranger,--bearing every mark of refined birth and good breeding in her finely-marked features, her straight, slim white body, her slender hands and feet, her dainty ways and fearless bearing,--to adapt herself to the situation. the first excitement over, her terror and fright returned, and the cry went up unceasingly in lisping english interspersed with words utterly unintelligible to the two distracted ladies, begging to be taken to that mother of whom mary carew entertained so poor an opinion. it was in vain that good woman, with a tenderness and patience quite at variance with her harsh tones, rocked, petted, coaxed and tried to satisfy with vague promises of "to-morrow." in vain did norma, no less earnestly now that the touch of romance had faded into grim responsibility, whistle and sing and snap her fingers, the terror was too real, the sense of loss too poignant, the baby heart refused to be comforted, and it was only when exhaustion came that the child would moan herself to sleep in mary's arms. so passed several days, the baby drooping and pining, but clinging to mary through it all, with a persistency which, while it won her heart entirely, sadly interfered with the progress of jean pantaloons. as for the more material norma, whose time, free from the requirements of her profession, had hitherto been largely given to reshaping her old garments in imitations of the ever-changing fashions, finding that the baby clung to mary, she bore no malice, but good-naturedly turned her skill toward making the poor accommodations of their room meet the needs of the occasion, and in addition appointed herself maid to her small ladyship. and an arduous task it ultimately proved, for, as the child gradually became reconciled and began to play about, a dozen times a day a little pair of hands were stretched toward norma and a sweet, tearful voice proclaimed in accents of anguished grief, "angel's hands so-o-o dirty!"--which indeed they were each time, her surroundings being of that nature which rubbed off at every touch. indeed so pronounced was the new inmate's dislike to dirt, that mary, sensitive to criticism, took to rising betimes these hot mornings and making the stuffy room sweet with cleanliness. not so easy a task as one might imagine either, in an apartment which combined kitchen, laundry, bedroom, dining-room and the other conveniences common to housekeeping in a Ã� space, as evidenced by the presence of a stove, a table with a tub concealed beneath, a machine, a bed, a washstand, two chairs, and a gayly decorated bureau, norma's especial property, set forth with bottles of perfumery, a satin pin-cushion and a bunch of artificial flowers in a vase. and in putting the room thus to rights, when it is considered that every drop of water used upon floor, table or window, had to be carried up four flights of stairs, the sincerity of mary's conversion to the angelic way of regarding things cannot be doubted. nor, if mary's word can be taken, were these efforts wasted upon her little ladyship, who, awakened by the bustle on the very first occasion of mary's crusade against the general disorder, sat up in the crib donated by mrs. o'malligan,--the last of the o'malligans being now in trousers,--and hung over the side with every mark of approving interest. and happy with something to love and an object to work for, mary continued to scrub on with a heart strangely light. "and i couldn't slight the corners if i wanted to," she told her neighbors, "with them great solemn eyes a-watchin' an' a-follerin' me." it was on a morning following one of these general upheavals and straightenings that the three sat down to breakfast, the two ladies feeling unwontedly virtuous and elegant by reason of their clean surroundings. the angel seeming brighter and more willing to leave mary's side, norma put her into one of their two chairs, and herself sat on the bed. but no sooner had the baby grabbed her cracked mug than her smooth forehead began to pucker, and, setting it down again, she regarded norma earnestly. "didn't a ought to _say_ something?" she demanded, and her eyes grew dark with puzzled questioning. "and what should you say, darling?" returned norma, leaning over to crumble some bread into the milk which a little judicious pinching in other directions made possible for the child. the baby studied her bread and milk intently. "jesus"--she lisped, then hesitated, and her worried eyes sought norma's again,--"jésus"--then with a sudden joyful burst of inspiration, "amen," she cried and seized her mug triumphantly. "it's a blessing she is asking," said norma with tears in her eyes, "i know, for i've seen it done on the stage, though what with the food being pasteboard cakes and colored plaster fruit, i never took much stock in it before," and she laughed somewhat unsteadily. "bread and butter, come to supper," sang the baby with sudden glee, "that what tante says.--where angel's tante?" and with the recollection her face changed, and the pretty pointed chin began to quiver. a moment of indecision, and she slipped down from her chair. "kiss angel bye," she commanded, tugging at mary's skirts, "her goin' to tante," the little face fierce with determination, every curl bobbing with the emphatic nods of the little head, "kiss her bye, c'rew," and the wild sobs began again. so passed a week, but, for all the added care and responsibility, the longer this wayward, imperious little creature, with the hundred moods for every hour, was hers, the less was mary carew disposed to consider the possibility of any one coming to claim her. not so with the blonde-tressed chorus lady, who combined more of worldly wisdom with her no less kindly heart. patiently she tried to win the child's further confidence, to stimulate the baby memory, to unravel the lisped statements. but it was in vain. smiles indeed, she won at length, through tears, and little sad returns to her playful sallies, but the little one's words were too few, her ideas too confused, for norma to learn anything definite from her lispings. but norma was not satisfied. "my heart misgives me," she murmured in the tragic accents she so loved to assume,--one evening as she pinned on her cheap and showy lace hat and adjusted its wealth of flowers, preparatory to starting to the garden opera house, "my heart misgives me. it seems to me it is our duty, mary, to do something about this,--to report it--somehow,--somewhere"--she ended vaguely. "hadn't i better speak to a policeman after all?" mary carew drew the child,--drowsing in her arms,--to her quickly. "no," she said, and her thin, bony face looked almost fierce, "no, for if you did and they couldn't find her people, which you know as well as i do they couldn't, do you s'pose they'd give her back to us? they'd put her in a refuge or 'sylum, that's what they'd do, where, while maybe she'd have more to eat, she'd be enough worse off, a-starvin' for a motherin' word!" miss bonkowski, abashed at mary's fierce attack, made an attempt to speak, but mary, vehemently interrupting, hurried on: "i know whereas i speak, norma bonkowski, i know, i know. i've gone through it all myself. i ain't never told you," and the knobby face burned a dull red, "i was county poor, where i come from in the state, an' sent to th' poor-house at four years old, myself, and i know, norma, the miseries whereas i speak of. and the lord helpin' me," with grim solemnity, "an' since he sent you here huntin' a room, an' since he helped me get the machine, hard to run as it is, somehow i'm believin' more he's the lord of us poor folks too,--an' him a-helpin' me to turn out one more pair of pants a day, i'll never be the means of puttin' no child in a refuge no-how an' no time. an' there it is, how i feel about it!" miss bonkowski turned from a partial view of herself such as the abbreviated glass to her bureau afforded. "well," she said amiably, "coming as i did from across the ocean as a child," and she nodded her head in the supposed direction of the atlantic, "and, until late years, always enjoying a good home, what with father getting steady work as a scene-painter, as i've told you often, and me going on in the chorus off and on, and having my own bit of money, i don't really know about the asylums in this country. but i have heard say they are so fine, people ain't against deserting their children just to get 'em in such places knowin' they'll be educated better'n they can do themselves." mary's pale eyes blazed. "do you mean, norma bonkowski," she demanded angrily, "that you'd rather she should go?" miss bonkowski shrugged her shoulders somewhat haughtily. "how you do talk, mary! you know i don't,--but neither do i believe she is any deserted child, and it's worrying me constant, what we ought to do. poor as i am, and what with father dying and the manager cutting my salary as i get older,--i'll admit it to you, mary, though i wouldn't have him know i'm having another birthday to-day--" with a laugh and a shrug, "why, as i say, i am pretty poor, but every cent i've got is yours and the child's, and you know it, mary carew," and the good-hearted chorus-lady, with a reproachful backward glance at her room-mate, flounced out the door, leaving the re-assured mary to sew, by the light of an ill-smelling lamp, until her return from the theatre near midnight. chapter iii. introduces the little major. while the fine, embroidered dress in which the angel had made her appearance was all mrs. o'malligan had claimed it as to daintiness and quality, after a few days' wear, its daintiness gave place to dirt, its quality thinned to holes. upon this the tenement was called into consultation. the angel must be clothed, but what, even from its cosmopolitan wardrobe, could the house produce suitable for angelic wear? many lands indeed were represented by the inmates who now called its shelter home, but none from that country where angels are supposed to have their being. "on my word," quoth miss bonkowski to the ladies gathered in the room at her bidding, and miss norma gave an eloquent shrug and elevated her blackened eyebrows as she spoke, "on my word i believe her little heart would break if she had to stay in dirty, ragged clothes very long. such a darling for being washed and curled, such a precious for always cleaning up! it makes me sure she must be different,"--miss norma was airy but she was also humble, recognizing perhaps her own inherent shrinking from too frequent an application of soap and water--"she's something different, born and bred, from such as me!" but at this the ladies murmured. miss bonkowski had been their pride, their boast, nor did their allegiance falter now, even in the face of the angel's claims to superiority. miss bonkowski was not ungrateful for this expression of loyalty, which she acknowledged with a smile, as she tightened the buckle on the very high-heeled and coquettish slipper she was rejuvenating, but she protested, nevertheless, that all this did not alter the fact that the angel must be clothed. "as fer th' dirt," said the energetic mrs. o'malligan, on whose ample lap the angel was at that moment sitting in smiling friendliness, "sure an' i'll be afther washin' her handful uv clothes ivery wake, meself, an' what with them dozens of dresses i'm doin' fer mrs. tony's childers all th' time, it's surely a few she'd be a-givin' me, whin i tell her about th' darlint, an' me a niver askin' fer nothin' at all, along of all mine bein' boys. sure an' i'll be a-beggin' her this very day, i will, whin i carry me washin' home." and mrs. o'malligan being as good as her word, and mrs. tony successfully interviewed, the good irish lady returned home in triumph bearing a large bundle of cast-off garments, and at once summoned the tenement to her apartments. the first arrived ladies were already giving vent to their appreciation of the tony generosity when miss carew and miss bonkowski arrived, mary's bony face, in deference to the angelic prejudices now ruling her, red and smarting from an energetic application of the same soap as ministered to her room's needs, but beaming with a grim pride as she bore the radiant angel, wild with delight at getting out of her narrow quarters. yielding to the popular voice, though not without reluctance, mary placed her darling in mrs. o'malligan's lap, and the process of exhibiting and trying on the garments began at once. for a time her small ladyship yielded graciously, until seeing her pretty feet bared that the little stockings and half worn shoes might be fitted, she suddenly cast her eyes about the circle of ladies, and won by the pretty, dark beauty of young mrs. repetto, the tenement's bride of a month's standing, imperiously demanded that lady to take the pink toes to market. overcome with having the public attention thus drawn upon her, pretty mrs. repetto in the best italian-english she could muster, confessed her inability to either understand or comply, whereupon the baby, bearing no malice in her present high good-humor, proceeded to take them herself. "this little pig went to market," the angelic accents declared, while her ladyship smiled sweetly upon mrs. repetto, and mary carew breathlessly motioned for silence with all the pride of a doting parent. "this little pig stayed home--" the ladies on the outskirts pressed near that they too might hear. "this little pig had bread and cheese," whereupon mrs. repetto recovering, went down on her knees to be nearer the scene of exploit. "this little pig had none;" the interest now was breathless, and as the last little pig went squeaking home the ladies nearest fell upon the darling and covered her with kisses. "an' it's jus' that smart she is, all the time," declared mary carew proudly, "an' 'taint like she's showin' off, either, is it, norma?" when at last the trying on was over, and the tony generosity was sufficiently enlarged upon, the ladies, as is the way with the best of the sex, fell into a mild gossip before separating. and while racy bits of tenement shortcomings were being handed around, the small object of this gathering, too young, alas, to know the joys denied her because of her limited abilities to understand the nature of the conversation, slipped down from mrs. o'malligan's lap, and eluding mary's absent hold, proceeded to journey about the room, until reaching the open door, she took her way, unobserved, out of the o'malligan first floor front and leaving its glories of red plush furniture and lace curtains behind her, forthwith made her way out the hall door into the street. the hot, garbage-strewn pavements and sunbaked gutters swarmed with the sons and daughters of the tenement. directly opposite its five-storied front was the rear entrance to the fourth regiment armory. and there, at that moment, a sad-eyed, swarthy italian,--swinging his hand-organ down on the asphalt pavement in front of the armory's open doors, was beginning to grind out his melodies. and with the first note, children came running, from doorstep and curb, from sidewalk and gutter, while, at the same moment, in the open door of the armory appeared a small, chubby-cheeked boy, who had upon his head a soldier cap so much too large for him as to cover the tips of his ears entirely, and who, moreover, wore, buckled about his waist, a belt gay as to trimmings and glittering with silver finishings. if the fourth regiment boasted a company of lilliputian guards here surely was a member. the angel, in the tenement door, was enchanted. how different a world from that upstairs room under the roof! she kept step to the music and nodded her head to the fascinating little boy in the armory door. and the sharp eyes of that young gentleman had no sooner espied the nodding little creature in the doorway opposite, than heels together, head erect, up went a quick hand to the military cap. the angel was being saluted, and while her ignorance of the fact prevented her appreciating that honor, the friendliness of the little boy was alluring. down the steps she came, her little feet tripping to the measure of the music, her skirts outheld, and flitting across the pavement and over the curb, she made for the group of children in the street. cobblestones, however, being strange to the baby feet, up those dancing members tripped and down the angel fell, just as a wagon came dashing around the corner of the streets. out rushed the small boy from the armory door, and, scattering the crowd around the organ, caught the fallen angel by the arm, and raised his hand with an air of authority, as, with a grin, the driver on the wagon drew up his horse and surveyed the group, and the sad-eyed italian, recognizing the superior attraction, shouldered his organ and moved on. "hello," cried the man on the wagon seeing the child was not hurt, "yer can soak me one if it ain't little joe! where'd yer git dem togs, kid? what'r' yer goin' in fer anyhow, baby perlice?" the region in the neighborhood of joey's waist swelled with pride, and his chubby face bore a look of wounded dignity. "there ain't no perlice about this yere, bill, it's a sojer i be, see?" being pressed by bill to explain himself, joey unbent. "yer see, bill, dad ain't never showed up fer to git me--seen anything of dad since he got out, bill?" bill nodded. "what's he up to now?" queried joey. "shovin' the queer," admitted bill laconically, "nabbed right off an' in the cooler waitin' his turn, yer won't be troubled by him fer quite a spell, i'll give yer dat fer a pointer, see?" joey saw, and for the space of half a second seemed somewhat sobered by the intelligence. "i guessed as much," said he, "yer see, after he got nabbed first, mammy she--yer didn't know as mammy took an' died, did yer, bill?" and joey faltered and let the angel take possession of his cap and transfer it to her own curly head while the tenement children applauded with jeering commendation, seeing there was a standing feud between joey and the rest of the juvenile populace over its possession. "no," bill allowed, he did not know it, but, seeing that she was always ailing, bill was in no wise surprised. "an'--an' since then, i'm stayin' over ter th' arm'ry wid old g. a. r. yer know him, bill, old g. a. r. what takes care of th' arm'ry. he was there afore yer left th' grocery." bill remembered the gentleman. "i stays wid him an' he drills me an' makes me scrub, hully gee, how he do make me wash meself, bill! an' there's one sojer-man, th' cap'n, he give me these togs, he did, an' he tol' old g. a. r. to lem'me eat along wid him over ter dutchy's res'traunt," nodding toward a cheap eating-house at the corner, "an' he'd stand fer it. they calls me major, all of 'em to th' arm'ry, bill, see?" and joey was waxing voluble indeed, when he turned to see the mob of jeering children make off up the street, his cap in their midst, while the wailing angel was being rescued from under the horse's very hoofs by mary carew. joey put his spirit of inquiry before even his cap. "is she er angel, say?" he inquired of miss carew, turning his back on bill without ceremony who with a grin and a nod to the group of tenement ladies at the door, drove off, "i heerd yer had er angel over there, but i didn't know as it was straight, what they was givin' me, see?" "that's what she is, the darling yonder," declared miss bonkowski from the curbstone, nodding airily, "you've got it straight this time, joey. and if what peter o'malligan says about your picking her up just now is so, you're welcome to come over some time and play with her." "yes, it's true," supplemented mary carew, trying to pacify the struggling angel in her arms who, gazing after the children, showed a decided inclination to descend to human level and mingle with them of earth, "it's true an' that's jus' what she is,--the angel of this tenement, an', as norma says, you're free to come over and play with her, though there ain't many of you i'd say it to;" and with that the tall, gaunt mary bearing the baby, followed norma into the house and up the narrow, broken stairs, and along the dark halls past door after door closed upon its story of squalor and poverty, until, at last, panting with the child's weight, she reached their own abode under the roof. "which," as mary had been wont, in the past, to observe, "was about as near heaven as the poor need look to get." but now, for some reason, these bitter speeches were growing less frequent on mary carew's lips since she opened her door to entertain an angel. chapter iv. the angel becomes a fairy. july passed, and in august, the heat in the room beneath the roof set the air to shimmering like a veil before the open window, and mary carew, gasping, found it harder and harder to make that extra pair of jean pantaloons a day. and, as though the manager at the garden opera house had divined that miss bonkowski had left another birthday behind her, like milestones along the way, that lady's salary received a cut on the first day of august. at best, the united incomes of the two made but a meagre sum, and there was nothing for it now but to reduce expenses. the rent being one thing that was never cut, the result was a scantier allowance of food. moreover, the mortals seeing to it that their heavenly visitant had her full craving satisfied, it was small wonder that the bones in mary's face pressed more like knobs than ever against the tight-drawn skin, or that the spirits of the airy, hopeful, buoyant norma flagged. indeed, had not the warm-hearted, loving little creature, repaid them with quick devotion, filling their meagre lives with new interests and affections, despair or worse--regret for their generous impulse--must now have seized their hearts. invitations, too, grew rare, from the other ladies of the tenement, bidding the little stranger whose simple friendliness and baby dignity had won them all, to dine or to sup, for hard times had fallen upon them also. a strike at a neighboring foundry, the shutting down of the great rolling-mill by the river had sent their husbands home for a summer vacation, with, unfortunately, no provision for wages, a state of affairs forbidding even angels' visits, when the angel possessed so human a craving for bread. even mrs. o'malligan, whose chief patron, mrs. tony, together with her children and their dozens of dresses, had gone for a summer outing, had no more on her table than her own family could dispose of. but the angel,--"'eaving bless her," as mrs. tomlin was wont to observe when the angel, coming to see the baby, would stand with grave wonder, touching the pallid little cheek with a rosy finger to make the baby smile,--the angel noted nothing of all this. even the memory of "_mamma_" was fading, and mary, norma, the tenement, the friendly children swarming staircase and doorway, were fast becoming her small world. with instinct born of her profession, the chorus-lady had long ago recognized the wonderful grace and buoyancy of the child's every movement, and to her surprise found that the baby had quite a knowledge of dancing. "who taught you how, my precious?" she would ask, when the child, as if from the very love of motion, would catch and spread her skirts, and, with pointed toe, trip about the room, "tell your norma who taught the darling how to dance?" the baby glancing over her shoulder, with the little frown of displeasure that always greeted such ignorance on norma's part, had but one reply: "tante," she would declare, and continue her measured walk about the floor. so, for pastime, norma began teaching her the figures of a dance then on the boards at the opera house, to which her little ladyship lent herself with readiness. the motions, sometimes approaching the grotesque in the lean and elderly chorus-lady as she bobbed about the limited space, courtesying, twirling, pirouetting, her blonde hair done up in kids,--herself in the abbreviated toilet of pink calico sack and petticoat reserved for home hours, changed to unconscious grace and innocent abandon in the light, clean-limbed child, who learned with quickness akin to instinct, and who seemed to follow norma's movements almost before they were completed. "it is wonderful--amazing!" miss bonkowski would exclaim, pausing for breath, "it is _genius_," and her voice would pause and fall reverently before the words, and the lesson would be resumed with greater enthusiasm than before. but many were the days when, norma away at rehearsal and mary carew, hot, tired, alas, even cross,--totally irresponsive to anything but the stitching of jean pantaloons,--the angel would grow tired of the stuffy room and long for the forbidden dangers and delights of tenement sidewalks. then, often, with nothing else to do, she would catch up her tiny skirts and whirl herself into the dance norma had taught her, in and out among the furniture crowding the room, humming little broken snatches of music for herself, bending, swaying, her bright eyes full of laughter as they met mary's tired ones, her curls bobbing, until breathless, hot and weary she would drop on the floor and fall asleep, her head pillowed on her soft dimpled arm. but on one of these long, hot mornings when the heat seemed to stream in as from a furnace at the window and even the flies buzzed languidly, the angel was seized with another idea for passing time. her vocabulary of tenement vernacular was growing too, and she chattered unceasingly. "c'rew, didn't a fink angel might go find her mamma?" she demanded on this particular morning. "to-morrow," said c'rew, and the click in her tired voice sounded even above the whirring of the heavy machine, for c'rew's head ached and her back ached, and possibly her heart ached too, for herself and norma and the child and poor people in one-windowed tenement rooms in general. "didn't a fink she might go play with little joey?" "no," said mary decidedly, and she leaned back wearily and pushed her thin, colorless hair off her hot, throbbing temples, "no, you played down on the pavement with joey an' th' rest yesterday, an the sun made you sick. but," with haste to avert the cloud lowering over the baby face, "if you'll be real good an' not worry her, you can go down an' see mrs. o'malligan." fair weather prevailed again on the pretty face, and at mary's word the angel was at the open door, tugging at the chair placed crossways to keep her from venturing out unobserved, and with a sigh and a guilty look at the pile of unfinished work, mary rose and carried her down to the good irish lady's door, and, with a word, hurried back. mrs. o'malligan, big, beaming and red, smiled a moist but hearty welcome from over her tubs toward the little figure in the faded gingham standing shyly in the open doorway. "an' it's proud to see ye i am, me angel," she declared, "though there's never a childer in call to be playin' wid ye." but the angel, nothing daunted, smiled back in turn, and climbed into a chair, and the two forthwith fell into friendly conversation, though it is doubtful if either understood one-half of what the other was talking about. presently mrs. o'malligan, with many apologies, went out into the back court to hang out the last of the family wash, and on her return, stopping short in the doorway, her jolly red face spread into a responsive smile. "the saints presarve us," she cried, "would ye look at the child?" for in the tub of blue rinsing water sat the gleeful angel, water trickling from her yellow hair and from every stitch of clothing, while her evident enjoyment of the cool situation found a response in mrs. o'malligan's kind and indulgent heart. "angel take a baf," was the smiling though superfluous explanation which came from the infant undine. "an' it's right ye are," laughed mrs. o'malligan, "an' sure i'll be afther givin' ye a rale wan meself," and filling an empty tub with clean water, the brisk lady soon had the baby stripped to her firm, white skin and standing in the tub. and what with the splashings of the naughty feet, and the wicked tumbles into the soap-suds every time the mischievous little body was rinsed, and mrs. o'malligan's "whist, be aisy," and "it's a tormentin' darlint ye are," they heard nothing of the knocks at the door or the calls, nor knew that miss bonkowski, in street dress and hat, had entered, until she stood beside them with an armful of clean clothes. "was there ever such luck," she cried excitedly, "to find her all washed and just ready! mary said she was here, and so i just brought her clean clothes down with me to save a trip back upstairs. wipe her quickly, please," and with hands and tongue going, miss norma explained that one of the children in the juvenile dance on the boards at the garden opera house had been suddenly taken ill, and a matinée advertised for the next day. "and it happens lucky enough," she went on, addressing the ladies who, catching wind of the excitement, had speedily gathered about the doorway, "it just happens i have been teaching her this very dance, and if she don't get frightened, i believe she will be able to take the place." so saying, miss bonkowski gave a pull out and a last finishing pat to the strings of the embroidered muslin bonnet the child had worn on her first appearance, and taking her, clean, dainty, smiling and expectant, into her arms, miss norma plunged out of the comparative coolness of the tenement hallway into the glare of the august sun. but all this while the little brain was at work. "goin' to angel's mamma,--her goin' to her mamma," suddenly the child broke forth as norma hurried along the hot streets, and the little hand beat a gleeful tattoo as it rested on norma's shoulder. norma paused on the crowded sidewalk, to take breath beneath the shade of a friendly awning. "not to-day, my angel," she panted, "to-day your norma is going to take her precious where there are ever so many nice little girls for her to dance with." "angel likes to dance with little girls, norma," admitted the baby, while norma made ready to thread her way across the street through the press of vehicles. "i'll not say one word to her about being frightened," reflected the wise chorus lady, "and she's such an eager little darling, thinking of other things and trying to do her best, maybe she won't think of it. if she can only keep the place while that child is sick,--what a help the money would be!"--and the usually hopeful norma sighed as she hurried in the side entrance of the handsome stone building known to the public as the garden opera house. * * * * * the next afternoon, at the garden opera house, as the bell rang for the curtain to rise, mary carew, in best attire of worn black dress and cheap straw hat, was putting the angel into the absent fairy's cast-off shell, which consisted of much white tarlatan as to skirts and much silver tinsel as to waist, with a pair of wonderful gauzy wings at sight of which the angel was enraptured. miss bonkowski being, as she expressed it, "on in the first scene," mary carew had been obliged to forsake jean pantaloons for the time being and come to take charge of the child, who in her earnest, quick, enthusiastic little fashion had done her part and gone through the rehearsal better even than the sanguine norma had hoped, and after considerable drilling had satisfied the authorities that she could fill the vacancy. as for the angel, in her friendly fashion she had enjoyed herself hugely, accepting the homage of the other children like a small queen, graciously permitting herself to be enthused over by the various ladies who, like norma, constituted "the chorus," and carrying home numerous offerings, from an indigestible wad of candy known as "an all-day-sucker," given her by her fairy-partner, to a silver quarter given her by the blonde and handsome tenor. "she is the most fascinating little creature i ever met in my life," the prima donna had cried to the excited miss bonkowski, who had never been addressed by that great personage before,--"did you ever see such heavenly eyes,--not blue--violet--and such a smile--like the sun through tears! who is she,--where did she come from? such grace,--such poise!" the angel's story was recited to quite an audience, in miss bonkowski's most dramatic manner. but long before the chorus lady had finished, the great singer, lending but a wandering attention after the few facts were gathered, had coaxed the child into her silken lap, and with the mother touch which lies in every real woman's fingers from doll-baby days upward, was fondling and re-touching the rings of shining hair, and, with the mother-notes which a child within one's arms brings into every womanly woman's voice, was cooing broken endearments into the little ear. meanwhile the angel gazed into the beautiful face with the calm and critical eyes of childhood. but what she saw there must have satisfied, for, with a sigh of content, she finally settled back against the encircling arm. "pretty lady," was her candid comment. "angel loves her." flattered and praised as she had been, it is doubtful if the great singer had ever received a tribute to her charms that pleased her more. "bring her to my room to-morrow to dress her," she said to miss bonkowski in soft, winning tones that were nevertheless a command, unpinning the two long-stemmed roses she wore and putting them in the baby fingers, "and bring her early, mind!" and so it was that mary carew, nervous and awkward, was there now, doing her best to dress the excited little creature, whom nothing could keep still a second at a time. "thank you, ma'am," mary managed to breathe as the great personage, turning the full radiance of her beauty upon the bewildered seamstress, took the necklace of flashing jewels from her maid's fingers and bade her help mary. the great lady laughed. "you're nervous, aren't you?" she said good-humoredly, too human not to be pleased at this unconscious tribute on mary's part. "if the child can only do it right, ma'am," said mary, in a voice she hardly knew for her own, overcome this by graciousness no less than by the splendor. "right," said the lady, clasping a bracelet upon her round, white arm, and settling her trailing draperies preparatory to going on, "right! of course she will, who ever heard of an angel going wrong!" and laughing she sailed away. "now," cried miss bonkowski, rushing in a little later, "give her to me, quick, mary! if you stand right here in the wings you can see nicely," and the excited lady, wonderful as to her blonde befrizzlement, gorgeous as to pink skirt, blue bodice and not the most cleanly of white waists, bore the angel, like a rosebud in a mist of gauze, away. left alone amid the bustle and confusion mary stood where norma had directed, gazing out upon the stage like one in a dream. never in all her colorless life had she been in the midst of such bewildering splendors before. was it any wonder that norma bonkowski was different from the rest of the tenement when she shared such scenes daily? still further dazed by the music and the glimpses she could catch of the brilliantly lighted house, mary held her breath and clasped her hands as she gazed out on the stage where, across the soft green, from among the forest trees, into the twilighted opening, glided the fairies; waving their little arms, tripping slowly as if half-poised for flight, listening, bending, swaying, whirling, faster, swifter, they broke into "the grand spectacular ballet of the fairies," as the advertisements of the opera phrased it. faster, swifter still, noiselessly they spun, here, there, in, out, in bewildering maze until, as the red and yellow lights cast upon the stage changed into green, their footsteps slackened, faltered, their heads, like tired flowers, drooped, and each on its mossy bank of green,--the fairies sank to sleep. all? all but one; one was left, in whose baby mind was fixed an unfaltering supposition that she must dance, as she had done alone, over and over again at the rehearsals for her tiny benefit, until the music stopped. so, while norma bonkowski wrung her hands and the stage manager swore, and all behind the scenes was confusion and dismay, the angel danced on. the prima donna whose place it now was, as the forsaken princess, lost in the forest, to happen upon the band of sleeping fairies, waited at her entrance, watching the child as, catching and spreading her fan-like skirts of gauze, she bent, swayed, flitted to and fro, her eyes big and earnest with intentness to duty, her yellow hair flying, all unconscious, in the fierce glare of the colored lights, of the sea of faces in the house before her. with a sudden flash of intuition norma bonkowski flew to the manager. "stop the music, make them stop," she begged. he glared at her savagely, but nevertheless communicated the order to the orchestra, and as the music waned to a mere wailing of the violin, the little dancer, rosy, hot, tired, whirled slower, slower,--then sank on her bed of green, and like her companions feigned sleep with the cunning pretence of childhood. but not even then could the prima donna make her appearance, for, in the storm of applause which followed, the revived efforts of the orchestra were drowned. the face of the manager broadened into smiles, norma bonkowski fell against mary carew with tears of relief, and the prima donna with good-natured readiness stepped upon the stage, lifted the now frightened child who, at the noise, had sprung up in alarm, and carried her out to the footlights, the other children peeping, but too well drilled, poor dears, to otherwise stir. the audience paused. "wave bye-bye to the little girl over there," whispered the prima donna with womanly readiness, nodding toward the nearest box, filled with children eagerly enjoying "the children's opera of the princess blondina and the fairies." though frightened and ready to cry, the angel waved her hand obediently, and the prima donna, nodding and smiling in the unaffected fashion which was half her own charm, carried the child off the stage amid applause as enthusiastic as she herself was used to receiving. it had all taken place in a very few minutes, but as the smiling singer said, handing the angel over to the manager, even in those few moments, "she has made the hit of the season," then, turning, re-entered the stage, her voice, with its clear bell-like tones, filling the house with the song, "blondina awakening the fairies." nor did it end with this, for the angel was forthwith engaged, at what seemed to norma and mary a fabulous price, to repeat her solo dance at every wednesday and saturday matinée during the further run of the opera. chapter v. the angel rescues mr. tomlin. it was on the afternoon that mary carried back her week's completed work that norma, receiving an unexpected summons to the opera house, was obliged, though with many misgivings, to leave the angel in the charge of joey. "but what else could i do," she reasoned afterward, "with mrs. o'malligan out and mrs. tomlin sick, and nobody else willing, it appeared, to see to her?" true, she had cautioned joey, over and over again about keeping the child away from the window, and about staying right in the room until her return; but, notwithstanding, norma could hardly have gotten to the corner before joey, promptly forgetting his promise, and finding the room a dull playground, was enticing his charge into the hall and straightway down the stairs. at the bottom of the second flight, the two children came upon mr. tomlin entertaining two gentlemen callers. only the week before, the tenement had been called upon to mourn with the tomlins, whose baby had been carried away in a little coffin after the fashion of tenement babies when the thermometer climbs up the scale near to one hundred. and since then, mrs. tomlin, refusing to be comforted, had taken to her bed, thus making it necessary for her husband to receive his company in the hall. the callers, who, together with their host, were sitting on the steps, moved aside to allow the children to pass. the larger of the gentlemen was unpleasantly dirty, with a ragged beard and a shock of red hair. the other was a little man with quick black eyes and a pleasant smile. passing these by, the angel paused on the step above mr. tomlin and slipped her arms around his neck. "pick a back, my tomlin," she sweetly commanded in the especially imperious tones she reserved for mr. tomlin's sex, "get up, horsey." the good-natured giant, for such her tomlin was, shouldered her as one would some precious burden liable to break, grinned, stood up and obediently trotted the length of the hall and back. joey, meanwhile, legs apart, stood eyeing the visitors attentively. "keep up that kind of talk," the dirty gentleman was urging, "and we've got him. he's worth any three of ordinary strength, and he's a favorite with the men, too." here the horse and his rider returned. "what a got in a pocket for angel?" the young autocrat proceeded to demand when lifted down. of all her masculine subjects in the tenement, mr. tomlin was her veriest slave. he produced a soiled but gay advertising picture. her ladyship put out her hand. "but you must give us a dance fer it," coaxed mr. tomlin, anxious to display the talent of the tenement. "she's the young 'un as dances at the op'ry house, the kid is," he explained to his visitors, "they've had her pictoor in the papers, too. miss bonkowski, the chorus-lady upstairs, she's got one of them, came out in a sunday supplement, though i can't say i see the likeness myself." at this, the two gentlemen, who had seemed decidedly bored than otherwise at the interruption, deigned to bestow a moment of their attention upon the beautiful child in the faded gingham dress. "she got skeered to the theyater the other day," put in joey, "an' most cried when they clapped so, an' they promised her anything she wanted if she wouldn't next time----" "and her didn't cwy," declared the baby, turning a pair of indignantly reproachful eyes upon joey, "her danced, her didn't cwy." "ain't yer goin' to dance fer us now?" coaxed mr. tomlin. "no," said the angel naughtily, then relenting at sight of her tomlin's face, "her'll sing, her won't dance." the pleasant gentleman, thinking, perhaps to please mr. tomlin, or maybe to get rid of them the sooner, produced a red ribbon badge. "ef ze will sing," he said, showing his white teeth as he smiled, "ze shall hav it." turning to view this new party, her ladyship treated him to a brief examination, but evidently approving of him, began to sing with no more ado: "je suis si l'enfant gaté tra la la la, tra la la, car je les aime les petits patés. et les confitures, si vous voulez me les donner je suis très bien obligé, tra la la la, tra la la, tra la la la, tra la la." only a word here and there could have been intelligible, but their effect upon the pleasant gentleman was instantaneous. he broke into a torrent of foreign exclamations and verbosity, showing his teeth and gesticulating with his hands. a strange light came into the baby's face and she held out her arms to the little man entreatingly. "oui, oui," she cried, a spot of red burning on each cheek, "you take angel to her mamma, take angel to her mamma!" but here the door of the tomlin's room opened hastily, and the neighbor who was sitting with the sick woman thrust out her head. "she's talkin' mighty wild an' out her head," she said, "you'd better come to her." mr. tomlin rose hastily, while the dark little man, yielding to the child's entreaties, took her in his arms. but the red-headed gentleman laid a dirty hand on mr. tomlin's arm. "just as i was saying," he said, as if resuming a broken-off conversation, "no doctor, no medicine. why? no work, no wages. why? the heel of the rich man grinding the poor to the earth." mr. tomlin hesitated. "it's entirely a meeting of union men. no violence advocated. a mass-meeting to discuss appointing committees to demand work." "ze outcry of ze oppressed," put in the pleasant gentleman, looking out from behind the angel's fair little head, and showing his white teeth in his smile, "in zer union ees zere only strength." mr. tomlin's door opened still more violently. "she's a-beggin' as you'll get her some ice," announced the neighbor, "she says she's burnin' up." "god a'mighty!" burst forth the giant, "i ain't got a cent on earth to get her nothin'," and he turned toward the two men fiercely, his great brows meeting over his sullen eyes, "yes, i'll come, you can count on me," and he went in the door. "liberty square by the statue, four o'clock," called the dirty gentleman after him, while the pleasant gentleman put the angel hastily down. "adieu, mon enfant," he cried, showing his teeth as he smiled back over his shoulder, and followed his companion down the stairs. in time joey and his weeping charge also reached the bottom. not a word of the conversation had escaped the sharp ears of the major. "it's past two, now," he soliloquized, "an' he said liberty square, four o'clock. i know where the statoo is. yer follows the cars from front of th' arm'ry an' they goes right there, 'cause that's where the cap'n's office is. don'tcher cry no more, angel," with insinuating coaxing in his tones, "i'll take yer there if yer wanter go." the angel slipped her hand in his obediently, and the two forthwith proceeded to leave the neighborhood of the tenement behind them, undeterred by the friendly overtures of petey o'malligan and his colleagues to join in with their pastimes. "we ain't got no time fer foolin'," confided joey, hurrying her along, "there'll be flags an' hollerin', an' we wanter get there in time." on reaching the car line the small major was obliged to slacken his speed, for, while, in a measure, the angel had caught the spirit of his enthusiasm, yet her legs refused to keep pace with his haste. "ef yer was still ter heaven, angel," the major pondered, as they stood on the street corner getting breath, "yerz wouldn't need ter use yer legs at all, would yer? yer'd jus' take out an' fly across this yere street, waggins an' trucks an' all, wouldn't yer?" the angel cast her eyes upon him doubtfully. "that's what my mammy tol' me about angels," joey declared stoutly. "angel didn't a never fly," nevertheless the baby stated with conviction. joey looked disappointed, and even unconvinced. then his face brightened. "that's 'cause you was too little, like that canary at th' res't'rant what ain't got its feathers yet. you was too little fer yer wings to have growed afore you come away," and his lively imagination having thus settled the problem, the two continued their way. "yer see how it is," he observed presently, evidently having been revolving the subject in his busy brain, "ef mis' tomlin had th' doctor an' some ice, she'd get well, she would, an' mr. tomlin, he's goin' to this yere meetin' to see about work, so's he can get 'em fer her. but 'tain't no use fer workin' men to beg for work these yere days," he added with a comical air of wisdom. "i heerd old g. a. r. say, i did, to a man what comes ter talk politics wid him, that beggin' th' rich people to help yer was jus' like buttin' yer head agin a brick wall, so what good's it goin' ter do if he does go?" the angel nodded amiably, and slipped her hand in joey's that she might the better keep up. they had passed the region of small shops and were passing through a better portion of the city. before a tall stone house, one of a long row, a girl stood singing, while a boy played an accompaniment on a harp. as joey and his charge reached them, a lady, with a group of children clustered about her, threw some pennies out the window to the young musicians. "did yer see that, angel," demanded joey, "did yer ketch onter that little game? we c'n do that. i c'n whis'le an' you c'n sing, an' we'll make 'nough to get mis' tomlin th' ice ourselves. if yer do," continued the wily joey, "i tell yer what,--we'll go home on the cable cars, we will." and he hurried his small companion along the sunny sidewalks, still following the line of the cable cars, until they came to a business street again, this time of large and handsome stores. here, before the most imposing, joey paused, and cast a calculating eye upon the stream of shoppers passing in and out. "now, angel, sing," he commanded. the footsore, tired angel, hot and cross, declined to do it. "her wants to sit down an' west," she declared. "we'll sit down out there on ther curbstone an' rest soon as yer sing some," promised the major. so, taking up their stand on the flagging outside the entrance of the big store, the bare-headed angel, in her worn gingham frock, highbred and beautiful as a little princess, despite it, struck up with as much effect as a bird's twitter might make. finding that his whistle in no way corresponded to the song, joey wisely contented himself with holding out his soldier's cap. two such babies, one with so innocent, and the other with so comically knowing a smile, could not but attract attention. some laughed, some sighed, some stopped to question, many dropped pennies and some put nickels, and even a dime or two into joey's cap, while one stout and good-humored woman opened the paper bag she carried and put a sponge cake in each hand. but at this point, seeing that the policeman in charge of the crossing had more than once cast a questioning eye upon them, joey decided to move on. "we'll have ter hurry anyhow," he observed, "ter get to ther speakin' in time. if you'll come on, angel, 'thout restin', i'll tell yer what,--i'll buy yer a banana, i will, first ones we see." and the weary angel, thus beguiled, dragged her tired feet along in joey's wake. * * * * * the slanting rays from the setting sun were falling across liberty square, on the statue of that great american who declared all men to be created equal, on the sullen faces of hundreds of idle men who stood beneath its shadow, listening to speech after speech from various speakers, speeches of a nature best calculated to coax the smouldering resentment in their hearts into a blaze. on the outskirts of the park-like square a small boy was urging a smaller girl to hurry. "angel's legs won't go no more," the diminutive female was wailing as her companion dragged her along. meanwhile the impassioned words of the last oration were being echoed and emphasized by mutterings and imprecations. the mob, in fact, was beginning to respond, just as its promoters had intended that it should, and as their dangerous eloquence continued to pour forth, the emotions of the crowd accordingly grew fiercer, louder, until from sullen mutterings, the applauding echoes grew to clamor and uproar. and following the impassioned harangue of the last speaker upon the program--a red-haired gentleman, unpleasantly dirty--the cheers gave place to groans, the groans grew to threats, to curses, and the confusion spread like the roar of a coming storm. suddenly above the noise, came the measured tramp of feet. in the momentary lull succeeding, "the police, the police," a voice rang out on the silence, and the single cry swelled to a roar from hundreds of throats, and as suddenly died away to an expectant silence. at that a voice, loud with authority, rang out upon the stillness, "in the name of the commonwealth," the measured words declared, "i command you to immediately and peaceably disperse!" the answer came in a chorus of jeers, hoots, yells of derision, and the howling mob began to seize whatever promised to be a weapon of defense or attack. growing in numbers as dusk fell, the crowd now was spreading back into the surrounding streets. merchants who had not already done so, were hurriedly closing their stores. the cars were blocked, and foot travellers fleeing in all directions. from the thickest of the crowd, a mighty creature of bone and muscle, a giant in height and breadth, grasping an iron support twisted from a bench, had forced his way out to the street, and now was using it to pry up the bricks from the sidewalk, which in turn were seized by his companions. above the uproar and confusion the voice of authority, ringing out its words of command, was heard again. head and shoulders above the crowd, the giant stood erect, waving his iron bar above his head. "at 'em, men," he cried, "at 'em before they fire!" but as he paused, another cry arose, a frightened, childish wail, that came from a very diminutive female clinging to his knees. "my tomlin," it cried. the giant's arm dropped, and as the crowd swept on and left him standing, mr. tomlin looked down to behold the angel, and holding fast to her, the badly frightened but defiant personage of joey. the giant caught the angel up in his arms. "hold on to my coat," he cried to joey, and speedily, such of the crowd as had not swept by in their charge against the police, fell back on either side before mr. tomlin's mighty fist. fighting desperately, he reached the edge, and seizing joey, dragged him across the car tracks as the crash of stones, the breaking of glass, the sharp crack of firearms, told of the meeting of the forces behind him. howls of rage, of pain, of defiance answered, followed by further crashing of stones and splintering of glass in street lights and car windows, and not until they were several squares removed from the scene of action did mr. tomlin pause. he then laid a heavy hand on joey. "by all that's--" he began. but joey was ready for him, and hastily began to pour his earnings from his jacket pocket in a pile upon the flagging. "me an' angel made it a-singin' on the street fer to get ice fer mis' tomlin," the wily one explained. and the tender-hearted giant, gazing from one small figure to the other, forthwith began to sob like a child. and, oh, the rejoicings of the distracted tenement when the lost angel was returned! and how joey was seized and violently threatened to be as violently forgiven. mrs. tomlin, given ice to her heart's content, fell asleep, blessing the angel for having rescued her husband from the almost certain hands of the law. and when, next day, it was learned that various and sundry of mr. tomlin's friends, among them the red-haired gentleman and his dark companion, had been arrested, while mr. tomlin was safe at home, the angel became more than ever the pride and idol of the tenement. "there's some'n' mighty wrong," mr. tomlin was heard arguing soon after, "for a man with the bone and muscle to 'em as i've got, wantin' work an' willin' to do anything, yet havin' to starve--but whatever it is as is wrong, i'm thinkin' mobs ain't the way to right it." "an' if he'd only hed th' sinse to make the furrin' gintleman as could talk the gibberish to question th' angel choild," said mrs. o'malligan indignantly, "sure an' we moight have larned all about her by this toime, entoirely, for there's mony a thing she's tried to tell us an' can't for the want of a worrud. but foind me a man of yer as does any thinkin' 'thout his woman there to prompt him," she quoth contemptuously, "an' i'll foind ye a polaceman as isn't a meddler in other folks' affairs, as this yere mob is jist anither provin' of." chapter vi. the major superintends the angel's education. "it's a nice, cool morning," said the ever sanguine miss bonkowski to joey, one day late in september, "so, if you will give me your solemn promise--" and miss norma paused impressively, emphasizing her words with nods of her blonde head, "not to go to any speakings, nor yet to the dock to fish, nor to any fires, or to a procession, even if it's right around the corner," and miss norma drew breath as she finished the enumerating of his various exploits, "why, angel here can play with you until mary carew comes down to get her." the major--his cap a little more battered, his belt somewhat the worse from constant wear, but clean as to face and hands, having just emerged from the morning inspection of the armory janitor, better known to the neighborhood as old g. a. r.--treated miss bonkowski to a salute and a confidential wink, and edged up to the smiling angel's side. "yer jus' leave her wid me," he responded reassuringly, "an' i ain't goin' to do nothin' as ain't square." and miss norma, whose faith in human nature, phoenix-like, ever sprang up anew from the blighted hopes of former trust, accordingly turned her darling over to joey and hurried off. "for she's obliged to have some one to play with and to get some fresh air somehow," the chorus-lady argued for her own re-assuring, though it remains a mystery as to how she could deceive herself into considering the garbage-scented atmosphere of the neighborhood as fresh, "and joey's by far the best of the lot around here." meanwhile, the small subject of all this solicitude, in clean frock and smiling good-humor, responded at once to joey's proposal, and the two sat down on the curbstone. in the constant companionship of their two months' acquaintance, the little major's growing interest in the angel had assumed almost fatherly proportions. hitherto this zeal had taken itself out in various expeditions for her entertainment similar to the one ending in mr. tomlin's rescue. to-day it was produced in the shape of a somewhat damaged peach purchased with a stray penny. but the angel, in her generous fashion, insisting on a division of the dainty, joey at first stoutly declining, weakened and took half, seeing to it, however, that his was the damaged side. "when yer was up there," he observed unctiously as he devoured his portion--and he nodded his round little head toward that foggy and smoky expanse about them, popularly believed by the population about the tenement to be the abode of angels--"when yer was up there, yer had these kinder things every day, didn't yer?" if her small ladyship's word could be taken for it, in that other life still remembered by her, she had everything, even to hoky-poky ad libitum, to her heart's content, though her testimony framed itself into somewhat more halting and uncertain english. "what did yer do up there, anyhow?" queried joey curiously. "danced," the angel declared, daintily devoting herself to her portion of the peach, "her danced and--her danced." this earthly vocation seemed to fail to appeal to joey's imagination. "nothin' else?" he demanded anxiously. "didn't yer never do nothin' else?" but the angel had fallen to poking the green contents of the gutter with a stick, and seemed to find the present more fascinating to contemplate than the past. "didn't yer never go nowhere?" persisted joey. "her went to school," the angel admitted, or so it sounded to joey. "what 'ud yer do at school?" he inquired. "danced," was the angel's unmistakable announcement. joey looked disgusted, but soon recovered and fell to revolving a new idea in his fertile young brain. "i know where there is a school," he remarked. "i've never went, but i hung on ter the window-sill an' looked in, an' if yer went ter school up there, yer oughter be goin' down here, see!" and forthwith joey arose. amiable as her small ladyship usually was, on this occasion, seeing determination written on joey's small countenance, she rebelled. "angel yants to stay here," the young lady declared, continuing to poke at the contents of the gutter. "i don't wanter make her cry," argued joey wisely, then cast about in his mind for an inducement. "they have parties to that school, they do," finally he observed, "fer i seen 'em settin' 'round tables an' eatin' one day." the guileless infant rose to the bait at once, and dropped her stick and slipped her confiding hand in joey's. "angel likes to have parties," she declared, and thus lured on, she forthwith followed joey down the street. * * * * * "some one to see me," repeated pretty miss stannard, of the darcy college settlement's free kindergarten, and laying down her blocks she went to the door. on the steps outside the entrance stood a small, chubby-cheeked boy smiling up out of knowing brown eyes from beneath a soldier's cap many sizes too large for him, while behind him stood a slender, graceful child with wonderful shining hair, and eyes equally as smiling. the small boy treated the tall, pretty young lady to a most confiding nod and a wink. "i've brought her ter school," he remarked. "oh, have you?" returned the young lady laughing, "then i'd better invite you in, i suppose," and she led the way toward the entry-room where hung some dozens of shabby hats and bonnets. "and what is your name?" she inquired. "her name is angel, it is," responded the little fellow briskly, with emphasis on the pronoun, as if to let the young lady understand at once that her interest need extend no further than to the prospective pupil. "didn't a know i are angel?" queried the smiling cherub with her accustomed egotistical surprise. "and what is your other name?" questioned miss stannard smiling. "she ain't got no more," returned the escort succinctly. "and what is yours?" "mine--oh, i'm just the major, i am," with off-hand loftiness. "indeed? and where do you live, major?" "fourth reg'ment arm'ry," responded the major glibly. "and the little girl,--angel--you said--" the major looked somewhat surprised, "they come from heaven,--angels do, yer know," he remarked, staring a little at the tall young lady's want of such knowledge. "yes," responded the pretty lady gently, "but where is she living now?" "round by me," said the small boy briefly, showing some restlessness. "with her father and mother?" the major, staring again, shook his head, and poor miss stannard, despairing, of learning anything definite from this source, asked if he would take her there after kindergarten, and began to untie the little girl's cap. evidently gratified at this attention to his charge, the major said that he would, and followed the two into the large, sunny room adjoining. "the children are just going on the circle," said the pretty young lady, "won't you take my other hand and go too." the major drew back hastily. "she's come ter school," he declared indicating the angel, "there ain't no school in it fer me. i'm a sojer, i am." "then have a chair, sir, and watch us," said the young lady, with amused eyes, as she brought out a little red chair with polite hospitality. the young gentleman graciously accepting it, the angel was forthwith borne away to join the circle of children about the ring, and to miss stannard's surprise, with no more ado, joined in the game like one familiar with it all, waving her small hands, singing gaily and, when her turn arrived, flitting gaily about the circle until the sash strings of her little faded dress sailed straight out behind her. and the game at an end, without waiting for direction or guidance, the newcomer marched with the other children about the big room and took her place with them at one of the tables spread with entrancing green and yellow papers. and here, absorbed in directing the work at her own table, and her two assistant teachers equally absorbed at theirs, miss stannard was presently aroused by a nudge from 'tildy peggins, the freckle-faced young person employed in a capacity of janitress and nursery maid. "look a-yonder to that young willain, miss ruth," urged 'tildy, whose sentiments regarding the infant populace refused, despite all the efforts of her employers, to be tempered by kindergarten views. miss stannard looked up hastily, and so did the twenty pairs of eyes about her table. from the depths of one pocket the major had produced a cigarette, and from the mixed contents of another he had extracted a match, and as the twenty pairs of eyes fell on him, a fascinating curl of blue smoke was just issuing from his lips. 'tildy peggins folded her arms on her flat chest and gave vent to a groan. already, with her gloomy views on kindergarten regeneration versus innate depravity, she foresaw the contamination of every half-subjugated small masculine in the room. miss stannard, with a shake of her head at 'tildy, coughed slightly. instantly the eyes of the school left the major and fixed themselves expectantly on her pretty face. "i thought you wanted to be a soldier, major," she observed, addressing the small gentleman. "i is goin' to be," returned that unabashed gentleman, calmly sticking a thumb in his belt, and in so doing pushing his jacket aside, so as to further expose the military trappings about his round little person, "i's a-goin' to be a sojer in the fourth regiment." "no, indeed," said miss ruth, "the members of the fourth regiment are gentlemen, and a gentleman would never have smoked in here without asking if he might." the major looked somewhat moved out of his usual imperturbability. the curl of offending smoke ceased. "i know a soldier," miss ruth went on calmly, "and what is more, he is a member of the fourth regiment, but he never would have done such a thing as you are doing." the cigarette trembled in the major's irresolute fingers. "and even if you had asked first," the steady voice went on, "i would have said no, for such a thing as smoking is never allowed in this room." the major's irresolute brown eyes met miss stannard's resolute brown ones. then the cigarette went out the open window behind him and the work at the tables went on. presently miss ruth looked up again. "won't you come," she said pleasantly, touching a pile of the gay papers. "are you not tired?" the major shook his head decidedly. "no, he would not," and finding a chip among the apparently inexhaustible stores of his pockets, he next produced a knife boasting an inch of blade and went to whittling upon 'tildy's immaculate floor. miss ruth saw it all, and presently saw the chip fall to the floor and the round head begin to nod. then, with 'tildy peggins' gloomy and disapproving eye upon her at this act of overture, she crossed the room. "major," said miss ruth, just a little plaintively, perhaps, "do you suppose you could do something for me?" the major was wide awake on the instant. "these papers," explained miss ruth, while 'tildy from her work of washing windows, shook her disapproving head, "put all like this in a pile on the table here, and all like this over here, and this color,--here," and before miss stannard had gotten over to her table again, the major was deep in the seductive fascinations of kindergarten. it was when the three teachers, with 'tildy's help, had at last distributed the sixty hats, hoods, and caps, and started the loitering groups on their homeward ways, that pretty miss stannard, putting on her own hat, addressed her new pupils. "now, major, i am ready," she said, and the three accordingly turned their steps toward the neighborhood of the tenement. miss ruth's small escort had quite an idea of the proper thing to do, and pointed out the landmarks as the three went along, the angel's friendly hand slipped confidingly into that of her new friend. "i did hear as so many died in this yere house of the fevers this summer," joey remarked cheerfully, pointing to a wretched-looking tenement building they were passing; "they'll give yer a room there now fer nothin' to git a good name fer the house agin." miss ruth shivered as they passed. the major next nodded toward a dingy saloon. "here's where i take a schooner an' a free lunch sometimes," he remarked confidentially. the tall young lady's brown eyes danced as she glanced down at the small person of the major. "and how old are you, major?" she inquired. "ha'f pas' seven, the cap'n an' old g. a. r., they say." "the captain? old g. a. r.?" "uh, huh! the cap'n's a good 'un, he is. he gim' me these yere togs, he did, an' he told old g. a. r. i might sleep to th' arm'ry, see?" miss ruth saw, and was just about to pursue the subject of old g. a. r., when the angel dropped her hand and with a gleeful cry ran ahead, and miss stannard looked up to behold two females bearing down upon them. miss bonkowski and mrs. o'malligan in fact, nor did they pause in their haste, until the angel was safe in norma's embrace and the major anything but safe, in the clutches of the irate irish lady. "an' it's yerself, ye limb, an' plaze to tell us whut ye mane by it?" the loud-voiced mrs. o'malligan demanded, "a-runnin' off with the childer agin, an' the whole tiniment out huntin' an' her niver to be found at all, at all?" but the sweet-faced, tall young lady coming to his rescue, the two women softened, and reaching the tenement, insisted on miss stannard coming in, and hearing the angel's story. and on the way up to miss bonkowski's apartment, she learned that the tenement, that morning, had been convulsed from cellar to garret, by the great honor bestowed upon it. for who but the prima donna, the great personage of norma's professional world, had just driven away in her carriage after a visit of an hour and the angel never to be found at all! "an' ma'am," explained mary carew, her bony face swollen with crying, when miss stannard had been installed in one of the two chairs of the apartment, "an' ma'am, it was fer th' angel she come. a offerin' norma an' me anything we'd name to give her up, such a fancy as she's taken to her, an' wantin' her fer her own." "and you, what did you say?" asked miss ruth, gently, watching mary with tender eyes as she held the beautiful, chattering little creature so jealously in her arms, and thinking as she watched, of the life and reputation commonly accorded the great singer. "say?" came from miss bonkowski quickly, her befrizzled blonde tresses fairly a-tremble with her intensity, and sticking the hat-pin recklessly in and out of the lace hat she had taken off, "what did we say, you ask, and knowing, as you and every body must, the kind of life and future it would mean for a child that takes to things like this 'n does! with all her money and her soft, winning ways, it is better, far better, for the child with her disposition, to starve along with mary an' me, than grow up to that, if it was nothing more to be afraid of than being left to servants and hotel people and dragged around from place to place in such a life as it is. not that i mean, ma'am," and miss bonkowski spoke with quick pride, "that being in the profession need to make any body what they shouldn't be, for i know plenty of 'em of the best, and am one myself, though only a chorus, but what with what's said about this one, even with her good heart and generous ways, she's not the one to have our angel, though she meant it for the best." "an' she said," mary carew took it up, "as how norma's gettin' old, and 'll be dropped afore long from the chorus, an' she offered her, she did, in this very room, a' here before me, to buy out a costumer as is leavin' the business, an' start norma in for herself, along of her knowin' how to run a business such as that." "and oh girls," declared miss stannard as she told this part of the story to her assistant teachers afterward, "it was the bravest thing i've met among the poor people yet. think of the courage of those two women, with poverty grimmer than they have yet known, ahead of them in all probability, yet determined to resist the temptation because they are assured it is not well for the child. picture making jean pantaloons, year in, year out, at barely living wages, yet having the courage to put the matter so resolutely aside. after that, i could not bring myself to tell them they had done wrong in the beginning in not notifying the authorities. of course there is some mystery about it. i cannot for a moment accept their explanation of it. the child, beyond question, is well born and has been carefully trained. and she goes about among all the strange, queer inmates of that tenement house as fearlessly as a little queen. but, oh, the one that is a chorus-singer! if you could see her! so lean, so sallow, so airy and full of manner. but i will never laugh at another elderly chorus-singer again in my life, she is grand, she's heroic," and the pretty kindergartner threaded gay worsteds into needles with a vigor which lent emphasis to her words. "she's powerful stuck up, too," asserted the gloomy tones of 'tildy peggins, and she shook her mournful head, as she moved about straightening the disordered room for the next day, "there's a man lives in our tenement wanted to keep comp'ny with her, but, la, she tossed her yellow head at his waffle cart, she did, an' she said if he'd had a settled h'occupation she might a thought about it in time, but she couldn't bring herself to consider a perambulating business, an' that was all there was to it. la, maybe she is grand an' 'eroic, but she's got a 'aughty 'eart, too, that woman has!" chapter vii. miss ruth makes the acquaintance of old g. a. r. the angel, as the cooler weather came on, being suitably clothed by miss stannard and the invisible though still generous mrs. tony, and the good ladies of the tenement seeing that she was properly fed, her little ladyship continued to thrive, and to pursue her way, sweet and innocent, in the midst of squalor, poverty and wickedness such as mary and norma could not always hide, even from her baby eyes. true to the promise these ladies had made, she appeared regularly at kindergarten in the charge of her faithful squire, the major, whose own interest in the daily work had never flagged since the day he first agreed to help miss stannard. it was with surprise, therefore, that, late in november, miss ruth noted the absence of the two for several successive days. "childern's obliged to get wore out fiddlin' with beads an' paper an' such, in time," said the perverse and unconverted 'tildy peggins. "that's the reason they's constant droppin' off, an' new ones comin' in. there ain't enough willainy in kindergarten to keep their minds h'occupied. they's pinin' for the streets long afore you'd h'ever believe it,--their 'earts ain't satisfied with beads and paper, childern's obliged to have a little willainy mixed in." but despite 'tildy's pessimistic views, on the fifth morning of their absence, miss ruth had just determined to send around to the tenement, when a knock summoned her to the door. outside stood the smiling angel, in her little winter cloak and hood, her hand in that of a very large, very grizzled, and very military-looking man, who greeted miss stannard with a salute reminding her at once of joey. "what has become of my friend, the major?" she inquired, ushering them into the school-room. "joey couldn't come," explained the angel, mournfully. "it was to tell you about him, ma'am, i stepped around," replied the man, gazing admiringly about the bright room, with its pictures, its growing plants, its tables, and dozens of little red chairs. "it is a pretty place now, i must say, and it's no wonder the little chap likes to come here. he's been that worried, and fretting so about the little one not getting to school, that i promised him i'd march her 'round here every day if he'd call a halt on his fretting." "he is sick, then?" miss ruth inquired. "well, it didn't seem as if it was enough to lay him off duty," responded the man, as he regarded miss ruth with friendly gaze; "he's a knowin' little shaver, the major is, and great on tryin' to help me." "are you the friend that he calls old g. a. r.?" inquired miss ruth, with sudden intuition, as she smiled back into the weather-beaten face. the old soldier chuckled. "he's told you about that, has he? 'old g. a. r.!' great name, ain't it?" "why does he call you by it?" "grand army of the republic, ma'am. i'm a member, and i reckon i do anecdote about it overmuch at times. the reg'ment round there, they dubbed me that." "and the major?" "that's right, ma'am, for'ard march! i'm gettin' to it. he was in the arm'ry with me, the other day, a-pretendin' to help me clean up, and he fell off one of the cannon he was monkeyin' round. he didn't seem so bad hurt, at first, but somehow, after i come to think it over, he hasn't seemed to want to move round since, so i lay it to that." "have you had a doctor to see him?" asked miss ruth, waving the groups of arriving children on to 'tildy's care. "no, ma'am, i haven't. the officer that took the fancy to the little chap and pays for his eatin' along with me at the restaurant, he's been out of town for six weeks, and after leaving the baby here, i am on my way to his office now, to see if he has got back," and he stepped toward the door. "i will take angel home and stop by there and see joey," said miss ruth. "we'll be happy to have you, ma'am," and with a salute, the old soldier marched out the door. * * * * * "indade, miss ruthie, an' it's proud i am to go wid ye," said mrs. o'malligan some hours later, in response to miss ruth's request to go over to the armory with her, "just ye wait till i starts the angel choild up the steps," and mrs. o'malligan accordingly, was soon accompanying miss ruth through the big door of the armory. the old soldier met them and led the way into a neat box of a room, very orderly, very spotless. here, on a cot, lay the major, his eyes turned to meet them expectantly. it was quite pitiful to see how these few days had changed him into the white little chap looking up from the pillow. "well, major," began miss ruth, cheerily, and at sound of her bright, animated voice, a figure in the shadow on the other side of the cot looked up. "why, mr. dilke," cried miss ruth, at sight of the young and very properly attired gentleman who stood up to greet her. the young gentleman came round and shook hands with evident pleasure. "so you are the wonderful '_teacher_,' miss stannard?" "and you are the '_cap'n_'?" retorted miss ruth. here the major, as he would have phrased it, "caught on." "she said yer was a gentleman what wouldn't a-smoked before ladies, she did," volunteered joey. miss ruth blushed and laughed and blushed again. "well, he wouldn't, joey," she reiterated stoutly. whereupon the boyishly smooth face of mr. dilke colored too, and being very big and blonde and diffident, he blushed very red indeed, while joey, seeing something up, tried to wink his roguish eyes but failed for very weakness and found them full of tears instead. "where does it hurt?" asked miss ruth gently, leaning over him. the major winked indignantly. "sojers aint goin' to make no fuss if does hurt, old g. a. r. he says so!" old g. a. r. in the background gave vent to a sudden chuckle. "obey your superior officers, major, afore anything," he corrected. "faith i'll jist take him in me lap an' say whir he's hurted for meself," said mrs. o'malligan briskly and forthwith laid her energetic hand upon the little fellow. at her well meant but rough handling, the child cried out, turning white to the lips. "howly mither, forgive me," cried mrs. o'malligan. miss ruth turned away to hide her tears. "have you had a doctor yet?" she inquired. "no, i had just gotten here a moment ahead of you," explained mr. dilke. "well," said miss ruth, decidedly, "whether it proves serious or not, he ought to go to st. luke's and be properly nursed, and if there happens to be a free cot vacant, i will have no trouble getting him in." mr. dilke turned quickly. "don't stop for that," he said, "use me,--i mean,--don't let the cost of it interfere,--i'll be very glad,--you know----" miss ruth beamed at the young man whom she knew to be very rich indeed. "just take charge of a free kindergarten, mr. dilke, if you ever really want to properly appreciate your blessings and privileges," she said, "i am never so sordid in my desire for wealth, as when i stand helpless, with the knowledge of the suffering around me, that money can remedy or at least, alleviate." "let me walk with you to st. luke's," begged mr. dilke, "and you can tell me something more about it all if you will." and leaving joey to mrs. o'malligan, until their return, the two started off. "you've evidently been very good to joey," miss stannard remarked graciously, as they went along. mr. dilke blushed furiously, "who? i? no more than the other men in the regiment. now a fellow could hardly help liking the little chap, could he?" and he regarded his pretty companion as if seeking justification in her answer. "how did it ever begin?" inquired miss stannard. "through the old man--the janitor, you know. the boy's mother was a daughter of a dead soldier, comrade to old g. a. r. good for nothing husband, and that sort of thing, you know, and always runnin' to old g. a. r. for protection and help too, i suspect. when she died, the old fellow didn't have the money, and appealed to some of us fellows to help bury her. and then, it turned out, here was the boy. first we agreed to his staying at the armory a day or so, then a week, then longer, and by that time the knowing little monkey had made his own cause good. here we are,--and we'll just arrange, while here, to take a doctor back with us." it was late that afternoon that miss ruth, having remained to see the major safely asleep after his removal to st. luke's hospital, came down the steps of that institution with her pretty eyes all dim with crying, the doctor's words ringing in her ears, "poor little chap," he had said, "it's merely a question of time." chapter viii. the angel meets an old friend. a few days later mrs. o'malligan, in her best attire, and miss bonkowski, also gotten up regardlessly even to an added bloom upon her cheeks, sallied forth in the face of the first snowfall, to take the angel to st. luke's hospital, where, by appointment, miss ruth was to meet them. when in time they reached the building and miss stannard led the way up to the children's ward, a white-capped nurse came forward between the rows of little beds each with its child occupant, her finger on her lips. "he is so much weaker to-day," she explained, "i would say he had better not see any one, except that he will fret, so please stay only a few moments," and she led them to where joey lay, his white bed shut off from his little neighbors by a screen. his eyes were closed and a young resident physician was standing by the bed. "we thought he was going for a while this morning," whispered the nurse, but, low as she spoke, the major heard. a ghost of a twinkle was in his brown eyes as they opened and sought the doctor's. "i fooled 'em that time, didn't i, doc?" he demanded, and one trembling lid attempted its old-time wink. "you wanted angel, joey dear," said miss ruth, "and she has come to see you." the angel's face was full of doubt and trouble, her eyes dark with gathering tears. frightened at this something she half-divined, but could not understand, she drew near doubtfully. "angel loves her joey, her does," she asserted, however, as if in refutation of her fears. "show her--my--gun," whispered joey, and from the table where his eyes could feast upon it, the nurse lifted a small rifle. "the cap'n give it ter me,--so i could be a--member of th' reg'ment--_now_--see? ain't it a dandy--angel?" the child nodded gravely, but all the while her little breast was heaving with the gathering sobs. seeing miss norma also in tears, miss ruth motioned her to take the angel ahead, and leaving mrs. o'malligan speaking to the nurse, miss ruth followed slowly after, talking with the doctor as she went. a moment later, the ward was startled by a cry from the hall beyond, "yosie,--angel's yosie!" miss ruth and the doctor hurried out. in the hall in a rolling chair sat a young woman to whose knees the angel was clinging, amid sobs and little cooing cries of joy. "yosie, angel's yosie." "poor girl!" ejaculated the young doctor, "this may lead to her identification. we do not even know her name," he explained to miss stannard. "a case of paralysis,--almost helpless. never has spoken since brought here. yes," in answer to miss ruth's eager inquiries, "she has gotten so that she can make signs for yes and no." at once miss stannard turned to the girl, from whose lap norma was trying to draw the expostulating angel. "do you know angel?" she asked, her hand on the child as she spoke. there was a slight affirmative droop to the eyelids, while the gaze beneath was fixed imploringly on miss ruth. "are you rosy?" she asked. "my yosie, it _is_ my yosie!" declared the angel, with one of her little bursts of baby rage, pulling away from norma and stamping her foot, frantic that any doubt should exist. at this point, mrs. o'malligan, who had been following in her comfortable fashion, unconscious of any excitement, drew near. suddenly there was an excited cry from that lady. "howly mither, an' it's mrs. buckley's own sister, rosy o'brien, fer sure!" the wild eyes of the sick girl turned towards mrs. o'malligan with signs of recognition. the doctor repeated his story. "she must have been angel's nurse," said miss stannard. "an' was it the darlint's nurse ye war, rosy o'brien?" inquired mrs. o'malligan. "yes," signalled the eyelids, whereupon mrs. o'malligan, swaying her body to and fro, and clapping her hands, burst forth suddenly, "i say through wid it all, i say through wid it all! ye brought the angel choild to the tiniment wid ye to say your sister, now, didn't ye, rosy, me jewel?" the good irish lady waited for the affirmative droop from the eager eyes. "an' maybe ye found the door locked, an' not knowin' yer sister had moved away an' miss johnson, what goes to the car stables a-cleanin' by the day, livin' in her room now, ye set the choild down in the empty room a-nixt to it, an' run down to ask me as to whir yer sister had gone, now, didn't ye, rosy o'brien?" and mrs. o'malligan's garlanded bonnet fell over one ear in the good soul's excitement. thus far apparently she was right. "an' i wasn't to home, for sure i niver seen ye," ventured mrs. o'malligan, her hands now on her hips as she gazed at the girl and pondered. she was right again. "an' what happened thin, i niver can say no further!" the doctor, referring to a note book, spoke next. "she was brought here," he said, "on the seventh of last july, about six o'clock in the evening, having been knocked down by a horse at the corner of camden and lisiden streets." "whist!" cried mrs. o'malligan, her shawl fallen to the floor, her bonnet now hanging by the strings down her back, "that's our own corner, an' it's as plain to me now as the nose on yer face! not findin' me to home, ye were runnin' over to the grocery to find out from yer sister's husband's brother bill whativer had become of the family!" the sharp irish lady had hit it again, and miss ruth here interrupted to ask miss bonkowski if she could remember the date on which the child had been found in the vacant room. after some thought and debate, miss norma declared it to have been on the morning of the eighth of july, because her own birthday came on the fifteenth and she remembered remarking the child had then been with them a week. but here the whole party came to a standstill, and the wild, imploring look came back in poor rosy o'brien's eyes. the doctor laid his hand on her shoulder reassuringly. "don't fret, my girl, it will all come right now in time. it is no wonder," turning to miss stannard, "she has been so slow getting better. i have said a hundred times the girl had something on her mind." miss ruth turned to rosy again. "does the child's mother, or do her people live here in the city?" she inquired. the eyelids failed to move, which according to the doctor meant _no_. "what will we do," sighed miss ruth, "for the more the child is asked, the more perplexed we get, and now----" "sure an' we'll ask mrs. buckley, rosy's sister, an' she'll tell us all about it," said the practical mrs. o'malligan. "i remember well of her tellin' me of the foine wages rosy was a-gittin; along of her goin' off so fur wid some rich lady as a nurse." at this hopeful point the doctor interfered, thinking best to prevent any further exciting of his patient, and accordingly wheeled her back to her ward, leaving the others to soothe the terror of the child, at seeing hope vanish with rosy. pausing outside the big hospital in a trembling and excited little group, miss stannard detailed her plans. as the snow was coming down steadily, miss bonkowski should return to the tenement at once with the excited, sobbing child, and mrs. o'malligan should take miss ruth to find mrs. buckley, the sister of poor rosy o'brien. * * * * * "and do you know," explained miss ruth that evening, to mr. dilke, who had fallen into a way of calling quite frequently indeed, of late, "and do you know, this woman, this mrs. buckley would not believe us, but insisted that her sister, rosy o'brien, as well as the child her sister had nursed, were drowned in that terrible ferry-boat disaster last july. after what seemed to me hours of catechising, i got the story from her. "a year ago, as i finally found out, her sister, this same rosy o'brien, went south with a mr. and mrs. de leon breaux, whose child she had been nursing at narragansett during the summer. "this spring, mrs. buckley, living then in the tenement where the child was afterward found, received a letter from rosy, saying she would be in the city with her mistress for a few days in july on their way to the seashore for the summer. "meanwhile mrs. buckley moved, and being unable to write, left her new address with mrs. o'malligan. but the summer passing and no rosy appearing, in september mrs. buckley grew anxious and got a friend to write to the breaux' address for her, inclosing a letter to rosy. "in answer came a reply from mr. breaux, which letter mrs. buckley showed me. it stated that on the seventh of last july rosy o'brien and the child, '_our little angelique_,' the letter called her, had been drowned while crossing the river on the ferry. "mrs. breaux and her young sister, with rosy o'brien and the child, had reached the city the day before, having come by steamer from new orleans, their home. "according to the statement of a waiter at the hotel. rosy, tired of waiting for the return of the two ladies from a shopping expedition, and having been promised the afternoon, started off soon after lunch with the child, saying that she was going across the river on the ferry to see her sister. this was the last seen of them. "mr. breaux hurried north in response to his wife's summons, and some days following the ferry disaster, which occurred shortly after the girl left the hotel, a body was found in the river, which from its black cashmere dress, white apron and plain gold ring, was identified as that of poor rosy. "the girl had been taken on the recommendation of a former mistress and, as so often is the case, the breaux' knew neither the name nor the address of this sister, and having,--in addition to the papers being filled with the matter,--advertised in vain, the body was buried and, despairing finally of recovering their child's body, they returned south. though don't think," said pretty ruth suddenly regarding mr. dilke's attentive face while she laughed, "that i received the story from mrs. buckley in any such direct fashion. such people are not only illogical and irrelevant, they are secretive,--if ever you have to do with them as my work leads me to, you'll understand what i mean. but to continue with mrs. buckley. in order to convince her that neither rosy nor the child, despite her evidence, were dead, i took her straight back to the hospital, and as she then admitted rosy to be rosy, any lingering doubts were put at rest. and now you see why i was so relieved when you came this evening. mother has no better business head than i have, and i want you to help me determine how best to let these breaux know the child is alive." but mr. dilke, though far from a stupid young man, confessed himself a little dazed by miss ruth's rapid and excited story. whereupon, laughing, she went over it again, adding, "and here is the address and the name is de leon breaux, and how shall we word the telegram?" and after much speculation the following was written and sent: "nurse-girl, rose o'brien, found in hospital, paralyzed. child safe and well. "van alstine dilke, "hotel st. george." chapter ix. mary carew is tempted. when norma, on reaching home with the tired child, finished her story, which, truth to tell, lost nothing of its dramatic possibilities in her telling, mary carew looked up with her face so set and white that norma, who had been too intent in her recital to notice the gradual change in the other's manner, was startled. "don't take on so, mary," she cried, removing the child's wraps as she spoke, "i've always warned you she wasn't any deserted child, haven't i?" but there was a real tenderness in norma's voice as she reminded the other of it. "you'd better get your supper," mary replied, "it's near time for you to be going," and she pushed her work aside and held out her arms for the child, her face softening as it did for nothing else in the world. tired, cold, dazed with crying, the drooping little soul crept into mary's arms, which closed hungrily and held her close as the sobs began to come again. unlike her usual self, mary let norma prepare the supper unaided, while she sat gazing down on the flushed little face pillowed on her arm, and drew off the broken shoes, chafing and rubbing the cold, tired feet with her hand. she wanted no supper, she declared shortly in response to norma's call, but on being pressed, came to the table and drank a little tea thirstily, and fed the sleepy child from her own plate. "now don't take on so, mary, don't fret about it while i'm gone," norma begged as she hurried off to her nightly duties. "i'll miss her just as much as you, if it does turn out that we have to give her up, and for the darling's own sake, mary, we ought to be glad to think she's going back to her own." but mary, laying the sleeping child down in the crib, burst forth as the door closed, "an' it's norma bonkowski can tell me i ought to be glad! she can tell me that, and then say she'll miss her the same as me! it's little then she knows about my feelings,--for it'll be to lose the one bright thing outer my life as has ever come in it. 'go back to her own!' like as not her own's a mother like them fine ones i see on the avenoos as leaves their little ones to grow up with hired nurses. 'give her up--give--her up--' norma says so easy like,--when every word chokes me--" and struggling against her sobs, mary fell on her knees beside the crib, burying her face in the covers, "an' i must go on sittin' here day after day sewin', an' my precious one gone; stitchin' an' stitchin', one day jus' like another stretchin' on ahead, long as life itself, an' no little feet a-patterin' up the stairs, an' no little voice a-callin' on me,--nothin' to live for, nothin' to keep me from thinkin' an' thinkin' till i'm nigh to goin' crazy with the stitchin'--give her up?"--a wild look was on mary's face as she raised it suddenly, a desperate one in her eyes--"i'll not give her up--she's mine----" for a moment she gazed at the flushed face framed about with the sunny hair, then she rose, and, moving about the room with feverish haste, she gathered together certain of the garments which hung from nails about the walls, and rolled them into a bundle. then from between the mattress and the boards of the bed she drew an old purse, and counted its contents. "two dollars and seventy-five,--eighty-five, ninety,--that's mine,--the rest is norma's," and she returned the remainder to the hiding-place. then, putting on her own hat and shawl, she lifted the drowsy child, still dressed, and slipping on her cloak, rolled her in addition, in the shawl found with her that july morning almost five months before. then grimly picking up child and bundle, with one guilty, frightened look about the room that for so many years had meant home to her, she went out the door and hurried cautiously down the steps and out into the snowy night. * * * * * it was half-past twelve when norma bonkowski, returning, climbed the stairs of the tenement wearily. she was cold, for her clothes were thin; she was tired, for the day had been a hard one; she was dispirited, for the manager had been more than usually sharp and critical of her performance that night. when she entered her door the room was dark. the lamp had burned itself out and the room was filled with the sickening smell. the fire, too, was out, save for a few red embers. with a sudden realization that something was wrong, norma groped about the littered mantel-shelf for a match, then hastily lit an end of candle. bed and crib were empty, half the nails bare of their garments. "gone!" cried norma, beginning to wring her hands. intuitively she felt what had happened. desperate at the thought of losing her darling, mary carew had fled. but in a moment a re-assuring look replaced the fright on the blue, pinched features. "i know mary better than she knows herself," declared the optimistic norma, "she'll be back," and tossing her blonde head resolutely, she threw aside her hat and cape and began to rekindle the fire. "i'll put on the tea-kettle, too," she told herself, "and be real comfortable and extravagant for once, and have a cup of tea ready when they come," for the good lady had no intention of going to bed, assuring herself she would not sleep if she did. so, moving about, she refilled the lamp, and drawing the machine nearer the stove, began to sew where mary had left off. "i wonder how she thinks to make a livin'," norma asked herself, smiling grimly, "seein' the machine's left behind. poor mary! i know her too well, she'll be back before morning." one, two,--then three, a neighboring church clock tolled, and norma stitched and waited, stitched and waited. several times she fell asleep, her head upon the machine, to awake with a start, hurry to the door and listen. a little before four she heard a step, and running to the door caught poor mary as she staggered in, half-sinking with her burdens. taking the frightened, wailing child and putting her down by the fire, norma dragged mary to a chair. "hush," she commanded, when mary tried to speak, "i know--i understand," and for once regardless of the child's comfort, she dragged the sodden shoes from mary's feet, drew off the wet skirts and wrapped her in anything, everything, warm she could find. by this time mary was sobbing wildly, and norma, half-distracted, turned to draw the tea and to toast some slices of the stale bread she had waiting. "now," she said, jerking the table around before mary, then sitting down and taking up the child, "you drink that, mary carew, before you dare to say one word!" the child responded promptly to the warmth and food and began to chatter. "c'rew did take angel away, norma, and it was cold and angel cwied, and c'rew cwied, but the nice lady sang." "i tried to run off with her," sobbed mary, "but the lord stood right in my way an' turned me back." "whatever do you mean, mary?" demanded norma. "just that, just what i said. i was a-runnin' off so's to keep her fer my own, an' th' lord stopped me an' sent me back." the child, nodding on norma's knee like a rosy little mandarin, caught the sacred name. "i p'ay the lord mine and joey's and eve'ybody's soul to keep," she murmured with drowsy effort, thinking c'rew was urging her to say the little prayer miss ruth had taught her. "he will, he will," said mary carew with awed emphasis, "if ever i doubted it before, norma, i know now he will. i had been walkin' a good while after i left here, for i had laid my plans hasty-like, to cross the river an' get a room on the other side, for i was jus' outer my head, norma, along of the thought of losin' her,--an' as i said, i had been walkin' i don' know how long, plannin' as i went, when the darlin' woke up, an' begun to cry. an' jus' then a man opened a door to come out of a place as had a great sign up, an' in the light as come out with him, he caught sight of us. "'haven't you no place to go fer shelter, my poor woman?' he says, for i was kinder breathless, an' pantin', fer the darlin' an' the bundle was a weight to carry. but i was that tired out, i couldn't say nothin' but jus' begin to cry. seem' which he says, 'this is one of the all-night-missions, come in an' i will see if you may stay until morning.' "thinkin' as how th' child might be sufferin' with the cold, i follered him in, a-plannin' to leave at daylight an' get across the river. i set down on a bench where he pointed me, an' when i got my breath i begun to look around. "it was a nice place, norma, with picters round th' walls an' a good fire an' people sittin' round listenin' to a man talkin', an' when he stopped, a lady begun to sing a song about some sheep as were lost. "angel here, she had stopped crying soon as she got warm, an' now she set up, peart an' smilin', pleased to death with the singin'. an' when she was done her song, the lady went to talkin', an' right along, norma, she was talkin' straight at me. it mus' have been th' lord as tol' her to do it, else how did she know? "'rachel,' says she, an' i reckon this rachel's another poor such a one as me, don't you, norma?--'rachel a cryin' for her children an' there wasn't any comfort for her because they weren't there!' that's how she begun. 'there isn't no love,' she said, 'no love on earth like the love a mother has for her child, you might take it away,' she said, 'an' try to fill its place with money an' everything good in life, but you can't make her stop wantin' her child an' thinkin' about it, not if you was to separate them fifty years; or you might try to beat it out of a mother or starve it out of her, but if the mother love had ever been there, it'd be there still.' that's what she said, norma. an' she s'posed like the child was lost an' she said, 'even if there was a lot of children besides that a one, would she stay at home, contented like, with them as was safe? no,' she said, 'that mother wouldn't, she'd start out and go hunt for the one as was lost,--even to faintin' along the way, till she found the child or give up an' died. that's how the lord cares for us'--she said, but i didn't hear no more after that, for i jus' set there turned like to stone, goin' over what she said, the darlin' asleep again in my lap. an' seems like i must a set there for hours, norma, fightin' against the lord. "'an' if you as ain't her mother wants her so,' at last, somethin' inside says to me, 'how much more must th' mother what's lost her want her?' and at that, norma, the lord won an' i got up an' come back with the child." chapter x. the major obeys orders. "he's going fast." so the nurse whispered to miss stannard, as with mr. dilke and old g. a. r., she came in that december afternoon. as the three neared the little bed, shut off by the screens from the rest of the ward, they found the angel already there in the arms of a tall, dark gentleman, while by joey's pillow knelt a slender lady with shining hair and grave, sweet eyes like the angel's. the major tried to smile a welcome. "they've come--ter--carry--angel home, they have," he whispered, "her dad--an' her--mammy." the white hand of the angel's "mammy," took joey's softly and her eyes were full of tears. "joey is going home too," she said. the major's eyes wandered questioningly "the big--angel's--come to get th' little angel--but--my mammy--ain't come--to get me?" "she has not come, joey dear," the soft voice explained, "because she is waiting for you. joey is going to her." the little voice was very weak now,--very wistful. "goin'--now?" asked the major. "yes, joey." his whisper could hardly be understood when after a long pause, he spoke again. "i--want--th' cap'n--ter--gimme--th'--order,--'cause-- i--b'long--ter--th' reg'ment." "what order, major?" came from the captain huskily. "old--g.--a.--r.--he knows--" the major's voice could just be caught now. old g. a. r. who had given the order to those little feet so many times, knew and understood, and his big voice rolled out with suspicious unsteadiness now,--"attention--company!--forward--" then the old soldier's voice broke as the little eyelids fluttered. old g. a. r. could not go on. "--march!" came softly from van alstine dilke, and with a ghost of his old, roguish smile the major's eyes closed, as he obeyed orders. chapter xi. tells of the tenement's christmas. the angel had but a week in which to prepare christmas for the tenement, but with the help of her marshaled forces she did it. with such a company of grateful assistants as her father, her mother, and the pretty young aunt or "tante" as the angel called her, all things seemed possible. a christmas tree it was decreed by her small ladyship her tenement should have, and mrs. o'malligan's first floor front, failing entirely in height or breadth to accommodate it, mr. dilke came forward and offered miss angelique the armory in the name of the fourth regiment. and such a tree! how it towered to the oaken roof and lost itself among the beams, and laden, festooned, and decorated, how proudly it spread its great branches out to the balconies! mrs. o'malligan, alone, of all the tenement, was let into the secret, and when it was finally disclosed, how the hearts of the favored fluttered as the angel delivered her invitations,--every lady, every lady's husband, and every son and daughter of the tenement being bidden to come. not to steal in at the back door, as if the armory was ashamed of its guests, but to walk proudly around the square and enter boldly in at the front doors of the building. all of which tended to raise the self-respect of the tenement, whose spirits went up very high indeed. and on that eventful christmas day, when the guests who were bidden had arrived, it was discovered that the object most desired of each good lady's heart, was to be found on, or around the base of that tree. perhaps if mrs. o'malligan had explained the meanings of the many mysterious conferences that had taken place lately in her first floor front, the ladies might better have understood. there was a pretty carpet, as well as lace curtains, long the desire of little mrs. tomlins' ambition, the set of "chiny" dishes dear to another good lady, a dress for this one, a bonnet, a nice rocking chair for that,--with new hats, pipes and tobacco around for the men,--and in addition for mr. tomlin, an entire suit of clothes and an overcoat, did that wonderful tree shed upon his proud shoulders. candy, nuts, and fruit were there in abundance, open to all, while the children paused,--awed, under a deluge of toys such as their eyes had never beheld the likeness of before. nor was this all,--for somewhere about that tree, hung a document, which being delivered, revealed to miss norma bonkowski that she was now the owner and proprietor of that same costumer's establishment she had so coveted,--while a most innocent and ordinary looking little book bearing mary carew's name told the secret of a sum of money safely in bank, so sufficient that never again need that grim phantom, the poor-house, threaten to overshadow the end as it had the beginning of mary's life. as for mrs. o'malligan,--who had so successfully betrayed the secrets of her neighbors, she was the most surprised of all to find her own discovered. for, learning that the o'malligans' savings toward "a house of our own over th' river wid a goat an' a bit of a pig-sty," still lacked a small sum of being sufficient, the angel had accordingly completed the amount. and then the tenement, weary with the accumulations of pleasure and surprise, had taken itself home. no one had been forgotten. even the sixty little kindergartens, through the combined munificence of mr. dilke and the angel, were, according to the gloomy prophecies of 'tildy peggins as she waited upon them at the feast, "a stuffed to their little stomicks' heverlastin' undoin'." and old g. a. r., from the depths of a new arm-chair, tried to solace his lonely old heart with whiffs of fragrant tobacco from a wonderful new pipe. neither was joey forgotten in this time of rejoicing, for st. luke's was made glad that christmas day when the fourth regiment endowed a child cot's "in memory of the little major." even rosy o'brien, whose one act of unfaithfulness had been so terribly punished, was made happy by the news her little angelique brought her, that now since she was freed of her wearing secret, her health would begin to return. and in time it did, and long after, when her tongue could again frame its words, she dictated such a letter of contrition and remorse to mrs. breaux, that that gentle heart's last feelings against her were forgotten. in this letter, too, the poor girl related the happenings of the afternoon when she left the hotel. allured by the shop windows, she and her charge had stopped so often that on reaching the river, they learned of the accident which had just taken place in mid-river. at this, the girl had hurried back and crossed by the bridge. on reaching the tenement finally, and finding her sister's door locked, and beginning to feel anxious about returning, on the impulse of the moment, that she might go down the faster, being breathless with the climb up the steep and broken stairs, she set the tired and sleepy child down on her shawl in the adjoining room, whose door stood open, and hurried down to find mrs. o'malligan and beg a scrap of paper to write a few lines to put under her sister's door. again fate was against her. mrs. o'malligan's door was locked, and she determined to run across to the corner grocery to beg a bit of paper and pencil from mr. buckley's brother bill who clerked there, and learn something of the absent family. and here, while crossing the street in nervous haste, she had been knocked down in a press of vehicles,--and so the long chapter of strange accidents was set going. * * * * * a few days after christmas the prima donna of the garden opera house was found in her luxurious sitting-room, by her maid, face downward on the couch,--in tears, the result of a state of mind, caused, as it proved, by a visit from the little angelique and her beautiful mother. "how can i ever thank you for your generous impulse," mrs. breaux had said, in impulsive, sweet fashion, taking the wayward, beautiful, young creature's hand in hers, "or how can i ever be grateful enough to the good god for surrounding my darling with such love and preserving her, as he has done, from the evils of this terrible city," and she had cried and trembled even then, with the child there against her knee, calling and prattling to the green and yellow parrot on his gilded perch. "if only some one could have understood all the poor child tried to tell," said the prima donna, "but her dear, funny little lisp--" "it is no wonder they could not," cried the mother in quick exoneration of her child's tenement friends, "her speech was a comical mixture of her father's french, my english, and the nurse's irish brogue,--even mr. breaux gave up often in despair, and would turn for me to interpret." it followed, then, that angelique had been brought to tell the great singer good-bye, and in speaking of her first meeting with her at the opera house, the prima donna referred to the child's wonderful grace, her poise. "she has more than talent," the professional woman said, "she has genius." "it is a love of motion born in her," replied the mother, "my sisters have it before her. angelique danced actually before she could talk, and my sister took her to dancing school and kindergarten when she was little more than a baby, because it seemed such a pleasure to the child." and then it so happened the singer was led to speak of her own life, of her wretched, motherless childhood, her poverty, the discovery of her voice and her subsequent success. "a success that sometimes seems but ashes in my mouth," she sobbed, as the young mother gathered her in her arms and comforted her with words which to her impulsive, untaught, undisciplined heart were as "apples of gold," and which sank too deep to ever be forgotten. and it was following this visit that her maid found her in tears. * * * * * pretty miss stannard sighed, as with mr. dilke in attendance, she was walking up from the station, having seen angelique, her mother, father, and tante off for their southern home. "how nice," she sighed, "for them to have been able to show their gratitude as they have; money can do anything." but mr. dilke, who, of late had had reason to question the desirability of being a rich young man, since the conscientious and analytical young person by his side had returned an unfavorable answer to a certain matrimonial proposition on his part, alleging her inability to determine how far her affections were biased by sordidness. so mr. dilke shook his head and took a sidelong glance at his companion's pretty profile. "no, money cannot," he returned promptly in refutation of her statement, "all mine cannot give me the one thing that makes the rest seem worth while." "nor would you want that one thing if it could," returned miss stannard quite as promptly, though what little of her profile mr. dilke could catch sight of now, so attractive did something prove across the way--grew a beautiful rosy red as she spoke,--"no, money could not give you that. i've thought and thought until i am quite--convinced--of that--though if you just could be poor,--real nice and poverty-stricken long enough to test me,--i'd always feel safer--you know----" and when, in time, a successor was found to supply miss stannard's place at the darcy settlement's free kindergarten, it was to see the angel in her beautiful southern home that mr. van alstine took his pretty, young wife. and there, whom did they find,--her face all softened and transfigured with happiness, tending her beloved charge with jealous care--but mary carew! the end. * * * * * sunbeam stories and others. by annie flint. _with cover design by dora wheeler keith, and seven full-page illustrations by dora wheeler keith, meredith nugent and izora c. chandler._ _square, mo. cloth, $ . ._ ------ "there is a touch of pure poetic fancy in each of the tales, and the sunbeams here invested with life and tiny human forms, are lovable and mirth-provoking imps.... the children, too, are real children, and there is no mawkish sentimentality, but an unforced, tender pathos in the story of little tom riley, who was 'mos twelve,' but who had a heart big enough for a man, and so skilfully is it told that a child may read and miss much of the sadness of it. in and out and everywhere play the sunbeams, as merry, mischievous and kindly a set of sprites as any in the realms of fairyland."--_the sun_, new york. in these stories, the sunbeams are made to talk and laugh and play, just like children. they are delightful. sometimes when they are naughty, father sun shuts them up in a cloud all day, where it is wet and rainy, and then they get good and promise not to tease and be bad any more. and then he lets them out, and they come down among the flowers and children and make everything bright and happy. the fancy is pretty, and we are sure the little children will thoroughly enjoy the little sunbeams. pretty pictures and fine press-work and paper, make it a beautiful book.--_christian observer_, louisville, ky. "the stories are fascinating--rivalling the best works of imagination. for purity and simplicity of style and diction, they are classic."--locke richardson. ------ bonnell, silver & co., publishers, west d street, new york. the log of the lady gray. by louise seymour houghton. _cloth. price cents._ ------ the "ship's company" that embarked one may morning for a holiday cruise on the "cat-boat" _lady gray_, consisted according to "the log," of the skipper, two cabin-boys, one ship's clerk, one small child, and two supernumeraries. the ship's clerk, who kept "the log," was a young girl, the small child was a much younger girl, and the supernumeraries were two dolls, who came in for a fair share of adventure, although they did not, like the others, suffer from "short commons," or join in the welcome meal of "hoe cake and sorghum," with difficulty obtained from the half famished "company." the story is one for young people; it is pleasantly told, and will be appreciated, especially by those who are interested in good books for children. the "log of lady gray" is a bright little record of the cruise of a party in a cat-boat with enigmas, riddles, and other verbal amusements to give variety.--_public opinion._ the book abounds in fun and frolic, and suggestions of a sweet and happy daily life.--_the evangelist._ the book is full of sprightly good things.--_herald and presbyter._ ------ bonnell, silver & co., publishers, west d street, new york. proofreading team. the island of faith by margaret e. sangster to m's m and chance contents i. introducing--the settlement house ii. the quarrel iii. concerning ideals iv. the park v. rose-marie comes to the rescue vi. "there's no place--" vii. a lily in the slums viii. another quarrel ix. and another x. mrs. volsky promises to try xi. bennie comes to the settlement house xii. an island xiii. ella makes a decision xiv. pa steps aside xv. a solution xvi. enter--jim xvii. an answer xviii. and a miracle xix. and the happy ending i introducing--the settlement house there is a certain section of new york that is bounded upon the north by fourteenth street, upon the south by delancy. folk who dwell in it seldom stray farther west than the bowery, rarely cross the river that flows sluggishly on its eastern border. they live their lives out, with something that might be termed a feverish stolidity, in the dim crowded flats, and upon the thronged streets. to the people who have homes on central park west, to the frail winged moths who flutter up and down broadway, this section does not exist. its poor are not the picturesque poor of the city's latin quarter, its criminals seldom win to the notoriety of a front page and inch-high headlines; it almost never produces a genius for the world to smile upon--its talent does not often break away from the undefined, but none the less certain, limits of the district. it is curious that this part of town is seldom featured in song or story, for it is certainly neither dull nor unproductive of plot. the tenements that loom, canyon-like, upon every side are filled to overflowing with human drama; and the stilted little parks are so teeming with romances, of a summer night, that only the book of the ages would be big enough to hold them--were they written out! life beats, like some great wave, up the dim alleyways--it breaks, in a shattered tide, against rock-like doorways. the music of a street band, strangely sweet despite its shrillness, rises triumphantly above the tumult of pavement vendors, the crying of babies, the shouting of small boys, and the monotonous voices of the womenfolk. in almost the exact center of this district is the settlement house--a brown building that is tall and curiously friendly. between a great hive-like dwelling place and a noisy dance-hall it stands valiantly, like the soldier of god that it is! and through its wide-open doorway come and go the girls who will gladly squander a week's wage for a bit of satin or a velvet hat; the shabby, dull-eyed women who, two years before, were care-free girls themselves; the dreamers--and the ones who have never learned to dream. for there is something about the settlement house--and about the tiny group of earnest people who are the heart of the settlement house--that is like a warm hand, stretched out in welcome to the poor and the needy, to the halt in body and the maimed in soul, and to the casual passer-by. ii the quarrel "they're like animals," said the young doctor in the tone of one who states an indisputable fact. "only worse!" he added. rose-marie laid down the bit of roll that she had been buttering and turned reproachful eyes upon the young doctor. "oh, but they're not," she cried; "you don't understand, or you wouldn't talk that way. you don't understand!" quite after the maddening fashion of men the doctor did not answer until he had consumed, and appreciatively, the last of the roll he was eating. and then-- "i've been here quite as long as you have, miss thompson," he remarked, a shade too gently. the superintendent raised tired eyes from her plate. she was little and slim and gray, this superintendent; it seemed almost as though the slums had drained from her the life and colour. "when you've been working in this section for twenty years," she said slowly, "you'll realize that nobody can ever understand. you'll realize that we all have animal traits--to a certain extent. and you'll realize that quarrelling isn't ever worth while." "but"--rose-marie was inclined to argue the point--"but dr. blanchard talks as if the people down here are scarcely human! and it's not right to feel so about one's fellow-men. dr. blanchard acts as if the people down here haven't _souls_!" the young doctor helped himself nonchalantly to a second roll. "there's a certain sort of a little bug that lives in the water," he said, "and it drifts around aimlessly until it finds another little bug that it holds on to. and then another little bug takes hold, and another, and another. and pretty soon there are hundreds of little bugs, and then there are thousands, and then there are millions, and then billions, and then--" the superintendent interrupted wearily. "i'd stop at the billions, if i were you," she said, "particularly as they haven't any special bearing on the subject." "oh, but they _have_" said the doctor, "for, after a while, the billions and _trillions_ of little bugs, clinging together, make an island. they haven't souls, perhaps," he darted a triumphant glance at rose-marie, "but they make an island just the same!" he paused for a moment, as if waiting for some sort of comment. when it did not come, he spoke again. "the people of the slums," he said, "the people who drift into, and out of, and around this settlement house, are not very unlike the little bugs. and, after all, _they do help to make the city_!" there was a quaver in rose-marie's voice, and a hurt look in her eyes, as she answered. "yes, they are like the little bugs," she said, "in the blind way that they hold together! but please, dr. blanchard, don't say they are soulless. don't--" all at once the young doctor's hand was banging upon the table. all at once his voice was vehemently raised. "it's the difference in our point of view, miss thompson," he told rose-marie, "and i'm afraid that i'm right and that you're--not right. you've come from a pretty little country town where every one was fairly comfortable and fairly prosperous. you've always been a part of a community where people went to church and prayer-meeting and sunday-school. your neighbours loved each other, and played pollyanna when things went wrong. and you wore white frocks and blue sashes whenever there was a lawn party or a sociable." he paused, perhaps for breath, and then--"i'm different," he said; "i struggled for my education; it was always the survival of the fittest with me. i worked my way through medical school. i had my hospital experience in bellevue and on the island--most of my patients were the lowest of the low. i've tried to cure diseased bodies--but i've left diseased minds alone. diseased minds have been out of my line. perhaps that's why i've come through with an ideal of life that's slightly different from your sunshine and apple blossoms theory!" "oh," rose-marie was half sobbing, "oh, you're so hard!" the young doctor faced her suddenly and squarely. "why did you come here," he cried, "to the slums? why did you come to work in a settlement house? what qualifications have you to be a social service worker, you child? what do you know of the meaning of service, of life?" rose-marie's voice was earnest, though shaken. "i came," she answered, "because i love people and want to help them. i came because i want to teach them to think beautiful thoughts, to have beautiful ideals. i came because i want to show them the god that i know--and try to serve--" she faltered. the young doctor laughed--but not pleasantly. "and i," he said, "came to make their bodies as healthy as possible. i came because curing sick bodies was my job--_not because i loved people or had any particular faith in them_. prescribing to criminals and near-criminals isn't a reassuring work; it doesn't give one faith in human nature or in human souls!" the superintendent had been forgotten. but her tired voice rose suddenly across the barrier of speech that had grown high and icy between the young doctor and rose-marie. "you both came," she said, and she spoke in the tone of a mother of chickens who has found two young and precocious ducklings in her brood, "you both came to help people--of that i'm sure!" rose-marie started up, suddenly, from the table. "i came," she said, as she moved toward the door that led to the hall, "to make people better." "and i," said the young doctor, moving away from the table toward the opposite side of the room and another door, "i came to make them healthier!" with his hand on the knob of the door he spoke to the superintendent. "i'll not be back for supper," he said shortly, "i'll be too busy. giovanni celleni is out of jail again, and he's thrown his wife down a flight of stairs. she'll probably not live. and while minnie cohen was at the vaudeville show last night--developing her soul, perhaps--her youngest baby fell against the stove. well, it'll be better for the baby if it does die! and there are others--" the door slammed upon his angry back. rose-marie's face was white as she leaned against the dark wainscoting. "minnie cohen brought the baby in last week," she shuddered, "such a dear baby! and mrs. celleni--she tried so hard! oh, it's not right--" she was crying, rather wildly, as she went out of the room. the superintendent, left alone at the table, rang for the stolid maid. her voice was carefully calm as she gave orders for the evening meal. if she was thinking of giovanni celleni, his brute face filled with semi-madness; if she was thinking of a burned baby, sobbing alone in a darkened tenement while its mother breathlessly watched the gay colours and shifting scenes of a make-believe life, her expression did not mirror her thought. only once she spoke, as she was folding her napkin, and then-- "they're both very young," she murmured, a shade regretfully. perhaps she was remembering the enthusiasm--and the intolerance--of her own youth. iii concerning ideals "sunshine and apple blossoms!" rose-marie, hurrying along the hall to her own room, repeated the young doctor's words and sobbed afresh as she repeated them. she tried to tell herself that nothing he could think mattered much to her, but there was a certain element of truth in everything that he had said. it was a fact that her life had been an unclouded, peaceful one--her days had followed each other as regularly, as innocuously, as blue china beads, strung upon a white cord, follow each other. of course, she told herself, she had never known a mother; and her father had died when she was a tiny girl. but she was forced to admit--as she had been forced to admit many times--that she did not particularly feel the lack of parents. her two aunts, that she had always lived with, had been everything to her--they had indulged her, had made her pretty frocks, had never tried, in any way, to block the reachings of her personality. when she had decided suddenly, fired by the convincing address of a visiting city missionary, to leave the small town of her birth, they had put no obstacle in her path. "if you feel that you must go," they had told her, "you must. maybe it is the work that the lord has chosen for you. we have all faith in you, rose-marie!" and rose-marie, splendid in her youth and assurance, had never known that their pillows were damp that night--and for many another night--with the tears that they were too brave to let her see. they had packed her trunk, folding the white dress and the blue sash--rose-marie wondered how the young doctor had known about the dress and sash--in tissue paper. they had created a blue serge frock for work, and a staunch little blue coat, and a blue tam-o'-shanter. rose-marie would have been aghast to know how childish she looked in that tam-o'-shanter! her every-day shoes had been resoled; her white ruffled petticoats had been lengthened. and then she had been launched, like a slim little boat, upon the turbulent sea of the city! looking back, through a mist of angry tears, rose-marie felt her first moment of homesickness for the friendly little town with its wide, tree-shaded streets, its lawn parties, and its neighbours; cities, she had discovered, discourage the art of neighbouring! she felt a pang of emptiness--she wanted her aunts with their soft, interested eyes, and their tender hands. at first the city had thrilled her. but now that she had been in the settlement house a month, the thrill was beginning to die away. the great buildings were still unbelievably high, the crowds of people were still a strange and mysterious throng, the streets were as colourful as ever--but life, nevertheless, was beginning to settle into ordinary channels. she had thought, at the beginning of her stay there, that the settlement house was a hotbed of romance. every ring of the doorbell had tingled through her; every step in the hall had made her heart leap, with a strange quickening movement, into her throat--every shabby man had been to her a possible tragedy, every threadbare woman had been a case for charity. she had fluttered from reception-hall to reading-room, and back again--she had been alert, breathless, eager. but, with the assignment of regular duties, some of the adventure had been drained from life. for her these consisted of teaching a club of girls to sew, of instructing a group of mothers in the art of making cakes and pies and salads, and of hearing a half hundred little children repeat their a b cs. only the difference in setting, only the twang of foreign tongues, only the strange precociousness of the children, made life at all different from the life at home. she told herself, fiercely, that she might be a teacher in a district school--a country school--for all the good she was accomplishing. she had offered, so many times, to do visiting in the tenements--to call upon families of the folk who would not come to the settlement house. but the superintendent had met her, always, with a denial that was wearily firm. "i have a staff of women--older women from outside--who do the visiting," she had said. "i'm afraid" she was eyeing rose-marie in the blue coat and the blue tam-o'-shanter, "i'm afraid that you'd scarcely be--convincing. and," she had added, "dr. blanchard takes care of all the detail in that department of our work!" dr. blanchard ... rose-marie felt the tears coming afresh at the thought of him! she remembered how she had written home enthusiastic, schoolgirlish letters about the handsome man who sat across the dining table from her. it had seemed exciting, romantic, that only the three of them really should live in the great brownstone house--the young doctor, the superintendent--who made a perfect chaperon--and herself. it had seemed, somehow, almost providential that they should be thrown together. yes, rose-marie remembered how she had been attracted to dr. blanchard at the very first--how she had found nothing wanting in his wiry strength, his broad shoulders, his dark, direct eyes. but she had not been in the settlement house long before she began to feel the clash of their natures. when she started to church service, on her first sunday in new york, she surprised a smile of something that might have been cynical mirth upon his lean, square-jawed face. and when she spoke of the daily prayers that she and her aunts had so beautifully believed in, back in the little town, he laughed at her--not unkindly, but with the sympathetic superiority that one feels for a too trusting child. rose-marie, thinking it over, knew that she would rather meet direct unkindness than that bland superiority! and so--though there had never been an open quarrel until the one at the luncheon table--rose-marie had learned to look to the superintendent for encouragement, rather than to the young doctor. and she had frigidly declined his small courtesies--a visit to the movies, a walk in the park, a 'bus ride up fifth avenue. "i never went to the movies at home," she had told him. or, "i'm too busy, just now, to take a walk." or, "i can't go with you to-day. i've letters to write." "it's a shame," she confided, on occasion, to the superintendent, "that dr. blanchard never goes to church. it's a shame that he has had so little religious life. i gave him a book to read the other day--the letters of an american missionary in china--and he laughed and told me that he couldn't waste his time. what do you think of that! but later," rose-marie's voice sank to a horrified whisper, "later, i saw him reading a cheap novel--he had time for a cheap novel!" the superintendent looked down into rose-marie's earnest little face. "my dear," she said gently, stifling a desire to laugh, "my dear, he's a very busy man. he gives a great deal of himself to the people here in the slums. the novel, to him, was just a mental relaxation." but to the young doctor, later, the superintendent spoke differently. "billy blanchard," she said, and she only called him billy blanchard when she wanted to scold him, "i've known you for a long time. and i'm sure that there's no harm in you. of course," she sighed, "i wish that you could feel a little more in sympathy with the spiritual side of our work. but i've argued with you, more than once, on that point!" the doctor, who was packing medicines into his bag, looked up. "you know, you old dear," he told her, "that i'm hopeless. i haven't had an easy row to hoe, not ever; you wouldn't be religious yourself if you were in my shoes! there--don't look so shocked--you've been a mother to me in your funny, fussy way, since i came to this place! that's the main reason, i guess, that i stick here, as i do, when i could make a lot more money somewhere else!" he reached up to pat her thin hand, and then, "but why are you worrying, just now, about my soul?" he questioned. the superintendent sighed again. "it's the little thompson girl," she answered; "she's so anxious to convert people, and she's so sincere,--so very sincere. i can't help feeling that you are a thorn in her flesh, billy. she says that you won't read her missionary books--" the young doctor interrupted. "she's such a pretty girl," he said quite fiercely. "why on earth didn't she stay at home, where she belonged! why on earth did she pick out this sort of work?" the superintendent answered. "one never knows," she said, "why girls pick out certain kinds of work. i've had the strangest cases come to my office--of homely girls who wanted to be artists' models, and anemic girls who wanted to be physical directors, and flighty girls who wanted to go to bible school, and quiet girls who were all set for a career on the stage. rose-marie thompson is the sort of a girl who was cut out to be a home-maker, to give happiness to some nice, clean boy, to have a nursery full of rosy-cheeked babies. and yet here she is, filled with a desire to rescue people, to snatch brands from the burning. here she is in the slums when she'd be dramatically right in an apple orchard--at the time of year when the trees are covered with pink and white blossoms." the young doctor laughed. he so well understood the superintendent--so enjoyed her point of view. "yes," he agreed, "she'd be perfect there in an organdy frock with the sun slanting across her face. but--well, she's just like other girls. tell a pretty girl that she's clever, they say, and tell a clever girl that she's a raving, tearing beauty. that's the way for a man to be popular!" the superintendent laughed quietly with him. it was a moment before she grew sober again. "i wonder," she said at last, "why you have never tried to be popular with girls. you could so easily be popular. you're young and--don't try to hush me up--good-looking. and yet--well, you're such an antagonistic person. from the very first you've laughed at rose-marie--and she was quite ready to adore you when she arrived. how do i know? oh, i could tell! take the child seriously, billy blanchard, before she actually begins to dislike you!" the young doctor put several bottles of violently coloured pills into his bag before he spoke. "she dislikes me already," he said. "she's such a cool little person. what are you trying to do, anyway? are you trying to matchmake; to stir up a love affair between the both of us--" suddenly he was laughing again. "i'm too busy to have a romance, you old dear," he told the superintendent, "far too busy. i'm as likely to fall in love, just now, as you are!" the woman's face was averted as she answered. but her low voice was steady. "when i was your age, billy," she said gently, "i _was_ in love. that's why, perhaps, i came here. that's why, perhaps, i stayed. no, he didn't die--he married another girl. and dreams are hard things to forget. that's why i left the country. maybe that's why the little thompson girl--" but the young doctor was shaking his head. "she hasn't had any love affair," he told the superintendent. "she's too young and full of ideals to have anything so ordinary as a romance. everybody," his laugh was not too pleasant, "can have a romance! and few people can be so filled with ideals as miss thompson. oh, it's her ideals that i can't stand! it's her impractical way of gazing at life through pink-coloured glasses. she'll never be of any real use here in the slums. i'm only afraid that she'll come to some harm because she's so trusting and over-sincere. i'd hate to see her placed in direct contact with some of the young men that i work with, for instance. you haven't--" all at once his voice took on a new note. "you haven't let her be with any of the boys' classes, have you? her ideals might not stand the strain!" the superintendent answered. "ideals don't hurt any one," she said, and her voice was almost as fierce as the doctor's. "no, i haven't given her a bit of work with the boys. she's too young and too untouched and, as you say, too pretty. i'm letting her spend her time with the mothers, and the young girls, and the little tots--not even allowing her to go out alone, if i can help it. such innocence--" the superintendent broke off suddenly in the middle of the sentence. and she sighed again. iv the park crying helps, sometimes. when rose-marie, alone in her room, finally dried away the tears that were the direct result of her quarrel with dr. blanchard, there was a new resolve in her eyes--a look that had not been there when she went, an hour before, to the luncheon table. it was the look of one who has resolutions that cannot be shattered--dreams that are unbreakable. she glanced at her wrist watch and there was a shade of defiance in the very way she raised the arm that wore it. "they make a baby of me here," she told herself, "they treat me like a silly child. it's a wonder that they don't send a nurse-maid with me to my classes. it's a wonder"--she was growing vehement--"that they give me credit for enough sense to wear rubbers when it's raining! i," again she glanced at the watch, "i haven't a single thing to do until four o'clock--and it's only just a little after two. i'm going out--_now_. i'm going into the streets, or into a tenement, or into a--a _dive_, if necessary! i'm going to show them"--the plural pronoun, strangely, referred to a certain young man--"that i can help somebody! i'm going to show them--" she was struggling eagerly into her coat; eagerly she pulled her tam-o'-shanter over the curls that, even in the city slums, were full of sunshine. with her hands thrust staunchly into her pockets, she went out; out into the jungle of streets that met, as in the center of a labyrinth, in front of the settlement house. always, when she had gone out alone, she had sought a small park not far from her new home. it was a comfortingly green little oasis in the desert of stone and brick--a little oasis that reminded one of the country. she turned toward it now, quite blindly, for the streets confused her--they always did. as the crowds closed around her she hurried vaguely, as a swimmer hurries just before he loses his head and goes down. she caught her breath as she went, for the crowds always made her feel submerged--quite as the swimmer feels just before the final plunge. she entered the park--it was scarcely more than a square of grass--with a very definite feeling of relief, almost of rescue. as usual, the park was crowded. but park crowds are different from street crowds--they are crowds at rest, rather than hurrying, restless throngs. rose-marie sank upon an iron bench and with wide, childishly distended eyes surveyed the people that surged in upon her. there was a woman with a hideous black wig--the badge of revered jewish motherhood--pressed down over the front of her silvered hair. rose-marie, a short time ago, would have guessed her age at seventy--now she told herself that the woman was probably forty. there was a slim, cigarette-smoking youth with pale, shifty eyes. there was an old, old man--white-bearded like one of the patriarchs--and there was a dark-browed girl who held a drowsy baby to her breast. all of these and many more--italians, slavs, russians, hungarians and an occasional chinaman--passed her by. it seemed to the girl that this section was a veritable melting pot of the races--and that every example of every race was true to type. she had seen any number of young men with shifty eyes--she had seen many old men with white beards. she knew that other black-wigged women lived in every tenement; that other dark-browed girls were, at that same moment, rocking other babies. she fell to wondering, whimsically, whether god had fashioned the people of the slums after some half-dozen set patterns--almost as the cutter, in many an alley sweatshop, fashions the frocks of a season. a sharp cry broke in upon her wonderings. it was the cry of an animal in utter pain--in blind, unreasoning agony. rose-marie was on her feet at the first moment that it cut, quiveringly, through the air. with eyes distended she whirled about to face a small boy who knelt upon the ground behind her bench. to rose-marie the details of the small boy's appearance came back, later, with an amazing clarity. later she could have described his dark, sullen eyes, his mouth with its curiously grim quirk at one corner, his shock of black hair and his ragged coat. but at the moment she had the ability to see only one thing--the scrawny gray kitten that the boy had tied to the iron leg of the bench; the shrinking kitten that the boy was torturing with a cold, relentless cruelty. it shrieked again--with an almost human cry--as she started around the bench toward it. and the wild throbbing of her heart told her that she was witnessing, for the first time, a phase of human nature of which she had never dreamed. v rose-marie comes to the rescue rose-marie's hand upon the small boy's coat collar was not gentle. with surprising strength, for she was small and slight, she jerked him aside. "you wicked child!" she exclaimed, and the young doctor would have chuckled to hear her tone. "you wicked child, what are you doing?" without waiting for an answer she knelt beside the pitiful little animal that was tied to the bench, and with trembling fingers unloosed the cord that held it, noting as she did so how its bones showed, even through its coat of fur. when it was at liberty she gathered it close to her breast and turned to face the boy. he had not tried to run away. even with the anger surging through her, rose-marie admitted that the child was not--in one sense--a coward. he had waited, brazenly perhaps, to hear what she had to say. with blazing eyes she said it: "why," she questioned, and the anger that made her eyes blaze also put a tremor into her voice, "why were you deliberately hurting this kitten? don't you know that kittens can feel pain just as much as you can feel pain? don't you know that it is wicked to make anything suffer? why were you so wicked?" the boy looked up at her with sullen, dark eyes. the grim twist at one corner of his mouth became more pronounced. "aw," he said gruffly, "why don't yer mind yer own business?" if rose-marie's hands had been free, she would have taken the boy suddenly and firmly by both shoulders. she felt an overwhelming desire to shake him--to shake him until his teeth chattered. but both of her hands were busy, soothing the gray kitten that shivered against her breast. "i am minding my own business," she told the boy. "it's my business to give help where it's needed, and this kitten," she cuddled it closer, "certainly needed help! haven't you ever been told that you should be kind? like," she faltered, "like jesus was kind? he wouldn't have hurt anything. he loved animals--and he loved boys, too. why don't you try to be the sort of a boy he could love? why do you try to be bad--to do wrong things?" the eyes of the child were even more sullen--the twist of his mouth was even more grim as he listened to rose-marie. but when she had finished speaking, he answered her--and still he did not try to run away. "wot," he questioned, almost in the words of the young doctor, "wot do you know about things that's right an' things that's wrong? it ain't bad t' hurt animals--not if they're little enough so as they ain't able t' hurt you!" rose-marie sat down, very suddenly, upon the bench. in all of her life--her sheltered, glad life--she had never heard such a brutal creed spoken, and from the lips of a child! her eyes, searching his face, saw that he was not trying to be funny, or saucy, or smart. curiously enough she noted that he was quite sincere--that, to him, the torturing of a kitten was only a part of the day with its various struggles and amusements. when she spoke again her tone was gentle--as gentle as the tone with which the other slum children, who came to the settlement house, were familiar. "whoever told you," she questioned, "that it's not wrong to hurt an animal, so long as it can't fight back?" the boy eyed her strangely. rose-marie could almost detect a gleam of latent interest in his dark eyes. and then, as if he had gained a sort of confidence in her, he answered. "nobody never told me," he said gruffly. "but i _know_." the kitten against rose-marie's breast cried piteously. perhaps it was the hopelessness of the cry that made her want so desperately to make the boy understand. conquering the loathing she had felt toward him she managed the ghost of a smile. "i wish," she said, and the smile became firmer, brighter, as she said it, "i wish that you'd sit down, here, beside me. i want to tell you about the animals that i've had for pets--and about how they loved me. i had a white dog once; his name was dick. he used to go to the store for me, he used to carry my bundles home in his mouth--and he did tricks--" the boy had seated himself, gingerly, on the bench. he interrupted her, and his voice was eager. "did yer have t' beat him," he questioned, "t' make him do the tricks? did he bleed when yer beat him?" again rose-marie gasped. she leaned forward until her face was on a level with the boy's face. "why," she asked him, "do you think that the only way to teach an animal is to teach him by cruelty? i taught my dog tricks by being kind and sweet to him. why do you talk of beatings--i couldn't hurt anything, even if i disliked it, until it _bled_!" the small boy drew back from rose-marie. his expression was vaguely puzzled--it seemed almost as if he did not comprehend what her words meant. "my pa beats me," he said suddenly, "always he beats me--when he's drunk! an' sometimes he beats me when he ain't. he beats ma, too, an' he uster beat jim, 'n' ella. he don't dare beat jim now, though"--this proudly--"jim's as big as he is now, an' ella--nobody'd dast lay a hand on ella ..." almost as suddenly as he had started to talk, the boy stopped. for the moment the episode of the kitten was a forgotten thing. there was only pity, only a blank sort of horror, on rose-marie's face. "doesn't your father love you--any of you?" she asked. "naw." the boy's mouth was a straight line--a straight and very bitter line, for such a young mouth. "naw, he only loves his booze. he hits me all th' time--an' he's four times as big as me! an' so i hit whoever's smaller'n i am. an' even if they cry i don't care. i hate things that's little--that can't take care o' themselves. everything had oughter be able t' take care of itself!" "haven't you"--again rose-marie asked a question--"haven't you ever loved anything that was smaller than you are? haven't you ever had a pet? haven't you ever felt that you must protect and take care of some one--or something? haven't you?" all at once the boy was smiling, and the smile lit up his small, dark face as a candle, slowly flickering, brings cheer and brightness to a dull, lonely room. "i love lily," he told her. "i wouldn't let nobody touch lily! if pa so much as spoke mean to her--i'd kill him. i'd kill him with a knife!" rose-marie shuddered inwardly at the thought. but her voice was very even as she spoke. "who is lily?" she asked. the boy had slid down along the bench. he was so close to her that his shabby coat sleeve touched her blue one. "lily's my kid sister," he said, and, miracle of miracles, his voice held a note of tenderness. "say--miss, i'm sorry i hurt th' cat." with a sudden feeling of warmth rose-marie moved just a fraction of an inch closer to the boy. she knew, somehow, that his small, curiously abject apology was in a way related to the "kid sister"; she knew, almost instinctively, that this lily who could make a smile come to the dark little face, who could make a tenderness dwell in those hard young eyes, was the only avenue by which she could reach this strange child. she spoke to him suddenly, impulsively. "i'd like to see your lily; i'd like to see her, awfully," she told him. "will you bring her some time to call on me? i live at the settlement house." a subtle change had come over the child's face. he slid, hurriedly, from the bench. "oh," he said, "yer one o' them! you sing hymns 'n' pray 'n' tell folks t' take baths. i know. well, i can't bring lily t' see you--not ever!" rose-marie had also risen to her feet. "then," she said eagerly, "let me come and see lily. where do you live?" the boy's eyes had fallen. it was plain that he did not want to answer--that he was experiencing the almost inarticulate embarrassment of childhood. "we live," he told her at last, "in that house over there." his pointing finger indicated the largest and grimiest of the tenements that loomed, dark and high, above the squalor of a side street. "but you wouldn't wanter come--there!" rose-marie caught her breath sharply. she was remembering how the superintendent had forbidden her to do visiting, how the young doctor had laughed at her desire to be of service. she knew what they would say if she told them that she was going into a tenement to see a strange child named lily. perhaps that was why her voice had an excited ring as she answered. "yes, i would come there!" she told the boy. "tell me what floor you live on, and what your name is, and when it would be best for me to come?" "my name's bennie volsky," the boy said slowly. "we're up five flights, in th' back. d'yer really mean that you'll come--an' see lily?" rose-marie nodded soberly. how could the child know that her heart was all athrob with the call of a great adventure? "yes, i mean it," she told him. "when shall i come?" the boy's grubby hand shot out and rested upon her sleeve. "come to-morrow afternoon," he told her. "say, yer all right!" he turned, swiftly, and ran through the crowd, and in a moment had disappeared like a small drab-coloured city chameleon. rose-marie, standing by the bench, watched the place where he had disappeared. and then, all at once, she turned swiftly--just as swiftly as the boy had--and started back across the park toward the settlement house. "i won't tell them!" she was saying over and over in her heart, as she went, "i won't tell them! they wouldn't let me go, if i did.... i won't tell them!" the kitten was still held tight in her arms. it rested, quite contentedly, against her blue coat. perhaps it knew that there was a warm, friendly place--even for little frightened animals--in the settlement house. vi "there's no place--" when rose-marie paused in front of the tenement, at three o'clock on the following afternoon, she felt like a naughty little girl who is playing truant from school. when she remembered the way that she had avoided the superintendent's almost direct questions, she blushed with an inward sense of shame. but when she thought of the young doctor's offer to go with her--"wherever she was going"--she threw back her head with a defiant little gesture. she knew well that the young doctor was sorry for yesterday's quarrel--she knew that a night beside the dying mrs. celleni, and the wails of the cohen baby, had temporarily softened his viewpoint upon life. and yet--he had said that they were soulless--these people that she had come to help! he would have condemned bennie volsky from the first--but she had detected the glimmerings of something fine in the child! no--despite his more tolerant attitude--she knew that, underneath, his convictions were unchanged. she was glad that she had gone out upon her adventure alone. with a heart that throbbed in quick staccato beats, she mounted the steps of the tenement. little dark-eyed children moved away from her, apparently on every side, but somehow she scarcely noticed them. the doorway yawned, like an open mouth, in front of her--and she could think of nothing else. as she went over the dark threshold she remembered stories that she had read about people who go in at tenement doorways and are never seen again. every one has read such stories in the daily newspapers--and perhaps some of them are true! a faint light flickered in through the doorway. it made the ascent of the first flight of creaking stairs quite easy. at least rose-marie could step aside from the piles of rubbish and avoid the rickety places. she wondered, as she went up, her fingers gingerly touching the dirty hand-rail, how people could exist under such wretched conditions. the second flight was harder to manage. the light from the narrow doorway was shut off, and there were no windows. there might have been gas jets upon every landing--rose-marie supposed that there were--but it was mid-afternoon, and they had not yet been lighted. she groped her way up the second flight, and the third, feeling carefully along each step with her foot before she put her weight upon it. on the fourth flight she paused for a moment to catch her breath. but she realized, as she paused, that even breathing had to be done under difficulties in this place. there was no ventilation of any sort, so far as she could tell--all about her floated the odours of boiled cabbage, and fried onions, and garlic. and there were other odours, too; the indescribable smells of soiled clothing and soap-suds and greasy dishes. but in rose-marie's mind, the odours--poignant though they were--took second place to the sounds. never, she told herself, had she imagined that so many different sorts of noises could exist in the same place at one and the same time. there were the cries and sobs of little children, the moans of sickness, the thuds of falling furniture and the crashes of breaking crockery. there were yells of rage, and--worst of all--bursts of appalling profanity. rose-marie, standing there in the darkness of the fourth flight, heard words that she had never expected to hear--phrases of which she had never dreamed. she shuddered as she started up the fifth flight, and when, at last, she stood in front of the volsky flat, she experienced almost a feeling of relief. at least she would be shut off, in a moment, from those alien and terrible sounds--at least, in a moment, she would be in a _home_. to most of us--particularly if we have grown up in an atmosphere such as had always sheltered rose-marie--the very sound of the word "home" brings a certain sense of warmth and comfort. home stands for shelter and protection and love. "be it ever so humble," the old song tells us, "be it ever so humble ..." and rose-marie, knocking timidly upon the volsky door, expected to find a home. she expected it to be humble in the truest sense of the word--to be ragged and poverty-stricken and mean. and yet she could not feel that it would be utterly divorced from the ideals she had always built around her conception of the word. she expected it to be a home because a family lived there together--a mother, and a father, and children. in answer to her knock the door swung open--a little way. the glow of a dingy lamp fell about her, through the opening--she felt suddenly as if she had been swept, willy-nilly, before the footlights of some hostile stage. for a moment she stood blinking. and as she stood there, quite unable to see, she heard the voice of bennie volsky, speaking in a hoarse whisper. "it's you, miss!" said the voice, and it was as full of intense wonderment as a voice could be. "i never thought that you'd come--i didn't think you was on th' level. so many folks say they'll do things--" he broke off, and then--"walk in, quiet," he told her slowly. "don't make any noise, if yer can help it! pa's come home, all lit up. an' he's asleep, in th' corner! there'll be--" he broke off--"there'll be th' dickens t' pay, if pa wakes up! but walk in, still-like. an' yer can see ma an' all, an'--_lily_!" rose-marie, whose eyes had now become accustomed to the dim light, stepped past the boy and into the room. her hand, in passing, touched his arm lightly, for she knew that he was labouring under intense excitement. she stepped into the room, on mousy-quiet feet--and then, with a quick gasp, drew back again. never, in her wildest dreams of poverty, had rose-marie supposed that squalor, such as she saw in the volsky home, could exist. never had she supposed that a family could live in such cramped, airless quarters. never had she thought that filth, such as she saw in the room, was possible. it all seemed, somehow, an unbelievably bad dream--a dream in which she was appearing, with startling realism. her comfortable picture of a home was vanishing--vanishing as suddenly and completely as a soap bubble vanishes, if pricked by a pin. "why--why, bennie!" she began. but the child was not listening. he had darted from her side and was dragging forward, by one listless, work-coarsened hand, a pallid, drooping woman. "dis is my ma," he told rose-marie. "she didn't know yer was comin'. i didn't tell her!" it seemed to rose-marie that there was a scared sort of appeal in the woman's eyes as they travelled, slowly, over her face. but there was not even appeal in the tone of her voice--it was all a drab, colourless monotone. "whatcha come here fer?" she questioned. "pa, he's home. if he should ter wake up--" she left the sentence unfinished. almost instinctively the eyes of rose-marie travelled past the figure of mrs. volsky. there was nothing in that figure to hold her gaze--it was so vague, so like a shadow of something that had been. she saw the few broken chairs, the half-filled wash tub, the dish-pan with its freight of soiled cups and plates. she saw the gas stove, with its battered coffee-pot, and a mattress or two piled high with dingy bedding. and, in one corner, she saw--with a new sense of horror--the reclining figure of pa. pa was sleeping. sleeping heavily, with his mouth open and his tousled head slipping to one side. one great hairy hand was clenched about an empty bottle--one huge foot, stockingless and half out of its shoe, was dragging limply off the heap of blankets that was his bed. a stubble of beard made his already dark face even more sinister, his tousled hair looked as if it had never known the refining influences of a comb or brush. as rose-marie stared at him, half fascinated, he turned--with a spasmodic, drunken movement--and flung one heavy arm above his head. the room was not a large one. but, at that moment, it seemed appallingly spacious to rose-marie. she turned, almost with a feeling of affection, toward bennie. at least she had seen him before. and, as if he interpreted her feeling, bennie spoke. "we got two other rooms," he told her, "one that ella an' lily sleep in, an' one that jim pays fer, his own self. ma an' pa an' me--we sleep _here_! say, don't you be too scared o' pa--he'll stay asleep fer a long time, now. he won't wake up unless he's shook. will he, ma?" mrs. volsky nodded her head with a worn out, apathetic movement. noiselessly, but with the appearance of a certain terrible effort under the shell of quiet, she moved away across the room toward the stove. "she's goin' t' warm up th' coffee," bennie said. "she'll give you some, in a minute, if yer want it!" rose-marie was about to speak, about to assure bennie that she didn't want any of the coffee, when steps sounded on the stairs. they were hurried steps; steps suggesting to the listener that five flights were nothing, after all! rose-marie found herself turning as a hand fell heavily upon a door-knob, and the door swung in. a young man stood jauntily upon the threshold. rose-marie's first impression of him was one of extreme, almost offensive neatness--of sleek hair, that looked like patent leather, and of highly polished brown shoes. she saw that his blue and white striped collar was speckless, that his blue tie was obviously new, that his trousers were creased to an almost dangerous edge. but it was the face of the young man from which rose-marie shrank back--a clever, sharp face with narrow, horribly speculative eyes and a thin-lipped red mouth. it was a handsome face, yes, but-- the voice of bennie broke, suddenly, across her speculations. "jim," he said. still jauntily--rose-marie realized that jauntiness was his keynote--the young man entered the room. his sharp eyes travelled with lightning-like rapidity over the place, resting a moment on the sleeping figure of pa before they hurried past him to rose-marie. he surveyed her coolly, taking in every feature, every fold of her garments, with a studied boldness that was somehow offensive. "who's she?" he questioned abruptly, of any one who cared to answer, and one manicured finger pointed in her direction. "where'd she come from?" bennie was the one who spoke. rather gallantly he stepped in front of rose-marie. "she's a friend of mine," he said; "she lives by th' settlement house. she come up here t' see me, 'n' ma, 'n' lily. you leave her be--y' understand?" the young man laughed, and his laugh was curiously hard and dry. "oh, sure!" he told bennie. "i'll leave her be! what," he turned to rose-marie with an insolent smile, "what's yer name?" rose-marie met his insolent gaze with a calm expression. no one would have guessed that she was trembling inwardly. "my name," she told him, "is rose-marie thompson. i live in the settlement house, and i came to see your sister." "well," the young man's insolent gaze was still studying rose-marie, "well, she'll be up soon. i passed 'er on th' stairs. but," he laughed again, "why didn't yer come t' see me--huh?" rose-marie, having no answer, turned expectantly toward the door. if this jim had passed his sister on the stairs, she couldn't be very far away. as if in reply to her supposition, the door swung open again and a tall, dark-eyed girl came into the room. rose-marie saw with her first swift glance that the red upon the girl's cheeks was too high to be quite natural--that the scarlet of her lips was over-vivid. and yet, despite the patently artificial colouring, she realized that the girl was beautiful with a high strung, almost thoroughbred beauty. she wondered how this beauty had been born of the dim woman who seemed so colourless and the sodden brute who lay snoring in the comer. her train of thought was broken, suddenly. for the young man was speaking. rose-marie disliked, somehow, the very tone of his voice. "here's a girl t' see you, ella," he said. "she's from th' settlement house--she says! maybe she wants," sarcastically, "that you should join a bible class!" the girl's eyes were flashing with a dangerously hard light. she turned angrily to rose-marie. but before she could say anything, the child, bennie, had interposed. "she didn't come t' see _you_" he told his older sister--"she don't want t' see you--like those other wimmen did. she come t' see _lily_--" he paused and rose-marie, who had gathered that social service workers were not welcome visitors, went on breathlessly, from where he left off. "i _am_ from the settlement house," she told ella, "and i'd like awfully to have you join our classes. but that wasn't why i came here. bennie told me that he had a dear little sister. and i came to see her." a change swept miraculously over ella's cold face. rose-marie could see, all at once, that she and her young brother were strikingly alike--that jim was the different one in this family. "i'll get lily," ella said simply, and there was a warmth, a tenderness in her dark eyes that had been so hard. "i didn't understand," she added, as she went quickly past rose-marie and into the small inner room that bennie had said his sisters shared. in a moment she came out leading a small girl by the hand. "this is lily!" she said softly. even in that dingy place--perhaps accentuated by the very dinginess of it--lily's blond loveliness struck rose-marie with a sense of shock. the child might have been a flower--the very flower whose name she bore--growing upon an ash heap. her beauty made the rest of the room fade into dim outlines--made jim and ella and bennie seem heavy, and somehow overfed. even pa, snoring lustily, became almost a shadow. rose-marie stepped toward the child impulsively, with outflung arms. "oh, you dear!" she said shakily, "you dear!" nobody spoke. only ella, with gentle hands, pushed her little sister forward. the child's great blue eyes looked past rose-marie, and a vague smile quivered on her lips. "oh, you dear!" rose-marie exclaimed again, and went down on her knees on the dirty floor--real women will always kneel before a beautiful child. lily might have been four years old. her hair, drawn back from her white little face, was the colour of pale gold, and her lips were faintly coral. but it was her deep eyes, with their vague expression, that clutched, somehow, at rose-marie's heart. "tell me that you're going to like me, lily!" she almost implored. "i love little girls." the child did not answer--indeed, she did not seem to hear. but one thin little hand, creeping out, touched rose-marie's face with a gesture that was singularly appealing, singularly full of affection. when the fingers touched her cheek, rose-marie felt a sudden suspicion, a sudden dread. she noticed, all at once, that no one was speaking--that the room was quite still, except for the beastial grunts of the sleeping pa. "why," she asked, quite without meaning to, "why doesn't she answer me? she isn't afraid of me, is she? why doesn't she say something?" it was, curiously enough, mrs. volsky who answered. even her voice--that was usually so dull and monotonous--held a certain tremor. "lily," she said slowly, "can't spick--'r hear.... an' she's--blind!" vii a lily in the slums rose-marie started back from the child with a sickening sense of shock. all at once she realized the reason why bennie's eyes grew tender at the mention of his little sister--why ella forgot anger and suspicion when lily came into the room. she understood why mrs. volsky's dull voice held love and sorrow. and yet, as she looked at the small girl, it seemed almost incredible that she should be so afflicted. deaf and dumb and blind! never to hear the voices of those who loved her, never to see the beautiful things of life, never--even--to speak! rose-marie choked back a sob, and glanced across the child's cloud of pale golden hair at ella. as their eyes met she knew that they were, in some strange way, friends. with a sudden, overwhelming pity, her arms reached out again to lily. as she gathered the child close she was surprised at the slenderness of the tiny figure, at the neatness of the faded gingham frock that blended in tone with the great, sightless eyes. all at once she remembered what bennie had said to her, the day before, in the park. "i love lily," he had told her, "i wouldn't let nobody hurt lily! if any one--even pa, so much as spoke mean to her--i'd kill him...." glancing about the room, at the faces of the others, she sensed a silent echo of bennie's words. mrs. volsky, who would keep neither her flat nor herself neat, quite evidently saw to it that lily's little dress was spotless. ella, whose temper would flare up at the slightest word, cared for the child with the tender efficiency of a professional nurse; bennie's face, as he looked at his tiny sister, had taken on a cherubic softness. and jim ... rose-marie glanced at jim and was startled out of her reflections. for jim was not looking at lily. his gaze was fixed upon her own face with an intensity that frightened her. with a sudden impulse she spoke directly to him. "you must be very kind to this little sister of yours," she told him. "she needs every bit of love and affection and consideration that her family can give her!" jim, his gaze still upon her face, shrugged his shoulders. but before he could answer ella had come a step closer to rose-marie. her eyes were flashing. "jim," she said, "ain't got any love or kindness or consideration in him! jim thinks that lily ain't got any more feelin's than a puppy dog--'cause she can't answer back. oh," in response to the question in rose-marie's face, "oh, he'd never put a finger on her--not that! but he don't speak kind to her, like we do. it's enough fer him that she can't hear th' words he lays his tongue to. even pa--" suddenly, as if in answer to his spoken name, there came a scuffling sound from the corner where pa was sleeping. all at once the empty bottle dropped from the unclenched hand, the mouth fell open in a prodigious yawn, the eyes became wide, burned-out wells of drunkenness. and as she watched, rose-marie saw the room cleared in an amazing fashion. she heard mrs. volsky's terrified whisper, "he's wakin' up!" she heard jim's harsh laugh; she saw ella, with a fiercely maternal sweep of her strong arms, gather the little lily close to her breast and dart toward the inner room. and then, as she stood dazedly watching the mountain of sodden flesh that was pa rear itself to a sitting posture, and then to a standing one, she felt a hot little hand touch her own. "we better clear out," said the voice of bennie. "we better clear out pretty quick! pa's awful bad, sometimes, when he's just wakin' up!" with a quickness not unlike the bump at the end of a falling-through-space dream, rose-marie felt herself drawn from the room--heard the door close with a slam behind her. and then she was hurrying after the shadowy form of bennie, down the five rickety flights of stairs--past the same varied odours and the same appalling sounds that she had noticed on the way up! viii another quarrel when rose-marie came out into the sunlight of the street she glanced at her watch and saw, with an almost overwhelming surprise, that it was only four o'clock. it was just an hour since she had entered the cavern-like doorway of the tenement. but in that hour she had come, for the first time, against life in the rough. she had seen degeneracy, and poverty, and--she was thinking of the expression in jim's eyes--a menace that she did not at all understand. she had seen the waste of broken middle age and the pity of blighted childhood. she had seen fear and, if she had stayed a few moments longer, she would have seen downright brutality. her hand, reaching out, clutched bennie's hand. "dear," she said--and realized, from the startled expression of his eyes, that he had not often been called "dear,"--"is it always like that, in your home?" bennie looked up into her eyes. he seemed, somehow, younger than he had appeared the day before, younger and softer. "yes, miss," he told her, "it's always like that, except when it's worse!" "and," rose-marie was still asking questions, "do your older sister and brother just drift in, at any time, like that? and is your father home in the middle of the day? don't any of them work?" bennie's barriers of shyness had been burned away by the warmth of her friendship. he was in a mood to tell anything. "pa, he works sometimes," he said. "an' ella--she uster work till she had a fight with her boss last week. an' now she says she ain't gotta work no more 'cause there's a feller as will give her everythin' she wants, if she says th' word! an' jim--i ain't never seen him do nothin', but he always has a awful lot o' money. he must do his workin' at night--after i'm asleep!" rose-marie, her mind working rapidly, realized that bennie had given revelations of which he did not even dream. pa--his condition was what she had supposed it to be--but ella was drifting toward danger-shoals that she had never imagined! well she knew the conditions under which a girl of ella's financial status stops working--she had heard many such cases discussed, with an amazing frankness, during her short stay at the settlement house. and jim--jim with his sleek, patent-leather hair, and his rat-like face--jim did his work at night! rose-marie could not suppress the shudder that ran over her. quickly she changed the subject to the one bright spot in the volsky family--to lily. "your little sister," she asked bennie, "has she always been as she is now? wasn't there ever a time when she could hear, or speak, or see?" bennie winked back a suspicion of tears before he answered. rose-marie, who found herself almost forgetting the episode of the kitten, liked him better for the tears. "yes, miss," he told her, "she was born all healthy, ma says. but she had a sickness--when she was a baby. an' she ain't been right since!" they walked the rest of the way in silence--a silence of untold depth. but it was that silent walk, rose-marie felt afterward, that cemented the strange affection that had sprung suddenly into flower between them. as they said good-bye, in front of the brownstone stoop of the settlement house, there was none of the usual restraint that exists between a child and a grown-up. and when rose-marie asked bennie, quite as a matter of course, to come to some of their boys' clubs he assented in a manner as casual as her own. * * * * * as she sat down to dinner, that night, rose-marie was beaming with happiness and the pride of achievement. the superintendent, tired after the day's work, noticed her radiance with a wearily sympathetic smile--the young doctor, coming in briskly from his round of calls, was aware of her pink cheeks and her sparkling eyes. all at once he realized that rose-marie was a distinct addition to the humdrum life of the place; that she was like a sweet old-fashioned garden set down in the gardenless slums. he started to say something of the sort before he remembered that a quarrel lay, starkly, between them. rose-marie, herself, could scarcely have told why she was so bubbling over with gladness. when she left the tenement home of the volskys she had been exceedingly depressed, when she parted from bennie at the settlement house steps she had been ready to cry. but the hours between that parting and dinnertime had brought her a sort of assurance, a sort of joyous bravery. she felt that at last she had found her true vocation, her real place in the sun. the volsky family presented to her a very genuine challenge. she glanced, covertly, at the young doctor. he was eating soup, and no man is at his best while eating soup. and yet as she watched him, she considered very seriously whether she should tell him of her adventure. his skill might, perhaps, find some way out for lily, who had not been born a mute, who had come into the world with seeing eyes. bennie had told her that the child's condition was the result of an illness. perhaps the young doctor might be able to effect at least a partial cure. perhaps it was selfish of her--utterly, absurdly selfish, to keep the situation to herself. the superintendent's voice broke, sharply, into her reverie. it was a pleasant voice, and yet rose-marie found herself resenting its questioning tone. "did you have a pleasant afternoon, dear?" the superintendent was asking. "i noticed that you were out for a long while, alone!" "why, yes," rose-marie faltered, as she spoke, and, to her annoyance, she could feel the red wave of a blush creeping up over her face (rose-marie had never learned to control her blushes). "why, yes, i had a very delightful afternoon!" the young doctor, glancing up from his soup, felt a sudden desire to tease. rose-marie, with her cheeks all flushed, made a startlingly colourful, extremely young picture. "you're blushing!" he told her accusingly. "you're blushing!" rose-marie, feeling the blushes creep still higher, knew a rude impulse to slap the young doctor. all of her desire to confide in him died away, as suddenly as it had been born. he was the man who had said that the people who lived in poverty are soulless. he would scoff at the volskys, and at her desire to help them. worse than that--he might keep her from seeing the volskys again. and, in keeping her from seeing them, he would also keep her from making bennie into a real, wholesome boy--he would keep her from showing ella the dangers of the precipice that she was skirting. of course, he might help lily. but, rose-marie told herself that perhaps even lily--golden-haired, angelic little lily--might seem soulless to him. "i'm not blushing, dr. blanchard," she said shortly, and could have bitten her tongue for saying it. the young doctor laughed with a boyish vigour. "i thought," he said annoyingly, "that you were a christian, miss rose-marie thompson!" rose-marie felt a tide of quite definite anger rising in her heart. "i am a christian!" she retorted. "then," the young doctor was still laughing, "then you must never, never tell untruths. you are blushing!" the superintendent interrupted. it had been her role, lately, to interrupt quarrels between the two who sat on either side of her table. "don't tease, billy blanchard!" she said, sternly. "if rose-marie went anywhere this afternoon, she certainly had a right to. and she also has a right to blush. i'm glad, in these sophisticated days, to see a girl who can blush!" the young doctor was leaning back in his chair, surveying the pair of them with unconcealed amusement. "how you women do stick together!" he said. "talk about men being clannish! i believe," he chuckled, "from the way miss thompson is blushing, that she's got a very best beau! i believe that she was out with him, this afternoon!" rose-marie, who had always been taught that deceit is wicked, felt a sudden, unexplainable urge to be wicked! she told herself that she hated dr. blanchard--she told herself that he was the most unsympathetic of men! his eyes, fixed mirthfully upon her, brought words--that she scarcely meant to say--to her lips. "well," she answered slowly and distinctly, "what if i was?" there was silence for a moment. and then--with something of an effort--the superintendent spoke. "i told you," she said, "not to bother rose-marie, doctor. if rose-marie was out with a young man i'm sure that she had every right to be. rose-marie"--was it possible that her eyes were fixed a shade inquiringly upon the blushing girl--"would have nothing to do with any one who had not been approved by her aunts. and she realizes that she is, in a way, under my care--that i am more or less responsible for her safety and welfare. rose-marie is trustworthy, absolutely trustworthy. and she is old enough to take care of herself. you must not bother her, billy blanchard!" it was a long speech for the superintendent, and it was a kindly one. it was also a speech to invite confidences. but--strangely enough--rose-marie could not help feeling that there was a question half concealed in the kindliness of it. she could not help feeling that the superintendent was just a trifle worried over the prospect of an unknown young man. it was her time, then, to admit that there was nobody, really--that she had gone out on an adventure by herself, that there had been no "beau." but the consciousness of the young doctor's eyes, fixed upon her face, prohibited all speech. she could not tell him about the volskys--neither could she admit that no young man was interested in her. every girl wants to seem popular in the eyes of some member of the opposite sex--even though that member may be an unpleasant person--whom she dislikes. and so, with a feeling of utter meanness in her soul--with a real weight of deceit upon her heart--she smiled into the superintendent's anxious face. "i do appreciate the way you feel about me," she said softly, "i do, indeed! you may be sure that i won't do anything that either you, or my aunts, would disapprove of!" after all, she assured herself a trifle uncomfortably, she had in no way told a direct falsehood. they had assumed too much and she had not corrected their assumptions. she said fiercely, in her heart, that she was not to blame if they insisted upon taking things for granted! ix and another as the days crept into weeks, rose-marie no longer felt the dull unrest of inaction. she was busy at the settlement house--her clubs for mothers and young girls, her kindergarten for the little tots, had grown amazingly popular. and at the times when she was not busy at the settlement house, she had the volsky family and their many problems to occupy her. the volsky family--and their many problems! rose-marie would have found it hard to tell which problem was the most important! of course lily came first--her infirmities and her sweetness made her the central figure. but the problem of ella was a more vital one to watch--it was, somehow, more immediate. rose-marie had found it hard to reach ella--except when lily was the topic of conversation; except when lily's welfare was to be considered, she stayed silently in the background. but the flashings of her great dark eyes, the quiverings of her too scarlet mouth, were ominous. rose-marie could see that the untidiness of the flat, the drunken mutterings of pa, and her mother's carelessness and dirt had strained ella's resistance to the breaking point. some day there would be a crash and, upon that day ella would disappear like a gorgeous butterfly that drifts across the road, and out of sight. rose-marie was hoping to push that day into the background--to make it only a dim uncertainty rather than the sword of damocles that it was. but she could only hope. bennie, too, was a problem. but it was bennie who cheered rose-marie when she felt that her efforts in behalf of ella were failing. for bennie's brain was the fertile ground in which she could plant ideals, and dreams. bennie was young enough to change, and easily. he got into the way of waiting for her, after his school had been dismissed, in the little park. and there, seated close together on an iron bench, they would talk; and rose-marie would tell endless stories. most of the stories were about knights who rode upon gallant quests, and about old-time courtesy, and about wonderful animals. but sometimes she told him of her home in the country--of apple trees in bloom, and frail arbutus hiding under the snow. she told him of coasting parties, and bonfires, and trees to climb. and he listened, star-eyed and adoring. they made a pretty picture together--the slim, rosy-cheeked girl and the ragged little boy, with the pale, city sunshine falling, like a mist, all about them. lily and ella and bennie--rose-marie loved them, all three. but jim volsky was the unsolvable problem--the one that she tried to push to the back of her mind, to avoid. mrs. volsky and pa she gave up as nearly hopeless--she kept, as much as possible, out of pa's way, and mrs. volsky could only be helped in the attaining of creature comforts--her spirit seemed dead! but jim insisted upon intruding upon her moments in the flat; he monopolized conversations, and asked impertinent questions, and stared. more than once he had offered to "walk her home" as she was leaving; more than once he had thrust himself menacingly across her path. but she had managed, neatly, to avoid him. rose-marie was afraid of jim. she admitted it to herself--she even admitted, at times, that the young doctor might be of assistance if any emergency should arise out of jim's sleek persistence. she had noticed, from the first, that the doctor was an impressive man among men--she had seen the encouraging swell of muscles through the warm tweed of his coat sleeve. but to have asked his help in the controlling of jim would have been an admission of deceit, of weakness, of failure! to prove her own theory that the people were real, underneath--to prove that they had some sort of a code, and worth-while impulses--she had to make the reformation of the volsky family her own, individual task. yes--rose-marie was busy. almost she hated to give up moments of her time to the letters she had to write home--to the sewing that she had to do. she made few friends among the teachers and visitors who thronged the settlement house by day--she was far too tired, when night came, to meet with the young doctor and the superintendent in the cosy little living-room. but often when her activities lasted well along into the evening, often when her clubs gave sociables or entertainments, she was forced to welcome the young doctor (the superintendent was always welcome); to make room for him beside her own place. it was during one of these entertainments--her girls' sewing society was giving a party--that she and the young doctor had their first real talk. before the quarrel at the luncheon table they had had little time together; since the quarrel the young doctor had seldom been able to corner rose-marie. but at the entertainment they were placed, by the hand of circumstance, upon a wooden settee in the back of the room. and there, for the better part of two hours--while katie syrop declaimed poetry and helen merskovsky played upon the piano, and others recited long and monotonous dialogues--they were forced to stay. the young doctor was in a chastened mood. he applauded heartily whenever a part of the program came to a close; the comments that he made behind his hand were neither sarcastic nor condescending. he praised the work that rose-marie had done and then, while she was glowing--almost against her will--from the warmth of that praise, he ventured a remark that had nothing to do with the work. "when i see you," he told her very seriously, "when i see you, sitting here in one of our gray coloured meeting rooms, i can't help thinking how appropriate your name is. rose-marie--there's a flower, isn't there, that's named rosemary? i like flowery names!" rose-marie laughed, as lightly as she could, to cover a strange feeling of embarrassment. "most people don't like them," she said--"flowery names, i mean. i don't myself. i like names like jane, and anne, and nancy. i like names like phyllis and sarah. i've always felt that my first name didn't fit my last one. thompson," she was warming to her subject, "is such a matter-of-fact name. there's no romance in it. but rose-marie--" the young doctor interrupted. "but rose-marie," he finished for her, "is teeming with romance! it suggests vague perfumes, and twilight in the country, and gay little lights shining through the dusk. it suggests poetry." rose-marie had folded her hands, softly, in her lap. her eyes were bent upon them. "my mother," she said, and her voice was quiet and tender, "loved poetry. i've heard how she used to read it every afternoon, in her garden. she loved perfumes, too, and twilight in the country. my mother was the sort of a woman who would have found the city a bit hard, i think, to live in. beauty meant such a lot--to her. she gave me my name because she thought, just as you think, that it had a hint of lovely things in it. and, even though i sometimes feel that i'd like a plainer one, i can't be sorry that she gave it to me. for it was a part of her--a gift that was built out of her imagination," all at once she coughed, perhaps to cover the slight tremor in her voice, and then-- "to change the subject," she said, "i'll tell you what rosemary really is. you said that you thought it was a flower. it's more than a flower," she laughed shakily, "it's a sturdy, evergreeny sort of little shrub. it has a clean fragrance, a trifle like mint. and it bears small blue blossoms. folk say that it stands for remembrance," suddenly her eyes were down, again, upon her clasped hands. "let's stop talking about flowers and the country--and mothers--" she said suddenly. her voice broke upon the last word. the young doctor's understanding glance was on the girl's down-bent face. after a moment he spoke. "are you ever sorry that you left the home town, miss rose-marie?" he questioned. rose-marie looked at him, for a moment, to see whether he was serious. and then, as no flicker of mirth stirred his mouth, she answered. "sometimes i'm homesick," she said. "usually after the lights are out, at night. but i'm never sorry!" the young doctor was staring off into space--past the raised platform where the girls of the club were performing. "i wonder," he said, after a moment, "i wonder if you can imagine what it is to have nothing in the world to be lonesome for, miss rose-marie?" rose-marie felt a quick wave of sympathy toward him. "my mother and my father are dead, dr. blanchard--you know that," she told him, "but my aunts have always been splendid," she added honestly, "and i have any number of friends! no, i've never felt at all alone!" the young doctor was silent for a moment. and then-- "it isn't an alone feeling that i mean," he told her, "not exactly! it's rather an empty feeling! like hunger, almost. you see my father and mother are dead, too. i can't even remember them. and i never had any aunts to be splendid to me. my childhood--even my babyhood--was spent in an orphan asylum with a firm-fisted matron who punished me; with nobody to give me the love i needed. i came out of it a hard man--at fourteen. i--" he broke off, suddenly, and then-- "i don't know why i'm telling you all this," he said; "you wouldn't be in the least interested in my school days--they were pretty drab! and you wouldn't be interested in the scholarship that gave me my profession. for," his tone changed slightly, "you aren't even interested in the result--not enough to try to understand my point of view, when i attempt to tell you, frankly, just what i think of the people down here--barring girls like these," he pointed to the stage, "and a few others who are working hard to make good! you act, when i say that they're like animals, as if i'm giving you a personal insult! you think, when i suggest that you don't go, promiscuously, into dirty tenements, that i'm trying to curb your ambition--to spoil your chances of doing good! but i'm not, really. i'm only endeavouring, for your own protection, to give you the benefit of my rather bitter experience. i don't want any one so young, and trusting and--yes, beautiful--as you are, to be forced by experience into my point of view. we love having you here, at the settlement house. but i almost wish that you'd go home--back to the place and the people that you're lonesome for--after the lights are out!" rose-marie, watching the play of expression across his keen dark face, was struck, first of all by his sincerity. it was only after a moment that she began to feel the old resentment creeping back. "then," she said at last, very slowly, "then you think that i'm worthless here? it seems to me that i can help the people more, just because i am fresh, and untried, and not in the least bitter! it seems to me that by direct contact with them i may be able to show them the tender, guiding hand of god--as it has always been revealed to me. but you think that i'm worthless!" there was a burst of loud singing from the raised platform. the girls of the sewing club loved to sing. but neither rose-marie nor the young doctor was conscious of it. "no," the young doctor answered, also very slowly, "no, i don't think that you are worthless--not at all.-but i'm almost inclined to think that you're _wasted_. go home, child, go home to the little town! go home before the beautiful colour has worn off the edge of your dreams!" again rose-marie felt the swift burst of anger that she had felt upon other occasions. why did he persist in treating her like a child? but her voice was steady as she answered. "well," she said, "i'm afraid that i'll have to disappoint you! for i came here with a definite plan to carry out. and i'm going to stay here until i've at least partly made good!" the young doctor was watching her flushed face. he answered almost regretfully. "then," he said, "i'm glad that you have a sweetheart--you didn't deny it, you know, the other night! he'll take you away from the slums, i reckon, before very long! he'll take you away before you've been hurt!" rose-marie, looking straight ahead, did not answer. but the weight of deceit upon her soul made her feel very wicked. yes, the weight of deceit upon her soul made her feel very wicked! but later that night, after the club members had gone home, dizzy with many honours, it was not the weight of deceit that troubled her. as she crept into her narrow little bed she was all at once very sorry for herself; and for a vanished dream! dr. blanchard could be so nice--when he wanted to. he could be so understanding, so sympathetic! there on the bench in the rear of the room they had been, for a moment, very close together. she had nearly come back, during their few minutes of really intimate conversation, to her first glowing impression of him. and then he had changed so suddenly--had so abruptly thrust aside the little house of friendship that they had begun to build. "if he would only let me," she told herself, "i could teach him to like the things i like. if he would only understand i could explain just how i feel about people. if he would only give me a chance i could keep him from being so lonely." rose-marie had known few men. the boys of her own town she scarcely regarded as men--they were old playmates, that was all. no one stood out from the other, they were strikingly similar. they had carried her books to school, had shared apples with her, had played escort to prayer-meetings and to parties. but none of them had ever stirred her imagination as the young doctor stirred it. there in the dark rose-marie felt herself blushing. could it be possible that she felt an interest in the young doctor, an interest that was more than a casual interest? could it be possible that she liked a man who showed plainly, upon every possible occasion, that he did not like her? could it be possible that a person who read sensational stories, who did not believe in the greatness of human nature, who refused to go to church, attracted her? of a sudden she had flounced out of bed; had shrugged her slender little body into a shapeless wrapper--the parting gift of a girl friend--from which her small flushed face seemed to grow like some delicate spring blossom. with hurried steps--she might almost have been running away from something--she crossed the room to a small table that served as a combination dresser and writing desk. brushing aside her modest toilet articles, she reached for a pad of paper and a small business-like fountain pen. her aunts--she wanted them, all at once, and badly. she wished that she might talk with them--writing seemed so inadequate. "my dears," she began, "i miss you very much. often i'm lonely enough to cry. of course," she added hastily (for they must not worry), "of course, every one is nice to me. i like every one, too. that is, except dr. blanchard. i guess i told you about him; he's the resident physician. he's awfully good looking but he's not very pleasant. i never hated any one so--" she paused, for a moment, as a round tear splashed devastatingly down upon the paper. x mrs. volsky promises to try as lily pattered across the room, on her soft, almost noiseless little feet, rose-marie stopped talking. she had been having one of her rare conversations alone with mrs. volsky--a conversation that she had almost schemed for--and yet she stopped. it struck her suddenly as strange that lily's presence in any place should make such a vast difference--that the child should bring with her a healing silence and a curious tenderness. she had felt, many times before, a slowing up in conversations--she had seen the bitterness drain from ella's face, the stolidness from bennie's. she had even seen pa, half intoxicated, turn and go quietly from a room that lily was entering. and now, as she watched, she saw a spark leap into the dullness of mrs. volsky's eyes. with a gentle hand she reached out to the child, drew her close. lily nestled against her side with a slight smile upon her faintly coral lips, with her blue, vacant gaze fixed upon space--or upon something that they could not see! rose-marie had often felt that lily was watching beautiful vistas with those sightless eyes of hers; that she was hearing wonderful sounds, with her useless little ears--sounds that normal people could not hear. but she did not say anything of the sort to mrs. volsky--mrs. volsky would not have been able to understand. instead she spoke of something else that had lain, for a long time, upon her mind. "has lily ever received any medical attention?" she asked abruptly. mrs. volsky's face took on lines of blankness. "what say?" she mouthed thickly. "i don' understan'?" rose-marie reconstructed her question. "has lily ever been taken to a doctor?" she asked. mrs. volsky answered more quickly than she usually answered questions. "when she was first sick, years ago," she told rose-marie, "she had a doctor then. he say--no help fer her. las' year ella, she took lily by a free clinic. but the doctors, there, they say lily never get no better. and if there comes another doctor to our door, now--" she shrugged; and her shrug seemed to indicate the uselessness of all doctors. rose-marie, with suddenly misting eyes, lifted lily to her knee... "the only times," she said slowly, "when i feel any doubt in my mind of the divine plan--are the times when i see little children, who have never done anything at all wicked or wrong, bearing pain and suffering and..." she broke off. mrs. volsky answered, as she almost always answered, with a mechanical question. "what say?" she murmured dully. rose-marie eyed her over the top of lily's golden head. after all, she told herself, in the case of mrs. volsky she could see the point of dr. blanchard's assertion! she had known many animals who apparently were quicker to reason, who apparently had more enthusiasm and ambition, than mrs. volsky. she looked at the dingy apron, the unkempt hair, the sagging flesh upon the gray cheeks. and she was conscious suddenly of a feeling of revulsion. she fought it back savagely. "christ," she told herself, "never turned away from people because they were dirty, or ugly, or stupid. christ loved everybody--no matter how low they were. he would have loved mrs. volsky." it was curious how it gave her strength--that reflection--strength to look straight at the woman in front of her, and to smile. "why," she asked, and the smile became brighter as she asked it, "why don't you try to fix your hair more neatly, mrs. volsky? and why don't you wear fresh aprons, and keep the flat cleaner? why don't you try to make your children's home more pleasant for them?" mrs. volsky did not resent the suggestion as some other women might have done. mrs. volsky had reached the point where she no longer resented even blows. "i uster try--onct," she said tonelessly, "but it ain't no good, no more. ella an' bennie an' jim don' care. an' pa--he musses up th' flat whenever he comes inter it. an' lily can't see how it looks. so what's th' use?" it was a surprisingly long speech for mrs. volsky. and some of it showed a certain reasoning power. rose-marie told herself, in all fairness, that if she were mrs. volsky--she, too, might be inclined to ask "what's th' use?" she leaned forward, searching desperately in her mind for something to say. "do you like _me_, mrs. volsky?" she questioned at last, "do you like me?" the woman nodded, and again the suggestion of a light flamed up in her eyes. "sure i like you," she said, "you are good to all of us--_an' to lily_." "then," rose-marie's voice was quivering with eagerness, "then won't you try--_for my sake_--to make things here," the sweep of her hand included every corner of the ugly room, "a little better? i'll help you, very gladly. i'll make new aprons for you, and i'll"--her brave resolution faltered, but only for a moment--"i'll wash your hair, and take you to the free baths with me. and then," she had a sudden inspiration, "then lily will love to touch you, you'll be so nice and clean! then lily will be glad that she has you for a mother!" all at once the shell of stupidity had slipped from mrs. volsky's bent shoulders. all at once she was eager, breathlessly eager. "miss," she said, and one thin, dingy hand was laid appealingly upon rose-marie's dress, "miss, you can do wit' me as you wish to! if you t'ink dat my bein' clean will make lily glad"--she made a sudden impetuous gesture with her hand--"den i will be clean! if you t'ink dat she will like better dat i should be her mother," the word, on her lips, was surprisingly sweet, "den i will do--_anyt'ing_!" all at once she broke into phrases that were foreign to rose-marie, phrases spoken lovingly in some almost forgotten tongue. and the girl knew that she was quite forgotten--that the drab woman was dreaming over some youthful hope, was voicing tenderly the promises of a long dead yesterday, and was making an impassioned pledge to her small daughter and to the future! the words that she spoke might be in the language of another land--but the tone was unmistakable, was universal. rose-marie, listening to her, felt a sudden desire to kneel there, on the dirty tenement floor, and say a little prayer of thanksgiving. once again she had proved that she was right--and that the young doctor was wrong. xi bennie comes to the settlement house it was bennie who came first to the settlement house. shyly, almost, he slipped through the great doors--as one who seeks something that he does not quite understand. as he came, a gray kitten, creeping out from the shadows of the hall, rubbed affectionately against his leg. and bennie, half unconsciously--and with absolutely no recognition--stooped to pat its head. rose-marie would have cried with joy to have seen him do it, but rose-marie was in another part of the building, teaching tiny children to embroider outlines, with gay wool, upon perforated bits of cardboard. the young doctor, passing by the half-opened door of the kindergarten room, saw her there and paused for a moment to enjoy the sight. he thought, with a curious tightening of his lips, as he left noiselessly, that some day rose-marie would be surrounded by her own children--far away from the settlement house. and he was surprised at the sick feeling that the thought gave him. "i've been rather a fool," he told himself savagely, "trying to send her away. i've been a fool. but i'd never known anything like her--not in all of my life! and it makes me shiver to think of what one meeting with some unscrupulous gangster would do to her point of view. it makes me want to fight the world when i realize how an unpleasant experience would affect her love of people. i'd rather never see her again," he was surprised, for a second time, at the pain that the words caused him, "than to have her made unhappy. i hope that this man of hers is a regular fellow!" he passed on down the hall. he walked slowly, the vision of rose-marie, a dream child held close to her breast, before his eyes. that was why, perhaps, he did not see bennie--why he stumbled against the boy. "hello," he said gruffly, for his voice was just a trifle hoarse (voices get that way sometimes, when visions _will_ stay in front of one's eyes!) "hello, youngster! do you want anything? or are you just looking around?" bennie straightened up. the kitten that he had been patting rubbed reassuringly against his legs, but bennie needed more reassurance than the affection of a kitten can give. the kindness of rose-marie, the stories that she had told him, had given him a great deal of confidence. but he had not yet learned to stand up, fearlessly, to a big man with a gruff voice. it is a step forward to have stopped hurting the smaller things. but to accept a pretty lady's assurance that things larger than you will be kind--that is almost too much to expect! bennie answered just a shade shrinkingly. "th' kids in school," he muttered, "tol' me 'bout a club they come to here. it's a sort of a scout club. they wears soldier clo's. an' they does things fer people. an' i wanter b'long," he gulped, noisily. the young doctor leaned against the wall. he did not realize how tall and strong he looked, leaning there, or he could not have smiled so whimsically. to him the small dark boy with his earnest face, standing beside the gray kitten, was just an interesting, rather lovable joke. "which do you want most," he questioned, "to wear soldier clothes, or to do things for people?" bennie gulped again, and shuffled his feet. his voice came, at last, rather thickly. "i sorter want to do things fer people!" he said. more than anything else the young doctor hated folk, even children, who say or do things for effect. and he knew well the lure that soldier clothes hold for the small boy. "say, youngster," he inquired in a not too gentle voice, "are you trying to bluff me? or do you really mean what you're saying? and if you do--why?" bennie had never been a quitter. by an effort he steadied his voice. "i mean," he said, "what i'm a-tellin' yer. i wanter be a good boy. my pa, he drinks. he drinks like--" the word he used, in description, was not the sort of a word that should have issued from childish lips. "an' my big brother--he ain't like pa, but he's a bum, too! i don't wanter be like they are--not if i kin help it! i wanter be th' sort of a guy king arthur was, an' them knights of his'n. i wanter be like that there st. george feller, as killed dragons. i wanter do real things," unconsciously he was quoting from the gospel of rose-marie, "wi' my life! i wanter be a good husban' an' father--" all at once the young doctor was laughing. it was not an unkind laugh--it gave bennie heart to listen to it--but it was exceedingly mirthful. bennie could not know that the idea of himself, as a husband and father, was sending this tall man into such spasms of merriment--he could not know that it was rather incongruous to picture his small grubby form in the shining armour of st. george or of king arthur. but, being glad that the doctor was not angry, he smiled too--his strange, twisted little smile. the young doctor stopped laughing almost as quickly as he had begun. with something of interest in his face he surveyed the little ragged boy. "where," he questioned after a moment, "did you learn all of that stuff about knights, and saints, and doing things with your life, and husbands and fathers? who told you about it?" bennie hesitated a moment. perhaps he was wondering who had given this stranger a right to pry into his inner shrine. perhaps he was wondering if rose-marie would like an outsider to know just what she had told him. when he answered, his answer was evasive. "a lady told me," he said. "a lady." the young doctor was laughing again. "and i suppose," he remarked, with an effort at solemnity, "that gentlemen don't pass ladies' names about between 'em--i suppose that you wouldn't tell me who this lady of yours may be, even though i'd like to meet her?" bennie's lips closed in a hard little line that quirked up at one end. he shook his head. "i'd ruther not," he said very slowly. "say--where's th' scout club?" the young doctor shook his head. "it's such a strange, old-fashioned, young person!" he informed the empty hallway. and then--"come with me, youngster," he said kindly, "and we'll find this very wonderful club where small boys learn about doing things for people--and, incidentally, wear soldier clothes!" bennie, following stealthily behind him, felt that he had found another friend--something like his lady, only different! xii an island rose-marie was exceptionally weary that night. it had been a hard day. all three of her classes had met, and--late in the afternoon--she had made good her promise to wash mrs. volsky's hair. the task had not been a joyous one--she felt that she could never wash hair again--not even her own soft curls or the fine, snowy locks that crowned her aunts' stately heads. mrs. volsky had once more relapsed into her shell of silence--she had seemed more apathetic, more dull than ever. but rose-marie had noticed that there were no unwashed dishes lying in the tub--that the corners of the room had had some of the grime of months swept out of them. when ella volsky came suddenly into the flat, with lips compressed, and a high colour, rose-marie had been glowingly conscious of her start of surprise. and when she had said, haltingly, in reference to the hair--"i'll dry it for you, miss rose-marie!" rose-marie could have wept with happiness. it was the first time that she had ever heard ella offer to do anything for her mother. jim--coming in as she was about to leave--had added to rose-marie's weariness. he had been more insistent than usual--he had commented upon her rosy cheeks and he had made a laughing reference to her wide eyes. and he had asked her, gruffly, why she didn't take up with some feller like himself--a good provider, an' all, that'd doll her up the way she'd oughter be dolled up? and when ella had interrupted, her dark eyes flashing, he had told her--with a burst of soul-chilling profanity--to mind her own business. and then pa had come in--apparently more drunk than he had ever been. and rose-marie had seen his bleary eyes pass, without a flicker of interest, over his wife's clean apron and freshly washed hair; had seen him throw his coat and his empty bottle into one of the newly dusted corners, had seen his collapse into a heap in the center of the room. and, last of all, as she had hurried away, with jim's final insinuation ringing in her ears, she had known the fear that all was not well with bennie--for bennie came in every afternoon before she left. she could not know that bennie, by this time a budding boy scout, was learning more lessons of the sort that she had taught him. yes, she was weary, in every fibre of her being, as she sat down to supper that night. she had it quite alone in the dining-room, which, all at once, seemed very large--for the superintendent was sitting, somewhere, with a dying woman, and the young doctor had been called out on an emergency case. and then, still alone, she wandered into the library of the settlement house and picked up a book. she felt, somehow, too tired to sleep--too utterly exhausted to lay her head upon her pillow. it was in the library that the superintendent, coming wearily back from the watch with death, found her. "my dear," said the superintendent, and there was a sound of tears in her usually steady voice, "my dear, i'm about all in! yes, i know it's slang, but i can't help it--i feel slangy! come up to my sitting-room for a few minutes and we'll have a cup of hot chocolate!" rose-marie laid down her book with alacrity. she realized, suddenly, that she wanted companionship of her own sort--that she longed with all of her soul to chat with some one who did not murder the queen's english, that she wanted to exchange commonplaces about books, and music, and beautiful things--things that the volskys would not understand. "i guess," she said, as she followed the superintendent into the cozy sitting-room, "i guess that tiredness is in the air to-day. i'm all in, myself. a cup of chocolate and a friendly talk will be a godsend to me, this evening!" the superintendent was laying aside her coat and her hat. she smoothed her hair with a nervous hand, and straightened her linen collar, before she sank into an easy chair. "child," she said abruptly, "_you_ shouldn't be tired--not ever! you've got youth, and all of the world at your feet. you've got beauty, and confidence, and faith. and i--well, i'm getting to be an old woman! i feel sometimes as if i've been sitting on the window sill, watching life go by, for centuries. you mustn't--" she paused, and there was a sudden change in her voice, "you're not tiring yourself, rose-marie? you're not doing more than your strength will permit? if you could have read the letter that your aunts sent to me, when you first came to the settlement house! i tell you, child, i've felt my responsibility keenly! i'd no more think of letting you brush up against the sort of facts i'm facing, than i would--" rose-marie's cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright, as she interrupted. "somehow," she said, "i can't think that you and my aunts are quite right about shielding me--about keeping me from brushing up against life, and the real facts of life. it seems to me that there's only one way to develop--really. and that way is to learn to accept things as they come; to meet situations--no matter how appalling they may be, with one's eyes open. if i," she was warming to her subject, "am never to tire myself out, working for others, how am i to help them? if i am never to see conditions as they are how am i ever to know the sort of a problem that we, here at the settlement house, are fighting? dr. blanchard wouldn't try to treat a case if he had no knowledge of medicine--he wouldn't try to set a broken leg if he had never studied anatomy. you wouldn't be in charge, here, if you didn't know the district, if you didn't realize the psychological reasons back of the things that the people of the district say and do. without the knowledge that you're trying to keep from me you'd be as useless as"--she faltered--"as i am!" the superintendent's expression reflected all the tenderness of her nature; the mother-instinct, which she had never known, made her smile into the girl's serious face. "my dear," she said, "you must not think that you're useless. you must never think that! look at the success you've had in your club work--remember how the children that you teach have come to love you. you've done more with them, because of the things that you don't know, than i could ever do--despite the hard facts that i've had to brush up against. find content, dear, in being the sweet place in our garden--that has so pitifully few flowers. do not long for the hard, uncomfortable places on the other side of the garden wall!" despite the superintendent's expression--despite the gentle tone of her voice, rose-marie felt a sudden desire to cry out against the irony of it all. she was so tired of being classed with the flowers! "they toil not, neither do they spin," came back to her, from a certain golden text that she had learned, long ago, in sunday-school. even at the time it had seemed to her as if the flowers enjoyed lives that were a shade too easy! at the time it had seemed unfair that they, who were not workers, should be beautiful--more beautiful than the ants, for instance, that uncomplainingly toiled all day long for their existence. "i don't want to be a flower," she exclaimed, almost fretfully, "i want to be a worth while member of society--that's what i want! what's the use of being a decoration in a garden! what's the use of knowing only the sunshine? i want to know storms, too, and gales of wind. i want to share the tempests that you go through!" she hesitated; and then--"i read a book once," she said slowly, "i forget what it was--but i remember, in one place, that a woman was being discussed. she was a very beautiful elderly woman who, despite her age, had a face as unlined and calm as a young girl's face could be. one character in the book commented upon the woman's youth and charm, and another character agreed that she _was_ beautiful and charming, but that she'd be worth more if she had a few lines on her face. 'she's never known tears,' the character said, 'she's never lived _deeply_ enough to know tears! her life has been just a surface life. if you go down deep enough into the earth you find water, always. if you go down deep enough into life you invariably find tears. it's one of the unbreakable rules!'" rose-marie paused, for a moment, and stole a covert glance at the superintendent's face. "you don't want me to be a woman whose life is only a surface life," she pleaded, "and it will be just that if you keep me from helping, as i want to help! you don't want me to have a perfectly unlined face when i'm eighty years old?" all at once the superintendent was laughing. "you child!" she exclaimed when the first spasm of mirth had passed, "you blessed child! if you could know how ridiculously young you looked, sitting there and talking about lined faces--and yourself at eighty. eighty is a long way off, rose-marie--for you!" the girl joined, a trifle shamefacedly, in the older woman's laughter. "i reckon," she agreed, "that i do take myself too seriously! but--well, there are families that i'm just dying to help--families that i've come in contact with through the"--again she was forced to a slight deceit--"through the settlement house. i'm sure that i could help them if you'd let me visit them, in their own homes. i'm sure that i'd be able to reform ever so many people if you'd only let me go out and find them. the city missionary who spoke once in our church, back home, told of wonderful things that he'd done--of lives that he'd actually made over. of course, i couldn't do the sort of work he did, but i'm sure--if you'd only give me a chance--" she paused. the superintendent was silent for a moment. and then-- "maybe you're right, dear," she said, "and maybe you're wrong. maybe i am cramping your ambitions--maybe i am hampering your mental and spiritual growth. but then, again, maybe i'm right! and i'm inclined to think that i am right. i'm inclined to adhere to my point, that it will be better for you to wait, until you're older, before you go into many tenements--before you do much reforming outside of the settlement house. when you're older and more experienced i'll be glad to let you do anything--" she was interrupted by a rap upon the door. it was a gentle rap, but it was, above all, a masculine one. there was real gladness on her face as she rose to answer it. "i didn't expect billy blanchard--he thought he had an all-night case," she told rose-marie. "how nice!" but rose-marie was rising to her feet. "i don't think that i'll stay," she said hurriedly, "i'm too tired, after all! i think--" the superintendent had paused in her progress to the door. her voice was surprisingly firm, of a sudden; firmer than rose-marie had ever heard it. "no, my dear," said the superintendent, "you're not too tired! you just don't want to be civil to a very fine boy--who has had a harder day than either of us. you came to the slums, rose-marie, to help people--to show that you were a christian. i think that you can show it, to-night, by forgetting a silly quarrel that happened weeks ago--by forgetting the words dr. blanchard said that he never really meant, inside. if he thought that these people weren't worth it, do you suppose he'd stay here, at the settlement house, for a mere pittance? he's had many a chance to go to fashionable hospitals, up-town!" rose-marie, bewildered, and not a little ashamed, sank back into her seat as the superintendent swung open the door. the young doctor came in with a springing step, but there were gray lines that spoke of extreme fatigue about his mouth, and his eyes were darkly circled. his surprise, at the sight of rose-marie, was evident--though he tried to hide it by the breeziness of his manner. "you'll be glad to know," he told the superintendent, "that the stork has called on the stefan family. it's a boy--nine pounds--with lots of dark hair. there have been three girls, in the stefan family," he explained to rose-marie, "and so they are wild with joy at this latest addition. papa stefan is strutting about like a proud turkey, with his chest out. and mamma stefan is trying to sing a lullaby. i feel something like a tool in the hand of providence, to-night!" he threw himself upon the sofa. there was deep, motherly affection in the superintendent's face as she smiled at him. "we're all of us mental and physical wrecks this evening, billy!" she said. "i think that i've never been so utterly worn out before. katie" (katie was the stolid maid) "is making chocolate for us!" "chocolate!" the young doctor's glance answered the affection that shone out of the superintendent's face--"you _are_ a dear!" he smiled at her, and then--all at once--turned swiftly to rose-marie. "don't let's squabble to-night," he said childishly, "not about anything! we're dog-tired, all three of us, and we're not up to even a tiny quarrel. i'm willing to admit anything you want me to--even that i'm wrong on a lot of subjects. and i want you to admit, yourself, that you'd rather be here, with the two of us, than out in some den of iniquity--reforming people. am i right?" rose-marie felt a glow of friendship toward the young doctor. why couldn't he always be like this--confiding and boyish and approachable? she smiled at him, very sweetly, as she answered. "you're right," she admitted. "i'm afraid that i haven't the heart to think of reforming any one, this evening! i'm just glad--glad from the very soul of me--to be here with you all, in the very center of this--island!" the superintendent's face was puzzled--the superintendent's eyes were vague--as she asked a question. "you said--_island_?" she questioned. rose-marie laughed with a shade of embarrassment. "i didn't really mean to say island," she explained, "but--well, you remember what dr. blanchard told us, once, about the little bugs that fastened together--first one and then another until there were billions? and how, at last, they made an island?" she paused and, at their nods of assent, went on. "ever since then," she told them slowly, "i've thought of us, here at the settlement house, as the first little bugs--the ones that the others must hold to. and i've felt, though many of them don't realize it, though we hardly realize it ourselves, that we're building an island together--_an island of faith_!" there was silence for a moment. and then the young doctor spoke. his voice was a trifle husky. "you've made me more than a bit ashamed of myself, miss rose-marie," he said, "and i want to thank you for putting a real symbolism into my chance words. after all"--suddenly he laughed, and then--"after all," he said, "i wouldn't be surprised if you are right! i had a curious experience, this afternoon, that would go to prove your theory." the superintendent was leaning back, shielding her eyes from the light. "tell us about your experience, billy," she said. the chocolate had come, and the young doctor took an appreciative sip before he answered. "just as i was going out this afternoon," he said, at last, "i ran into a dirty little boy in the hall. he was fondling a kitten--that thin gray one that you brought to the settlement house, miss rose-marie. i asked him what he was doing and he told me that he was hunting for a scout club that he'd heard about. i"--the young doctor chuckled--"i engaged him in conversation. and he told me that his ambition was to be a combination of st. george and king arthur and all the rest of those fellows. he said that, some day, he wanted to be a good husband and father. when i asked him where he got his large ambitions he told me that a lady had given them to him." rose-marie was leaning forward. "did he tell you the lady's name?" she breathed. the young doctor shook his head. "not a thing did he tell me!" he said dramatically. "the lady's name seemed to be something in the nature of a sacred trust to him. but his big dark eyes were full of the spirit that she'd given him. and his funny little crooked mouth was--" he paused, suddenly, his gaze fixed upon rose-marie. "what's the matter?" he queried. "what's the matter? you look as if somebody'd just left you a million dollars!" rose-marie's face was flushed and radiant. her eyes were deep wells of joy. "i have every reason in the world," she said softly, "to be happy!" and she was too absorbed in her own thoughts to realize that a sudden cloud had crept across the brightness of the young doctor's face. xiii ella makes a decision and then the climax of ella's life--the crash that rose-marie had been expecting--happened. it happened when ella came furiously into the volsky flat, early one afternoon, and--ignoring the little lily, who sat placidly on rose-marie's lap--hurried silently into her own room. mrs. volsky, bending over the wash-tubs, straightened up as if she could almost feel the electric quality of the air, as ella passed her, but rose-marie only held tighter to lily--as if, somehow, the slim little body gave her comfort. "i wonder what's the matter?" she ventured, after a moment. mrs. volsky, again bending over the wash-tubs, answered. "ella, she act so funny, lately," she told rose-marie, "an' there is some feller; bennie, he tell me that he have seen her wit' some feller! a rich feller, maybe; maybe he puts ella up to her funny business!" there were sounds of activity from the inner room, as if clothing was being torn down from hooks--as if heavy garments were being flung into bags. rose-marie listened, apprehensively, to the sounds before she spoke again. "perhaps i'd better go in and see what's the matter," she suggested. mrs. volsky, looking back over her shoulder, gave a helpless little shrug. "if you t'inks best," she said hopelessly. "but ella--she not never want to take any help..." only too well rose-marie knew what mrs. volsky meant by her twisted sentence. only too well she understood that ella would never allow herself to be biased by another's judgment,--that ella would not allow herself to be moved by another's plea. and yet she set lily gently down upon the floor and rose to her feet. "i'll see what she's doing," she told mrs. volsky, and pushed open the inner door. despite all of the time that she had spent in the volsky flat, rose-marie had never been past the front room with its tumbled heaps of bedding, and its dirt. she was surprised to see that the inner room, shared by ella and lily, was exquisitely neat, though tiny. there were no windows--the only light came from a rusty gas fixture--but rose-marie, after months in the slums, was prepared for that. it was the geranium, blooming on the shabby table, that caught her eye; it was the clean hair-brush, lying on the same table, and the framed picture of a madonna, upon the wall, that attracted her. she spoke of them, first, to the girl who knelt on the floor, packing a cheap suit-case--spoke of them before she questioned gently: "you're not going away, are you, ella?" ella glanced up from her packing. "yes. i'm going away!" she said, shortly. and then, as if against her will, she added: "i got th' flower an' th' picture for lily. oh, sure, i know that she can't see 'em! but i sorter feel that she knows they're here!" rose-marie's voice was very soft, as she spoke again. "i'm glad that you chose the picture you did," she said, "the picture of the christ child and his mother!" ella wadded a heavy dress into the suit-case. "i don't hold much with religious pictures," she said, without looking up; "religion never did much fer me! i only got it 'cause th' baby had hair like lily's hair!" rose-marie crouched down, suddenly, upon the floor beside the girl. she laid her hand upon the suit-case. "where are you going, ella?" she asked abruptly. "where are you going--and when will you be back?" ella's lips drew up into the semblance of a smile--a very bitter one--as she answered. "it's none of yer business where i'm goin'," she said, "an' i may not ever come back--see?" rose-marie caught her breath in a kind of sob. it was as she had guessed--and feared! "ella," she asked slowly, "are you going alone?" the girl's face coloured swiftly, with a glorious wave of crimson. she tossed her head with a defiant movement. "no, i ain't goin' alone!" she told rose-marie. "you kin betcha life i ain't goin' alone!" rose-marie--sitting beside her on the floor--asked god, silently, for help before she spoke again. she felt suddenly powerless, futile. "_why_ are you going, dear?" she questioned, at last. ella dropped the shoes that she had been about to tuck into the suit-case. her eyes were grim. "because," she said, "i'm tired of all o' this," her finger pointed in the direction of the outer room. "i'm tired o' dirt, and drunken people, and jim's rotten talk. i'm tired o' meals et out o' greasy dishes, an' cheap clothes, and jobs that i hate--an' that i can't nohow seem ter hold! i'm tired, dog-tired, o' life. all that's ever held me in this place is lily. an' sometimes, when i look at her, i don't think that she'd know the difference whether i was here 'r not!" rose-marie was half sobbing in her earnestness. "ah, but she would know the difference," she cried. "lily loves you with all of her heart. and your mother is really trying to be neater, to make a better home for you! she hasn't a pleasant time of it, either--your mother. but she doesn't run away. she stays!" there was scorn in the laugh that came, all at once, from ella's twisted mouth. her great eyes were somberly sarcastic. "sure, she stays," said ella, "'cause she ain't got enough gumption ter be gettin' out! i know." in her heart rose-marie was inclined to agree with ella. she knew, herself, that mrs. volsky would never have the courage to make any sort of a definite decision. but she couldn't say so--not while ella was staring at her with that cynical expression. "i guess," she said bravely, "that we'd better leave your mother out of this discussion. after all, it's between you--and your conscience." "say," ella's face was suddenly drawn and ugly, "say, where do you get off to pull this conscience stuff? you've always had a nice home, an' pretty clothes, an' clean vittles, an'--an' love! i ain't had any of it. but," her eyes flamed, "i'm goin' to! don't you dast ter pull this conscience stuff on me--i've heard you profess'nal slummers talk before--a lot o' times. what good has a conscience ever done me--huh?" rose-marie had been watching the girl's face. of a sudden she shot her thunderbolt. "are you running away to be married, ella?" she asked. a second flush ran over ella's face, and receded slowly--leaving it very pale. but her head went up rather gallantly. "no, i ain't," she retorted. "marriage," she said the words parrot-like, "was made fer th' sort o' folks who can't stick at nothin' unless they're tied. i ain't one of those folks!" across the nearly forgotten suit-case, rose-marie leaned toward ella volsky. her eyes were suddenly hot with anger. "who gave you that sort of an argument?" she demanded. "who has been filling your head with lies? you never thought of that yourself, ella--i know you never thought of that yourself!" ella's eyes met rose-marie's angry glance. her words, when she spoke, came rapidly--almost tumbled over each other. it was as if some class-resentment, long repressed, were breaking its bounds. "how d' you know," she demanded passionately, "that i didn't think of that myself? how do you know? you're th' only one, i s'pose," her tone was suddenly mocking, "that knows how t' think! no"--as rose-marie started to interrupt--"don't try t' pull any alibi on me! i know th' way you settlement house _ladies_"--she accented the word--"feel about _us_. you have clubs for us, an' parties, an' uplift meetin's. you pray fer us--an' with us. you tell us who t' marry, an' how t' bring up our children, an' what butcher t' buy our meat off of. but when it comes t' understandin' us--an' likin' us! well, you're too good, that's all." she paused, staring at rose-marie's incredulous face with insolent eyes. "you're like all th' rest," she went on, after a moment, "just like all th' rest. i was beginnin' t' think that you was diff'rent. you've been so white about bennie. an' you washed ma's hair--i wouldn't 'a' done that myself! but now--now it sticks out all over you; th' i'm-better-'n-you-are stuff. i never could think of a thing, _i_ couldn't. but you--you're smart, you are. you could think--" rose-marie's cheeks were flushed with a very real resentment, as she interrupted the girl's flow of half-articulate speech. "ella," she said, and her words, too, came rapidly, "you know that you're not being fair--you know it! i've never held apart from you in any way. oh, i realize that we've been brought up in different--surroundings. and it's made us different from each other in the unimportant things. but we're both girls, ella--we're both young and we've both got all of life before us. and so, perhaps, we can understand each other"--she was fumbling mentally for words, in an effort to make clear her meaning--"more than either of us realize. i wasn't, for one moment, trying to patronize you when i said what i did. i was only wondering how you happened to say something that i wouldn't ever dream of saying--that no nice girl, who had a real understanding of life"--she wondered, even as she spoke the words, what the young doctor would think if he could hear them issuing from her lips--"would dream of saying. you're a nice girl, ella--or you wouldn't be in the same family with bennie and lily. and you're a sensible girl, so you must realize how important and sacred marriage is. who told you that it was a mistake, ella? who," her childish face was very grave, indeed, "who told you such a terrible thing?" ella's eyes were blazing--rose-marie almost thought that the girl was going to strike her! but the blazing eyes wavered, after a moment, and fell. "my gentleman fren' says marriage is wrong," said ella. "he knows a lot. and he has _so_ much money"--she made a wide gesture with her hands--"i can have a nice place ter live, miss rose-marie, an' pretty clothes. lookit ma; she's married an' she ain't got nothin'! i can have coats an' hats an'--" rose-marie touched ella's hand, timidly, with her cool fingers. "but you'll have to pay for them, ella," she said. "think, dear; will the coats and hats be worth the price that you'll have to pay? will they be worth the price of self-respect--will they be worth the price of honourable wifehood and--motherhood? will the pretty clothes, ella, make it easier for you to look into the face of some other woman--who has kept straight? will they?" ella raised her eyes and, in their suddenly vague expression, rose-marie saw a glimmering of the faded, crushed mother. she hurried on. "what kind of a chap is this gentleman friend," she raged, "to ask so much of you, dear? is there--is there any reason why he can't marry you? is he tied to some one else?" all at once ella was sobbing, with gusty, defiant sobs. "not as far as i've heard of, there ain't nobody else," she sobbed. "i don't know much about him, miss rose-marie. jim gimme a knockdown ter him, one night, in a dance-hall. i thought he was all right--jim said he was ... an' he said he loved me, an'"--wildly--"i love him, too! an' i hate it all, here, except lily--" rose-marie, thinking rapidly, seized her advantage. "will going away with him," she asked steadily, "be worth never seeing lily again? for you wouldn't be able to see her again--you wouldn't feel able to touch her, you know, if your hands weren't--clean. you bought her a religious picture, ella, and a flower. why? because you know, in your heart, that she's aware of religion and beauty and sweetness! going away with this man, ella, will separate you from lily, just as completely as an ocean--flowing between the two of you--would make a separation! and all of your life you'll have to know that she's suffering somewhere, perhaps; that maybe somebody's hurting her--that her dresses are dirty and her hair isn't combed! every time you hear a little child crying you'll think of lily--who can't cry aloud. every time a pair of blue eyes look into your face you'll think of her eyes--that can't see. will going away with him be worth never knowing, ella, whether she's alive or dead--" ella had stopped sobbing, but the acute misery of her face was somehow more pitiful than tears. rose-marie waited, for a moment, and then--as ella did not speak--she got up from her place beside the suit-case, and going to the dividing door, opened it softly. the room was as she had left it. mrs. volsky was still bending above the tubs, lily was standing in almost the same place in which she had been left. with hurried steps rose-marie crossed the room, and took the child's slim, little hand in her own. "come with me, honey," she said, almost forgetting that lily could not hear her voice. "come with me," and she led her gently back to the inner room. ella was sitting on the floor, her face still wan, her attitude unconsciously tragic. but as the child, clinging to rose-marie's hand, came over to her side, she was suddenly galvanized into action. "oh, darlin', darlin'," she sobbed wildly, "ella was a-goin' ter leave you! ella was a-goin' away. but she isn't now--not now! darlin'," her arms were flung wildly about the little figure, "show, some way, that you forgive ella--who loves you!" rose-marie was crying, quite frankly. all at once she dropped down on the floor and put her arms about the two sisters--the big one and the little one--and her sobs mingled with ella's. but, curiously enough, as she stood like a little statue between them, a sudden smile swept across the face of lily. she might, almost, have understood. xiv pa steps aside they wept together for a long time, ella and rose-marie. and as they cried something grew out of their common emotion. it was a something that they both felt subconsciously--a something warm and friendly. it might have been a new bond of affection, a new chain of love. rose-marie, as she felt it, was able to say to herself--with more of tolerance than she had ever known-- "if i had been as tempted and as unhappy as she--well, i might, perhaps, have reacted in the same way!" and ella, sobbing in the arms of the girl that she had never quite understood, was able to tell herself: "she's right--dead right! the straight road's the only road...." it was little lily who created a diversion. she had been standing, very quietly, in the shelter of their arms for some time--she had a way of standing with an infinite patience, for hours, in one place. but suddenly, as if drawn by some instinct, she dropped down on the floor, beside the cheap suit-case, and her small hands, shaking with eagerness, started to take out the clothes that had been flung into it. it was uncanny, almost, to see the child so happily beginning to unpack the suit-case. the sight dried rose-marie's tears in an almost miraculous way. "let's put away the things," she suggested shakily, to ella. "for you won't be going now, will you?" the face that ella volsky lifted was a changed face. her expression was a shade more wistful, perhaps, but the somber glow had gone out of her eyes, leaving them softer than rose-marie had supposed possible. "no, miss," she said quietly, "i won't be going--away. you're right, it ain't worth the price!" and the incident, from that moment, was closed. they unpacked the garments--there weren't many of them--quietly. but rose-marie was very glad, deep in her soul, and she somehow felt that ella's mind was relieved of a tremendous strain. they didn't speak again, but there was something in the way ella's hand touched her little sister's sunny hair that was more revealing than words. and there was something in the way rose-marie's mouth curved blithely up that told a whole story of satisfaction and content. it seemed as if peace, with her white wings folded and at rest, was hovering, at last, above the volsky flat. and then, all at once, the momentary lull was over. all at once the calm was shattered as a china cup, falling from a careless hand, is broken. there was a sudden burst of noise in the front room; of rough words; of a woman sobbing. there was the sound of mrs. volsky's voice, raised in an unwonted cry of anguish, there was a trickle of water slithering down upon an uncarpeted floor--as if the wash-tub had been overturned. it was the final event of an unsettling day--the last straw. forgetting lily, forgetting the unpacking, rose-marie jumped to her feet, ran to the door. ella followed. they stood together on the threshold of the outer room, and stared. the room seemed full of people--shouting, gesticulating people. and in the foreground was jim--as sleek and well groomed as ever. of all the crowd he seemed the only one who was composed. in front of him stood mrs. volsky--her face drawn and white, her hands clasped in a way that was singularly and primitively appealing. at first rose-marie thought that the commotion had to do with jim. she was always half expecting to hear that he had been apprehended in some sort of mischief, that he had been accused of some crime. but she dismissed the idea quickly--his composure was too real to be born of bravado. it was while her brain groped for some new solution that she became conscious of mrs. volsky's voice. "oh, he ain't," the woman was moaning, "say he ain't! my man--he could not be so! there ain't no truth in it--there can't be no truth.... say as he ain't been done to so bad! say it!" ella, with a movement that was all at once love-filled, stepped quickly to her mother's side. as she faced the crowd--and jim--her face was also drawn; drawn and apprehensive. "what's up?" she queried tersely of her brother. "what's up?" the face of jim was calm and almost smiling as he answered. behind him the shrill voices of the crowd sounded, like a background, to the blunt words that he spoke. "pa was comin' home drunk," he told ella, "an' he was ran inter by a truck. he was smashed up pretty bad; dead right away, th' cop said. but they took him ter a hospital jus' th' same. wonder why they'd take a stiff ter a hospital?" mrs. volsky's usually colourless voice was breaking into loud, almost weird lamentation. ella stood speechless. but rose-marie, the horror of it all striking to her very soul, spoke. "it can't be true," she cried, starting forward and--in the excitement of the moment--laying her hand upon jim's perfectly tailored coat sleeve. "it can't be true.... it's too terrible!" jim's laugh rang out heartlessly, eerily, upon the air. "it ain't so terrible!" he told rose-marie. "pa--he wasn't no good! he wasn't a reg'lar feller--like me." all at once his well-manicured white hand crept down over her hand. "_he wasn't a reg'lar feller_," he repeated, "_like me_!" xv a solution as rose-marie left the volsky flat--ella had begged her to go; had assured her that it would be better to leave mrs. volsky to her inarticulate grief--her brain was in a whirl. things had happened, in the last few hours, with a kaleidoscopic rapidity--the whirl of events had left her mind in a dazed condition. she told herself, over and over, that ella was saved. but she found it hard to believe that ella would ever find happiness, despite her salvation, in the grim tenement that was her home. she told herself that bennie was learning to travel the right road--that the scout club would be the means of leading him to other clubs and that the other clubs would, in time, introduce him to sunday-school and to the church. she told herself that mrs. volsky was willing to try; very willing to try! but of what avail would be bennie's growing faith and idealism if he had to come, night after night, to the home that was responsible for men like jim--and like pa? pa! rose-marie realized with a new sense of shock that pa was no longer a force to reckon with. pa was dead--had been crushed by a truck. never again would he slouch drunkenly into the flat, never again would he throw soiled clothing and broken bottles and heavy shoes into newly tidied corners. he was dead and he had--after all--been the one link that tied the volskys to their dingy quarters! with pa gone the family could seek cleaner, sweeter rooms--rooms that would have been barred to the family of a drunkard! with pa gone the air would clear, magically, of some of its heaviness. rose-marie, telling herself how much the death of pa was going to benefit the volsky family, felt all at once heartless. she had been brought up in an atmosphere where death carries sorrow with it--deep sorrow and sanctity. she remembered the dim parlours of the little town when there was a funeral--she remembered the singing of the village choir and the voice of the pastor, slightly unsteady, perhaps, but very confident of the life hereafter. she remembered the flowers, and the mourners in their black gowns, and the pure tears of grief. she had always seen folk meet death so--meet it rather beautifully. but the passing of pa! she shuddered to think of its cold cruelty--it was rather like his life. he had been snuffed out--that was all--snuffed out! there would be for him no dim parlour, no singing choir, no pastor with an unsteady voice. the black-robed mourners would be absent, and so would the flowers. his going would cause not a ripple in the life of the community--it would bring with it better opportunities for his family, rather than a burden of sorrow! "i can't grieve for him!" rose-marie told herself desperately. "i can't grieve for him! it's the only chance he ever gave to his children--_dying_! perhaps, without him, they'll be able to make good...." she was crossing the park--splashed with sunshine, it was. and suddenly she remembered the first time that she had met bennie in the park. it seemed centuries away, that first meeting! she remembered how she had been afraid, then, of the crowds. now she walked through them with a certain assurance--_she belonged_. she had come a long distance since that first meeting with bennie--a very long distance! she told herself that she had proved her ability to cope with circumstance--had proved her worth, almost. why, now, should the superintendent keep her always in the shadow of the settlement house--why should the young doctor laugh at her desire to help people? she had something to show them--she could flaunt bennie before their eyes, she could quote the case of ella; she could produce mrs. volsky, broken of spirit but ready to do anything that she could. and--last but not least--she would show lily to them, lily who had been hidden away from the eyes of the ones who could help her--lily who so desperately needed help! all at once rose-marie was weary of deceit. she would be glad--ever so glad--to tell her story to the superintendent! she was tired of going out furtively of an afternoon to help these folk that she had come to help. she wanted to go in an open way--with the stamp of approval upon her. the superintendent had said, once, that she would hardly be convincing to the people of the slums. with the volsky family to show, she could prove that she had been convincing, very convincing! with a singing heart she approached the settlement house. with a smile on her lips she went up the brownstone steps, pushed wide the door--which was never locked. and then she hurried, as fast as her feet could hurry, to the superintendent's tiny office. the superintendent was in. she answered rose-marie's knock with a cheery word, but, when the girl entered the room, she saw that the superintendent's kind eyes were troubled. "what's the matter?" she questioned, forgetting, for a moment, the business of which she had been so full. "what's the matter? you look ever so worried!" the superintendent's tired face broke into a smile. "was i looking as woe-begone as that?" she queried. "i didn't realize that i was. nothing serious is the matter, dear--nothing very serious! only katie's sister in the old country is ill--and katie is going home to stay with her. and it's just about impossible to get a good maid, nowadays--it seems as if katie has been with me for a lifetime. i expect that we'll manage, somehow, but i don't just fancy cooking and sweeping, and running the settlement house, too!" all at once an idea leaped, full-blown, into the brain of rose-marie. she leaned forward and laid her hand upon the superintendent's arm. "i wonder," she asked excitedly, "if you'd consider a woman with a family to take katie's place? the family isn't large--just a small boy who goes to school, and a small girl, and an older girl who is working. there's a grown son, but he can take care of himself..." the last she said almost under her breath. "he can take care of himself. it would be better, for them--" the superintendent was eyeing rose-marie curiously. "we have plenty of sleeping-rooms on the top floor," she said slowly, "and i suppose that the older girl could help a bit, evenings. why, yes, perhaps a family might solve the problem--it's easier to keep a woman with children than one who is," she laughed, "heart-whole and fancy free! who are they, dear, and how do you happen to know of them?" rose-marie sat down, suddenly, in a chair beside the superintendent's desk. all at once her knees were shaky--all at once she felt strangely apprehensive. "once," she began, and her voice quivered slightly, "i met a little boy, in the park. he was hurting a kitten. i started to scold him and then something made me question him, instead. and i found out that he was hurting the kitten because he didn't know any better--think of it, _because he didn't know any better_! and so i was interested, ever so interested. and i decided it was my duty to know something of him--to find out what sort of an environment was responsible for him." the superintendent's tired face was alight she leaned forward to ask a question. "how long ago," she questioned, "did you meet this child, in the park?" rose-marie flushed. the time, suddenly, seemed very long to her. "it was the day that i came home bringing a little gray cat with me," she said. "it was the day that i quarreled with dr. blanchard at the luncheon table. do you remember?" the superintendent smiled reminiscently. "ah, yes, i remember!" she said. and then--"go on with the story, dear." rose-marie went on. "i found the place where he lived," she said hurriedly. "yes--i know that you wouldn't have let me go if you'd known about it! that's why i didn't tell you. i found the place where he lived; an unspeakable tenement on an unspeakable street. and i met, there, his family--a most remarkable family! there was a mother, and an older sister, and an older brother, and a drunken father, and a little crippled girl...." and then, shaking inwardly, rose-marie told the story of the volskys. she told it well; better than she realized. for the superintendent's eyes never left her face and--at certain parts of the story--the superintendent's cheeks grew girlishly pink. she told of the saving of ella--she told of bennie, explaining that he was the same child whom the young doctor had met in the hall. she told of mrs. volsky's effort to better herself, and of jim's snake-like smoothness. and then she told of lily--lily with her almost unearthly beauty and her piteous physical condition. as she told of lily the superintendent's kind eyes filled with tears, and her lips quivered. "oh," she breathed, "if only something could be done for her--if only something could be done! billy blanchard must see her at once--he's done marvellous things with the crippled children of the neighbourhood!" with a feeling of sudden confidence rose-marie smiled. she realized that she had caught the superintendent's interest--and her sympathy. it would be easier, now, to give the family their chance! her voice was more calm as she went on with the narrative. it was only when she told of the death of pa that her lips trembled. "you'll think that i'm hard and callous," she said, "taking his death so easily. but i can't help feeling that it's for the best. they could never have broken away--not with him alive. _you_ would never have taken them in--if he had had to be included! you couldn't have done it.... but now," her voice was aquiver with eagerness, "now, say that they may come! say that mrs. volsky may take katie's place. oh, i know that she isn't very neat; that she doesn't cook as we would want her to. but she can learn and, free from the influence of her husband and son, i'm sure she'll change amazingly. say that you'll give the family a chance!" the superintendent was wavering. "i'm not so sure," she began, and hesitated. "i'm not so sure--" rose-marie interrupted. her voice was very soft. "it will mean," she said, "that lily will be here, under the doctor's care. it will mean that she will get well--perhaps! for her sake give them a chance...." the superintendent's eyes were fixed upon space. when she spoke, she spoke irrelevantly. "then," she said, "that was where you went every afternoon--to the tenement. you weren't out with some man, after all?" rose-marie hung her head. "i went to the tenement every afternoon," she admitted, "to the _tenement_. oh, i know that you're angry with me--i know it. and i don't in the least blame you. i've been deceitful, i've _sneaked_ away when your back was turned, i've practically told lies to you! don't think," her voice was all a-tremble, "don't think that i haven't been sorry. i've been tremendously sorry ever so many times. i've tried to tell you, too--often. and i've tried to make you think my way. do you remember the talk we had, that night when we were both so tired, in your sitting-room--before dr. blanchard came? i was trying to scrape up the courage to tell you, then, but you so disagreed with me that i didn't dare!" the superintendent seemed scarcely to be listening. there seemed to be something upon her mind. "rose-marie," she said with a mock sternness, "you're evading my questions. answer me, child! isn't there any one that you--care for? weren't you out with some man?" rose-marie was blushing furiously. "no," she admitted, "i wasn't out with a man. i never had any sort of a sweetheart, not ever! i just let you all think that i was with some one because--if i hadn't let you think that way--you might have made me stay in. i wouldn't have made a point of deliberately telling you a falsehood--but dr. blanchard gave me the idea and "--defiantly--"i just let him think what he wanted to think!" the superintendent was laughing. "what he _wanted_ to think!" she exclaimed. "oh, rose-marie--you've a lot to answer for! what he wanted to think...." suddenly the laugh died out of her voice, all at once she was very serious. "perhaps," she said slowly, "your idea about the volsky family is a good one. we'll try it out, dear! there was a man, once, who said: 'suffer the little children to come--'why, rose-marie, what's the matter?" for rose-marie, her face hidden in the crook of her elbow, was crying like a very tired child. xvi enter--jim it was with a light heart that rose-marie started back to the tenement. the tears had cleared her soul of the months of evasion that had so worried her--she felt suddenly free and young and happy. it was as if a rainbow had come up, tenderly, out of a storm-tossed sky; it was as if a star was shining, all at once, through the blackness of midnight. she felt a glad assurance of the future--a faith in the hand of god, stretched out to his children. "everything," she sing-songed, joyously, to herself, "will come right, now. everything will come right!" it was strange how she suddenly loved all of the people, the almost mongrel races of people, who thronged the streets! she smiled brightly at a mother, pushing a baby-buggy--she thrust a coin into the withered hand of an old beggar. on a crowded corner she paused to listen to the vague carollings of a barrel organ, to pat the head of a frayed looking little monkey that hopped about in time to the music. all at once she wanted to know a dozen foreign languages so that she could tell those who passed her by that she was their friend--_their friend!_ and yet, despite her sudden feeling of kinship to these people of the slums, she did not loiter. for she was the bearer of a message, a message of hope! she wished, as she sped through the crowded streets, that her feet were winged so that she might hurry the faster! she wanted to see the expression of bewilderment on mrs. volsky's face, she wanted to see a light dawn in ella's great eyes, she wanted to whisper a message of--of life, almost--into lily's tiny useless ear. and, most of all, she wanted to feel bennie's warm, grubby little fingers touching her hand! jim--she hoped that jim would be out when she arrived. she did not want to have jim throw cold water upon her plans--which did not include him. well she knew that the arrangement would make no real difference to him--it was not love of family that kept him from leaving the dirty, crowded little flat. it was the protection of a family, with its pseudo-respectability, that he wanted. it was the locked room, which no one would think of prying into, that he desired. she went in through the mouth-like tenement door--it was no longer frightful to her--with a feeling of intense emotion. she climbed the narrow stairs, all five flights of them, with never a pause for breath. and then she was standing, once again, in front of the volskys' door. she knocked, softly. everything was apparently very still in the volsky flat. all up and down the hall came the usual sounds of the house; the stairs echoed with noise. but behind the closed door silence reigned supreme. as rose-marie stood there she felt a strange mental chill--the chill of her first doubt. perhaps the volskys would not want to come with her to the settlement house, perhaps they would resent her attitude--would call it interference. perhaps they would tell her that they were tired of her--and of her plans. perhaps--but the door, swinging open, cut short her suppositions. jim stood in the doorway. he was in his shirt sleeves but--even divested of his coat--he was still too painfully immaculate--too well groomed. rose-marie, looking at him, felt a sudden primitive desire to see him dirty and mussed up. she wished, and the wish surprised her, that she might sometime see him with his hair rumpled, his collar torn, his eye blackened and--she could hardly suppress a hysterical desire to laugh as the thought struck her--his nose bleeding. somehow his smooth, hard neatness was more offensive to her than his mother's dirty apron--than his small brother's frankly grimy hands. she spoke to him in a cool little voice that belied her inward disturbance. "where," she questioned, "are your mother and ella? i want to see them." with a movement that was not ungraceful jim flung wide the door. indeed, rose-marie told herself, as she stepped into the volsky flat, jim was never ungraceful. there was something lithe and cat-like in his slightest movement, just as there was something feline in the expression of his eyes. rose-marie often felt like a small, helpless mouse when jim was staring at her. "where are your mother and ella?" she questioned again as she stepped into the room. "i _do_ want to see them!" jim was dragging forward a chair. he answered. "then yer'd better sit down 'n' make yourself at home," he told her, "fer they've gone out. they're down t' th' hospital, now, takin' a last slant at pa. ma's cryin' to beat th' band--you'd think that she really liked _him_! an' ella's cryin', too--she's fergot how he uster whip her wit' a strap when she was a kid! an' they've took bennie; bennie ain't cryin' but he's a-holdin' to ma's hand like a baby. oh," he laughed sneeringly, "it's one grand little family group that they make!" rose-marie sat down gingerly upon the edge of the chair. she did not relish the prospect of spending any time alone with jim, but a certain feeling of pride kept her from leaving the place. she would not let jim know that she feared him--it would flatter him to think that he had so much influence over her. she would stay, even though the staying made her uneasy! but she hoped, from the bottom of her heart, that the rest of the family would not be long at the hospital. "when did they go out?" she questioned, trying to make her tone casual. "do you expect them back soon?" jim sat down in a chair that was near her own. he leaned forward as he answered. "they haven't been gone so awful long," he told her. "an'--say--what's th' difference _when_ they gets back? i never have no chance to talk wit' you--not ever! an'," he sighed with mock tragedy, "an' i have so much t' say t' yer! you never have a word fer me--think o' that! an' think o' all th' time yer waste on bennie--an' him too young t' know a pretty girl when he sees one!" rose-marie flushed and hated herself for doing it. "we'll leave personalities out of this!" she said primly. jim was laughing, but there was a sinister note in his mirth. "not much we won't!" he told her. "i like you--see? you're th' best lookin' girl in this neck o' woods--even if you do live at the settlement house! if you'd learn to dress more snappy--t' care more about hats than yer do about bible classes--you'd make a big hit when yer walked out on delancy street. there ain't a feller livin' as wouldn't turn t' look at yer--not one! say, kid," he leaned still closer, "i'm strong fer yer when yer cheeks get all pink-like. i'm strong fer yer any time a-tall!" rose-marie was more genuinely shocked than she had ever been in her life. the flush receded slowly from her face. "you'd like me to be more interested in clothes than in bible classes!" she said slowly. "you'd like me to go parading down delancy street ..." she paused, and then--"you're a fine sort of a man," she said bitterly--"a fine sort of a man! oh, i know. i know the sort of people you introduce to ella--and she's your sister. i've seen the way you look at lily, and she's your sister, too! you wouldn't think of making things easier for your mother; and you'd give bennie a push down--instead of a boost _up_! and you scoff at your father--lying dead in his coffin! you're a fine sort of a _man_.... i don't believe that you've a shred of human affection in your whole make-up!" jim had risen slowly to his feet. there was no anger in his face--only a huge amusement. rose-marie, watching his expression, knew all at once that nothing she said would have the slightest effect upon him. his sensibilities were too well concealed, beneath a tough veneer of conceit, to be wounded. his soul seemed too well hidden to be reached. "so that's what you think, is it?" he asked, and his voice was almost silky, it was so smooth, "so that's what you think! i haven't any 'human affection in my make-up,'" he was imitating her angry voice, "i haven't any 'human affection'!" he laughed suddenly, and bent with a swift movement until his face was on a level with her face. "lot yer know about it!" he told her and his voice thickened, all at once, "lot yer know about it! i'm crazy about you, little kid--just crazy! yer th' only girl as i've ever wanted t' tie up to, get that? how'd yer like t' marry me?" for one sickening moment rose-marie thought that she had misunderstood. and then she saw his face and knew that he had been deadly serious. her hands fluttered up until they rested, like frightened birds, above her heart. xvii an answer there was eagerness--and a hint of something else--in jim's voice as he repeated his question. "well," he asked for the second time, "what d' yer say about it--huh? how'd yer like ter marry me?" rose-marie's fascinated eyes were on his face. at the first she had hardly believed her ears--but her ears had evidently been functioning properly. jim wanted to marry her--to marry _her_! it was a possibility that she had never dreamed of--a thought that she had never, for one moment, entertained. jim had always seemed so utterly of another world--of another epoch, almost. he spoke a language that was far removed from her language, his mind worked differently--even his emotions were different from her emotions. he might have been living upon another planet--so distant he had always seemed from her. _and yet he had asked her to marry him_! like every other normal girl, rose-marie had thought ahead to the time when she would have a home and a husband. she had dreamed of the day when her knight would come riding--a visionary, idealized figure, always, but a noble one! she had pictured a hearth-fire, and a blue and white kitchen with aluminum pans and glass baking dishes. she had even wondered how tiny fingers would feel as they curled about her hand--if a wee head would be heavy upon her breast. of late her dreams, for some reason, had become a little less misty--a little more definite. the figure of her knight had been a trifle more clear cut--the armour of her imagination had given place to rough tweed suits and soft felt hats. and the children had looked at her, from out of the shadows, with wide, dark eyes--almost like real children. her thoughts had shaped themselves about a figure that was not the romantic creation of girlhood--that was strong and willing and very tender. dr. blanchard--had he not been mistaken upon so many subjects--would have fitted nicely into the picture! but jim--of all people, _jim!_ he was as far removed from the boundaries of her dream as the north pole is removed from the south. his patent leather hair--she could not picture it against her arm--his mouth, thin-lipped and too red.... she shuddered involuntarily, as she thought of it and the man, bending above her, saw the shudder. "well," he questioned for the third time, "what about it? i'm a reg'lar guy, ain't i? how'd you like to marry me?" rose-marie moistened her lips before she answered. her voice, when it came, was very husky. "why, jim," she said faintly, "what an idea! how did you ever come to think of it?" the man's face was flushed. his words tumbled, quickly, from his unsteady mouth. "i'm crazy about yer, kid," he said, "crazy about yer! don't think that bein' married t' me will mean as you'll have ter live in a dump like this-there"--the sweep of his arm was expressive--"fer yer won't! you'll have th' grandest flat in this city--anywhere yer say'll suit me! yer'll have hats an' dresses, an' a car--if yer want it. yer'll have everything--if yer'll marry me! what d' yer say?" rose-marie's face was a study of mixed emotions--consternation struggling with incredulity for first place. the man saw the unbelief; for he hurried on before she could speak. "yer think that i'm like my pa was"--he told her--"livin' on measly wages! well, i ain't. some nights i make a pile that runs inter thousands--an' it'll be all fer yer! all fer yer!" of a sudden, rose-marie spoke. she was scarcely tactful. "how do you make all of this money, jim?" she questioned; "do you come by it honestly?" a dark wave of colour spread over the man's face--dyeing it to an ugly crimson. "what's it matter how i get it," he snarled, "long's i get it! what business is it of yers how i come by my coin? i ain't stagin' a investergation. and"--his face softened suddenly, "an' yer wouldn't understand, anyhow! yer only a girl--a little kid! what's it matter how i gets th' roll--long as i'm willin' ter spend it on m' sweetie? what's it matter?" he made a movement as if to take her into his arms--"_what's it matter_?" he questioned again. like a flash rose-marie was upon her feet. with a swing of her body she had evaded his arms. her face was white and drawn, but her mind was exceptionally active--more active than it had ever been in all of her life. she knew that jim was in a difficult mood--that a word, one way or the other, would make him as easy to manage as a kitten or as relentless as a panther, stalking his prey. she knew that it was in her power to say the word that would calm him until the return of his mother and his sister. and yet she found it well-nigh impossible to say that word. "i'm tired of deceit," she told herself, as she stepped back in the direction of the door. "i'll not say anything to him that isn't true! ... nothing can happen to me, anyway," she assured herself. "this is the twentieth century, and i'm rose-marie thompson. this is a civilized country--nothing can hurt me! i'm not afraid--not while god is taking care of me!" jim had straightened up. he seemed, suddenly, to tower. "well," he growled, "how about it? when'll we be married?" rose-marie raised her head gallantly. "we won't ever be married, jim volsky!" she told him, and even to her own surprise there was not the suggestion of a quaver in her voice. "we won't ever be married. i'm surprised at you for suggesting it!" the man stared at her, a moment, and his eyes showed clearly that he did not quite understand. "yer mean," he stammered at last, "that yer t'rowing me down?" rose-marie's head was still gallantly lifted. "i mean," she said, "that i won't marry you! please--we'll let the matter drop, at once!" the man came a step nearer. the bewilderment was dying from his face. "not much, we won't let the matter drop!" he snarled. "what's yer reason fer turnin' me down--huh?" it was then that rose-marie made her mistake. it was then that she ceased to be tactful. but suddenly she was tired, desperately tired, of jim's persistence. suddenly she was too tired even to be afraid. the lift of her chin was very proud--proud with some ingrained pride of race, as she answered. behind her stood a long line of ancestors with gentle blood, ancestors who had known the meaning of chivalry. coolly she surveyed him. dispassionately she noticed the lack of breeding in his face, the marks of early dissipation, the lines that sin had etched. and as she looked she laughed with just the suggestion of hauteur. for the first time in her life rose-marie was experiencing a touch of snobbishness, of class distinction. "we won't discuss my reason," she told him slowly; "it should be quite evident to _any one_!" not many weeks before, rose-marie had told the young doctor--in the presence of the superintendent--that she loved the people of the slums. she had been so sure of herself then--so certain that she spoke the truth. more recently she had assured the superintendent that she could cope with any situation. and that very afternoon she had told ella that they were alike, were just young girls--both of them--with all of life in front of them, with the same hopes and the same fears and the same ambitions. she had believed the statement that she had made, so emphatically, to the young doctor--she had believed it very strongly. she had been utterly sure of herself when she begged the superintendent to let her know more of life. and, during her talk with ella, she had felt a real kinship to the whole of the volsky family! but now that she had come face to face with a crisis--now that she was meeting her big test--she knew that her strong beliefs were weakening and that she was no longer at all sure of herself! and as for being kin to the volskys--the idea was quite unthinkable. always, rose-marie had imagined that a proposal of marriage would be the greatest compliment that a man could pay a girl. but the proposal of the man in front of her did not seem in the least complimentary. she realized--with the only feeling of irony she had ever known, that this proposal was her very first. and she was looking upon it as an insult. with a tiny curl of her lips she raised her eyes until they met jim's eyes. "it should be quite evident," she repeated, "to any one!" jim volsky's face had turned to a dark mottled red. his slim, well manicured hands were clenched at his sides. "y' mean," he questioned, and his voice had an ugly ring, "y' mean i ain't good enough fer yer?" all at once the snobbishness had slipped, like a worn coat, from the shoulders of the girl. she was rose-marie thompson again--settlement worker. she was no better, despite the ancestors with gentle blood, than the man in front of her--just more fortunate. she realized that she had been not only unkind, but foolish. she tried, hurriedly--and with a great scare looking out of her wide eyes--to repair the mistake that she had made. "i don't mean that i am better than you, jim," she said softly, "not in the matter of family. we are all the children of god--we are all brothers and sisters in his sight." jim volsky interrupted. he came nearer to rose-marie--so near that only a few inches of floor space lay between them. "don't yer go sayin' over sunday-school lessons at me," he snarled. "i know what yer meant. yer think i ain't good enough--t' marry yer. well"--he laughed shortly, "well, maybe i ain't good enough--t' marry yer! but i guess i'm good enough t' kiss yer--" all at once his hands shot out, closed with the strength of a vise upon her arms, just above her elbows. "i guess i'm good enough t' kiss yer!" he repeated gloatingly. rose-marie felt cold fear creeping through her veins. there was something clammy in jim's touch, something more than menacing in his eyes. she knew that her strength was nothing to be pitted against his--she knew that in any sort of a struggle she would be easily subdued. and yet she knew that she would rather die than feel his lips upon hers. she felt an intense loathing for him--the loathing that some women feel for toads and lizards. "jim," she said slowly and distinctly, "let go of me _this instant_!" the man was bending closer. a thick lock of his heavy hair had shaken down over his forehead, giving him a strangely piratical look. "not much i won't," he told her. "_so i ain't good enough_--" all at once rose-marie felt the blindness of rage--unreasoning, deadly anger. only two things she knew--that she hated jim and that she would not let him kiss her. she spoke sudden defiant words that surprised even herself. "no," she told him, and her voice was hysterically high, "no, you're not good enough! you're not good enough for _any_ decent girl! you're bad--too bad to lay your fingers upon me. you're--you're unclean! let go of me or i'll"--her courage was oozing rapidly away, "or i'll _scream_!" jim volsky's too red lips were on a level with her own. his voice came thickly. "scream, if you want to, little kid!" he said. "scream t' beat th' band! there ain't no one t' hear yer. ma an' ella an' bennie are at the hospital--givin' pa th' once over. an' th' folks in this house are used t' yellin'. they'd oughter be! scream if yer want to--but i'm a-goin' ter have my kiss!" rose-marie could feel the warmth of his breath upon her face. knowing the futility--the uselessness of it--she began to struggle. desperately she tried to twist her arms from the slim, brutal hands that held them--but the hands did not loosen their hold. she told herself, as she struggled, that jim had spoken the truth--that a scream, more or less, was an every-day occurrence in the tenement. all at once she realized, with a dazed, sinking feeling, that the young doctor had had some foundation of truth in certain of his statements. some of the slum people were like animals--very like animals! jim was all animal as he bent above her--easily holding her with his hands. nothing that she said could reach him--nothing. she realized why the young doctor had wanted her to leave the settlement house before any of her dreams had been shattered, before her faith in mankind had been abused! she realized why, at times, he had hurt her, and with the realization came the knowledge that she wanted him, desperately, at that minute--that he, out of all the people in the world, was the one that her heart was calling to in her time of need. she wanted his strength, his protection. once before, earlier in the afternoon, she had realized that there was much of the cat in jim. now she realized it again, with a new sense of fear and dislike. for jim was not claiming the kiss that he wanted, in a straight-forward way--he was holding her gloatingly, as a cat tortures a mouse. he was letting her know, without words, that she was utterly helpless--that he could kiss her when he wanted to, and not until he wanted to. there was something horribly playful in his attitude. she struggled again--but more weakly, her strength was going. if there were only somebody to help--somebody! and then, all at once, she remembered--with a blinding sense of relief--what she had been forgetting. she remembered that there was somebody--a somebody who is always ready to help--a somebody who watches over the fate of every little sparrow. "if you hurt me," she said desperately, to jim, "god will know! let go of me--or i'll--" jim interrupted. "yer'll scream!" he chuckled, and there was cruel mirth in the chuckle. "yer'll scream, an' god will take care o' yer! well--scream! i don't believe as god can help yer. god ain't never been in this tenement--as far as i know!" despite her weight of fear and loathing, rose-marie was suddenly sorry for jim. there was something pitiful--something of which he did not realize the pathos--in his speech. god had never been in the tenement--_god had never been in the tenement_! all at once she realized that jim's wickedness, that jim's point of view, was not wholly his fault. jim had not been brought up, as she had, in the clean out-of-doors; he--like many another slum child--had grown to manhood without his proper heritage of fresh air and sunshine. one could not entirely blame him for thinking of his home--the only home that he had ever known--as a godless place. she stopped struggling and her voice was suddenly calm and sweet as she answered jim's statement. "god," she said slowly, "_is_ in this tenement. god is everywhere, jim--everywhere! if i call on him, he will help me!" all at once jim had swung her away from him, until he was holding her at arm's length. he looked at her, from between narrowed lids, and there was bitter sarcasm in his eyes. "call on him, then," he taunted, "call on him! lotta good it'll do yer!" the very tone of his voice was a sacrilege, as he said it. rose-marie's eyes were blurred with tears as she spoke her answer to his challenge. she was remembering the prayers that she had said back home--in the little town. she was remembering how her aunts had taught her, when she was a wee girl, to talk with god--to call upon him in times of deep perplexity. she had called upon him, often, but she had never really needed him as she did now. "help me, god!" she said softly, "_help me, god_!" the volsky flat was still, for a moment. and then, with surprising quickness, the door to the inner room swung open. jim, who was standing with his back to the door, did not see the tiny, golden-haired figure that stood in the opening, but rose-marie caught her breath in a kind of a sob. "i had forgotten lily--" she murmured, almost to herself. jim, hearing her words, glanced quickly back over his shoulder. and then he laughed, and there was an added brutality in the tone of his laughter. "oh--lily!" he laughed. "lily! she won't help yer--not much! i was sort of expectin' this god that yer talk about--" the laughter died out of his face and he jerked her suddenly close--so close that she lay trembling in his arms. "lily can't hear," he exulted, "'r see, 'r speak. _i'll take my kiss--now_!" it was then that rose-marie, forgetting herself in the panic of the moment, screamed. she screamed lustily, twisting her face away from his lips. and as she screamed lily, as silently as a little wraith, started across the room. she might almost have heard, so straight she came. she might almost have known what was happening, so directly she ran to the spot where rose-marie was struggling in the arms of jim. all at once her thin little hands had fastened themselves upon the man's trouser leg, all at once she was pulling at him, with every bit of her feeble strength. rose-marie, still struggling, felt an added weight of apprehension. not only her own safety was at stake--lily, who was so weak, was in danger of being hurt. she jerked back, with another cry. "oh, god help me!" she cried, "god help _us_!" silently, but with a curious persistence, the child clung to the man's trouser leg. with an oath he looked back again over his shoulder. "leave go of me," he mouthed. "leave go o' me--y' little brat! 'r i'll--" and "let go of him, lily," sobbed rose-marie, forgetting that the child could not hear. "let go of him, or he'll hurt you!" the child lifted her sightless blue eyes wistfully to the faces above her--the faces that she could not see. and she clung the closer. jim was swearing, steadily--swearing with a dogged, horrible regularity. of a sudden he raised his heavy foot and kicked viciously at the child who clung so tenaciously to his other leg. rose-marie, powerless to help, closed her eyes--and opened them again almost spasmodically. "you brute," she screamed, "_you utter brute_!" lily, who had never, in all of her broken little life, felt an unkind touch, wavered, as the man's boot touched her slight body. her sightless eyes clouded, all at once, with tears. and then, with a sudden piercing shriek, she crumpled up--in a white little heap--upon the floor. xviii and a miracle for a moment rose-marie was stunned by the child's unexpected cry. she hung speechless, filled with wonderment, in jim's arms. and then, with a wrench, she was free--was running across the floor to the little huddled bundle that was lily. "you beast," she flung back, over her shoulder, as she ran. "you beast! you've killed her!" jim did not attempt to follow--or to answer. he had wheeled about, and his face was very pale. "god!" he said, in a tense whisper, "_god_!" it was the first time that the word, upon his lips, was neither mocking nor profane. rose-marie, with tender hands, gathered the child up from the hard floor. she was not thinking of the miracle that had taken place--she was not thinking of the sound that had come, so unexpectedly, from dumb lips. she only knew that the child was unconscious, perhaps dying. her trembling fingers felt of the slim wrist; felt almost with apprehension. she was surprised to feel that the pulse was still beating, though faintly. "get somebody," she said, tersely, to jim. "get somebody who knows--something!" jim's face was still the colour of ashes. he did not stir--did not seem to have the power to stir. "did yer hear her?" he mouthed thickly. "she _yelled_. i heard her. did yer hear--" rose-marie was holding lily close to her breast. her stern young eyes looked across the drooping golden head into the scared face of the man. "it was god, speaking through her," she said. "it was god. and you--you had denied him--_you beast_!" all at once jim was down upon the floor beside her. the mask of passion had slipped from his face--his shoulders seemed suddenly more narrow--his cruel hands almost futile. rose-marie wondered, subconsciously, how she had ever feared him. "she yelled," he reiterated, "_did yer hear her--_" rose-marie clutched the child tighter in her arms. "get some one, at once," she ordered, "if you don't want her to die--if you don't want to be a murderer!" but jim had not heard her voice. he was sobbing, gustily. "i'm t'rough," he was sobbing, "t'rough! oh--god, fergive--" it was then that the door opened. and rose-marie, raising eyes abrim with relief, saw that ella and mrs. volsky and bennie stood upon the threshold. "what's a-matter?" questioned mrs. volsky--her voice sodden with grief. "what's been a-happenin'?" but ella ran across the space between them, and knelt in front of rose-marie. "give 'er t' me!" she breathed fiercely; "she's my sister. give 'er t' me!" silently rose-marie handed over the light little figure. but as ella pillowed the dishevelled head upon her shoulder, she spoke directly to bennie. "run to the settlement house, as fast as ever you can!" she told him. "and bring dr. blanchard back with you. hurry, dear--it may mean lily's life!" and bennie, with his grimy face tear-streaked, was out of the door and clattering down the stairs before she had finished. ella, her mouth agonized and drawn, was the first to speak after bennie left the room. when she did speak she asked a question. "who done this t' her?" she questioned. "_who done it_?" rose-marie hesitated. she could feel the eyes of mrs. volsky, dumb with suffering, upon her--she could feel jim's rat-like gaze fixed, with a certain appeal, on her face. at last she spoke. "jim will tell you!" she said. if she had expected the man to evade the issue--if she had expected a downright falsehood from him--she was surprised. for jim's head came up, suddenly, and his eyes met the burning dark ones of his sister. "i done it," he said, simply, and he scrambled up from the floor, as he spoke. "i kicked her. she come in when i was tryin' t' kiss"--his finger indicated rose-marie, "_her_. lily got in th' way. so i kicked out hard--then--she," he gulped back a shudder, "she _yelled_!" ella was suddenly galvanized into action. she was on her feet, with one lithe, pantherlike movement--the child held tight in her arms. "yer kicked her," she said softly--and the gentleness of her voice was ominous. "yer kicked her! an' she yelled--" for the first time the full significance of it struck her. "_she yelled_?" she questioned, whirling to rose-marie; "yer don't mean as she made a _sound_?" rose-marie nodded dumbly. it was jim's voice that went on with the story. "she ain't dead," he told ella, piteously. "she ain't dead. an'--i promise yer true--i'll never do such a thing again. i promise yer true!" ella took a step toward him. her face was suddenly lined, and old. "if she dies," she told him, "_if she dies_..." she hesitated, and then--"much yer promises mean," she shrilled, "much yer promises--" rose-marie had been watching jim's face. almost without meaning to she interrupted ella's flow of speech. "i think that he means what he says," she told ella slowly. "i think that he means ... what he says." for she had seen the birth of something--_that might have been soul_--in jim's haggard eyes. the child in ella's arms stirred, weakly, and was still again. but the movement, slight as it was, made the girl forget her brother. her dark head bent above the fair one. "honey," she whispered, "yer goin' ter get well fer ella--ain't yer? yer goin' ter get well--" the door swung open with a startling suddenness, and rose-marie sprang forward, her hands outstretched. framed in the battered wood stood bennie--the tears streaking his face--and behind him was the young doctor. so tall he seemed, so capable, so strong, standing there, that rose-marie felt as if her troubles had been lifted, magically, from her shoulders. all at once she ceased to be afraid--ceased to question the ways of the almighty. all at once she felt that lily would get better--that the volskys would be saved to a better life. and all at once she knew something else. and the consciousness of it looked from her wide eyes. "you!" she breathed. "_you_!" and, though she had sent for him, herself, she felt a glad sort of surprise surging through her heart. the young doctor's glance, in her direction, was eloquent. but as his eyes saw the child in ella's arms his expression became impersonal, again, concentrated, and alert. with one stride he reached ella's side, and took the tiny figure from her arms. "what's the matter here?" he questioned sharply. rose-marie was not conscious of the words that she used as she described lily's accident. she glossed over jim's part in it as lightly as possible; she told, as quickly as she could, the history of the child. and as she told it, the doctor's lean capable hands were passing, with practiced skill, over the little relaxed body. when she told of the child's deaf and dumb condition she was conscious of his absolute attention--though he did not for a moment stop his work--when she spoke of the scream she saw his start of surprise. but his only words were in the nature of commands. "bring water"--he ordered, "clean water, in a basin. a _clean_ basin. bring a sponge"--he corrected himself--"a clean rag will do--only it must be _clean_"--this to mrs. volsky, "you _understand?_ where," his eyes were on ella's face, "can we lay the child? is there a _clean_ bed, anywhere?" ella was shaking with nervousness as she opened the door of the inner room that she and lily shared. mrs. volsky, carrying the basin of water, was sobbing. jim, standing in the center of the room, was like a statue--only his haunted eyes were alive. the young doctor, glancing from face to face, spoke suddenly to rose-marie. "i hate to ask you," he said simply, "but you seem to be the only one who hasn't gone to pieces. will you come in here with me?" rose-marie nodded, and she spoke, very softly. "then you think that i'll be able--to help?" she questioned. the young doctor was remembering--or forgetting--many things. "i know that you will!" he said, and he spoke as softly as she had done. "i know that you will!" they went, together, with lily, into the inner room. and as the young doctor closed the door, rose-marie knew a very real throb of triumph. for he had admitted that her help was to be desired--that she could really do something! but, the moment that the door closed, she forgot her feeling of victory, for, of a sudden, she saw dr. blanchard in a new light. she saw him lay the little figure upon the bed--she saw him pull off his coat. and then, while she held the basin of water, she saw him get to work. and as she watched him her last feeling of doubt was swept away. "he may say that he's not interested in people," she told herself joyously, "but he is. he may think that he doesn't care for religion--but he does. there's love of people in every move of his hands! there's something religious in the very way his fingers touch lily!" yes, she was seeing the young doctor in a new light. as she watched him she knew that he had quite forgotten her presence--had quite forgotten the little quarrels that had all but ruined their chance at friendship. she knew that his mind was only on the child who lay so still under his hands--she knew that all the intensity of his nature was concentrated upon lily. as she watched him, deftly obeying his simple directions, she gloried in his skill--in his surety. and then, at last, lily opened her eyes. she might have been waking from a deep slumber as she opened them--she might have been dreaming a pleasant dream as she smiled faintly. rose-marie had a sudden feeling--a feeling that she had experienced before--that the child was seeing visions, with her great sightless eyes, that other, normal folk could not see. all at once a great dread clutched at her soul. "she's not dying--?" she whispered, gaspingly. "her smile is so very--wonderful. she's not dying?" the young doctor turned swiftly from the bed. all at once he looked like a knight to rose-marie--an armourless, modern knight who fought an endless fight against the dragons of disease and pain. "bless your heart, no!" he answered. "she isn't dying! we'll bring her around in a few minutes. and now"--a great tenderness shone out of his eyes, "tell me all about it. you were very sketchy," his gesture indicated the other room, "out there! how did the child really get hurt--and how did you come to be here? how--why, rose-marie.... _sweetheart_!" for rose-marie had fainted very quietly--and for the first time in all of her strong young life. xix and the happy ending they were sitting together at the luncheon table--the superintendent, rose-marie, and the young doctor. the noontime sunshine slanted across the table--dancing on the silver, touching softly rose-marie's curls, finding an answering sparkle in the young doctor's smile. and silence--the warm silence of happiness--lay over them all. it was the young doctor who spoke first. "just about a month ago, it was," he said reflectively, "that i saw lily for the first time. and now"--he paused teasingly--"and now--" rose-marie laid down the bit of roll that she was buttering. her face was glowing with eagerness. "they've come to some decision," she whispered, in a question that was little more than a breath of sound, "the doctors at the hospital have come to some decision?" the superintendent was leaning forward and her kind soul shone out of her tired eyes. "tell us at once, billy blanchard!" she ordered, "_at once_!" quite after the maddening fashion of men the young doctor did not answer--not until he had consumed, and appreciatively, the bit of roll that he had been buttering. and then--"the other doctors agree with my diagnosis," he told them simply. "it's an extraordinary case, they say; but a not incurable one. the shock--when jim kicked her--was a blessing in disguise. not, of course, that i'd prescribe kicks for crippled children! but"--the term that he used was long and technical--"but such things have happened. not often, of course. the doctors agree with me that, if her voice comes back--as i believe it will--there may be a very real hope for her hearing. and her eyes "--his voice was suddenly tender--"well--thousands of slum kiddies are blind--and thousands of them have been cured. if lily is, some day, a normal child--if she can some day speak and see, and hear, it will be--" the superintendent's voice was soft-- "it is already a miracle!" she said simply. "it is already a miracle. look at jim--working for a small salary, _and liking it_! look at bennie--he was the head of his class in school, this month, he told me. and ella--" the young doctor interrupted. "ella and her mother went to church with us last sunday," he said. "rose-marie and i were starting out, together, and they asked if they might go along. i tell you"--his eyes were looking deep, _deep_, into the eyes of rose-marie and he spoke directly to her, "i tell you, dear--i've learned a great many lessons in the last few weeks. jim isn't the only one--or bennie. lily isn't the only nearly incurable case that has found new strength...." rose-marie was blushing. the superintendent, watching the waves of colour sweep over her face, spoke suddenly--reminiscently. "child," she said--and laughter, tremulous laughter, was in her voice, "your face is ever so _pink_! i believe," she was quoting, "'that you have a best beau'!" the young doctor was laughing, too. strangely enough his laughter had just the suggestion of a tremor in it. "i'll say that she has!" he replied, and his words, though slangy, were very tender. "i'll say that she has!" and then--"are _we_ going back to the little town, rose-marie," he questioned. "are _we_ going back to the little town to be married?" the blush had died from rose-marie's face, leaving it just faintly flushed. the eyes that she raised to the young doctor's eyes were like warm stars. "no," she told him, "we're not! i've thought it all out. we're going to be married here--here in the settlement house. i'll write for my aunts to come on--and for my old pastor! i couldn't be married without my aunts.... and my pastor; he christened me, and he welcomed me into the church, and"--all at once she started up from the table, "i'm going up-stairs to write, now," she managed. "i want to tell them that we're going to start our home here"--her voice broke, "here, on our own island...." like a flash she was out of the door. the young doctor was on his feet. luncheon was quite forgotten. "i think," he said softly, and his face was like a light, "i think that i'll go with her--and help her with the letter!" the door closed, sharply, upon his hurrying back. * * * * * the superintendent, left alone at the table, rang for the maid. her voice was carefully calm as she ordered the evening meal. but her eyes were just a bit misty as she looked into the maid's dull face. "mrs. volsky," she said suddenly, "love must have its way! and love is--" the maid looked at her blankly. obviously she did not understand. but, seeing her neat apron, her clean hands, her carefully combed hair, one could forgive her vague expression. "what say?" she questioned. the superintendent laughed wearily, "anyway," she remarked, "ella likes her work, doesn't she? and jim? and bennie is going to be a great man, some day--isn't he? and lily may be made well--quite well! you should be a glad woman, mrs. volsky!" pride flamed up, suddenly, in the maid's face--blotting out the dullness. "god," she said simply and--marvel of marvels--her usually toneless voice was athrob with love--"god is good!" she went out, with a tray full of dishes. her chin in the palm of her hand, the superintendent stared off into space. if she was thinking of a little blond child--lying in a hospital bed--if she was thinking of a man with sleek hair, trying to make a new start--if she was thinking of a girl with dark, flashing eyes, and a small, grubby-fingered boy, her expression did not mirror her thought. only once she spoke, as she was folding her napkin. and then-- "they're both very young," she murmured, a shade wistfully. perhaps she was remembering the springtime of her own youth. produced from images generously made available by the internet archive.) out of mulberry street jacob·a·riis [illustration: merry christmas in the tenements.] out of mulberry street stories of tenement life in new york city by jacob a. riis author of "how the other half lives," "the children of the poor," etc. new york the century co. copyright, , , by the century co. the de vinne press. contents page merry christmas in the tenements 'twas liza's doings the dubourques, father and son abe's game of jacks a little picture a dream of the woods a heathen baby he kept his tryst john gavin, misfit in the children's hospital nigger martha's wake a chip from the maelstrom sarah joyce's husbands the cat took the kosher meat fire in the barracks a war on the goats rover's last fight when the letter came the kid lost children the slipper-maker's fast paolo's awakening the little dollar's christmas journey a proposal on the elevated death comes to cat alley why it happened the christening in bottle alley in the mulberry street court spooning in dynamite alley heroes who fight fire preface since i wrote "how the other half lives" i have been asked many times upon what basis of experience, of fact, i built that account of life in new york tenements. these stories contain the answer. they are from the daily grist of the police hopper in mulberry street, at which i have been grinding for twenty years. they are reprinted from the columns of my newspaper, and from the magazines as a contribution to the discussion of the lives and homes of the poor, which in recent years has done much to better their lot, and is yet to do much more when we have all come to understand each other. in this discussion only facts are of value, and these stories are true. in the few instances in which i have taken the ordering of events into my own hands, it is chiefly their sequence with which i have interfered. the facts themselves remain as i found them. j. a. r. mulberry street. out of mulberry street 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 drafts 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 mama 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 draft. some one going out said, "a merry christmas to you all!" in a big, hearty voice. i awoke from my reverie 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 gaily, 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 peddlers 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 gin 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 peddler 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. juniper and tamarack 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 gentile 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 over-head 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 torchlight 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-worshipers, 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 gaily 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 down-stairs 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-à-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!" shouts 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 this 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 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 offense 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 as 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 peddler'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 moldy 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 candle-sticks. 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 cloakmaker 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 whisky with a fine air of indifference, but glancing apprehensively toward the crowd of women in the opposite corner that surrounds 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 skull cap, 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 meter. 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 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. peddlers 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 up-stairs. 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 somber-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 aniseed, 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 center 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; the 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. '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 now 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. peddlers 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, over-shadowed 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 mama 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. they ate their dinner together, and sat 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 boy, 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 engine." 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. the dubourques, father and son it must be nearly a quarter of a century since i first met the dubourques. there are plenty of old new-yorkers yet who will recall them as i saw them, plodding along chatham street, swarthy, silent, meanly dressed, undersized, with their great tin signs covering front and back, like ill-favored gnomes turned sandwich-men to vent their spite against a gay world. sunshine or rain, they went their way, indian file, never apart, bearing their everlasting, unavailing protest. "i demand," read the painted signs, "the will and testament of my brother, who died in california, leaving a large property inheritance to virgile dubourque, which has never reached him." that was all any one was ever able to make out. at that point the story became rambling and unintelligible. denunciation, hot and wrathful, of the thieves, whoever they were, of the government, of bishops, priests, and lawyers, alternated with protestations of innocence of heaven knows what crimes. if any one stopped them to ask what it was all about, they stared, shook their heads, and passed on. if money was offered, they took it without thanking the giver; indeed, without noticing him. they were never seen apart, yet never together in the sense of being apparently anything to each other. i doubt if they ever spoke, unless they were obliged to. grim and lonely, they traveled the streets, parading their grievance before an unheeding day. what that grievance was, and what was their story, a whole generation had tried vainly to find out. every young reporter tried his hand at it at least once, some many times, i among them. none of us ever found out anything tangible about them. now and then we ran down a rumor in the region of bleecker street, then the "french quarter,"--i should have said that they were french and spoke but a few words of broken english when they spoke at all,--only to have it come to nothing. one which i recall was to the effect that, at some time in the far past, the elder of the two had been a schoolmaster in lorraine, and had come across the sea in quest of a fabulous fortune left by his brother, one of the gold-diggers of ' , who died in his boots; that there had been some disagreement between father and son, which resulted in the latter running away with their saved-up capital, leaving the old man stranded in a strange city, among people of strange speech, without the means of asserting his claim, and that, when he realized this, he lost his reason. thus his son, erneste, found him, returning after years penniless and repentant. from that meeting father and son came forth what they were ever since. so ran the story, but whether it was all fancy, or some or most of it, i could not tell. no one could. one by one, the reporters dropped them, unable to make them out. the officers of a french benevolent society, where twice a week they received fixed rations, gave up importuning them to accept the shelter of the house before their persistent, almost fierce, refusal. the police did not trouble them, except when people complained that the tin signs tore their clothes. after that they walked with canvas posters, and were let alone. one morning in the winter of , among the police reports of the night's happenings that were laid upon my desk, i found one saying that virgile dubourque, frenchman, seventy-five years old, had died in a wooster-street lodging-house. the story of his death, as i learned it there that day, was as tragic as that of his life. he had grown more and more feeble, until at last he was unable to leave the house. for the first time the son went out alone. the old man sat by the stove all day, silently brooding over his wrongs. the lodgers came and went. he heeded neither their going nor their coming. through the long night he kept his seat, gazing fixedly into the fire. in the morning, when daylight shone upon the cold, gray ashes, he sat there dead. the son slept peacefully beside him. the old schoolmaster took his last trip alone; no mourners rode behind the hearse to the palisade cemetery, where charitable countrymen bought him a grave. erneste did not go to the funeral. that afternoon i met him on broadway, plodding alone over the old route. his eyes were red and swollen. the "protest" hung from his shoulders; in his hand he carried, done up roughly in a pack, the signs the old man had borne. a look of such utter loneliness as i had never seen on a human face came into his when i asked him where his father was. he made a gesture of dejection and shifted his feet uneasily, as if impatient at being detained. something distracted my attention for the moment, and when i looked again he was gone. once in the following summer i heard from erneste through the newspapers, just when i had begun to miss him from his old haunts. it seems that he had somehow found the papers that proved his claim, or thought he had. he had put them into the hands of the french consul the day before, said the item, appearing before him clothed and in his right mind, without the signs. but the account merely added to the mystery by hinting that the old man had unconsciously hoarded the papers all the years he sought them with such toil in the streets of new york. here was my story at last; but before i could lay hold of it, it evaded me once more in the hurry and worry of the police office. autumn had come and nearly gone, when new york was one day startled by the report that a madman had run through fourteenth street at an hour in the afternoon when it was most crowded with shoppers, and, with a pair of carpenter's compasses, had cut right and left, stabbing as many as came in his way. a scene of the wildest panic ensued. women flung themselves down basement-steps and fell fainting in doorways. fully half a score were cut down, among them the wife of policeman hanley, who was on duty in the block, and who arrested the maniac without knowing that his wife lay mortally wounded among his victims. she had come out to meet him, with the children. it was only after he had attended to the rest and sent the prisoner away securely bound that he was told there was still a wounded woman in the next store, and found her there with her little ones. the madman was erneste dubourque. i found him in the police station, surrounded by a crowd of excited officials, to whose inquiries he turned a mien of dull and stolid indifference. he knew me when i called him by name, and looked up with a movement of quick intelligence, as one who suddenly remembers something he had forgotten and vainly tried to recall. he started for the door. when they seized him and brought him back, he fought like a demon. his shrieks of "thieves! robbers!" filled the building as they bore him struggling to a cell. he was tried by a jury and acquitted of murder. the defense was insanity. the court ordered his incarceration in a safe asylum. the police had received a severe lesson, and during the next month, while it was yet fresh in the public mind, they bestirred themselves, and sent a number of "harmless" lunatics, who had gone about unmolested, after him. i never heard of erneste dubourque again; but even now, after fifteen years, i find myself sometimes asking the old question: what was the story of wrong that bore such a crop of sorrow and darkness and murder? 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. . 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. up-stairs 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 papoose, 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 marvelous 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. 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. piccaninnies have come in it before this, lots of them, black and shiny, and one papoose 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 up-stairs in a hurry. down-stairs first, in the sergeant's big blotter, and up-stairs 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, mama!" 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, mama! a real live baby! now tilde needn't brag of theirs. we will take it home, won't we, mama!" 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. " 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. 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 horseradish 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. 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 traveled 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 referred his case, had they done nothing else. 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 traveled early and traveled 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 mama'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. 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 woolen 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 dominoes, 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 visitor "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 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 make-weight, 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 mutton heads, 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 woolen 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 dominoes 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 dominoes. 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-woolen jacket--a combination to make the perspiration run right off one with the humidity at --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 defense 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 disheveled 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. 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. 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 off 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. entered. "was sarah joyce brought here?" he asked clerk betts. the clerk couldn't find the name. "look for mary donovan," said no. . "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. the cat took the kosher meat the tenement no. madison street had been for some time scandalized by the hoidenish ways of rose baruch, the little cloakmaker 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 freeborn 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 : 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. 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 if 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 halted 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. a 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 arm." 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, mama; 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. 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 water-works, 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 jewelry, 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, "nothin'," 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 vise, 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. 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 millionaire 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 envelop 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 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 offense 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 half-way across to broadway. he "wanted no guff," and i left him to his meditations respecting his defenseless 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? 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 passed 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 peddler, 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 cañon 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 peddler 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 peddler 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 clue 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 peddler'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 fostó 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."[ ] [ ] 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. 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, and 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 jewtown 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! 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 off 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 modeling-clay were brought in, and the children were told to mold 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 traveling 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 grottoes 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 inclosed 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 traveled 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 shoveling. 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. yes, 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. i wonder if it wouldn't 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, thus 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. peddlers of toys, of mottos, 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 protégé 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 shin-plasters 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 on, 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. a proposal on the elevated the sleeper on the : 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 cock-crow. 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 neighborhood 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 mama, 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. mama 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 half-way. "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. "mögtest 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. "mama!" 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. 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 up-stairs 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. why it happened yom kippur being at hand, all the east side was undergoing a scrubbing, the people included. it is part of the religious observance of the chief jewish holiday that every worshiper presenting himself at the synagogue to be cleansed from sin must first have washed his body clean. hence the numerous tenement bath-houses on the east side are run night and day in yom kippur week to their full capacity. there are so many more people than tubs that there is no rest for the attendants even in the small hours of the morning. they are not palatial establishments exactly, these _mikwehs_ (bath-houses). most of them are in keeping with the tenements that harbor them; but they fill the bill. one, at orchard street, has even a turkish and a russian attachment. it is one of the most pretentious. for thirty-five cents one can be roasted by dry heat or boiled with steam. the unhappy experience of jacob epstein shows that it is even possible to be boiled literally and in earnest in hot water at the same price. he chose that way unwittingly, and the choice came near causing a riot. epstein came to the bath-house with a party of friends at a. m., in quest of a russian bath. they had been steamed, and were disporting themselves to their heart's content when the thing befell the tailor. epstein is a tailor. he went to get a shower-bath in a pail,--where russian baths are got for thirty-five cents they are got partly by hand, as it were,--and in the dim, religious light of the room, the small gas-jet struggling ineffectually with the steam and darkness, he mistook the hot-water faucet for the cold. he found out his mistake when he raised the pail and poured a flood of boiling water over himself. then his shrieks filled the house. his companions paused in amazement, and beheld the tailor dancing on one foot and on the other by turns, yelling: "weh! weh! ich bin verbrennt!" they thought he had gone suddenly mad, and joined in the lamentation, till one of them saw his skin red and parboiled and raising big blisters. then they ran with a common accord for their own cold-water pails, and pursued him, seeking to dash their contents over him. but the tailor, frantic with pain, thought, if he thought at all, that he was going to be killed, and yelled louder than ever. his companions' shouts, joined to his, were heard in the street, and there promptly gathered a wailing throng that echoed the "weh! weh!" from within, and exchanged opinions between their laments as to who was being killed, and why. policeman schulem came just in time to prevent a general panic and restore peace. schulem is a valuable man on the east side. his name alone is enough. it signifies peace--peace in the language of ludlow street. the crowd melted away, and the tailor was taken to the hospital, bewailing his bad luck. the bath-house keeper was an indignant and injured man. his business was hurt. "how did it happen?" he said. "it happened because he is a schlemiehl. _teufel!_ he's worse than a schlemiehl; he is a chammer." which accounts for it, of course, and explains everything. 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 rag-picker 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 she had forgotten. they poked fun at him and spoke carmen's 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 cellarways, 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 leveled 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 at 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 down-stairs 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 up-stairs. 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 door-man 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. spooning in dynamite alley dynamite alley is bereft. its spring spooning is over. once more the growler has the right of way. but what good is it, with kate cassidy hiding in her third floor back, her "steady" hiding from the police, and tom hart laid up in hospital with two of his "slats stove in," all along of their "spieling"? there will be nothing now to heave a brick at on a dark night, and no chance for a row for many a day to come. no wonder dynamite alley is out of sorts. it got its name from the many rows that traveled in the wake of the growler out and in at the three-foot gap between brick walls, which was a garden walk when the front house was young and pansies and spiderwort grew in the back lot. these many years a tenement has stood there, and as it grew older and more dilapidated, rows multiplied and grew noisier, until the explosive name was hooked to the alley by the neighbors, and stuck. it was long after that that the cassidys, father and daughter, came to live in it, and also the harts. their coming wrought no appreciable change, except that it added another and powerful one to the dynamic forces of the alley--jealousy. kate is pretty. she is blonde and she is twenty. she greases plates in a pie bakery in sullivan street by day, and so earns her own living. of course she is a favorite. there isn't a ball going on that she doesn't attend, or a picnic either. it was at one of them, the last of the hounds' balls, that she met george finnegan. there weren't many hours after that when they didn't meet. he made the alley his headquarters by day and by night. on the morning after the ball he scandalized it by spooning with kate from daybreak till nine o'clock. by the middle of the afternoon he was back again, and all night, till every one was asleep, he and kate held the alley by main strength, as it were, the fact being that when they were in it no one could pass. their spooning blocked it, blocked the way of the growler. the alley called it mean, and trouble began promptly. after that things fell by accident out of the windows of the rear tenement when kate and george finnegan were sitting in the doorway. they tried to reduce the chances of a hit as much as might be by squeezing into the space of one, at which the alley jeered. sometimes one of the tenants would jostle them in the yard and "give lip," in the alley's vernacular, and kate would retort with dignity: "excuse yerself. ye don't know who yer talkin' to." it had to come to it, and it did. finnegan had been continuing the siege since the warm weather set in. he was a good spieler, kate gave in to that. but she hadn't taken him for her steady yet, though the alley let on it thought so. her steady is away at sea. george evidently thought the time ripe for cutting him out. his spooning ran into the small hours of the morning, night after night. it was near a. m. that morning when thomas hart came down to the yard, stumbled over the pair in the doorway, and made remarks. as he passed out of sight, george, the swain, said: "if he gives any more lip when he comes back, i'll swing on him." and just then hart came back. he did "give lip," and george "swung on him." it took him in the eye, and he fell. then he jumped on him and stove in his slats. kate ran. after all, george finnegan was not game. when hart's wife came down to see who groaned in the yard, and, finding her husband, let out those blood-curdling yells which made kate cassidy hide in an ice-wagon half-way down the block, he deserted kate and ran. mistress hart's yells brought policeman devery. he didn't ask whence they came, but made straight for the alley. mistress hart was there, vowing vengeance upon "kate cassidy's feller," who had done up her man. she vowed vengeance in such a loud voice that the alley trembled with joyful excitement, while kate, down the street, crept farther into the ice-wagon, trembling also, but with fear. kate is not a fighter. she is too good-looking for that. the policeman found her there and escorted her home, past the hart door, after he had sent mister hart to the hospital, where the doctors fixed his slats (ribs, that is to say). mistress hart, outnumbered, fell back and organized an ambush, vowing that she would lay kate out yet. discovering that the floods, next door, had connived at her enemy's descent by way of their fire-escape, she included them in the siege by prompt declaration of war upon the whole floor. the cause of it all, safe in the bakery, suspended the greasing of pie-plates long enough to give her version of the row: "we were a-sittin' there, quiet an' peaceful like," she said, "when mister hart came along an' made remarks, an' george he give it back to him good. 'oh,' says he, 'you ain't a thousand; yer only one,' an' he went. when he came back, george he stood up, an' mister hart he says to me: 'ye're not an up-stairs girl; you can be called down,' an' george he up an' struck him. i didn't wait fer no more. i just run out of the alley. is he hurted bad? "who is george? he is me feller. i met him at the hounds' ball in germania hall, an' he treated me same as you would any lady. we danced together an' had a couple of drinks, an' he took me home. george ain't me steady, you know. me regular he is to sea. see? "i didn't see nothin'. i hid in the wagon while i heard him callin' names. i wasn't goin' in till mr. deevy [policeman devery] he came along. i told him i was scart, and he said: 'oh, come along.' but i was dead scart. "say, you won't forget to come to our picnic, the 'pie-girls,' will you? it'll be great." heroes who fight fire thirteen years have passed since, 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. 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. is not specially 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[ ] 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. [ ] rooney wore the bennett medal for saving the life of a woman at the disastrous fire in the old "world" building, on january , . 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. , 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 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. they 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 per cent. 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. , 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. , 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 man, 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-draft, 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 quarreling, 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 disheveled 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 pipe-men are in place and ready; but in spite of all precautions, he is often surprised by the dreaded back-draft. i remember standing in front of a burning broadway store, one night, when the back-draft 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, ; 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-draft 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. , 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 property 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 , , when the geneva club on lexington avenue was burned out. fireman howe drove hook-and-ladder no. 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 groveled upon the floor, 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 . he was next in command of engine no. 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 , . 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 signaled, 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 to ,--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 was crumbling 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 imperiled comrades, whose escape was cut off, slid down hose and scaling-ladders. the last, the crew of engine company no. , had reached the street, and all were thought to be out, when the assistant foreman, daniel fitzmaurice, appeared at a 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 half-way 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 marvelous feat, or feats, of sergeant (now captain) john r. vaughan on that february morning six years ago. the alarm rang in patrol station no. at : 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-draft 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 of 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 off 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 fiancé 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 there were fires in new york, with an average loss of $ . per fire. in , with fires, the loss was but $ . at each. in , fires averaged only $ . . 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." how the other half lives [illustration: gotham court.] how the other half lives _studies among the tenements of new york_ by jacob a. riis _with illustrations chiefly from photographs taken by the author_ new york charles scribner's sons copyright, , by charles scribner's sons trow's printing and bookbinding company, new york. preface. the belief that every man's experience ought to be worth something to the community from which he drew it, no matter what that experience may be, so long as it was gleaned along the line of some decent, honest work, made me begin this book. with the result before him, the reader can judge for himself now whether or not i was right. right or wrong, the many and exacting duties of a newspaper man's life would hardly have allowed me to bring it to an end but for frequent friendly lifts given me by willing hands. to the president of the board of health, mr. charles g. wilson, and to chief inspector byrnes of the police force i am indebted for much kindness. the patient friendship of dr. roger s. tracy, the registrar of vital statistics, has done for me what i never could have done for myself; for i know nothing of tables, statistics and percentages, while there is nothing about them that he does not know. most of all, i owe in this, as in all things else, to the womanly sympathy and the loving companionship of my dear wife, ever my chief helper, my wisest counsellor, and my gentlest critic. j. a. r. contents. page introduction, chapter i. genesis of the tenement, chapter ii. the awakening, chapter iii. the mixed crowd, chapter iv. the down town back-alleys, chapter v. the italian in new york, chapter vi. the bend, chapter vii. a raid on the stale-beer dives, chapter viii. the cheap lodging-houses, chapter ix. chinatown, chapter x. jewtown, chapter xi. the sweaters of jewtown, chapter xii. the bohemians--tenement-house cigarmaking, chapter xiii. the color line in new york, chapter xiv. the common herd, chapter xv. the problem of the children, chapter xvi. waifs of the city's slums, chapter xvii. the street arab, chapter xviii. the reign of rum, chapter xix. the harvest of tares, chapter xx. the working girls of new york, chapter xxi. pauperism in the tenements, chapter xxii. the wrecks and the waste, chapter xxiii. the man with the knife, chapter xxiv. what has been done, chapter xxv. how the case stands, list of illustrations. gotham court, _frontispiece_ page hell's kitchen and sebastopol, tenement of , for twelve families on each flat, tenement of the old style. birth of the air-shaft, at the cradle of the tenement.--doorway of an old-fashioned dwelling on cherry hill, upstairs in blindman's alley, an old rear-tenement in roosevelt street, in the home of an italian rag-picker, jersey street, the bend, bandits' roost, bottle alley, lodgers in a crowded bayard street tenement--"five cents a spot," an all-night two-cent restaurant, in "the bend," the tramp, bunks in a seven-cent lodging-house, pell street, in a chinese joint, "the official organ of chinatown," a tramp's nest in ludlow street, a market scene in the jewish quarter, the old clo'e's man--in the jewish quarters, "knee-pants" at forty-five cents a dozen--a ludlow street sweater's shop, bohemian cigarmakers at work in their tenement, a black-and-tan dive in "africa," the open door, bird's-eye view of an east side tenement block, the white badge of mourning, in poverty gap, west twenty-eighth street. an english coal-heaver's home, dispossessed, the trench in the potter's field, prayer-time in the nursery--five points house of industry, "didn't live nowhere," street arabs in sleeping quarters, getting ready for supper in the newsboys' lodging-house, a downtown "morgue," a growler gang in session, typical toughs (from the rogues' gallery), hunting river thieves, sewing and starving in an elizabeth street attic, a flat in the pauper barracks, west thirty-eighth street, with all its furniture, coffee at one cent, evolution of the tenement in twenty years, general plan of the riverside buildings (a. t. white's) in brooklyn, floor plan of one division in the riverside buildings, showing six "apartments," "with gates of silver and bars of gold ye have fenced my sheep from their father's fold; i have heard the dropping of their tears in heaven these eighteen hundred years." "o lord and master, not ours the guilt, we build but as our fathers built; behold thine images, how they stand, sovereign and sole, through all our land." then christ sought out an artisan, a low-browed, stunted, haggard man, and a motherless girl, whose fingers thin pushed from her faintly want and sin. these set he in the midst of them, and as they drew back their garment-hem, for fear of defilement, "lo, here," said he, "the _images_ ye have made of me!" --james russell lowell. how the other half lives. _introduction._ long ago it was said that "one half of the world does not know how the other half lives." that was true then. it did not know because it did not care. the half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat. there came a time when the discomfort and crowding below were so great, and the consequent upheavals so violent, that it was no longer an easy thing to do, and then the upper half fell to inquiring what was the matter. information on the subject has been accumulating rapidly since, and the whole world has had its hands full answering for its old ignorance. in new york, the youngest of the world's great cities, that time came later than elsewhere, because the crowding had not been so great. there were those who believed that it would never come; but their hopes were vain. greed and reckless selfishness wrought like results here as in the cities of older lands. "when the great riot occurred in ," so reads the testimony of the secretary of the prison association of new york before a legislative committee appointed to investigate causes of the increase of crime in the state twenty-five years ago, "every hiding-place and nursery of crime discovered itself by immediate and active participation in the operations of the mob. those very places and domiciles, and all that are like them, are to-day nurseries of crime, and of the vices and disorderly courses which lead to crime. by far the largest part--eighty per cent. at least--of crimes against property and against the person are perpetrated by individuals who have either lost connection with home life, or never had any, or whose _homes had ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent, and desirable to afford what are regarded as ordinary wholesome influences of home and family_.... the younger criminals seem to come almost exclusively from the worst tenement house districts, that is, when traced back to the very places where they had their homes in the city here." of one thing new york made sure at that early stage of the inquiry: the boundary line of the other half lies through the tenements. it is ten years and over, now, since that line divided new york's population evenly. to-day three-fourths of its people live in the tenements, and the nineteenth century drift of the population to the cities is sending ever-increasing multitudes to crowd them. the fifteen thousand tenant houses that were the despair of the sanitarian in the past generation have swelled into thirty-seven thousand, and more than twelve hundred thousand persons call them home. the one way out he saw--rapid transit to the suburbs--has brought no relief. we know now that there is no way out; that the "system" that was the evil offspring of public neglect and private greed has come to stay, a storm-centre forever of our civilization. nothing is left but to make the best of a bad bargain. what the tenements are and how they grow to what they are, we shall see hereafter. the story is dark enough, drawn from the plain public records, to send a chill to any heart. if it shall appear that the sufferings and the sins of the "other half," and the evil they breed, are but as a just punishment upon the community that gave it no other choice, it will be because that is the truth. the boundary line lies there because, while the forces for good on one side vastly outweigh the bad--it were not well otherwise--in the tenements all the influences make for evil; because they are the hot-beds of the epidemics that carry death to rich and poor alike; the nurseries of pauperism and crime that fill our jails and police courts; that throw off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks to the island asylums and workhouses year by year; that turned out in the last eight years a round half million beggars to prey upon our charities; that maintain a standing army of ten thousand tramps with all that that implies; because, above all, they touch the family life with deadly moral contagion. this is their worst crime, inseparable from the system. that we have to own it the child of our own wrong does not excuse it, even though it gives it claim upon our utmost patience and tenderest charity. what are you going to do about it? is the question of to-day. it was asked once of our city in taunting defiance by a band of political cutthroats, the legitimate outgrowth of life on the tenement-house level.[ ] law and order found the answer then and prevailed. with our enormously swelling population held in this galling bondage, will that answer always be given? it will depend on how fully the situation that prompted the challenge is grasped. forty per cent. of the distress among the poor, said a recent official report, is due to drunkenness. but the first legislative committee ever appointed to probe this sore went deeper down and uncovered its roots. the "conclusion forced itself upon it that certain conditions and associations of human life and habitation are the prolific parents of corresponding habits and morals," and it recommended "the prevention of drunkenness by providing for every man a clean and comfortable home." years after, a sanitary inquiry brought to light the fact that "more than one-half of the tenements with two-thirds of their population were held by owners who made the keeping of them a business, _generally a speculation_. the owner was seeking a certain percentage on his outlay, and that percentage very rarely fell below fifteen per cent., and frequently exceeded thirty.[ ]... the complaint was universal among the tenants that they were entirely uncared for, and that the only answer to their requests to have the place put in order by repairs and necessary improvements was that they must pay their rent or leave. the agent's instructions were simple but emphatic: 'collect the rent in advance, or, failing, eject the occupants.'" upon such a stock grew this upas-tree. small wonder the fruit is bitter. the remedy that shall be an effective answer to the coming appeal for justice must proceed from the public conscience. neither legislation nor charity can cover the ground. the greed of capital that wrought the evil must itself undo it, as far as it can now be undone. homes must be built for the working masses by those who employ their labor; but tenements must cease to be "good property" in the old, heartless sense. "philanthropy and five per cent." is the penance exacted. [footnote : tweed was born and bred in a fourth ward tenement.] [footnote : forty per cent. was declared by witnesses before a senate committee to be a fair average interest on tenement property. instances were given of its being one hundred per cent. and over.] if this is true from a purely economic point of view, what then of the outlook from the christian standpoint? not long ago a great meeting was held in this city, of all denominations of religious faith, to discuss the question how to lay hold of these teeming masses in the tenements with christian influences, to which they are now too often strangers. might not the conference have found in the warning of one brooklyn builder, who has invested his capital on this plan and made it pay more than a money interest, a hint worth heeding: "how shall the love of god be understood by those who have been nurtured in sight only of the greed of man?" [illustration: hell's kitchen and sebastopol.] chapter i. genesis of the tenement. the first tenement new york knew bore the mark of cain from its birth, though a generation passed before the writing was deciphered. it was the "rear house," infamous ever after in our city's history. there had been tenant-houses before, but they were not built for the purpose. nothing would probably have shocked their original owners more than the idea of their harboring a promiscuous crowd; for they were the decorous homes of the old knickerbockers, the proud aristocracy of manhattan in the early days. it was the stir and bustle of trade, together with the tremendous immigration that followed upon the war of that dislodged them. in thirty-five years the city of less than a hundred thousand came to harbor half a million souls, for whom homes had to be found. within the memory of men not yet in their prime, washington had moved from his house on cherry hill as too far out of town to be easily reached. now the old residents followed his example; but they moved in a different direction and for a different reason. their comfortable dwellings in the once fashionable streets along the east river front fell into the hands of real-estate agents and boarding-house keepers; and here, says the report to the legislature of , when the evils engendered had excited just alarm, "in its beginning, the tenant-house became a real blessing to that class of industrious poor whose small earnings limited their expenses, and whose employment in workshops, stores, or about the warehouses and thoroughfares, render a near residence of much importance." not for long, however. as business increased, and the city grew with rapid strides, the necessities of the poor became the opportunity of their wealthier neighbors, and the stamp was set upon the old houses, suddenly become valuable, which the best thought and effort of a later age has vainly struggled to efface. their "_large_ rooms were partitioned into _several smaller ones_, without regard to light or ventilation, the rate of rent being lower in proportion to space or height from the street; and they soon became filled from cellar to garret with a class of tenantry living from hand to mouth, loose in morals, improvident in habits, degraded, and squalid as beggary itself." it was thus the dark bedroom, prolific of untold depravities, came into the world. it was destined to survive the old houses. in their new rôle, says the old report, eloquent in its indignant denunciation of "evils more destructive than wars," "they were not intended to last. rents were fixed high enough to cover damage and abuse from this class, from whom nothing was expected, and the most was made of them while they lasted. neatness, order, cleanliness, were never dreamed of in connection with the tenant-house system, as it spread its localities from year to year; while reckless slovenliness, discontent, privation, and ignorance were left to work out their invariable results, until the entire premises reached the level of tenant-house dilapidation, containing, but sheltering not, the miserable hordes that crowded beneath smouldering, water-rotted roofs or burrowed among the rats of clammy cellars." yet so illogical is human greed that, at a later day, when called to account, "the proprietors frequently urged the filthy habits of the tenants as an excuse for the condition of their property, utterly losing sight of the fact that it was the tolerance of those habits which was the real evil, and that for this they themselves were alone responsible." still the pressure of the crowds did not abate, and in the old garden where the stolid dutch burgher grew his tulips or early cabbages a rear house was built, generally of wood, two stories high at first. presently it was carried up another story, and another. where two families had lived ten moved in. the front house followed suit, if the brick walls were strong enough. the question was not always asked, judging from complaints made by a contemporary witness, that the old buildings were "often carried up to a great height without regard to the strength of the foundation walls." it was rent the owner was after; nothing was said in the contract about either the safety or the comfort of the tenants. the garden gate no longer swung on its rusty hinges. the shell-paved walk had become an alley; what the rear house had left of the garden, a "court." plenty such are yet to be found in the fourth ward, with here and there one of the original rear tenements. worse was to follow. it was "soon perceived by estate owners and agents of property that a greater percentage of profits could be realized by the conversion of houses and blocks into barracks, and dividing their space into smaller proportions capable of containing human life within four walls.... blocks were rented of real estate owners, or 'purchased on time,' or taken in charge at a percentage, and held for under-letting." with the appearance of the middleman, wholly irresponsible, and utterly reckless and unrestrained, began the era of tenement building which turned out such blocks as gotham court, where, in one cholera epidemic that scarcely touched the clean wards, the tenants died at the rate of one hundred and ninety-five to the thousand of population; which forced the general mortality of the city up from in . in , to in . in , a year of unusual freedom from epidemic disease, and which wrung from the early organizers of the health department this wail: "there are numerous examples of tenement-houses in which are lodged several hundred people that have a _pro rata_ allotment of ground area scarcely equal to two square yards upon the city lot, court-yards and all included." the tenement-house population had swelled to half a million souls by that time, and on the east side, in what is still the most densely populated district in all the world, china not excluded, it was packed at the rate of , to the square mile, a state of affairs wholly unexampled. the utmost cupidity of other lands and other days had never contrived to herd much more than half that number within the same space. the greatest crowding of old london was at the rate of , . swine roamed the streets and gutters as their principal scavengers.[ ] the death of a child in a tenement was registered at the bureau of vital statistics as "plainly due to suffocation in the foul air of an unventilated apartment," and the senators, who had come down from albany to find out what was the matter with new york, reported that "there are annually cut off from the population by disease and death enough human beings to people a city, and enough human labor to sustain it." and yet experts had testified that, as compared with uptown, rents were from twenty-five to thirty per cent. higher in the worst slums of the lower wards, with such accommodations as were enjoyed, for instance, by a "family with boarders" in cedar street, who fed hogs in the cellar that contained eight or ten loads of manure; or "one room Ã� with five families living in it, comprising twenty persons of both sexes and all ages, with only two beds, without partition, screen, chair, or table." the rate of rent has been successfully maintained to the present day, though the hog at least has been eliminated. [footnote : it was not until the winter of that owners of swine were prohibited by ordinance from letting them run at large in the built-up portions of the city.] lest anybody flatter himself with the notion that these were evils of a day that is happily past and may safely be forgotten, let me mention here three very recent instances of tenement-house life that came under my notice. one was the burning of a rear house in mott street, from appearances one of the original tenant-houses that made their owners rich. the fire made homeless ten families, who had paid an average of $ a month for their mean little cubby-holes. the owner himself told me that it was _fully_ insured for $ , though it brought him in $ a year rent. he evidently considered himself especially entitled to be pitied for losing such valuable property. another was the case of a hard-working family of man and wife, young people from the old country, who took poison together in a crosby street tenement because they were "tired." there was no other explanation, and none was needed when i stood in the room in which they had lived. it was in the attic with sloping ceiling and a single window so far out on the roof that it seemed not to belong to the place at all. with scarcely room enough to turn around in they had been compelled to pay five dollars and a half a month in advance. there were four such rooms in that attic, and together they brought in as much as many a handsome little cottage, in a pleasant part of brooklyn. the third instance was that of a colored family of husband, wife, and baby in a wretched rear rookery in west third street. their rent was eight dollars and a half for a single room on the top-story, so small that i was unable to get a photograph of it even by placing the camera outside the open door. three short steps across either way would have measured its full extent. [illustration: tenement of , for twelve families on each flat.[ ] d, dark. l, light. h, halls.] [footnote : this "unventilated and fever-breeding structure" the year after it was built was picked out by the council of hygiene, then just organized, and presented to the citizens' association of new york as a specimen "multiple domicile" in a desirable street, with the following comment: "here are twelve living-rooms and twenty-one bedrooms, and only six of the latter have any provision or possibility for the admission of light and air, excepting through the family sitting- and living-room; being utterly dark, close, and unventilated. the living-rooms are but Ã� feet; the bedrooms ½ Ã� feet."] there was just one excuse for the early tenement-house builders, and their successors may plead it with nearly as good right for what it is worth. "such," says an official report, "is the lack of house-room in the city that any kind of tenement can be immediately crowded with lodgers, if there is space offered." thousands were living in cellars. there were three hundred underground lodging-houses in the city when the health department was organized. some fifteen years before that the old baptist church in mulberry street, just off chatham street, had been sold, and the rear half of the frame structure had been converted into tenements that with their swarming population became the scandal even of that reckless age. the wretched pile harbored no less than forty families, and the annual rate of deaths to the population was officially stated to be in , . these tenements were an extreme type of very many, for the big barracks had by this time spread east and west and far up the island into the sparsely settled wards. whether or not the title was clear to the land upon which they were built was of less account than that the rents were collected. if there were damages to pay, the tenant had to foot them. cases were "very frequent when property was in litigation, and two or three different parties were collecting rents." of course under such circumstances "no repairs were ever made." the climax had been reached. the situation was summed up by the society for the improvement of the condition of the poor in these words: "crazy old buildings, crowded rear tenements in filthy yards, dark, damp basements, leaking garrets, shops, outhouses, and stables[ ] converted into dwellings, though scarcely fit to shelter brutes, are habitations of thousands of our fellow-beings in this wealthy, christian city." "the city," says its historian, mrs. martha lamb, commenting on the era of aqueduct building between and , "was a general asylum for vagrants." young vagabonds, the natural offspring of such "home" conditions, overran the streets. juvenile crime increased fearfully year by year. the children's aid society and kindred philanthropic organizations were yet unborn, but in the city directory was to be found the address of the "american society for the promotion of education in africa." [footnote : "a lot Ã� , contained twenty stables, rented for dwellings at $ a year each; cost of the whole $ ."] [illustration] chapter ii. the awakening. the dread of advancing cholera, with the guilty knowledge of the harvest field that awaited the plague in new york's slums, pricked the conscience of the community into action soon after the close of the war. a citizens' movement resulted in the organization of a board of health and the adoption of the "tenement-house act" of , the first step toward remedial legislation. a thorough canvass of the tenements had been begun already in the previous year; but the cholera first, and next a scourge of small-pox, delayed the work, while emphasizing the need of it, so that it was before it got fairly under way and began to tell. the dark bedroom fell under the ban first. in that year the board ordered the cutting of more than forty-six thousand windows in interior rooms, chiefly for ventilation--for little or no light was to be had from the dark hallways. air-shafts were unknown. the saw had a job all that summer; by early fall nearly all the orders had been carried out. not without opposition; obstacles were thrown in the way of the officials on the one side by the owners of the tenements, who saw in every order to repair or clean up only an item of added expense to diminish their income from the rent; on the other side by the tenants themselves, who had sunk, after a generation of unavailing protest, to the level of their surroundings, and were at last content to remain there. the tenements had bred their nemesis, a proletariat ready and able to avenge the wrongs of their crowds. already it taxed the city heavily for the support of its jails and charities. the basis of opposition, curiously enough, was the same at both extremes; owner and tenant alike considered official interference an infringement of personal rights, and a hardship. it took long years of weary labor to make good the claim of the sunlight to such corners of the dens as it could reach at all. not until five years after did the department succeed at last in ousting the "cave-dwellers" and closing some five hundred and fifty cellars south of houston street, many of them below tide-water, that had been used as living apartments. in many instances the police had to drag the tenants out by force. the work went on; but the need of it only grew with the effort. the sanitarians were following up an evil that grew faster than they went; like a fire, it could only be headed off, not chased, with success. official reports, read in the churches in , characterized the younger criminals as victims of low social conditions of life and unhealthy, overcrowded lodgings, brought up in "an atmosphere of actual darkness, moral and physical." this after the saw had been busy in the dark corners ten years! "if we could see the air breathed by these poor creatures in their tenements," said a well-known physician, "it would show itself to be fouler than the mud of the gutters." little improvement was apparent despite all that had been done. "the new tenements, that have been recently built, have been usually as badly planned as the old, with dark and unhealthy rooms, often over wet cellars, where extreme overcrowding is permitted," was the verdict of one authority. these are the houses that to-day perpetuate the worst traditions of the past, and they are counted by thousands. the five points had been cleansed, as far as the immediate neighborhood was concerned, but the mulberry street bend was fast outdoing it in foulness not a stone's throw away, and new centres of corruption were continually springing up and getting the upper hand whenever vigilance was relaxed for ever so short a time. it is one of the curses of the tenement-house system that the worst houses exercise a levelling influence upon all the rest, just as one bad boy in a schoolroom will spoil the whole class. it is one of the ways the evil that was "the result of forgetfulness of the poor," as the council of hygiene mildly put it, has of avenging itself. the determined effort to head it off by laying a strong hand upon the tenement builders that has been the chief business of the health board of recent years, dates from this period. the era of the air-shaft has not solved the problem of housing the poor, but it has made good use of limited opportunities. over the new houses sanitary law exercises full control. but the old remain. they cannot be summarily torn down, though in extreme cases the authorities can order them cleared. the outrageous overcrowding, too, remains. it is characteristic of the tenements. poverty, their badge and typical condition, invites--compels it. all efforts to abate it result only in temporary relief. as long as they exist it will exist with them. and the tenements will exist in new york forever. [illustration: tenement of the old style.] [illustration: birth of the air-shaft.] to-day, what is a tenement? the law defines it as a house "occupied by three or more families, living independently and doing their cooking on the premises; or by more than two families on a floor, so living and cooking and having a common right in the halls, stairways, yards, etc." that is the legal meaning, and includes flats and apartment-houses, with which we have nothing to do. in its narrower sense the typical tenement was thus described when last arraigned before the bar of public justice: "it is generally a brick building from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor which, when used for the sale of liquor, has a side opening for the benefit of the inmates and to evade the sunday law; four families occupy each floor, and a set of rooms consists of one or two dark closets, used as bedrooms, with a living room twelve feet by ten. the staircase is too often a dark well in the centre of the house, and no direct through ventilation is possible, each family being separated from the other by partitions. frequently the rear of the lot is occupied by another building of three stories, high with two families on a floor." the picture is nearly as true to-day as ten years ago, and will be for a long time to come. the dim light admitted by the air-shaft shines upon greater crowds than ever. tenements are still "good property," and the poverty of the poor man his destruction. a barrack down town where he _has to live_ because he is poor brings in a third more rent than a decent flat house in harlem. the statement once made a sensation that between seventy and eighty children had been found in one tenement. it no longer excites even passing attention, when the sanitary police report counting adults and children in a crosby street house, one of twins, built together. the children in the other, if i am not mistaken, numbered , a total of for two tenements! or when a midnight inspection in mulberry street unearths a hundred and fifty "lodgers" sleeping on filthy floors in two buildings. spite of brown-stone trimmings, plate-glass and mosaic vestibule floors, the water does not rise in summer to the second story, while the beer flows unchecked to the all-night picnics on the roof. the saloon with the side-door and the landlord divide the prosperity of the place between them, and the tenant, in sullen submission, foots the bills. where are the tenements of to-day? say rather: where are they not? in fifty years they have crept up from the fourth ward slums and the five points the whole length of the island, and have polluted the annexed district to the westchester line. crowding all the lower wards, wherever business leaves a foot of ground unclaimed; strung along both rivers, like ball and chain tied to the foot of every street, and filling up harlem with their restless, pent-up multitudes, they hold within their clutch the wealth and business of new york, hold them at their mercy in the day of mob-rule and wrath. the bullet-proof shutters, the stacks of hand-grenades, and the gatling guns of the sub-treasury are tacit admissions of the fact and of the quality of the mercy expected. the tenements to-day are new york, harboring three-fourths of its population. when another generation shall have doubled the census of our city, and to that vast army of workers, held captive by poverty, the very name of home shall be as a bitter mockery, what will the harvest be? chapter iii. the mixed crowd. when once i asked the agent of a notorious fourth ward alley how many people might be living in it i was told: one hundred and forty families, one hundred irish, thirty-eight italian, and two that spoke the german tongue. barring the agent herself, there was not a native-born individual in the court. the answer was characteristic of the cosmopolitan character of lower new york, very nearly so of the whole of it, wherever it runs to alleys and courts. one may find for the asking an italian, a german, a french, african, spanish, bohemian, russian, scandinavian, jewish, and chinese colony. even the arab, who peddles "holy earth" from the battery as a direct importation from jerusalem, has his exclusive preserves at the lower end of washington street. the one thing you shall vainly ask for in the chief city of america is a distinctively american community. there is none; certainly not among the tenements. where have they gone to, the old inhabitants? i put the question to one who might fairly be presumed to be of the number, since i had found him sighing for the "good old days" when the legend "no irish need apply" was familiar in the advertising columns of the newspapers. he looked at me with a puzzled air. "i don't know," he said. "i wish i did. some went to california in ' , some to the war and never came back. the rest, i expect, have gone to heaven, or somewhere. i don't see them 'round here." whatever the merit of the good man's conjectures, his eyes did not deceive him. they are not here. in their place has come this queer conglomerate mass of heterogeneous elements, ever striving and working like whiskey and water in one glass, and with the like result: final union and a prevailing taint of whiskey. the once unwelcome irishman has been followed in his turn by the italian, the russian jew, and the chinaman, and has himself taken a hand at opposition, quite as bitter and quite as ineffectual, against these later hordes. wherever these have gone they have crowded him out, possessing the block, the street, the ward with their denser swarms. but the irishman's revenge is complete. victorious in defeat over his recent as over his more ancient foe, the one who opposed his coming no less than the one who drove him out, he dictates to both their politics, and, secure in possession of the offices, returns the native his greeting with interest, while collecting the rents of the italian whose house he has bought with the profits of his saloon. as a landlord he is picturesquely autocratic. an amusing instance of his methods came under my notice while writing these lines. an inspector of the health department found an italian family paying a man with a celtic name twenty-five dollars a month for three small rooms in a ramshackle rear tenement--more than twice what they were worth--and expressed his astonishment to the tenant, an ignorant sicilian laborer. he replied that he had once asked the landlord to reduce the rent, but he would not do it. "well! what did he say?" asked the inspector. "'damma, man!' he said; 'if you speaka thata way to me, i fira you and your things in the streeta.'" and the frightened italian paid the rent. in justice to the irish landlord it must be said that like an apt pupil he was merely showing forth the result of the schooling he had received, re-enacting, in his own way, the scheme of the tenements. it is only his frankness that shocks. the irishman does not naturally take kindly to tenement life, though with characteristic versatility he adapts himself to its conditions at once. it does violence, nevertheless, to the best that is in him, and for that very reason of all who come within its sphere soonest corrupts him. the result is a sediment, the product of more than a generation in the city's slums, that, as distinguished from the larger body of his class, justly ranks at the foot of tenement dwellers, the so-called "low irish." it is not to be assumed, of course, that the whole body of the population living in the tenements, of which new yorkers are in the habit of speaking vaguely as "the poor," or even the larger part of it, is to be classed as vicious or as poor in the sense of verging on beggary. new york's wage-earners have no other place to live, more is the pity. they are truly poor for having no better homes; waxing poorer in purse as the exorbitant rents to which they are tied, as ever was serf to soil, keep rising. the wonder is that they are not all corrupted, and speedily, by their surroundings. if, on the contrary, there be a steady working up, if not out of the slough, the fact is a powerful argument for the optimist's belief that the world is, after all, growing better, not worse, and would go far toward disarming apprehension, were it not for the steadier growth of the sediment of the slums and its constant menace. such an impulse toward better things there certainly is. the german rag-picker of thirty years ago, quite as low in the scale as his italian successor, is the thrifty tradesman or prosperous farmer of to-day.[ ] [footnote : the sheriff street colony of rag-pickers, long since gone, is an instance in point. the thrifty germans saved up money during years of hard work in squalor and apparently wretched poverty to buy a township in a western state, and the whole colony moved out there in a body. there need be no doubt about their thriving there.] the italian scavenger of our time is fast graduating into exclusive control of the corner fruit-stands, while his black-eyed boy monopolizes the boot-blacking industry in which a few years ago he was an intruder. the irish hod-carrier in the second generation has become a brick-layer, if not the alderman of his ward, while the chinese coolie is in almost exclusive possession of the laundry business. the reason is obvious. the poorest immigrant comes here with the purpose and ambition to better himself and, given half a chance, might be reasonably expected to make the most of it. to the false plea that he prefers the squalid homes in which his kind are housed there could be no better answer. the truth is, his half chance has too long been wanting, and for the bad result he has been unjustly blamed. as emigration from east to west follows the latitude, so does the foreign influx in new york distribute itself along certain well-defined lines that waver and break only under the stronger pressure of a more gregarious race or the encroachments of inexorable business. a feeling of dependence upon mutual effort, natural to strangers in a strange land, unacquainted with its language and customs, sufficiently accounts for this. the irishman is the true cosmopolitan immigrant. all-pervading, he shares his lodging with perfect impartiality with the italian, the greek, and the "dutchman," yielding only to sheer force of numbers, and objects equally to them all. a map of the city, colored to designate nationalities, would show more stripes than on the skin of a zebra, and more colors than any rainbow. the city on such a map would fall into two great halves, green for the irish prevailing in the west side tenement districts, and blue for the germans on the east side. but intermingled with these ground colors would be an odd variety of tints that would give the whole the appearance of an extraordinary crazy-quilt. from down in the sixth ward, upon the site of the old collect pond that in the days of the fathers drained the hills which are no more, the red of the italian would be seen forcing its way northward along the line of mulberry street to the quarter of the french purple on bleecker street and south fifth avenue, to lose itself and reappear, after a lapse of miles, in the "little italy" of harlem, east of second avenue. dashes of red, sharply defined, would be seen strung through the annexed district, northward to the city line. on the west side the red would be seen overrunning the old africa of thompson street, pushing the black of the negro rapidly uptown, against querulous but unavailing protests, occupying his home, his church, his trade and all, with merciless impartiality. there is a church in mulberry street that has stood for two generations as a sort of milestone of these migrations. built originally for the worship of staid new yorkers of the "old stock," it was engulfed by the colored tide, when the draft-riots drove the negroes out of reach of cherry street and the five points. within the past decade the advance wave of the italian onset reached it, and to-day the arms of united italy adorn its front. the negroes have made a stand at several points along seventh and eighth avenues; but their main body, still pursued by the italian foe, is on the march yet, and the black mark will be found overshadowing to-day many blocks on the east side, with one hundredth street as the centre, where colonies of them have settled recently. hardly less aggressive than the italian, the russian and polish jew, having overrun the district between rivington and division streets, east of the bowery, to the point of suffocation, is filling the tenements of the old seventh ward to the river front, and disputing with the italian every foot of available space in the back alleys of mulberry street. the two races, differing hopelessly in much, have this in common: they carry their slums with them wherever they go, if allowed to do it. little italy already rivals its parent, the "bend," in foulness. other nationalities that begin at the bottom make a fresh start when crowded up the ladder. happily both are manageable, the one by rabbinical, the other by the civil law. between the dull gray of the jew, his favorite color, and the italian red, would be seen squeezed in on the map a sharp streak of yellow, marking the narrow boundaries of chinatown. dovetailed in with the german population, the poor but thrifty bohemian might be picked out by the sombre hue of his life as of his philosophy, struggling against heavy odds in the big human bee-hives of the east side. colonies of his people extend northward, with long lapses of space, from below the cooper institute more than three miles. the bohemian is the only foreigner with any considerable representation in the city who counts no wealthy man of his race, none who has not to work hard for a living, or has got beyond the reach of the tenement. down near the battery the west side emerald would be soiled by a dirty stain, spreading rapidly like a splash of ink on a sheet of blotting paper, headquarters of the arab tribe, that in a single year has swelled from the original dozen to twelve hundred, intent, every mother's son, on trade and barter. dots and dashes of color here and there would show where the finnish sailors worship their djumala (god), the greek pedlars the ancient name of their race, and the swiss the goddess of thrift. and so on to the end of the long register, all toiling together in the galling fetters of the tenement. were the question raised who makes the most of life thus mortgaged, who resists most stubbornly its levelling tendency--knows how to drag even the barracks upward a part of the way at least toward the ideal plane of the home--the palm must be unhesitatingly awarded the teuton. the italian and the poor jew rise only by compulsion. the chinaman does not rise at all; here, as at home, he simply remains stationary. the irishman's genius runs to public affairs rather than domestic life; wherever he is mustered in force the saloon is the gorgeous centre of political activity. the german struggles vainly to learn his trick; his teutonic wit is too heavy, and the political ladder he raises from his saloon usually too short or too clumsy to reach the desired goal. the best part of his life is lived at home, and he makes himself a home independent of the surroundings, giving the lie to the saying, unhappily become a maxim of social truth, that pauperism and drunkenness naturally grow in the tenements. he makes the most of his tenement, and it should be added that whenever and as soon as he can save up money enough, he gets out and never crosses the threshold of one again. chapter iv. the down town back-alleys. down below chatham square, in the old fourth ward, where the cradle of the tenement stood, we shall find new york's other half at home, receiving such as care to call and are not afraid. not all of it, to be sure, there is not room for that; but a fairly representative gathering, representative of its earliest and worst traditions. there is nothing to be afraid of. in this metropolis, let it be understood, there is no public street where the stranger may not go safely by day and by night, provided he knows how to mind his own business and is sober. his coming and going will excite little interest, unless he is suspected of being a truant officer, in which case he will be impressed with the truth of the observation that the american stock is dying out for want of children. if he escapes this suspicion and the risk of trampling upon, or being himself run down by the bewildering swarms of youngsters that are everywhere or nowhere as the exigency and their quick scent of danger direct, he will see no reason for dissenting from that observation. glimpses caught of the parents watching the youngsters play from windows or open doorways will soon convince him that the native stock is in no way involved. leaving the elevated railroad where it dives under the brooklyn bridge at franklin square, scarce a dozen steps will take us where we wish to go. with its rush and roar echoing yet in our ears, we have turned the corner from prosperity to poverty. we stand upon the domain of the tenement. in the shadow of the great stone abutments the old knickerbocker houses linger like ghosts of a departed day. down the winding slope of cherry street--proud and fashionable cherry hill that was--their broad steps, sloping roofs, and dormer windows are easily made out; all the more easily for the contrast with the ugly barracks that elbow them right and left. these never had other design than to shelter, at as little outlay as possible, the greatest crowds out of which rent could be wrung. they were the bad after-thought of a heedless day. the years have brought to the old houses unhonored age, a querulous second childhood that is out of tune with the time, their tenants, the neighbors, and cries out against them and against you in fretful protest in every step on their rotten floors or squeaky stairs. good cause have they for their fretting. this one, with its shabby front and poorly patched roof, what glowing firesides, what happy children may it once have owned? heavy feet, too often with unsteady step, for the pot-house is next door--where is it not next door in these slums?--have worn away the brown-stone steps since; the broken columns at the door have rotted away at the base. of the handsome cornice barely a trace is left. dirt and desolation reign in the wide hallway, and danger lurks on the stairs. rough pine boards fence off the roomy fire-places--where coal is bought by the pail at the rate of twelve dollars a ton these have no place. the arched gateway leads no longer to a shady bower on the banks of the rushing stream, inviting to day-dreams with its gentle repose, but to a dark and nameless alley, shut in by high brick walls, cheerless as the lives of those they shelter. the wolf knocks loudly at the gate in the troubled dreams that come to this alley, echoes of the day's cares. a horde of dirty children play about the dripping hydrant, the only thing in the alley that thinks enough of its chance to make the most of it: it is the best it can do. these are the children of the tenements, the growing generation of the slums; this their home. from the great highway overhead, along which throbs the life-tide of two great cities, one might drop a pebble into half a dozen such alleys. [illustration: at the cradle of the tenement.--doorway of an old-fashioned dwelling on cherry hill.] one yawns just across the street; not very broadly, but it is not to blame. the builder of the old gateway had no thought of its ever becoming a public thoroughfare. once inside it widens, but only to make room for a big box-like building with the worn and greasy look of the slum tenement that is stamped alike on the houses and their tenants down here, even on the homeless cur that romps with the children in yonder building lot, with an air of expectant interest plainly betraying the forlorn hope that at some stage of the game a meat-bone may show up in the role of "it." vain hope, truly! nothing more appetizing than a bare-legged ragamuffin appears. meat-bones, not long since picked clean, are as scarce in blind man's alley as elbow-room in any fourth ward back-yard. the shouts of the children come hushed over the house-tops, as if apologizing for the intrusion. few glad noises make this old alley ring. morning and evening it echoes with the gentle, groping tap of the blind man's staff as he feels his way to the street. blind man's alley bears its name for a reason. until little more than a year ago its dark burrows harbored a colony of blind beggars, tenants of a blind landlord, old daniel murphy, whom every child in the ward knows, if he never heard of the president of the united states. "old dan" made a big fortune--he told me once four hundred thousand dollars--out of his alley and the surrounding tenements, only to grow blind himself in extreme old age, sharing in the end the chief hardship of the wretched beings whose lot he had stubbornly refused to better that he might increase his wealth. even when the board of health at last compelled him to repair and clean up the worst of the old buildings, under threat of driving out the tenants and locking the doors behind them, the work was accomplished against the old man's angry protests. he appeared in person before the board to argue his case, and his argument was characteristic. "i have made my will," he said. "my monument stands waiting for me in calvary. i stand on the very brink of the grave, blind and helpless, and now (here the pathos of the appeal was swept under in a burst of angry indignation) do you want me to build and get skinned, skinned? these people are not fit to live in a nice house. let them go where they can, and let my house stand." in spite of the genuine anguish of the appeal, it was downright amusing to find that his anger was provoked less by the anticipated waste of luxury on his tenants than by distrust of his own kind, the builder. he knew intuitively what to expect. the result showed that mr. murphy had gauged his tenants correctly. the cleaning up process apparently destroyed the home-feeling of the alley; many of the blind people moved away and did not return. some remained, however, and the name has clung to the place. some idea of what is meant by a sanitary "cleaning up" in these slums may be gained from the account of a mishap i met with once, in taking a flash-light picture of a group of blind beggars in one of the tenements down here. with unpractised hands i managed to set fire to the house. when the blinding effect of the flash had passed away and i could see once more, i discovered that a lot of paper and rags that hung on the wall were ablaze. there were six of us, five blind men and women who knew nothing of their danger, and myself, in an attic room with a dozen crooked, rickety stairs between us and the street, and as many households as helpless as the one whose guest i was all about us. the thought: how were they ever to be got out? made my blood run cold as i saw the flames creeping up the wall, and my first impulse was to bolt for the street and shout for help. the next was to smother the fire myself, and i did, with a vast deal of trouble. afterward, when i came down to the street i told a friendly policeman of my trouble. for some reason he thought it rather a good joke, and laughed immoderately at my concern lest even then sparks should be burrowing in the rotten wall that might yet break out in flame and destroy the house with all that were in it. he told me why, when he found time to draw breath. "why, don't you know," he said, "that house is the dirty spoon? it caught fire six times last winter, but it wouldn't burn. the dirt was so thick on the walls, it smothered the fire!" which, if true, shows that water and dirt, not usually held to be harmonious elements, work together for the good of those who insure houses. sunless and joyless though it be, blind man's alley has that which its compeers of the slums vainly yearn for. it has a pay-day. once a year sunlight shines into the lives of its forlorn crew, past and present. in june, when the superintendent of out-door poor distributes the twenty thousand dollars annually allowed the poor blind by the city, in half-hearted recognition of its failure to otherwise provide for them, blindman's alley takes a day off and goes to "see" mr. blake. that night it is noisy with unwonted merriment. there is scraping of squeaky fiddles in the dark rooms, and cracked old voices sing long-forgotten songs. even the blind landlord rejoices, for much of the money goes into his coffers. [illustration: upstairs in blindman's alley.] from their perch up among the rafters mrs. gallagher's blind boarders might hear, did they listen, the tramp of the policeman always on duty in gotham court, half a stone's throw away. his beat, though it takes in but a small portion of a single block, is quite as lively as most larger patrol rounds. a double row of five-story tenements, back to back under a common roof, extending back from the street two hundred and thirty-four feet, with barred openings in the dividing wall, so that the tenants may see but cannot get at each other from the stairs, makes the "court." alleys--one wider by a couple of feet than the other, whence the distinction single and double alley--skirt the barracks on either side. such, briefly, is the tenement that has challenged public attention more than any other in the whole city and tested the power of sanitary law and rule for forty years. the name of the pile is not down in the city directory, but in the public records it holds an unenviable place. it was here the mortality rose during the last great cholera epidemic to the unprecedented rate of in , inhabitants. in its worst days a full thousand could not be packed into the court, though the number did probably not fall far short of it. even now, under the management of men of conscience, and an agent, a king's daughter, whose practical energy, kindliness and good sense have done much to redeem its foul reputation, the swarms it shelters would make more than one fair-sized country village. the mixed character of the population, by this time about equally divided between the celtic and the italian stock, accounts for the iron bars and the policeman. it was an eminently irish suggestion that the latter was to be credited to the presence of two german families in the court, who "made trouble all the time." a chinaman whom i questioned as he hurried past the iron gate of the alley, put the matter in a different light. "lem ilish velly bad," he said. gotham court has been the entering wedge for the italian element, who until recently had not attained a foothold in the fourth ward, but are now trailing across chatham street from their stronghold in "the bend" in ever increasing numbers, seeking, according to their wont, the lowest level. it is curious to find that this notorious block, whose name was so long synonymous with all that was desperately bad, was originally built (in ) by a benevolent quaker for the express purpose of rescuing the poor people from the dreadful rookeries they were then living in. how long it continued a model tenement is not on record. it could not have been very long, for already in , ten years after it was finished, a sanitary official counted cases of sickness in the court, including "all kinds of infectious disease," from small-pox down, and reported that of children born in it in less than three years had died, mostly before they were one year old. seven years later the inspector of the district reported to the board of health that "nearly ten per cent. of the population is sent to the public hospitals each year." when the alley was finally taken in hand by the authorities, and, as a first step toward its reclamation, the entire population was driven out by the police, experience dictated, as one of the first improvements to be made, the putting in of a kind of sewer-grating, so constructed, as the official report patiently puts it, "as to prevent the ingress of persons disposed to make a hiding-place" of the sewer and the cellars into which they opened. the fact was that the big vaulted sewers had long been a runway for thieves--the swamp angels--who through them easily escaped when chased by the police, as well as a storehouse for their plunder. the sewers are there to-day; in fact the two alleys are nothing but the roofs of these enormous tunnels in which a man may walk upright the full distance of the block and into the cherry street sewer--if he likes the fun and is not afraid of rats. could their grimy walls speak, the big canals might tell many a startling tale. but they are silent enough, and so are most of those whose secrets they might betray. the flood-gates connecting with the cherry street main are closed now, except when the water is drained off. then there were no gates, and it is on record that the sewers were chosen as a short cut habitually by residents of the court whose business lay on the line of them, near a manhole, perhaps, in cherry street, or at the river mouth of the big pipe when it was clear at low tide. "me jimmy," said one wrinkled old dame, who looked in while we were nosing about under double alley, "he used to go to his work along down cherry street that way every morning and come back at night." the associations must have been congenial. probably "jimmy" himself fitted into the landscape. half-way back from the street in this latter alley is a tenement, facing the main building, on the west side of the way, that was not originally part of the court proper. it stands there a curious monument to a quaker's revenge, a living illustration of the power of hate to perpetuate its bitter fruit beyond the grave. the lot upon which it is built was the property of john wood, brother of silas, the builder of gotham court. he sold the cherry street front to a man who built upon it a tenement with entrance only from the street. mr. wood afterward quarrelled about the partition line with his neighbor, alderman mullins, who had put up a long tenement barrack on his lot after the style of the court, and the alderman knocked him down. tradition records that the quaker picked himself up with the quiet remark, "i will pay thee for that, friend alderman," and went his way. his manner of paying was to put up the big building in the rear of cherry street with an immense blank wall right in front of the windows of alderman mullins's tenements, shutting out effectually light and air from them. but as he had no access to the street from his building for many years it could not be let or used for anything, and remained vacant until it passed under the management of the gotham court property. mullins's court is there yet, and so is the quaker's vengeful wall that has cursed the lives of thousands of innocent people since. at its farther end the alley between the two that begins inside the cherry street tenement, six or seven feet wide, narrows down to less than two feet. it is barely possible to squeeze through; but few care to do it, for the rift leads to the jail of the oak street police station, and therefore is not popular with the growing youth of the district. there is crape on the door of the alderman's court as we pass out, and upstairs in one of the tenements preparations are making for a wake. a man lies dead in the hospital who was cut to pieces in a "can racket" in the alley on sunday. the sway of the excise law is not extended to these back alleys. it would matter little if it were. there are secret by-ways, and some it is not held worth while to keep secret, along which the "growler" wanders at all hours and all seasons unmolested. it climbed the stairs so long and so often that day that murder resulted. it is nothing unusual on cherry street, nothing to "make a fuss" about. not a week before, two or three blocks up the street, the police felt called upon to interfere in one of these can rackets at two o'clock in the morning, to secure peace for the neighborhood. the interference took the form of a general fusillade, during which one of the disturbers fell off the roof and was killed. there was the usual wake and nothing more was heard of it. what, indeed, was there to say? the "rock of ages" is the name over the door of a low saloon that blocks the entrance to another alley, if possible more forlorn and dreary than the rest, as we pass out of the alderman's court. it sounds like a jeer from the days, happily past, when the "wickedest man in new york" lived around the corner a little way and boasted of his title. one cannot take many steps in cherry street without encountering some relic of past or present prominence in the ways of crime, scarce one that does not turn up specimen bricks of the coming thief. the cherry street tough is all-pervading. ask superintendent murray, who, as captain of the oak street squad, in seven months secured convictions for theft, robbery, and murder aggregating no less than five hundred and thirty years of penal servitude, and he will tell you his opinion that the fourth ward, even in the last twenty years, has turned out more criminals than all the rest of the city together. but though the "swamp angels" have gone to their reward, their successors carry on business at the old stand as successfully, if not as boldly. there goes one who was once a shining light in thiefdom. he has reformed since, they say. the policeman on the corner, who is addicted to a professional unbelief in reform of any kind, will tell you that while on the island once he sailed away on a shutter, paddling along until he was picked up in hell gate by a schooner's crew, whom he persuaded that he was a fanatic performing some sort of religious penance by his singular expedition. over yonder, tweed, the arch-thief, worked in a brush-shop and earned an honest living before he took to politics. as we stroll from one narrow street to another the odd contrast between the low, old-looking houses in front and the towering tenements in the back yards grows even more striking, perhaps because we expect and are looking for it. nobody who was not would suspect the presence of the rear houses, though they have been there long enough. here is one seven stories high behind one with only three floors. take a look into this roosevelt street alley; just about one step wide, with a five-story house on one side that gets its light and air--god help us for pitiful mockery!--from this slit between brick walls. there are no windows in the wall on the other side; it is perfectly blank. the fire-escapes of the long tenement fairly touch it; but the rays of the sun, rising, setting, or at high noon, never do. it never shone into the alley from the day the devil planned and man built it. there was once an english doctor who experimented with the sunlight in the soldiers' barracks, and found that on the side that was shut off altogether from the sun the mortality was one hundred per cent. greater than on the light side, where its rays had free access. but then soldiers are of some account, have a fixed value, if not a very high one. the people who live here have not. the horse that pulls the dirt-cart one of these laborers loads and unloads is of ever so much more account to the employer of his labor than he and all that belongs to him. ask the owner; he will not attempt to deny it, if the horse is worth anything. the man too knows it. it is the one thought that occasionally troubles the owner of the horse in the enjoyment of his prosperity, built of and upon the successful assertion of the truth that all men are created equal. with what a shock did the story of yonder madison street alley come home to new yorkers one morning, eight or ten years ago, when a fire that broke out after the men had gone to their work swept up those narrow stairs and burned up women and children to the number of a full half score. there were fire-escapes, yes! but so placed that they could not be reached. the firemen had to look twice before they could find the opening that passes for a thoroughfare; a stout man would never venture in. some wonderfully heroic rescues were made at that fire by people living in the adjoining tenements. danger and trouble--of the imminent kind, not the everyday sort that excites neither interest nor commiseration--run even this common clay into heroic moulds on occasion; occasions that help us to remember that the gap that separates the man with the patched coat from his wealthy neighbor is, after all, perhaps but a tenement. yet, what a gap! and of whose making? here, as we stroll along madison street, workmen are busy putting the finishing touches to the brown-stone front of a tall new tenement. this one will probably be called an apartment house. they are carving satyrs' heads in the stone, with a crowd of gaping youngsters looking on in admiring wonder. next door are two other tenements, likewise with brown-stone fronts, fair to look at. the youngest of the children in the group is not too young to remember how their army of tenants was turned out by the health officers because the houses had been condemned as unfit for human beings to live in. the owner was a wealthy builder who "stood high in the community." is it only in our fancy that the sardonic leer on the stone faces seems to list that way? or is it an introspective grin? we will not ask if the new house belongs to the same builder. he too may have reformed. we have crossed the boundary of the seventh ward. penitentiary row, suggestive name for a block of cherry street tenements, is behind us. within recent days it has become peopled wholly with hebrews, the overflow from jewtown adjoining, pedlars and tailors, all of them. it is odd to read this legend from other days over the door: "no pedlars allowed in this house." these thrifty people are not only crowding into the tenements of this once exclusive district--they are buying them. the jew runs to real estate as soon as he can save up enough for a deposit to clinch the bargain. as fast as the old houses are torn down, towering structures go up in their place, and hebrews are found to be the builders. here is a whole alley nicknamed after the intruder, jews' alley. but abuse and ridicule are not weapons to fight the israelite with. he pockets them quietly with the rent and bides his time. he knows from experience, both sweet and bitter, that all things come to those who wait, including the houses and lands of their persecutors. here comes a pleasure party, as gay as any on the avenue, though the carry-all is an ash-cart. the father is the driver and he has taken his brown-legged boy for a ride. how proud and happy they both look up there on their perch! the queer old building they have halted in front of is "the ship," famous for fifty years as a ramshackle tenement filled with the oddest crowd. no one knows why it is called "the ship," though there is a tradition that once the river came clear up here to hamilton street, and boats were moored along-side it. more likely it is because it is as bewildering inside as a crazy old ship, with its ups and downs of ladders parading as stairs, and its unexpected pitfalls. but hamilton street, like water street, is not what it was. the missions drove from the latter the worst of its dives. a sailors' mission has lately made its appearance in hamilton street, but there are no dives there, nothing worse than the ubiquitous saloon and tough tenements. enough of them everywhere. suppose we look into one? no. -- cherry street. be a little careful, please! the hall is dark and you might stumble over the children pitching pennies back there. not that it would hurt them; kicks and cuffs are their daily diet. they have little else. here where the hall turns and dives into utter darkness is a step, and another, another. a flight of stairs. you can feel your way, if you cannot see it. close? yes! what would you have? all the fresh air that ever enters these stairs comes from the hall-door that is forever slamming, and from the windows of dark bedrooms that in turn receive from the stairs their sole supply of the elements god meant to be free, but man deals out with such niggardly hand. that was a woman filling her pail by the hydrant you just bumped against. the sinks are in the hallway, that all the tenants may have access--and all be poisoned alike by their summer stenches. hear the pump squeak! it is the lullaby of tenement-house babes. in summer, when a thousand thirsty throats pant for a cooling drink in this block, it is worked in vain. but the saloon, whose open door you passed in the hall, is always there. the smell of it has followed you up. here is a door. listen! that short hacking cough, that tiny, helpless wail--what do they mean? they mean that the soiled bow of white you saw on the door downstairs will have another story to tell--oh! a sadly familiar story--before the day is at an end. the child is dying with measles. with half a chance it might have lived; but it had none. that dark bedroom killed it. "it was took all of a suddint," says the mother, smoothing the throbbing little body with trembling hands. there is no unkindness in the rough voice of the man in the jumper, who sits by the window grimly smoking a clay pipe, with the little life ebbing out in his sight, bitter as his words sound: "hush, mary! if we cannot keep the baby, need we complain--such as we?" [illustration: an old rear-tenement in roosevelt street.] such as we! what if the words ring in your ears as we grope our way up the stairs and down from floor to floor, listening to the sounds behind the closed doors--some of quarrelling, some of coarse songs, more of profanity. they are true. when the summer heats come with their suffering they have meaning more terrible than words can tell. come over here. step carefully over this baby--it is a baby, spite of its rags and dirt--under these iron bridges called fire-escapes, but loaded down, despite the incessant watchfulness of the firemen, with broken household goods, with wash-tubs and barrels, over which no man could climb from a fire. this gap between dingy brick-walls is the yard. that strip of smoke-colored sky up there is the heaven of these people. do you wonder the name does not attract them to the churches? that baby's parents live in the rear tenement here. she is at least as clean as the steps we are now climbing. there are plenty of houses with half a hundred such in. the tenement is much like the one in front we just left, only fouler, closer, darker--we will not say more cheerless. the word is a mockery. a hundred thousand people lived in rear tenements in new york last year. here is a room neater than the rest. the woman, a stout matron with hard lines of care in her face, is at the wash-tub. "i try to keep the childer clean," she says, apologetically, but with a hopeless glance around. the spice of hot soap-suds is added to the air already tainted with the smell of boiling cabbage, of rags and uncleanliness all about. it makes an overpowering compound. it is thursday, but patched linen is hung upon the pulley-line from the window. there is no monday cleaning in the tenements. it is washday all the week round, for a change of clothing is scarce among the poor. they are poverty's honest badge, these perennial lines of rags hung out to dry, those that are not the washerwoman's professional shingle. the true line to be drawn between pauperism and honest poverty is the clothes-line. with it begins the effort to be clean that is the first and the best evidence of a desire to be honest. what sort of an answer, think you, would come from these tenements to the question "is life worth living?" were they heard at all in the discussion? it may be that this, cut from the last report but one of the association for the improvement of the condition of the poor, a long name for a weary task, has a suggestion of it: "in the depth of winter the attention of the association was called to a protestant family living in a garret in a miserable tenement in cherry street. the family's condition was most deplorable. the man, his wife, and three small children shivering in one room through the roof of which the pitiless winds of winter whistled. the room was almost barren of furniture; the parents slept on the floor, the elder children in boxes, and the baby was swung in an old shawl attached to the rafters by cords by way of a hammock. the father, a seaman, had been obliged to give up that calling because he was in consumption, and was unable to provide either bread or fire for his little ones." perhaps this may be put down as an exceptional case, but one that came to my notice some months ago in a seventh ward tenement was typical enough to escape that reproach. there were nine in the family: husband, wife, an aged grandmother, and six children; honest, hard-working germans, scrupulously neat, but poor. all nine lived in two rooms, one about ten feet square that served as parlor, bedroom, and eating-room, the other a small hall-room made into a kitchen. the rent was seven dollars and a half a month, more than a week's wages for the husband and father, who was the only bread-winner in the family. that day the mother had thrown herself out of the window, and was carried up from the street dead. she was "discouraged," said some of the other women from the tenement, who had come in to look after the children while a messenger carried the news to the father at the shop. they went stolidly about their task, although they were evidently not without feeling for the dead woman. no doubt she was wrong in not taking life philosophically, as did the four families a city missionary found housekeeping in the four corners of one room. they got along well enough together until one of the families took a boarder and made trouble. philosophy, according to my optimistic friend, naturally inhabits the tenements. the people who live there come to look upon death in a different way from the rest of us--do not take it as hard. he has never found time to explain how the fact fits into his general theory that life is not unbearable in the tenements. unhappily for the philosophy of the slums, it is too apt to be of the kind that readily recognizes the saloon, always handy, as the refuge from every trouble, and shapes its practice according to the discovery. chapter v. the italian in new york. certainly a picturesque, if not very tidy, element has been added to the population in the "assisted" italian immigrant who claims so large a share of public attention, partly because he keeps coming at such a tremendous rate, but chiefly because he elects to stay in new york, or near enough for it to serve as his base of operations, and here promptly reproduces conditions of destitution and disorder which, set in the frame-work of mediterranean exuberance, are the delight of the artist, but in a matter-of-fact american community become its danger and reproach. the reproduction is made easier in new york because he finds the material ready to hand in the worst of the slum tenements; but even where it is not he soon reduces what he does find to his own level, if allowed to follow his natural bent.[ ] the italian comes in at the bottom, and in the generation that came over the sea he stays there. in the slums he is welcomed as a tenant who "makes less trouble" than the contentious irishman or the order-loving german, that is to say: is content to live in a pig-sty and submits to robbery at the hands of the rent-collector without murmur. yet this very tractability makes of him in good hands, when firmly and intelligently managed, a really desirable tenant. but it is not his good fortune often to fall in with other hospitality upon his coming than that which brought him here for its own profit, and has no idea of letting go its grip upon him as long as there is a cent to be made out of him. [footnote : the process can be observed in the italian tenements in harlem (little italy), which, since their occupation by these people, have been gradually sinking to the slum level.] recent congressional inquiries have shown the nature of the "assistance" he receives from greedy steamship agents and "bankers," who persuade him by false promises to mortgage his home, his few belongings, and his wages for months to come for a ticket to the land where plenty of work is to be had at princely wages. the padrone--the "banker," is nothing else--having made his ten per cent. out of him en route, receives him at the landing and turns him to double account as a wage-earner and a rent-payer. in each of these rôles he is made to yield a profit to his unscrupulous countryman, whom he trusts implicitly with the instinct of utter helplessness. the man is so ignorant that, as one of the sharpers who prey upon him put it once, it "would be downright sinful not to take him in." his ignorance and unconquerable suspicion of strangers dig the pit into which he falls. he not only knows no word of english, but he does not know enough to learn. rarely only can he write his own language. unlike the german, who begins learning english the day he lands as a matter of duty, or the polish jew, who takes it up as soon as he is able as an investment, the italian learns slowly, if at all. even his boy, born here, often speaks his native tongue indifferently. he is forced, therefore, to have constant recourse to the middle-man, who makes him pay handsomely at every turn. he hires him out to the railroad contractor, receiving a commission from the employer as well as from the laborer, and repeats the performance monthly, or as often as he can have him dismissed. in the city he contracts for his lodging, subletting to him space in the vilest tenements at extortionate rents, and sets an example that does not lack imitators. the "princely wages" have vanished with his coming, and in their place hardships and a dollar a day, beheft with the padrone's merciless mortgage, confront him. bred to even worse fare, he takes both as a matter of course, and, applying the maxim that it is not what one makes but what he saves that makes him rich, manages to turn the very dirt of the streets into a hoard of gold, with which he either returns to his southern home, or brings over his family to join in his work and in his fortunes the next season. [illustration: in the home of an italian rag-picker, jersey street.] the discovery was made by earlier explorers that there is money in new york's ash-barrel, but it was left to the genius of the padrone to develop the full resources of the mine that has become the exclusive preserve of the italian immigrant. only a few years ago, when rag-picking was carried on in a desultory and irresponsible sort of way, the city hired gangs of men to trim the ash-scows before they were sent out to sea. the trimming consisted in levelling out the dirt as it was dumped from the carts, so that the scow might be evenly loaded. the men were paid a dollar and a half a day, kept what they found that was worth having, and allowed the swarms of italians who hung about the dumps to do the heavy work for them, letting them have their pick of the loads for their trouble. to-day italians contract for the work, paying large sums to be permitted to do it. the city received not less than $ , last year for the sale of this privilege to the contractors, who in addition have to pay gangs of their countrymen for sorting out the bones, rags, tin cans and other waste that are found in the ashes and form the staples of their trade and their sources of revenue. the effect has been vastly to increase the power of the padrone, or his ally, the contractor, by giving him exclusive control of the one industry in which the italian was formerly an independent "dealer," and reducing him literally to the plane of the dump. whenever the back of the sanitary police is turned, he will make his home in the filthy burrows where he works by day, sleeping and eating his meals under the dump, on the edge of slimy depths and amid surroundings full of unutterable horror. the city did not bargain to house, though it is content to board, him so long as he can make the ash-barrels yield the food to keep him alive, and a vigorous campaign is carried on at intervals against these unlicensed dump settlements; but the temptation of having to pay no rent is too strong, and they are driven from one dump only to find lodgement under another a few blocks farther up or down the river. the fiercest warfare is waged over the patronage of the dumps by rival factions represented by opposing contractors, and it has happened that the defeated party has endeavored to capture by strategy what he failed to carry by assault. it augurs unsuspected adaptability in the italian to our system of self-government that these rivalries have more than once been suspected of being behind the sharpening of city ordinances, that were apparently made in good faith to prevent meddling with the refuse in the ash-barrels or in transit. did the italian always adapt himself as readily to the operation of the civil law as to the manipulation of political "pull" on occasion, he would save himself a good deal of unnecessary trouble. ordinarily he is easily enough governed by authority--always excepting sunday, when he settles down to a game of cards and lets loose all his bad passions. like the chinese, the italian is a born gambler. his soul is in the game from the moment the cards are on the table, and very frequently his knife is in it too before the game is ended. no sunday has passed in new york since "the bend" became a suburb of naples without one or more of these murderous affrays coming to the notice of the police. as a rule that happens only when the man the game went against is either dead or so badly wounded as to require instant surgical help. as to the other, unless he be caught red-handed, the chances that the police will ever get him are slim indeed. the wounded man can seldom be persuaded to betray him. he wards off all inquiries with a wicked "i fix him myself," and there the matter rests until he either dies or recovers. if the latter, the community hears after a while of another italian affray, a man stabbed in a quarrel, dead or dying, and the police know that "he" has been fixed, and the account squared. with all his conspicuous faults, the swarthy italian immigrant has his redeeming traits. he is as honest as he is hot-headed. there are no italian burglars in the rogues' gallery; the ex-brigand toils peacefully with pickaxe and shovel on american ground. his boy occasionally shows, as a pick-pocket, the results of his training with the toughs of the sixth ward slums. the only criminal business to which the father occasionally lends his hand, outside of murder, is a bunco game, of which his confiding countrymen, returning with their hoard to their native land, are the victims. the women are faithful wives and devoted mothers. their vivid and picturesque costumes lend a tinge of color to the otherwise dull monotony of the slums they inhabit. the italian is gay, light-hearted and, if his fur is not stroked the wrong way, inoffensive as a child. his worst offence is that he keeps the stale-beer dives. where his headquarters is, in the mulberry street bend, these vile dens flourish and gather about them all the wrecks, the utterly wretched, the hopelessly lost, on the lowest slope of depraved humanity. and out of their misery he makes a profit. [illustration] chapter vi. the bend. where mulberry street crooks like an elbow within hail of the old depravity of the five points, is "the bend," foul core of new york's slums. long years ago the cows coming home from the pasture trod a path over this hill. echoes of tinkling bells linger there still, but they do not call up memories of green meadows and summer fields; they proclaim the home-coming of the rag-picker's cart. in the memory of man the old cow-path has never been other than a vast human pig-sty. there is but one "bend" in the world, and it is enough. the city authorities, moved by the angry protests of ten years of sanitary reform effort, have decided that it is too much and must come down. another paradise park will take its place and let in sunlight and air to work such transformation as at the five points, around the corner of the next block. never was change more urgently needed. around "the bend" cluster the bulk of the tenements that are stamped as altogether bad, even by the optimists of the health department. incessant raids cannot keep down the crowds that make them their home. in the scores of back alleys, of stable lanes and hidden byways, of which the rent collector alone can keep track, they share such shelter as the ramshackle structures afford with every kind of abomination rifled from the dumps and ash barrels of the city. here, too, shunning the light, skulks the unclean beast of dishonest idleness. "the bend" is the home of the tramp as well as the rag-picker. it is not much more than twenty years since a census of "the bend" district returned only twenty-four of the six hundred and nine tenements as in decent condition. three-fourths of the population of the "bloody sixth" ward were then irish. the army of tramps that grew up after the disbandment of the armies in the field, and has kept up its muster roll, together with the in-rush of the italian tide, have ever since opposed a stubborn barrier to all efforts at permanent improvement. the more that has been done, the less it has seemed to accomplish in the way of real relief, until it has at last become clear that nothing short of entire demolition will ever prove of radical benefit. corruption could not have chosen ground for its stand with better promise of success. the whole district is a maze of narrow, often unsuspected passage-ways--necessarily, for there is scarce a lot that has not two, three, or four tenements upon it, swarming with unwholesome crowds. what a birds-eye view of "the bend" would be like is a matter of bewildering conjecture. its everyday appearance, as seen from the corner of bayard street on a sunny day, is one of the sights of new york. bayard street is the high road to jewtown across the bowery, picketed from end to end with the outposts of israel. hebrew faces, hebrew signs, and incessant chatter in the queer lingo that passes for hebrew on the east side attend the curious wanderer to the very corner of mulberry street. but the moment he turns the corner the scene changes abruptly. before him lies spread out what might better be the market-place in some town in southern italy than a street in new york--all but the houses; they are still the same old tenements of the unromantic type. but for once they do not make the foreground in a slum picture from the american metropolis. the interest centres not in them, but in the crowd they shelter only when the street is not preferable, and that with the italian is only when it rains or he is sick. when the sun shines the entire population seeks the street, carrying on its household work, its bargaining, its love-making on street or sidewalk, or idling there when it has nothing better to do, with the reverse of the impulse that makes the polish jew coop himself up in his den with the thermometer at stewing heat. along the curb women sit in rows, young and old alike with the odd head-covering, pad or turban, that is their badge of servitude--her's to bear the burden as long as she lives--haggling over baskets of frowsy weeds, some sort of salad probably, stale tomatoes, and oranges not above suspicion. ash-barrels serve them as counters, and not infrequently does the arrival of the official cart en route for the dump cause a temporary suspension of trade until the barrels have been emptied and restored. hucksters and pedlars' carts make two rows of booths in the street itself, and along the houses is still another--a perpetual market doing a very lively trade in its own queer staples, found nowhere on american ground save in "the bend." two old hags, camping on the pavement, are dispensing stale bread, baked not in loaves, but in the shape of big wreaths like exaggerated crullers, out of bags of dirty bed-tick. there is no use disguising the fact: they look like and they probably are old mattresses mustered into service under the pressure of a rush of trade. stale bread was the one article the health officers, after a raid on the market, once reported as "not unwholesome." it was only disgusting. here is a brawny butcher, sleeves rolled up above the elbows and clay pipe in mouth, skinning a kid that hangs from his hook. they will tell you with a laugh at the elizabeth street police station that only a few days ago when a dead goat had been reported lying in pell street it was mysteriously missing by the time the offal-cart came to take it away. it turned out that an italian had carried it off in his sack to a wake or feast of some sort in one of the back alleys. [illustration: the bend.] on either side of the narrow entrance to bandit's roost, one of the most notorious of these, is a shop that is a fair sample of the sort of invention necessity is the mother of in "the bend." it is not enough that trucks and ash-barrels have provided four distinct lines of shops that are not down on the insurance maps, to accommodate the crowds. here have the very hallways been made into shops. three feet wide by four deep, they have just room for one, the shop-keeper, who, himself within, does his business outside, his wares displayed on a board hung across what was once the hall door. back of the rear wall of this unique shop a hole has been punched from the hall into the alley and the tenants go that way. one of the shops is a "tobacco bureau," presided over by an unknown saint, done in yellow and red--there is not a shop, a stand, or an ash-barrel doing duty for a counter, that has not its patron saint--the other is a fish-stand full of slimy, odd-looking creatures, fish that never swam in american waters, or if they did, were never seen on an american fish-stand, and snails. big, awkward sausages, anything but appetizing, hang in the grocer's doorway, knocking against the customer's head as if to remind him that they are there waiting to be bought. what they are i never had the courage to ask. down the street comes a file of women carrying enormous bundles of fire-wood on their heads, loads of decaying vegetables from the market wagons in their aprons, and each a baby at the breast supported by a sort of sling that prevents it from tumbling down. the women do all the carrying, all the work one sees going on in "the bend." the men sit or stand in the streets, on trucks, or in the open doors of the saloons smoking black clay pipes, talking and gesticulating as if forever on the point of coming to blows. near a particularly boisterous group, a really pretty girl with a string of amber beads twisted artlessly in the knot of her raven hair has been bargaining long and earnestly with an old granny, who presides over a wheel-barrow load of second-hand stockings and faded cotton yarn, industriously darning the biggest holes while she extols the virtues of her stock. one of the rude swains, with patched overalls tucked into his boots, to whom the girl's eyes have strayed more than once, steps up and gallantly offers to pick her out the handsomest pair, whereat she laughs and pushes him away with a gesture which he interprets as an invitation to stay; and he does, evidently to the satisfaction of the beldame, who forthwith raises her prices fifty per cent. without being detected by the girl. red bandannas and yellow kerchiefs are everywhere; so is the italian tongue, infinitely sweeter than the harsh gutturals of the russian jew around the corner. so are the "ristorantes" of innumerable pasquales; half of the people in "the bend" are christened pasquale, or get the name in some other way. when the police do not know the name of an escaped murderer, they guess at pasquale and send the name out on alarm; in nine cases out of ten it fits. so are the "banks" that hang out their shingle as tempting bait on every hand. there are half a dozen in the single block, steamship agencies, employment offices, and savings-banks, all in one. so are the toddling youngsters, bow-legged half of them, and so are no end of mothers, present and prospective, some of them scarce yet in their teens. those who are not in the street are hanging half way out of the windows, shouting at some one below. all "the bend" must be, if not altogether, at least half out of doors when the sun shines. in the street, where the city wields the broom, there is at least an effort at cleaning up. there has to be, or it would be swamped in filth overrunning from the courts and alleys where the rag-pickers live. it requires more than ordinary courage to explore these on a hot day. the undertaker has to do it then, the police always. right here, in this tenement on the east side of the street, they found little antonia candia, victim of fiendish cruelty, "covered," says the account found in the records of the society for the prevention of cruelty to children, "with sores, and her hair matted with dried blood." abuse is the normal condition of "the bend," murder its everyday crop, with the tenants not always the criminals. in this block between bayard, park, mulberry, and baxter streets, "the bend" proper, the late tenement house commission counted deaths of children[ ] in a specimen year ( ). their per centage of the total mortality in the block was . , while for the whole city the proportion was only . . the infant mortality in any city or place as compared with the whole number of deaths is justly considered a good barometer of its general sanitary condition. here, in this tenement, no. ½, next to bandits' roost, fourteen persons died that year, and eleven of them were children; in no. eleven, and eight of them not yet five years old. according to the records in the bureau of vital statistics only thirty-nine people lived in no. ½ in the year , nine of them little children. there were five baby funerals in that house the same year. out of the alley itself, no. , nine dead were carried in , five in baby coffins. here is the record of the year for the whole block, as furnished by the registrar of vital statistics, dr. roger s. tracy: _deaths and death-rates in in baxter and mulberry streets, between park and bayard streets._ key a = five years old and over. b = under five years. c = total. d = general. ----------------+------------------+------------+--------------------- | population. | deaths. | death-rate. +------+----+------+---+---+----+------+-------+------ | a | b | c | a | b | c | a | b | d ----------------+------+----+------+---+---+----+------+-------+------ baxter street | , | | , | | | | . | . | . mulberry street | , | | , | | | | . | . | . +------+----+------+---+---+----+------+-------+------ total | , | | , | | | | . | . | . ----------------+------+----+------+---+---+----+------+-------+------ the general death-rate for the whole city that year was . . these figures speak for themselves, when it is shown that in the model tenement across the way at nos. and , where the same class of people live in greater swarms ( , according to the record), but under good management, and in decent quarters, the hearse called that year only twice, once for a baby. the agent of the christian people who built that tenement will tell you that italians are good tenants, while the owner of the alley will oppose every order to put his property in repair with the claim that they are the worst of a bad lot. both are right, from their different stand-points. it is the stand-point that makes the difference--and the tenant. [illustration: bandits' roost.] what if i were to tell you that this alley, and more tenement property in "the bend," all of it notorious for years as the vilest and worst to be found anywhere, stood associated on the tax-books all through the long struggle to make its owners responsible, which has at last resulted in a qualified victory for the law, with the name of an honored family, one of the "oldest and best," rich in possessions and in influence, and high in the councils of the city's government? it would be but the plain truth. nor would it be the only instance by very many that stand recorded on the health department's books of a kind that has come near to making the name of landlord as odious in new york as it has become in ireland. bottle alley is around the corner in baxter street; but it is a fair specimen of its kind, wherever found. look into any of these houses, everywhere the same piles of rags, of malodorous bones and musty paper, all of which the sanitary police flatter themselves they have banished to the dumps and the warehouses. here is a "flat" of "parlor" and two pitch-dark coops called bedrooms. truly, the bed is all there is room for. the family tea-kettle is on the stove, doing duty for the time being as a wash-boiler. by night it will have returned to its proper use again, a practical illustration of how poverty in "the bend" makes both ends meet. one, two, three beds are there, if the old boxes and heaps of foul straw can be called by that name; a broken stove with crazy pipe from which the smoke leaks at every joint, a table of rough boards propped up on boxes, piles of rubbish in the corner. the closeness and smell are appalling. how many people sleep here? the woman with the red bandanna shakes her head sullenly, but the bare-legged girl with the bright face counts on her fingers--five, six! "six, sir!" six grown people and five children. "only five," she says with a smile, swathing the little one on her lap in its cruel bandage. there is another in the cradle--actually a cradle. and how much the rent? nine and a half, and "please, sir! he won't put the paper on." "he" is the landlord. the "paper" hangs in musty shreds on the wall. well do i recollect the visit of a health inspector to one of these tenements on a july day when the thermometer outside was climbing high in the nineties; but inside, in that awful room, with half a dozen persons washing, cooking, and sorting rags, lay the dying baby alongside the stove, where the doctors thermometer ran up to °! perishing for the want of a breath of fresh air in this city of untold charities! did not the manager of the fresh air fund write to the pastor of an italian church only last year[ ] that "no one asked for italian children," and hence he could not send any to the country? [footnote : see city mission report, february, , page .] [illustration: bottle alley.] half a dozen blocks up mulberry street there is a rag-picker's settlement, a sort of overflow from "the bend," that exists to-day in all its pristine nastiness. something like forty families are packed into five old two-story and attic houses that were built to hold five, and out in the yards additional crowds are, or were until very recently, accommodated in sheds built of all sorts of old boards and used as drying racks for the italian tenants' "stock." i found them empty when i visited the settlement while writing this. the last two tenants had just left. their fate was characteristic. the "old man," who lived in the corner coop, with barely room to crouch beside the stove--there would not have been room for him to sleep had not age crooked his frame to fit his house--had been taken to the "crazy-house," and the woman who was his neighbor and had lived in her shed for years had simply disappeared. the agent and the other tenants "guessed," doubtless correctly, that she might be found on the "island," but she was decrepit anyhow from rheumatism, and "not much good," and no one took the trouble to inquire for her. they had all they could do attending to their own business and raising the rent. no wonder; i found that for one front room and two "bedrooms" in the shameful old wrecks of buildings the tenant was paying $ a month, for the back-room and one bedroom $ , and for the attic rooms, according to size, from $ . to $ . . there is a standing quarrel between the professional--i mean now the official--sanitarian and the unsalaried agitator for sanitary reform over the question of overcrowded tenements. the one puts the number a little vaguely at four or five hundred, while the other asserts that there are thirty-two thousand, the whole number of houses classed as tenements at the census of two years ago, taking no account of the better kind of flats. it depends on the angle from which one sees it which is right. at best the term overcrowding is a relative one, and the scale of official measurement conveniently sliding. under the pressure of the italian influx the standard of breathing space required for an adult by the health officers has been cut down from six to four hundred cubic feet. the "needs of the situation" is their plea, and no more perfect argument could be advanced for the reformer's position. it is in "the bend" the sanitary policeman locates the bulk of his four hundred, and the sanitary reformer gives up the task in despair. of its vast homeless crowds the census takes no account. it is their instinct to shun the light, and they cannot be corralled in one place long enough to be counted. but the houses can, and the last count showed that in "the bend" district, between broadway and the bowery and canal and chatham streets, in a total of four thousand three hundred and sixty-seven "apartments" only nine were for the moment vacant, while in the old "africa," west of broadway, that receives the overflow from mulberry street and is rapidly changing its character, the notice "standing room only" is up. not a single vacant room was found there. nearly a hundred and fifty "lodgers" were driven out of two adjoining mulberry street tenements, one of them aptly named "the house of blazes," during that census. what squalor and degradation inhabit these dens the health officers know. through the long summer days their carts patrol "the bend," scattering disinfectants in streets and lanes, in sinks and cellars, and hidden hovels where the tramp burrows. from midnight till far into the small hours of the morning the policeman's thundering rap on closed doors is heard, with his stern command, "_apri port'!_" on his rounds gathering evidence of illegal overcrowding. the doors are opened unwillingly enough--but the order means business, and the tenant knows it even if he understands no word of english--upon such scenes as the one presented in the picture. it was photographed by flash-light on just such a visit. in a room not thirteen feet either way slept twelve men and women, two or three in bunks set in a sort of alcove, the rest on the floor. a kerosene lamp burned dimly in the fearful atmosphere, probably to guide other and later arrivals to their "beds," for it was only just past midnight. a baby's fretful wail came from an adjoining hall-room, where, in the semi-darkness, three recumbent figures could be made out. the "apartment" was one of three in two adjoining buildings we had found, within half an hour, similarly crowded. most of the men were lodgers, who slept there for five cents a spot. [illustration: lodgers in a crowded bayard street tenement--"five cents a spot."] another room on the top floor, that had been examined a few nights before, was comparatively empty. there were only four persons in it, two men, an old woman, and a young girl. the landlord opened the door with alacrity, and exhibited with a proud sweep of his hand the sacrifice he had made of his personal interests to satisfy the law. our visit had been anticipated. the policeman's back was probably no sooner turned than the room was re-opened for business. chapter vii. a raid on the stale-beer dives. midnight roll-call was over in the elizabeth street police-station, but the reserves were held under orders. a raid was on foot, but whether on the chinese fan-tan games, on the opium joints of mott and pell streets, or on dens of even worse character, was a matter of guess-work in the men's room. when the last patrolman had come in from his beat, all doubt was dispelled by the brief order "to the bend!" the stale-beer dives were the object of the raid. the policemen buckled their belts tighter, and with expressive grunts of disgust took up their march toward mulberry street. past the heathen temples of mott street--there was some fun to be gotten out of a raid _there_--they trooped, into "the bend," sending here and there a belated tramp scurrying in fright toward healthier quarters, and halted at the mouth of one of the hidden alleys. squads were told off and sent to make a simultaneous descent on all the known tramps' burrows in the block. led by the sergeant, ours--i went along as a kind of war correspondent--groped its way in single file through the narrow rift between slimy walls to the tenements in the rear. twice during our trip we stumbled over tramps, both women, asleep in the passage. they were quietly passed to the rear, receiving sundry prods and punches on the trip, and headed for the station in the grip of a policeman as a sort of advance guard of the coming army. after what seemed half a mile of groping in the dark we emerged finally into the alley proper, where light escaping through the cracks of closed shutters on both sides enabled us to make out the contour of three rickety frame tenements. snatches of ribald songs and peals of coarse laughter reached us from now this, now that of the unseen burrows. "school is in," said the sergeant drily as we stumbled down the worn steps of the next cellar-way. a kick of his boot-heel sent the door flying into the room. a room perhaps a dozen feet square, with walls and ceiling that might once have been clean--assuredly the floor had not in the memory of man, if indeed there was other floor than hard-trodden mud--but were now covered with a brown crust that, touched with the end of a club, came off in shuddering showers of crawling bugs, revealing the blacker filth beneath. grouped about a beer-keg that was propped on the wreck of a broken chair, a foul and ragged host of men and women, on boxes, benches, and stools. tomato-cans filled at the keg were passed from hand to hand. in the centre of the group a sallow, wrinkled hag, evidently the ruler of the feast, dealt out the hideous stuff. a pile of copper coins rattled in her apron, the very pennies received with such showers of blessings upon the giver that afternoon; the faces of some of the women were familiar enough from the streets as those of beggars forever whining for a penny, "to keep a family from starving." their whine and boisterous hilarity were alike hushed now. in sullen, cowed submission they sat, evidently knowing what to expect. at the first glimpse of the uniform in the open door some in the group, customers with a record probably, had turned their heads away to avoid the searching glance of the officer; while a few, less used to such scenes, stared defiantly. a single stride took the sergeant into the middle of the room, and with a swinging blow of his club he knocked the faucet out of the keg and the half-filled can from the boss hag's hand. as the contents of both splashed upon the floor, half a dozen of the group made a sudden dash, and with shoulders humped above their heads to shield their skulls against the dreaded locust broke for the door. they had not counted upon the policemen outside. there was a brief struggle, two or three heavy thumps, and the runaways were brought back to where their comrades crouched in dogged silence. "thirteen!" called the sergeant, completing his survey. "take them out. 'revolvers' all but one. good for six months on the island, the whole lot." the exception was a young man not much if any over twenty, with a hard look of dissipation on his face. he seemed less unconcerned than the rest, but tried hard to make up for it by putting on the boldest air he could. "come down early," commented the officer, shoving him along with his stick. "there is need of it. they don't last long at this. that stuff is brewed to kill at long range." at the head of the cellar-steps we encountered a similar procession from farther back in the alley, where still another was forming to take up its march to the station. out in the street was heard the tramp of the hosts already pursuing that well-trodden path, as with a fresh complement of men we entered the next stale-beer alley. there were four dives in one cellar here. the filth and the stench were utterly unbearable; even the sergeant turned his back and fled after scattering the crowd with his club and starting them toward the door. the very dog in the alley preferred the cold flags for a berth to the stifling cellar. we found it lying outside. seventy-five tramps, male and female, were arrested in the four small rooms. in one of them, where the air seemed thick enough to cut with a knife, we found a woman, a mother with a new-born babe on a heap of dirty straw. she was asleep and was left until an ambulance could be called to take her to the hospital. returning to the station with this batch, we found every window in the building thrown open to the cold october wind, and the men from the sergeant down smoking the strongest cigars that could be obtained by way of disenfecting the place. two hundred and seventy-five tramps had been jammed into the cells to be arraigned next morning in the police court on the charge of vagrancy, with the certain prospect of six months "on the island." of the sentence at least they were sure. as to the length of the men's stay the experienced official at the desk was sceptical, it being then within a month of an important election. if tramps have nothing else to call their own they have votes, and votes that are for sale cheap for cash. about election time this gives them a "pull," at least by proxy. the sergeant observed, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that he had more than once seen the same tramp sent to blackwell's island twice in twenty-four hours for six months at a time. [illustration: an all-night two-cent restaurant, in "the bend."] as a thief never owns to his calling, however devoid of moral scruples, preferring to style himself a speculator, so this real home-product of the slums, the stale-beer dive, is known about "the bend" by the more dignified name of the two-cent restaurant. usually, as in this instance, it is in some cellar giving on a back alley. doctored, unlicensed beer is its chief ware. sometimes a cup of "coffee" and a stale roll may be had for two cents. the men pay the score. to the women--unutterable horror of the suggestion--the place is free. the beer is collected from the kegs put on the sidewalk by the saloon-keeper to await the brewer's cart, and is touched up with drugs to put a froth on it. the privilege to sit all night on a chair, or sleep on a table, or in a barrel, goes with each round of drinks. generally an italian, sometimes a negro, occasionally a woman, "runs" the dive. their customers, alike homeless and hopeless in their utter wretchedness, are the professional tramps, and these only. the meanest thief is infinitely above the stale-beer level. once upon that plane there is no escape. to sink below it is impossible; no one ever rose from it. one night spent in a stale-beer dive is like the traditional putting on of the uniform of the caste, the discarded rags of an old tramp. that stile once crossed, the lane has no longer a turn; and contrary to the proverb, it is usually not long either. with the gravitation of the italian tramp landlord toward the old stronghold of the african on the west side, a share of the stale-beer traffic has left "the bend;" but its headquarters will always remain there, the real home of trampdom, just as fourteenth street is its limit. no real tramp crosses that frontier after nightfall and in the daytime only to beg. repulsive as the business is, its profits to the italian dive-keeper are considerable; in fact, barring a slight outlay in the ingredients that serve to give "life" to the beer-dregs, it is all profit. the "banker" who curses the italian colony does not despise taking a hand in it, and such a thing as a stale-beer trust on a mulberry street scale may yet be among the possibilities. one of these bankers, who was once known to the police as the keeper of one notorious stale-beer dive and the active backer of others, is to-day an extensive manufacturer of macaroni, the owner of several big tenements and other real estate; and the capital, it is said, has all come out of his old business. very likely it is true. on hot summer nights it is no rare experience when exploring the worst of the tenements in "the bend" to find the hallways occupied by rows of "sitters," tramps whom laziness or hard luck has prevented from earning enough by their day's "labor" to pay the admission fee to a stale-beer dive, and who have their reasons for declining the hospitality of the police station lodging-rooms. huddled together in loathsome files, they squat there over night, or until an inquisitive policeman breaks up the congregation with his club, which in mulberry street has always free swing. at that season the woman tramp predominates. the men, some of them at least, take to the railroad track and to camping out when the nights grow warm, returning in the fall to prey on the city and to recruit their ranks from the lazy, the shiftless, and the unfortunate. like a foul loadstone, "the bend" attracts and brings them back, no matter how far they have wandered. for next to idleness the tramp loves rum; next to rum stale beer, its equivalent of the gutter. and the first and last go best together. as "sitters" they occasionally find a job in the saloons about chatham and pearl streets on cold winter nights, when the hallway is not practicable, that enables them to pick up a charity drink now and then and a bite of an infrequent sandwich. the barkeeper permits them to sit about the stove and by shivering invite the sympathy of transient customers. the dodge works well, especially about christmas and election time, and the sitters are able to keep comfortably filled up to the advantage of their host. but to look thoroughly miserable they must keep awake. a tramp placidly dozing at the fire would not be an object of sympathy. to make sure that they do keep awake, the wily bartender makes them sit constantly swinging one foot like the pendulum of a clock. when it stops the slothful "sitter" is roused with a kick and "fired out." it is said by those who profess to know that habit has come to the rescue of oversleepy tramps and that the old rounders can swing hand or foot in their sleep without betraying themselves. in some saloons "sitters" are let in at these seasons in fresh batches every hour. on one of my visits to "the bend" i came across a particularly ragged and disreputable tramp, who sat smoking his pipe on the rung of a ladder with such evident philosophic contentment in the busy labor of a score of rag-pickers all about him, that i bade him sit for a picture, offering him ten cents for the job. he accepted the offer with hardly a nod, and sat patiently watching me from his perch until i got ready for work. then he took the pipe out of his mouth and put it in his pocket, calmly declaring that it was not included in the contract, and that it was worth a quarter to have it go in the picture. the pipe, by the way, was of clay, and of the two-for-a-cent kind. but i had to give in. the man, scarce ten seconds employed at honest labor, even at sitting down, at which he was an undoubted expert, had gone on strike. he knew his rights and the value of "work," and was not to be cheated out of either. [illustration: the tramp.] whence these tramps, and why the tramping? are questions oftener asked than answered. ill-applied charity and idleness answer the first query. they are the whence, and to a large extent the why also. once started on the career of a tramp, the man keeps to it because it is the laziest. tramps and toughs profess the same doctrine, that the world owes them a living, but from stand-points that tend in different directions. the tough does not become a tramp, save in rare instances, when old and broken down. even then usually he is otherwise disposed of. the devil has various ways of taking care of his own. nor is the tramps' army recruited from any certain class. all occupations and most grades of society yield to it their contingent of idleness. occasionally, from one cause or another, a recruit of a better stamp is forced into the ranks; but the first acceptance of alms puts a brand on the able-bodied man which his moral nature rarely hold out to efface. he seldom recovers his lost caste. the evolution is gradual, keeping step with the increasing shabbiness of his clothes and corresponding loss of self-respect, until he reaches the bottom in "the bend." of the tough the tramp doctrine that the world owes him a living makes a thief; of the tramp a coward. numbers only make him bold unless he has to do with defenceless women. in the city the policemen keep him straight enough. the women rob an occasional clothes-line when no one is looking, or steal the pail and scrubbing-brush with which they are set to clean up in the station-house lodging-rooms after their night's sleep. at the police station the roads of the tramp and the tough again converge. in mid-winter, on the coldest nights, the sanitary police corral the tramps here and in their lodging-houses and vaccinate them, despite their struggles and many oaths that they have recently been "scraped." the station-house is the sieve that sifts out the chaff from the wheat, if there be any wheat there. a man goes from his first night's sleep on the hard slab of a police station lodging-room to a deck-hand's berth on an out-going steamer, to the recruiting office, to any work that is honest, or he goes "to the devil or the dives, same thing," says my friend, the sergeant, who knows. chapter viii. the cheap lodging-houses. when it comes to the question of numbers with this tramps' army, another factor of serious portent has to be taken into account: the cheap lodging-houses. in the caravanseries that line chatham street and the bowery, harboring nightly a population as large as that of many a thriving town, a home-made article of tramp and thief is turned out that is attracting the increasing attention of the police, and offers a field for the missionary's labors beside which most others seem of slight account. within a year they have been stamped as nurseries of crime by the chief of the secret police,[ ] the sort of crime that feeds especially on idleness and lies ready to the hand of fatal opportunity. in the same strain one of the justices on the police court bench sums up his long experience as a committing magistrate: "the ten-cent lodging-houses more than counterbalance the good done by the free reading-room, lectures, and all other agencies of reform. such lodging-houses have caused more destitution, more beggary and crime than any other agency i know of." a very slight acquaintance with the subject is sufficient to convince the observer that neither authority overstates the fact. the two officials had reference, however, to two different grades of lodging-houses. the cost of a night's lodging makes the difference. there is a wider gap between the "hotel"--they are all hotels--that charges a quarter and the one that furnishes a bed for a dime than between the bridal suite and the every-day hall bedroom of the ordinary hostelry. [footnote : inspector byrnes on lodging-houses, in the north american review, september, .] the metropolis is to lots of people like a lighted candle to the moth. it attracts them in swarms that come year after year with the vague idea that they can get along here if anywhere; that something is bound to turn up among so many. nearly all are young men, unsettled in life, many--most of them, perhaps--fresh from good homes, beyond a doubt with honest hopes of getting a start in the city and making a way for themselves. few of them have much money to waste while looking around, and the cheapness of the lodging offered is an object. fewer still know anything about the city and its pitfalls. they have come in search of crowds, of "life," and they gravitate naturally to the bowery, the great democratic highway of the city, where the twenty-five-cent lodging-houses take them in. in the alleged reading-rooms of these great barracks, that often have accommodations, such as they are, for two, three, and even four hundred guests, they encounter three distinct classes of associates: the great mass adventurers like themselves, waiting there for something to turn up; a much smaller class of respectable clerks or mechanics, who, too poor or too lonely to have a home of their own, live this way from year to year; and lastly the thief in search of recruits for his trade. the sights the young stranger sees, and the company he keeps, in the bowery are not of a kind to strengthen any moral principle he may have brought away from home, and by the time his money is gone, with no work yet in sight, and he goes down a step, a long step, to the fifteen-cent lodging-house, he is ready for the tempter whom he finds waiting for him there, reinforced by the contingent of ex-convicts returning from the prisons after having served out their sentences for robbery or theft. then it is that the something he has been waiting for turns up. the police returns have the record of it. "in nine cases out of ten," says inspector byrnes, "he turns out a thief, or a burglar, if, indeed, he does not sooner or later become a murderer." as a matter of fact, some of the most atrocious of recent murders have been the result of schemes of robbery hatched in these houses, and so frequent and bold have become the depredations of the lodging-house thieves, that the authorities have been compelled to make a public demand for more effective laws that shall make them subject at all times to police regulation. inspector byrnes observes that in the last two or three years at least four hundred young men have been arrested for petty crimes that originated in the lodging-houses, and that in many cases it was their first step in crime. he adds his testimony to the notorious fact that three-fourths of the young men called on to plead to generally petty offences in the courts are under twenty years of age, poorly clad, and without means. the bearing of the remark is obvious. one of the, to the police, well-known thieves who lived, when out of jail, at the windsor, a well-known lodging-house in the bowery, went to johnstown after the flood and was shot and killed there while robbing the dead. an idea of just how this particular scheme of corruption works, with an extra touch of infamy thrown in, may be gathered from the story of david smith, the "new york fagin," who was convicted and sent to prison last year through the instrumentality of the society for the prevention of cruelty to children. here is the account from the society's last report: "the boy, edward mulhearn, fourteen years old, had run away from his home in jersey city, thinking he might find work and friends in new york. he may have been a trifle wild. he met smith on the bowery and recognized him as an acquaintance. when smith offered him a supper and bed he was only too glad to accept. smith led the boy to a vile lodging-house on the bowery, where he introduced him to his 'pals' and swore he would make a man of him before he was a week older. next day he took the unsuspecting edward all over the bowery and grand street, showed him the sights and drew his attention to the careless way the ladies carried their bags and purses and the easy thing it was to get them. he induced edward to try his hand. edward tried and won. he was richer by three dollars! it did seem easy. 'of course it is,' said his companion. from that time smith took the boy on a number of thieving raids, but he never seemed to become adept enough to be trusted out of range of the 'fagin's' watchful eye. when he went out alone he generally returned empty-handed. this did not suit smith. it was then he conceived the idea of turning this little inferior thief into a superior beggar. he took the boy into his room and burned his arms with a hot iron. the boy screamed and entreated in vain. the merciless wretch pressed the iron deep into the tender flesh, and afterward applied acid to the raw wound. "thus prepared, with his arm inflamed, swollen, and painful, edward was sent out every day by this fiend, who never let him out of his sight, and threatened to burn his arm off if he did not beg money enough. he was instructed to tell people the wound had been caused by acid falling upon his arm at the works. edward was now too much under the man's influence to resist or disobey him. he begged hard and handed smith the pennies faithfully. he received in return bad food and worse treatment." the reckoning came when the wretch encountered the boy's father, in search of his child, in the bowery, and fell under suspicion of knowing more than he pretended of the lad's whereabouts. he was found in his den with a half dozen of his chums revelling on the proceeds of the boy's begging for the day. the twenty-five cent lodging-house keeps up the pretence of a bedroom, though the head-high partition enclosing a space just large enough to hold a cot and a chair and allow the man room to pull off his clothes is the shallowest of all pretences. the fifteen-cent bed stands boldly forth without screen in a room full of bunks with sheets as yellow and blankets as foul. at the ten-cent level the locker for the sleeper's clothes disappears. there is no longer need of it. the tramp limit is reached, and there is nothing to lock up save, on general principles, the lodger. usually the ten- and seven-cent lodgings are different grades of the same abomination. some sort of an apology for a bed, with mattress and blanket, represents the aristocratic purchase of the tramp who, by a lucky stroke of beggary, has exchanged the chance of an empty box or ash-barrel for shelter on the quality floor of one of these "hotels." a strip of canvas, strung between rough timbers, without covering of any kind, does for the couch of the seven-cent lodger who prefers the questionable comfort of a red-hot stove close to his elbow to the revelry of the stale-beer dive. it is not the most secure perch in the world. uneasy sleepers roll off at intervals, but they have not far to fall to the next tier of bunks, and the commotion that ensues is speedily quieted by the boss and his club. on cold winter nights, when every bunk had its tenant, i have stood in such a lodging-room more than once, and listening to the snoring of the sleepers like the regular strokes of an engine, and the slow creaking of the beams under their restless weight, imagined myself on shipboard and experienced the very real nausea of sea-sickness. the one thing that did not favor the deception was the air; its character could not be mistaken. [illustration: bunks in a seven-cent lodging-house, pell street.] the proprietor of one of these seven-cent houses was known to me as a man of reputed wealth and respectability. he "ran" three such establishments and made, it was said, $ , a year clear profit on his investment. he lived in a handsome house quite near to the stylish precincts of murray hill, where the nature of his occupation was not suspected. a notice that was posted on the wall of the lodgers' room suggested at least an effort to maintain his up-town standing in the slums. it read: "no swearing or loud talking after nine o'clock." before nine no exceptions were taken to the natural vulgarity of the place; but that was the limit. there are no licensed lodging-houses known to me which charge less than seven cents for even such a bed as this canvas strip, though there are unlicensed ones enough where one may sleep on the floor for five cents a spot, or squat in a sheltered hallway for three. the police station lodging-house, where the soft side of a plank is the regulation couch, is next in order. the manner in which this police bed is "made up" is interesting in its simplicity. the loose planks that make the platform are simply turned over, and the job is done, with an occasional coat of white-wash thrown in to sweeten things. i know of only one easier way, but, so far as i am informed, it has never been introduced in this country. it used to be practised, if report spoke truly, in certain old-country towns. the "bed" was represented by clothes-lines stretched across the room upon which the sleepers hung by the arm-pits for a penny a night. in the morning the boss woke them up by simply untying the line at one end and letting it go with its load; a labor-saving device certainly, and highly successful in attaining the desired end. according to the police figures, , , separate lodgings were furnished last year by these dormitories, between two and three hundred in number, and, adding the , lodgings furnished by the station-houses, the total of the homeless army was , , , an average of over fourteen thousand homeless men[ ] for every night in the year! the health officers, professional optimists always in matters that trench upon their official jurisdiction, insist that the number is not quite so large as here given. but, apart from any slight discrepancy in the figures, the more important fact remains that last year's record of lodgers is an all round increase over the previous year's of over three hundred thousand, and that this has been the ratio of growth of the business during the last three years, the period of which inspector byrnes complains as turning out so many young criminals with the lodging-house stamp upon them. more than half of the lodging-houses are in the bowery district, that is to say, the fourth, sixth, and tenth wards, and they harbor nearly three-fourths of their crowds. the calculation that more than nine thousand homeless young men lodge nightly along chatham street and the bowery, between the city hall and the cooper union, is probably not far out of the way. the city missionary finds them there far less frequently than the thief in need of helpers. appropriately enough, nearly one-fifth of all the pawn-shops in the city and one-sixth of all the saloons are located here, while twenty-seven per cent. of all the arrests on the police books have been credited to the district for the last two years. [footnote : deduct , women lodgers in the police stations.] about election time, especially in presidential elections, the lodging-houses come out strong on the side of the political boss who has the biggest "barrel." the victory in political contests, in the three wards i have mentioned of all others, is distinctly to the general with the strongest battalions, and the lodging-houses are his favorite recruiting ground. the colonization of voters is an evil of the first magnitude, none the less because both parties smirch their hands with it, and for that reason next to hopeless. honors are easy, where the two "machines," intrenched in their strongholds, outbid each other across the bowery in open rivalry as to who shall commit the most flagrant frauds at the polls. semi-occasionally a champion offender is caught and punished, as was, not long ago, the proprietor of one of the biggest bowery lodging-houses. but such scenes are largely spectacular, if not prompted by some hidden motive of revenge that survives from the contest. beyond a doubt inspector byrnes speaks by the card when he observes that "usually this work is done in the interest of some local political boss, who stands by the owner of the house, in case the latter gets into trouble." for standing by, read twisting the machinery of outraged justice so that its hand shall fall not too heavily upon the culprit, or miss him altogether. one of the houses that achieved profitable notoriety in this way in many successive elections, a notorious tramps' resort in houston street, was lately given up, and has most appropriately been turned into a bar-factory, thus still contributing, though in a changed form, to the success of "the cause." it must be admitted that the black tramp who herds in the west side "hotels" is more discriminating in this matter of electioneering than his white brother. he at least exhibits some real loyalty in invariably selling his vote to the republican bidder for a dollar, while he charges the democratic boss a dollar and a half. in view of the well-known facts, there is a good deal of force in the remark made by a friend of ballot reform during the recent struggle over that hotly contested issue, that real ballot reform will do more to knock out cheap lodging-houses than all the regulations of police and health officers together. the experiment made by a well-known stove manufacturer a winter or two ago in the way of charity, might have thrown much desired light on the question of the number of tramps in the city, could it have been carried to a successful end. he opened a sort of breakfast shop for the idle and unemployed in the region of washington square, offering to all who had no money a cup of coffee and a roll for nothing. the first morning he had a dozen customers, the next about two hundred. the number kept growing until one morning, at the end of two weeks, found by actual count , shivering creatures in line waiting their turn for a seat at his tables. the shop was closed that day. it was one of the rare instances of too great a rush of custom wrecking a promising business, and the great problem remained unsolved. chapter ix. chinatown. between the tabernacles of jewry and the shrines of the bend, joss has cheekily planted his pagan worship of idols, chief among which are the celestial worshipper's own gain and lusts. whatever may be said about the chinaman being a thousand years behind the age on his own shores, here he is distinctly abreast of it in his successful scheming to "make it pay." it is doubtful if there is anything he does not turn to a paying account, from his religion down, or up, as one prefers. at the risk of distressing some well-meaning, but, i fear, too trustful people, i state it in advance as my opinion, based on the steady observation of years, that all attempts to make an effective christian of john chinaman will remain abortive in this generation; of the next i have, if anything, less hope. ages of senseless idolatry, a mere grub-worship, have left him without the essential qualities for appreciating the gentle teachings of a faith whose motive and unselfish spirit are alike beyond his grasp. he lacks the handle of a strong faith in something, anything however wrong, to catch him by. there is nothing strong about him, except his passions when aroused. i am convinced that he adopts christianity, when he adopts it at all, as he puts on american clothes, with what the politicians would call an ulterior motive, some sort of gain in the near prospect--washing, a christian wife, perhaps, anything he happens to rate for the moment above his cherished pigtail. it may be that i judge him too harshly. exceptions may be found. indeed, for the credit of the race, i hope there are such. but i am bound to say my hope is not backed by lively faith. chinatown as a spectacle is disappointing. next-door neighbor to the bend, it has little of its outdoor stir and life, none of its gayly-colored rags or picturesque filth and poverty. mott street is clean to distraction: the laundry stamp is on it, though the houses are chiefly of the conventional tenement-house type, with nothing to rescue them from the everyday dismal dreariness of their kind save here and there a splash of dull red or yellow, a sign, hung endways and with streamers of red flannel tacked on, that announces in chinese characters that dr. chay yen chong sells chinese herb medicines, or that won lung & co.--queer contradiction--take in washing, or deal out tea and groceries. there are some gimcracks in the second story fire-escape of one of the houses, signifying that joss or a club has a habitation there. an american patent medicine concern has seized the opportunity to decorate the back-ground with its cabalistic trade-mark, that in this company looks as foreign as the rest. doubtless the privilege was bought for cash. it will buy anything in chinatown, joss himself included, as indeed, why should it not? he was bought for cash across the sea and came here under the law that shuts out the live chinaman, but lets in his dead god on payment of the statutory duty on bric-à-brac. red and yellow are the holiday colors of chinatown as of the bend, but they do not lend brightness in mott street as around the corner in mulberry. rather, they seem to descend to the level of the general dulness, and glower at you from doors and windows, from the telegraph pole that is the official organ of chinatown and from the store signs, with blank, un-meaning stare, suggesting nothing, asking no questions, and answering none. fifth avenue is not duller on a rainy day than mott street to one in search of excitement. whatever is on foot goes on behind closed doors. stealth and secretiveness are as much part of the chinaman in new york as the cat-like tread of his felt shoes. his business, as his domestic life, shuns the light, less because there is anything to conceal than because that is the way of the man. perhaps the attitude of american civilization toward the stranger, whom it invited in, has taught him that way. at any rate, the very doorways of his offices and shops are fenced off by queer, forbidding partitions suggestive of a continual state of siege. the stranger who enters through the crooked approach is received with sudden silence, a sullen stare, and an angry "vat you vant?" that breathes annoyance and distrust. trust not him who trusts no one, is as safe a rule in chinatown as out of it. were not mott street overawed in its isolation, it would not be safe to descend this open cellar-way, through which come the pungent odor of burning opium and the clink of copper coins on the table. as it is, though safe, it is not profitable to intrude. at the first foot-fall of leather soles on the steps the hum of talk ceases, and the group of celestials, crouching over their game of fan tan, stop playing and watch the comer with ugly looks. fan tan is their ruling passion. the average chinaman, the police will tell you, would rather gamble than eat any day, and they have ample experience to back them. only the fellow in the bunk smokes away, indifferent to all else but his pipe and his own enjoyment. it is a mistake to assume that chinatown is honeycombed with opium "joints." there are a good many more outside of it than in it. the celestials do not monopolize the pipe. in mott street there is no need of them. not a chinese home or burrow there, but has its bunk and its lay-out, where they can be enjoyed safe from police interference. the chinaman smokes opium as caucasians smoke tobacco, and apparently with little worse effect upon himself. but woe unto the white victim upon which his pitiless drug gets its grip! the bloused pedlars who, with arms buried half to the elbow in their trousers' pockets, lounge behind their stock of watermelon seed and sugar-cane, cut in lengths to suit the purse of the buyer, disdain to offer the barbarian their wares. chinatown, that does most things by contraries, rules it holiday style to carry its hands in its pockets, and its denizens follow the fashion, whether in blue blouse, in gray, or in brown, with shining and braided pig-tail dangling below the knees, or with hair cropped short above a coat collar of "melican" cut. all kinds of men are met, but no women--none at least with almond eyes. the reason is simple: there are none. a few, a very few, chinese merchants have wives of their own color, but they are seldom or never seen in the street. the "wives" of chinatown are of a different stock that comes closer home. from the teeming tenements to the right and left of it come the white slaves of its dens of vice and their infernal drug, that have infused into the "bloody sixth" ward a subtler poison than ever the stale-beer dives knew, or the "sudden death" of the old brewery. there are houses, dozens of them, in mott and pell streets, that are literally jammed, from the "joint" in the cellar to the attic, with these hapless victims of a passion which, once acquired, demands the sacrifice of every instinct of decency to its insatiate desire. there is a church in mott street, at the entrance to chinatown, that stands as a barrier between it and the tenements beyond. its young men have waged unceasing war upon the monstrous wickedness for years, but with very little real result. i have in mind a house in pell street that has been raided no end of times by the police, and its population emptied upon blackwell's island, or into the reformatories, yet is to-day honeycombed with scores of the conventional households of the chinese quarter: the men worshippers of joss; the women, all white, girls hardly yet grown to womanhood, worshipping nothing save the pipe that has enslaved them body and soul. easily tempted from homes that have no claim upon the name, they rarely or never return. mott street gives up its victims only to the charity hospital or the potter's field. of the depth of their fall no one is more thoroughly aware than these girls themselves; no one less concerned about it. the calmness with which they discuss it, while insisting illogically upon the fiction of a marriage that deceives no one, is disheartening. their misery is peculiarly fond of company, and an amount of visiting goes on in these households that makes it extremely difficult for the stranger to untangle them. i came across a company of them "hitting the pipe" together, on a tour through their dens one night with the police captain of the precinct. the girls knew him, called him by name, offered him a pipe, and chatted with him about the incidents of their acquaintance, how many times he had "sent them up," and their chances of "lasting" much longer. there was no shade of regret in their voices, nothing but utter indifference and surrender. one thing about them was conspicuous: their scrupulous neatness. it is the distinguishing mark of chinatown, outwardly and physically. it is not altogether by chance the chinaman has chosen the laundry as his distinctive field. he is by nature as clean as the cat, which he resembles in his traits of cruel cunning, and savage fury when aroused. on this point of cleanliness he insists in his domestic circle, yielding in others with crafty submissiveness to the caprice of the girls, who "boss" him in a very independent manner, fretting vengefully under the yoke they loathe, but which they know right well they can never shake off, once they have put the pipe to their lips and given mott street a mortgage upon their souls for all time. to the priest, whom they call in when the poison racks the body, they pretend that they are yet their own masters; but he knows that it is an idle boast, least of all believed by themselves. as he walks with them the few short steps to the potter's field, he hears the sad story he has heard told over and over again, of father, mother, home, and friends given up for the accursed pipe, and stands hopeless and helpless before the colossal evil for which he knows no remedy. the frequent assertions of the authorities that at least no girls under age are wrecked on this chinese shoal, are disproved by the observation of those who go frequently among these dens, though the smallest girl will invariably, and usually without being asked, insist that she is sixteen, and so of age to choose the company she keeps. such assertions are not to be taken seriously. even while i am writing, the morning returns from one of the precincts that pass through my hands report the arrest of a chinaman for "inveigling little girls into his laundry," one of the hundred outposts of chinatown that are scattered all over the city, as the outer threads of the spider's web that holds its prey fast. reference to case no. , in this year's report of the society for the prevention of cruelty to children, will discover one of the much travelled roads to chinatown. the girl whose story it tells was thirteen, and one of six children abandoned by a dissipated father. she had been discharged from an eighth avenue store, where she was employed as cash girl, and, being afraid to tell her mother, floated about until she landed in a chinese laundry. the judge heeded her tearful prayer, and sent her home with her mother, but she was back again in a little while despite all promises of reform. [illustration: in a chinese joint.] her tyrant knows well that she will come, and patiently bides his time. when her struggles in the web have ceased at last, he rules no longer with gloved hand. a specimen of celestial logic from the home circle at this period came home to me with a personal application, one evening when i attempted, with a policeman, to stop a chinaman whom we found beating his white "wife" with a broom-handle in a mott street cellar. he was angry at our interference, and declared vehemently that she was "bad." "s'ppose your wifee bad, you no lickee her?" he asked, as if there could be no appeal from such a common-sense proposition as that. my assurance that i did not, that such a thing could not occur to me, struck him dumb with amazement. he eyed me a while in stupid silence, poked the linen in his tub, stole another look, and made up his mind. a gleam of intelligence shone in his eye, and pity and contempt struggled in his voice. "then, i guess, she lickee you," he said. no small commotion was caused in chinatown once upon the occasion of an expedition i undertook, accompanied by a couple of police detectives, to photograph joss. some conscienceless wag spread the report, after we were gone, that his picture was wanted for the rogues' gallery at headquarters. the insult was too gross to be passed over without atonement of some sort. two roast pigs made matters all right with his offended majesty of mott street, and with his attendant priests, who bear a very practical hand in the worship by serving as the divine stomach, as it were. they eat the good things set before their rice-paper master, unless, as once happened, some sacrilegious tramp sneaks in and gets ahead of them. the practical way in which this people combine worship with business is certainly admirable. i was told that the scrawl covering the wall on both sides of the shrine stood for the names of the pillars of the church or club--the joss house is both--that they might have their reward in this world, no matter what happened to them in the next. there was another inscription overhead that needed no interpreter. in familiar english letters, copied bodily from the trade dollar, was the sentiment: "in god we trust." the priest pointed to it with undisguised pride and attempted an explanation, from which i gathered that the inscription was intended as a diplomatic courtesy, a delicate international compliment to the "melican joss," the almighty dollar. [illustration: "the official organ of chinatown."] chinatown has enlisted the telegraph for the dissemination of public intelligence, but it has got hold of the contrivance by the wrong end. as the wires serve us in newspaper-making, so the chinaman makes use of the pole for the same purpose. the telegraph pole, of which i spoke as the real official organ of chinatown, stands not far from the joss house in mott street, in full view from chatham square. in it centres the real life of the colony, its gambling news. every day yellow and red notices are posted upon it by unseen hands, announcing that in such and such a cellar a fan tan game will be running that night, or warning the faithful that a raid is intended on this or that game through the machination of a rival interest. a constant stream of plotting and counter-plotting makes up the round of chinese social and political existence. i do not pretend to understand the exact political structure of the colony, or its internal government. even discarding as idle the stories of a secret cabal with power over life and death, and authority to enforce its decrees, there is evidence enough that the chinese consider themselves subject to the laws of the land only when submission is unavoidable, and that they are governed by a code of their own, the very essence of which is rejection of all other authority except under compulsion. if now and then some horrible crime in the chinese colony, a murder of such hideous ferocity as one i have a very vivid recollection of, where the murderer stabbed his victim (both chinamen, of course) in the back with a meat-knife, plunging it in to the hilt no less than seventeen times, arouses the popular prejudice to a suspicion that it was "ordered," only the suspected themselves are to blame, for they appear to rise up as one man to shield the criminal. the difficulty of tracing the motive of the crime and the murderer is extreme, and it is the rarest of all results that the police get on the track of either. the obstacles in the way of hunting down an italian murderer are as nothing to the opposition encountered in chinatown. nor is the failure of the pursuit wholly to be ascribed to the familiar fact that to caucasian eyes "all chinamen look alike," but rather to their acting "alike," in a body, to defeat discovery at any cost. withal the police give the chinese the name of being the "quietest people down there," meaning in the notoriously turbulent sixth ward; and they are. the one thing they desire above all is to be let alone, a very natural wish perhaps, considering all the circumstances. if it were a laudable, or even an allowable ambition that prompts it, they might be humored with advantage, probably, to both sides. but the facts show too plainly that it is not, and that in their very exclusiveness and reserve they are a constant and terrible menace to society, wholly regardless of their influence upon the industrial problems which their presence confuses. the severest official scrutiny, the harshest repressive measures are justifiable in chinatown, orderly as it appears on the surface, even more than in the bend, and the case is infinitely more urgent. to the peril that threatens there all the senses are alert, whereas the poison that proceeds from mott street puts mind and body to sleep, to work out its deadly purpose in the corruption of the soul. this again may be set down as a harsh judgment. i may be accused of inciting persecution of an unoffending people. far from it. granted, that the chinese are in no sense a desirable element of the population, that they serve no useful purpose here, whatever they may have done elsewhere in other days, yet to this it is a sufficient answer that they are here, and that, having let them in, we must make the best of it. this is a time for very plain speaking on this subject. rather than banish the chinaman, i would have the door opened wider--for his wife; make it a condition of his coming or staying that he bring his wife with him. then, at least, he might not be what he now is and remains, a homeless stranger among us. upon this hinges the real chinese question, in our city at all events, as i see it. to assert that the victims of his drug and his base passions would go to the bad anyhow, is begging the question. they might and they might not. the chance is the span between life and death. from any other form of dissipation than that for which chinatown stands there is recovery: for the victims of any other vice, hope. for these there is neither hope nor recovery; nothing but death--moral, mental, and physical death. [illustration] chapter x. jewtown. the tenements grow taller, and the gaps in their ranks close up rapidly as we cross the bowery and, leaving chinatown and the italians behind, invade the hebrew quarter. baxter street, with its interminable rows of old clothes shops and its brigades of pullers-in--nicknamed "the bay" in honor, perhaps, of the tars who lay to there after a cruise to stock up their togs, or maybe after the "schooners" of beer plentifully bespoke in that latitude--bayard street, with its synagogues and its crowds, gave us a foretaste of it. no need of asking here where we are. the jargon of the street, the signs of the sidewalk, the manner and dress of the people, their unmistakable physiognomy, betray their race at every step. men with queer skull-caps, venerable beard, and the outlandish long-skirted kaftan of the russian jew, elbow the ugliest and the handsomest women in the land. the contrast is startling. the old women are hags; the young, houris. wives and mothers at sixteen, at thirty they are old. so thoroughly has the chosen people crowded out the gentiles in the tenth ward that, when the great jewish holidays come around every year, the public schools in the district have practically to close up. of their thousands of pupils scarce a handful come to school. nor is there any suspicion that the rest are playing hookey. they stay honestly home to celebrate. there is no mistaking it: we are in jewtown. it is said that nowhere in the world are so many people crowded together on a square mile as here. the average five-story tenement adds a story or two to its stature in ludlow street and an extra building on the rear lot, and yet the sign "to let" is the rarest of all there. here is one seven stories high. the sanitary policeman whose beat this is will tell you that it contains thirty-six families, but the term has a widely different meaning here and on the avenues. in this house, where a case of small-pox was reported, there were fifty-eight babies and thirty-eight children that were over five years of age. in essex street two small rooms in a six-story tenement were made to hold a "family" of father and mother, twelve children, and six boarders. the boarder plays as important a part in the domestic economy of jewtown as the lodger in the mulberry street bend. these are samples of the packing of the population that has run up the record here to the rate of three hundred and thirty thousand per square mile. the densest crowding of old london, i pointed out before, never got beyond a hundred and seventy-five thousand. even the alley is crowded out. through dark hallways and filthy cellars, crowded, as is every foot of the street, with dirty children, the settlements in the rear are reached. thieves know how to find them when pursued by the police, and the tramps that sneak in on chilly nights to fight for the warm spot in the yard over some baker's oven. they are out of place in this hive of busy industry, and they know it. it has nothing in common with them or with their philosophy of life, that the world owes the idler a living. life here means the hardest kind of work almost from the cradle. the world as a debtor has no credit in jewtown. its promise to pay wouldn't buy one of the old hats that are hawked about hester street, unless backed by security representing labor done at lowest market rates. but this army of workers must have bread. it is cheap and filling, and bakeries abound. wherever they are in the tenements the tramp will skulk in, if he can. there is such a tramps' roost in the rear of a tenement near the lower end of ludlow street, that is never without its tenants in winter. by a judicious practice of flopping over on the stone pavement at intervals, and thus warming one side at a time, and with an empty box to put the feet in, it is possible to keep reasonably comfortable there even on a rainy night. in summer the yard is the only one in the neighborhood that does not do duty as a public dormitory. [illustration: a tramp's nest in ludlow street.] thrift is the watchword of jewtown, as of its people the world over. it is at once its strength and its fatal weakness, its cardinal virtue and its foul disgrace. become an over-mastering passion with these people who come here in droves from eastern europe to escape persecution, from which freedom could be bought only with gold, it has enslaved them in bondage worse than that from which they fled. money is their god. life itself is of little value compared with even the leanest bank account. in no other spot does life wear so intensely bald and materialistic an aspect as in ludlow street. over and over again i have met with instances of these polish or russian jews deliberately starving themselves to the point of physical exhaustion, while working night and day at a tremendous pressure to save a little money. an avenging nemesis pursues this headlong hunt for wealth; there is no worse paid class anywhere. i once put the question to one of their own people, who, being a pawnbroker, and an unusually intelligent and charitable one, certainly enjoyed the advantage of a practical view of the situation: "whence the many wretchedly poor people in such a colony of workers, where poverty, from a misfortune, has become a reproach, dreaded as the plague?" "immigration," he said, "brings us a lot. in five years it has averaged twenty-five thousand a year, of which more than seventy per cent. have stayed in new york. half of them require and receive aid from the hebrew charities from the very start, lest they starve. that is one explanation. there is another class than the one that cannot get work: those who have had too much of it; who have worked and hoarded and lived, crowded together like pigs, on the scantiest fare and the worst to be got, bound to save whatever their earnings, until, worn out, they could work no longer. then their hoards were soon exhausted. that is their story." and i knew that what he said was true. penury and poverty are wedded everywhere to dirt and disease, and jewtown is no exception. it could not well be otherwise in such crowds, considering especially their low intellectual status. the managers of the eastern dispensary, which is in the very heart of their district, told the whole story when they said: "the diseases these people suffer from are not due to intemperance or immorality, but to ignorance, want of suitable food, and the foul air in which they live and work."[ ] the homes of the hebrew quarter are its workshops also. reference will be made to the economic conditions under which they work in a succeeding chapter. here we are concerned simply with the fact. you are made fully aware of it before you have travelled the length of a single block in any of these east side streets, by the whir of a thousand sewing-machines, worked at high pressure from earliest dawn till mind and muscle give out together. every member of the family, from the youngest to the oldest, bears a hand, shut in the qualmy rooms, where meals are cooked and clothing washed and dried besides, the live-long day. it is not unusual to find a dozen persons--men, women, and children--at work in a single small room. the fact accounts for the contrast that strikes with wonder the observer who comes across from the bend. over there the entire population seems possessed of an uncontrollable impulse to get out into the street; here all its energies appear to be bent upon keeping in and away from it. not that the streets are deserted. the overflow from these tenements is enough to make a crowd anywhere. the children alone would do it. not old enough to work and no room for play, that is their story. in the home the child's place is usurped by the lodger, who performs the service of the irishman's pig--pays the rent. in the street the army of hucksters crowd him out. typhus fever and small-pox are bred here, and help solve the question what to do with him. filth diseases both, they sprout naturally among the hordes that bring the germs with them from across the sea, and whose first instinct is to hide their sick lest the authorities carry them off to the hospital to be slaughtered, as they firmly believe. the health officers are on constant and sharp lookout for hidden fever-nests. considering that half of the ready-made clothes that are sold in the big stores, if not a good deal more than half, are made in these tenement rooms, this is not excessive caution. it has happened more than once that a child recovering from small-pox, and in the most contagious stage of the disease, has been found crawling among heaps of half-finished clothing that the next day would be offered for sale on the counter of a broadway store; or that a typhus fever patient has been discovered in a room whence perhaps a hundred coats had been sent home that week, each one with the wearer's death-warrant, unseen and unsuspected, basted in the lining. [footnote : report of eastern dispensary for .] the health officers call the tenth the typhus ward; in the office where deaths are registered it passes as the "suicide ward," for reasons not hard to understand; and among the police as the "crooked ward," on account of the number of "crooks," petty thieves and their allies, the "fences," receivers of stolen goods, who find the dense crowds congenial. the nearness of the bowery, the great "thieves' highway," helps to keep up the supply of these, but jewtown does not support its dives. its troubles with the police are the characteristic crop of its intense business rivalries. oppression, persecution, have not shorn the jew of his native combativeness one whit. he is as ready to fight for his rights, or what he considers his rights, in a business transaction--synonymous generally with his advantage--as if he had not been robbed of them for eighteen hundred years. one strong impression survives with him from his days of bondage: the power of the law. on the slightest provocation he rushes off to invoke it for his protection. doubtless the sensation is novel to him, and therefore pleasing. the police at the eldridge street station are in a constant turmoil over these everlasting fights. somebody is always denouncing somebody else, and getting his enemy or himself locked up; frequently both, for the prisoner, when brought in, has generally as plausible a story to tell as his accuser, and as hot a charge to make. the day closes on a wild conflict of rival interests. another dawns with the prisoner in court, but no complainant. over night the case has been settled on a business basis, and the police dismiss their prisoner in deep disgust. these quarrels have sometimes a comic aspect. thus, with the numerous dancing-schools that are scattered among the synagogues, often keeping them company in the same tenement. they are generally kept by some man who works in the daytime at tailoring, cigarmaking, or something else. the young people in jewtown are inordinately fond of dancing, and after their day's hard work will flock to these "schools" for a night's recreation. but even to their fun they carry their business preferences, and it happens that a school adjourns in a body to make a general raid on the rival establishment across the street, without the ceremony of paying the admission fee. then the dance breaks up in a general fight, in which, likely enough, someone is badly hurt. the police come in, as usual, and ring down the curtain. [illustration: a market scene in the jewish quarter.] bitter as are his private feuds, it is not until his religious life is invaded that a real inside view is obtained of this jew, whom the history of christian civilization has taught nothing but fear and hatred. there are two or three missions in the district conducting a hopeless propagandism for the messiah whom the tenth ward rejects, and they attract occasional crowds, who come to hear the christian preacher as the jews of old gathered to hear the apostles expound the new doctrine. the result is often strikingly similar. "for once," said a certain well-known minister of an uptown church to me, after such an experience, "i felt justified in comparing myself to paul preaching salvation to the jews. they kept still until i spoke of jesus christ as the son of god. then they got up and fell to arguing among themselves and to threatening me, until it looked as if they meant to take me out in hester street and stone me." as at jerusalem, the chief captain was happily at hand with his centurions, in the person of a sergeant and three policemen, and the preacher was rescued. so, in all matters pertaining to their religious life that tinges all their customs, they stand, these east side jews, where the new day that dawned on calvary left them standing, stubbornly refusing to see the light. a visit to a jewish house of mourning is like bridging the gap of two thousand years. the inexpressibly sad and sorrowful wail for the dead, as it swells and rises in the hush of all sounds of life, comes back from the ages like a mournful echo of the voice of rachel "weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are not." attached to many of the synagogues, which among the poorest jews frequently consist of a scantily furnished room in a rear tenement, with a few wooden stools or benches for the congregation, are talmudic schools that absorb a share of the growing youth. the school-master is not rarely a man of some attainments who has been stranded there, his native instinct for money-making having been smothered in the process that has made of him a learned man. it was of such a school in eldridge street that the wicked isaac iacob, who killed his enemy, his wife, and himself in one day, was janitor. but the majority of the children seek the public schools, where they are received sometimes with some misgivings on the part of the teachers, who find it necessary to inculcate lessons of cleanliness in the worst cases by practical demonstration with wash-bowl and soap. "he took hold of the soap as if it were some animal," said one of these teachers to me after such an experiment upon a new pupil, "and wiped three fingers across his face. he called that washing." in the allen street public school the experienced principal has embodied among the elementary lessons, to keep constantly before the children the duty that clearly lies next to their hands, a characteristic exercise. the question is asked daily from the teacher's desk: "what must i do to be healthy?" and the whole school responds: "i must keep my skin clean, wear clean clothes, breathe pure air, and live in the sunlight." it seems little less than biting sarcasm to hear them say it, for to not a few of them all these things are known only by name. in their everyday life there is nothing even to suggest any of them. only the demand of religious custom has power to make their parents clean up at stated intervals, and the young naturally are no better. as scholars, the children of the most ignorant polish jew keep fairly abreast of their more favored playmates, until it comes to mental arithmetic, when they leave them behind with a bound. it is surprising to see how strong the instinct of dollars and cents is in them. they can count, and correctly, almost before they can talk. within a few years the police captured on the east side a band of firebugs who made a business of setting fire to tenements for the insurance on their furniture. there has, unfortunately, been some evidence in the past year that another such conspiracy is on foot. the danger to which these fiends expose their fellow-tenants is appalling. a fire-panic at night in a tenement, by no means among the rare experiences in new york, with the surging, half-smothered crowds on stairs and fire-escapes, the frantic mothers and crying children, the wild struggle to save the little that is their all, is a horror that has few parallels in human experience. i cannot think without a shudder of one such scene in a first avenue tenement. it was in the middle of the night. the fire had swept up with sudden fury from a restaurant on the street floor, cutting off escape. men and women threw themselves from the windows, or were carried down senseless by the firemen. thirteen half-clad, apparently lifeless bodies were laid on the floor of an adjoining coal-office, and the ambulance surgeons worked over them with sleeves rolled up to the elbows. a half-grown girl with a baby in her arms walked about among the dead and dying with a stunned, vacant look, singing in a low, scared voice to the child. one of the doctors took her arm to lead her out, and patted the cheek of the baby soothingly. it was cold. the baby had been smothered with its father and mother; but the girl, her sister, did not know it. her reason had fled. thursday night and friday morning are bargain days in the "pig-market." then is the time to study the ways of this peculiar people to the best advantage. a common pulse beats in the quarters of the polish jews and in the mulberry bend, though they have little else in common. life over yonder in fine weather is a perpetual holiday, here a veritable tread-mill of industry. friday brings out all the latent color and picturesqueness of the italians, as of these semites. the crowds and the common poverty are the bonds of sympathy between them. the pig-market is in hester street, extending either way from ludlow street, and up and down the side streets two or three blocks, as the state of trade demands. the name was given to it probably in derision, for pork is the one ware that is not on sale in the pig-market. there is scarcely anything else that can be hawked from a wagon that is not to be found, and at ridiculously low prices. bandannas and tin cups at two cents, peaches at a cent a quart, "damaged" eggs for a song, hats for a quarter, and spectacles, warranted to suit the eye, at the optician's who has opened shop on a hester street door-step, for thirty five cents; frowsy-looking chickens and half-plucked geese, hung by the neck and protesting with wildly strutting feet even in death against the outrage, are the great staple of the market. half or a quarter of a chicken can be bought here by those who cannot afford a whole. it took more than ten years of persistent effort on the part of the sanitary authorities to drive the trade in live fowl from the streets to the fowl-market on gouverneur slip, where the killing is now done according to jewish rite by priests detailed for the purpose by the chief rabbi. since then they have had a characteristic rumpus, that involved the entire jewish community, over the fees for killing and the mode of collecting them. here is a woman churning horse-radish on a machine she has chained and padlocked to a tree on the sidewalk, lest someone steal it. beside her a butcher's stand with cuts at prices the avenues never dreamed of. old coats are hawked for fifty cents, "as good as new," and "pants"--there are no trousers in jewtown, only pants--at anything that can be got. there is a knot of half a dozen "pants" pedlars in the middle of the street, twice as many men of their own race fingering their wares and plucking at the seams with the anxious scrutiny of would-be buyers, though none of them has the least idea of investing in a pair. yes, stop! this baker, fresh from his trough, bare-headed and with bare arms, has made an offer: for this pair thirty cents; a dollar and forty was the price asked. the pedlar shrugs his shoulders, and turns up his hands with a half pitying, wholly indignant air. what does the baker take him for? such pants--. the baker has turned to go. with a jump like a panther's, the man with the pants has him by the sleeve. will he give eighty cents? sixty? fifty? so help him, they are dirt cheap at that. lose, will he, on the trade, lose all the profit of his day's pedling. the baker goes on unmoved. forty then? what, not forty? take them then for thirty, and wreck the life of a poor man. and the baker takes them and goes, well knowing that at least twenty cents of the thirty, two hundred per cent., were clear profit, if indeed the "pants" cost the pedlar anything. [illustration: the old clo'e's man--in the jewish quarters.] the suspender pedlar is the mystery of the pig-market, omnipresent and unfathomable. he is met at every step with his wares dangling over his shoulder, down his back, and in front. millions of suspenders thus perambulate jewtown all day on a sort of dress parade. why suspenders, is the puzzle, and where do they all go to? the "pants" of jewtown hang down with a common accord, as if they had never known the support of suspenders. it appears to be as characteristic a trait of the race as the long beard and the sabbath silk hat of ancient pedigree. i have asked again and again. no one has ever been able to tell me what becomes of the suspenders of jewtown. perhaps they are hung up as bric-à-brac in its homes, or laid away and saved up as the equivalent of cash. i cannot tell. i only know that more suspenders are hawked about the pig-market every day than would supply the whole of new york for a year, were they all bought and turned to use. the crowds that jostle each other at the wagons and about the sidewalk shops, where a gutter plank on two ash-barrels does duty for a counter! pushing, struggling, babbling, and shouting in foreign tongues, a veritable babel of confusion. an english word falls upon the ear almost with a sense of shock, as something unexpected and strange. in the midst of it all there is a sudden wild scattering, a hustling of things from the street into dark cellars, into back-yards and by-ways, a slamming and locking of doors hidden under the improvised shelves and counters. the health officers' cart is coming down the street, preceded and followed by stalwart policemen, who shovel up with scant ceremony the eatables--musty bread, decayed fish and stale vegetables--indifferent to the curses that are showered on them from stoops and windows, and carry them off to the dump. in the wake of the wagon, as it makes its way to the east river after the raid, follow a line of despoiled hucksters shouting defiance from a safe distance. their clamor dies away with the noise of the market. the endless panorama of the tenements, rows upon rows, between stony streets, stretches to the north, to the south, and to the west as far as the eye reaches. chapter xi. the sweaters of jewtown. anything like an exhaustive discussion of the economical problem presented by the tenth ward[ ] is beset by difficulties that increase in precise proportion to the efforts put forth to remove them. i have too vivid a recollection of weary days and nights spent in those stewing tenements, trying to get to the bottom of the vexatious question only to find myself in the end as far from the truth as at the beginning, asking with rising wrath pilate's question, "what is truth?" to attempt to weary the reader by dragging him with me over that sterile and unprofitable ground. nor are these pages the place for such a discussion. in it, let me confess it at once and have done with it, i should be like the blind leading the blind; between the real and apparent poverty, the hidden hoards and the unhesitating mendacity of these people, where they conceive their interests to be concerned in one way or another, the reader and i would fall together into the ditch of doubt and conjecture in which i have found company before. [footnote : i refer to the tenth ward always as typical. the district embraced in the discussion really includes the thirteenth ward, and in a growing sense large portions of the seventh and contiguous wards as well.] the facts that lie on the surface indicate the causes as clearly as the nature of the trouble. in effect both have been already stated. a friend of mine who manufactures cloth once boasted to me that nowadays, on cheap clothing, new york "beats the world." "to what," i asked, "do you attribute it?" "to the cutter's long knife[ ] and the polish jew," he said. which of the two has cut deepest into the workman's wages is not a doubtful question. practically the jew has monopolized the business since the battle between east broadway and broadway ended in a complete victory for the east side and cheap labor, and transferred to it the control of the trade in cheap clothing. yet, not satisfied with having won the field, he strives as hotly with his own for the profit of half a cent as he fought with his christian competitor for the dollar. if the victory is a barren one, the blame is his own. his price is not what he can get, but the lowest he can live for and underbid his neighbor. just what that means we shall see. the manufacturer knows it, and is not slow to take advantage of his knowledge. he makes him hungry for work by keeping it from him as long as possible; then drives the closest bargain he can with the sweater. [footnote : an invention that cuts many garments at once, where the scissors could cut only a few.] many harsh things have been said of the "sweater," that really apply to the system in which he is a necessary, logical link. it can at least be said of him that he is no worse than the conditions that created him. the sweater is simply the middleman, the sub-contractor, a workman like his fellows, perhaps with the single distinction from the rest that he knows a little english; perhaps not even that, but with the accidental possession of two or three sewing-machines, or of credit enough to hire them, as his capital, who drums up work among the clothing-houses. of workmen he can always get enough. every ship-load from german ports brings them to his door in droves, clamoring for work. the sun sets upon the day of the arrival of many a polish jew, finding him at work in an east side tenement, treading the machine and "learning the trade." often there are two, sometimes three, sets of sweaters on one job. they work with the rest when they are not drumming up trade, driving their "hands" as they drive their machine, for all they are worth, and making a profit on their work, of course, though in most cases not nearly as extravagant a percentage, probably, as is often supposed. if it resolves itself into a margin of five or six cents, or even less, on a dozen pairs of boys' trousers, for instance, it is nevertheless enough to make the contractor with his thrifty instincts independent. the workman growls, not at the hard labor, or poor pay, but over the pennies another is coining out of his sweat, and on the first opportunity turns sweater himself, and takes his revenge by driving an even closer bargain than his rival tyrant, thus reducing his profits. the sweater knows well that the isolation of the workman in his helpless ignorance is his sure foundation, and he has done what he could--with merciless severity where he could--to smother every symptom of awakening intelligence in his slaves. in this effort to perpetuate his despotism he has had the effectual assistance of his own system and the sharp competition that keep the men on starvation wages; of their constitutional greed, that will not permit the sacrifice of temporary advantage, however slight, for permanent good, and above all, of the hungry hordes of immigrants to whom no argument appeals save the cry for bread. within very recent times he has, however, been forced to partial surrender by the organization of the men to a considerable extent into trades unions, and by experiments in co-operation, under intelligent leadership, that presage the sweater's doom. but as long as the ignorant crowds continue to come and to herd in these tenements, his grip can never be shaken off. and the supply across the seas is apparently inexhaustible. every fresh persecution of the russian or polish jew on his native soil starts greater hordes hitherward to confound economical problems, and recruit the sweater's phalanx. the curse of bigotry and ignorance reaches halfway across the world, to sow its bitter seed in fertile soil in the east side tenements. if the jew himself was to blame for the resentment he aroused over there, he is amply punished. he gathers the first-fruits of the harvest here. the bulk of the sweater's work is done in the tenements, which the law that regulates factory labor does not reach. to the factories themselves that are taking the place of the rear tenements in rapidly growing numbers, letting in bigger day-crowds than those the health officers banished, the tenement shops serve as a supplement through which the law is successfully evaded. ten hours is the legal work-day in the factories, and nine o'clock the closing hour at the latest. forty-five minutes at least must be allowed for dinner, and children under sixteen must not be employed unless they can read and write english; none at all under fourteen. the very fact that such a law should stand on the statute book, shows how desperate the plight of these people. but the tenement has defeated its benevolent purpose. in it the child works unchallenged from the day he is old enough to pull a thread. there is no such thing as a dinner hour; men and women eat while they work, and the "day" is lengthened at both ends far into the night. factory hands take their work with them at the close of the lawful day to eke out their scanty earnings by working overtime at home. little chance on this ground for the campaign of education that alone can bring the needed relief; small wonder that there are whole settlements on this east side where english is practically an unknown tongue, though the people be both willing and anxious to learn. "when shall we find time to learn?" asked one of them of me once. i owe him the answer yet. take the second avenue elevated railroad at chatham square and ride up half a mile through the sweaters' district. every open window of the big tenements, that stand like a continuous brick wall on both sides of the way, gives you a glimpse of one of these shops as the train speeds by. men and women bending over their machines, or ironing clothes at the window, half-naked. proprieties do not count on the east side; nothing counts that cannot be converted into hard cash. the road is like a big gangway through an endless work-room where vast multitudes are forever laboring. morning, noon, or night, it makes no difference; the scene is always the same. at rivington street let us get off and continue our trip on foot. it is sunday evening west of the bowery. here, under the rule of mosaic law, the week of work is under full headway, its first day far spent. the hucksters' wagons are absent or stand idle at the curb; the saloons admit the thirsty crowds through the side-door labelled "family entrance;" a tin sign in a store-window announces that a "sunday school" gathers in stray children of the new dispensation; but beyond these things there is little to suggest the christian sabbath. men stagger along the sidewalk groaning under heavy burdens of unsewn garments, or enormous black bags stuffed full of finished coats and trousers. let us follow one to his home and see how sunday passes in a ludlow street tenement. up two flights of dark stairs, three, four, with new smells of cabbage, of onions, of frying fish, on every landing, whirring sewing machines behind closed doors betraying what goes on within, to the door that opens to admit the bundle and the man. a sweater, this, in a small way. five men and a woman, two young girls, not fifteen, and a boy who says unasked that he is fifteen, and lies in saying it, are at the machines sewing knickerbockers, "knee-pants" in the ludlow street dialect. the floor is littered ankle-deep with half-sewn garments. in the alcove, on a couch of many dozens of "pants" ready for the finisher, a bare-legged baby with pinched face is asleep. a fence of piled-up clothing keeps him from rolling off on the floor. the faces, hands, and arms to the elbows of everyone in the room are black with the color of the cloth on which they are working. the boy and the woman alone look up at our entrance. the girls shoot sidelong glances, but at a warning look from the man with the bundle they tread their machines more energetically than ever. the men do not appear to be aware even of the presence of a stranger. they are "learners," all of them, says the woman, who proves to be the wife of the boss, and have "come over" only a few weeks ago. she is disinclined to talk at first, but a few words in her own tongue from our guide[ ] set her fears, whatever they are, at rest, and she grows almost talkative. the learners work for week's wages, she says. how much do they earn? she shrugs her shoulders with an expressive gesture. the workers themselves, asked in their own tongue, say indifferently, as though the question were of no interest: from two to five dollars. the children--there are four of them--are not old enough to work. the oldest is only six. they turn out one hundred and twenty dozen "knee-pants" a week, for which the manufacturer pays seventy cents a dozen. five cents a dozen is the clear profit, but her own and her husband's work brings the family earnings up to twenty-five dollars a week, when they have work all the time. but often half the time is put in looking for it. they work no longer than to nine o'clock at night, from daybreak. there are ten machines in the room; six are hired at two dollars a month. for the two shabby, smoke-begrimed rooms, one somewhat larger than ordinary, they pay twenty dollars a month. she does not complain, though "times are not what they were, and it costs a good deal to live." eight dollars a week for the family of six and two boarders. how do they do it? she laughs, as she goes over the bill of fare, at the silly question: bread, fifteen cents a day, of milk two quarts a day at four cents a quart, one pound of meat for dinner at twelve cents, butter one pound a week at "eight cents a quarter of a pound." coffee, potatoes, and pickles complete the list. at the least calculation, probably, this sweater's family hoards up thirty dollars a month, and in a few years will own a tenement somewhere and profit by the example set by their landlord in rent-collecting. it is the way the savings of jewtown are universally invested, and with the natural talent of its people for commercial speculation the investment is enormously profitable. [footnote : i was always accompanied on these tours of inquiry by one of their own people who knew of and sympathized with my mission. without that precaution my errand would have been fruitless; even with him it was often nearly so.] [illustration: "knee-pants" at forty-five cents a dozen--a ludlow street sweater's shop.] on the next floor, in a dimly lighted room with a big red-hot stove to keep the pressing irons ready for use, is a family of man, wife, three children, and a boarder. "knee-pants" are made there too, of a still lower grade. three cents and a half is all he clears, says the man, and lies probably out of at least two cents. the wife makes a dollar and a half finishing, the man about nine dollars at the machine. the boarder pays sixty-five cents a week. he is really only a lodger, getting his meals outside. the rent is two dollars and twenty-five cents a week, cost of living five dollars. every floor has at least two, sometimes four, such shops. here is one with a young family for which life is bright with promise. husband and wife work together; just now the latter, a comely young woman, is eating her dinner of dry bread and green pickles. pickles are favorite food in jewtown. they are filling, and keep the children from crying with hunger. those who have stomachs like ostriches thrive in spite of them and grow strong--plain proof that they are good to eat. the rest? "well, they die," says our guide, dryly. no thought of untimely death comes to disturb this family with life all before it. in a few years the man will be a prosperous sweater. already he employs an old man as ironer at three dollars a week, and a sweet-faced little italian girl as finisher at a dollar and a half. she is twelve, she says, and can neither read nor write; will probably never learn. how should she? the family clears from ten to eleven dollars a week in brisk times, more than half of which goes into the bank. a companion picture from across the hall. the man works on the machine for his sweater twelve hours a day, turning out three dozen "knee-pants," for which he receives forty-two cents a dozen. the finisher who works with him gets ten, and the ironer eight cents a dozen; buttonholes are extra, at eight to ten cents a hundred. this operator has four children at his home in stanton street, none old enough to work, and a sick wife. his rent is twelve dollars a month; his wages for a hard week's work less than eight dollars. such as he, with their consuming desire for money thus smothered, recruit the ranks of the anarchists, won over by the promise of a general "divide;" and an enlightened public sentiment turns up its nose at the vicious foreigner for whose perverted notions there is no room in this land of plenty. turning the corner into hester street, we stumble upon a nest of cloak-makers in their busy season. six months of the year the cloak-maker is idle, or nearly so. now is his harvest. seventy-five cents a cloak, all complete, is the price in this shop. the cloak is of cheap plush, and might sell for eight or nine dollars over the store-counter. seven dollars is the weekly wage of this man with wife and two children, and nine dollars and a half rent to pay per month. a boarder pays about a third of it. there was a time when he made ten dollars a week and thought himself rich. but wages have come down fearfully in the last two years. think of it: "come down" to this. the other cloak-makers aver that they can make as much as twelve dollars a week, when they are employed, by taking their work home and sewing till midnight. one exhibits his account-book with a ludlow street sweater. it shows that he and his partner, working on first-class garments for a broadway house in the four busiest weeks of the season, made together from $ . to $ . a week by striving from a.m. to p.m., that is to say, from $ . to $ . each.[ ] the sweater on this work probably made as much as fifty per cent. at least on their labor. not far away is a factory in a rear yard where the factory inspector reports teams of tailors making men's coats at an average of twenty-seven cents a coat, all complete except buttons and button-holes. [footnote : the strike of the cloakmakers last summer, that ended in victory, raised their wages considerably, at least for the time being.] turning back, we pass a towering double tenement in ludlow street, owned by a well-known jewish liquor dealer and politician, a triple combination that bodes ill for his tenants. as a matter of fact, the cheapest "apartment," three rear rooms on the sixth floor, only one of which deserves the name, is rented for $ a month. here is a reminder of the bend, a hallway turned into a shoemaker's shop. two hallways side by side in adjoining tenements, would be sinful waste in jewtown, when one would do as well by knocking a hole in the wall. but this shoemaker knows a trick the italian's ingenuity did not suggest. he has his "flat" as well as his shop there. a curtain hung back of his stool in the narrow passage half conceals his bed that fills it entirely from wall to wall. to get into it he has to crawl over the foot-board, and he must come out the same way. expedients more odd than this are born of the east side crowding. in one of the houses we left, the coal-bin of a family on the fourth floor was on the roof of the adjoining tenement. a quarter of a ton of coal was being dumped there while we talked with the people. we have reached broome street. the hum of industry in this six-story tenement on the corner leaves no doubt of the aspect sunday wears within it. one flight up, we knock at the nearest door. the grocer, who keeps the store, lives on the "stoop," the first floor in east side parlance. in this room a suspender-maker sleeps and works with his family of wife and four children. for a wonder there are no boarders. his wife and eighteen years old daughter share in the work, but the girl's eyes are giving out from the strain. three months in the year, when work is very brisk, the family makes by united efforts as high as fourteen and fifteen dollars a week. the other nine months it averages from three to four dollars. the oldest boy, a young man, earns from four to six dollars in an orchard street factory, when he has work. the rent is ten dollars a month for the room and a miserable little coop of a bedroom where the old folks sleep. the girl makes her bed on the lounge in the front room; the big boys and the children sleep on the floor. coal at ten cents a small pail, meat at twelve cents a pound, one and a half pound of butter a week at thirty-six cents, and a quarter of a pound of tea in the same space of time, are items of their house-keeping account as given by the daughter. milk at four and five cents a quart, "according to quality." the sanitary authorities know what that means, know how miserably inadequate is the fine of fifty or a hundred dollars for the murder done in cold blood by the wretches who poison the babes of these tenements with the stuff that is half water, or swill. their defence is that the demand is for "cheap milk." scarcely a wonder that this suspender-maker will hardly be able to save up the _dot_ for his daughter, without which she stands no chance of marrying in jewtown, even with her face that would be pretty had it a healthier tinge. up under the roof three men are making boys' jackets at twenty cents a piece, of which the sewer takes eight, the ironer three, the finisher five cents, and the button-hole-maker two and a quarter, leaving a cent and three-quarters to pay for the drumming up, the fetching and bringing back of the goods. they bunk together in a room for which they pay eight dollars a month. all three are single here, that is: their wives are on the other side yet, waiting for them to earn enough to send for them. their breakfast, eaten at the work-bench, consists of a couple of rolls at a cent a piece, and a draught of water, milk when business has been very good, a square meal at noon in a restaurant, and the morning meal over again at night. this square meal, that is the evidence of a very liberal disposition on the part of the consumer, is an affair of more than ordinary note; it may be justly called an institution. i know of a couple of restaurants at the lower end of orchard street that are favorite resorts for the polish jews, who remember the injunction that the ox that treadeth out the corn shall not be muzzled. being neighbors, they are rivals of course, and cutting under. when i was last there one gave a dinner of soup, meat-stew, bread, pie, pickles, and a "schooner" of beer for thirteen cents; the other charged fifteen cents for a similar dinner, but with two schooners of beer and a cigar, or a cigarette, as the extra inducement. the two cents had won the day, however, and the thirteen-cent restaurant did such a thriving business that it was about to spread out into the adjoining store to accommodate the crowds of customers. at this rate the lodger of jewtown can "live like a lord," as he says himself, for twenty-five cents a day, including the price of his bed, that ranges all the way from thirty to forty and fifty cents a week, and save money, no matter what his earnings. he does it, too, so long as work is to be had at any price, and by the standard he sets up jewtown must abide. it has thousands upon thousands of lodgers who help to pay its extortionate rents. at night there is scarce a room in all the district that has not one or more of them, some above half a score, sleeping on cots, or on the floor. it is idle to speak of privacy in these "homes." the term carries no more meaning with it than would a lecture on social ethics to an audience of hottentots. the picture is not overdrawn. in fact, in presenting the home life of these people i have been at some pains to avoid the extreme of privation, taking the cases just as they came to hand on the safer middle-ground of average earnings. yet even the direst apparent poverty in jewtown, unless dependent on absolute lack of work, would, were the truth known, in nine cases out of ten have a silver lining in the shape of a margin in bank. these are the economical conditions that enable my manufacturing friend to boast that new york can "beat the world" on cheap clothing. in support of his claim he told me that a single bowery firm last year sold fifteen thousand suits at $ . that averaged in cost $ . ½. with the material at fifteen cents a yard, he said, children's suits of assorted sizes can be sold at wholesale for seventy-five cents, and boys' cape overcoats at the same price. they are the same conditions that have perplexed the committee of benevolent hebrews in charge of baron de hirsch's munificent gift of ten thousand dollars a month for the relief of the jewish poor in new york. to find proper channels through which to pour this money so that it shall effect its purpose without pauperizing, and without perpetuating the problem it is sought to solve, by attracting still greater swarms, is indeed no easy task. colonization has not in the past been a success with these people. the great mass of them are too gregarious to take kindly to farming, and their strong commercial instinct hampers the experiment. to herd them in model tenements, though it relieve the physical suffering in a measure, would be to treat a symptom of the disease rather than strike at its root, even if land could be got cheap enough where they gather to build on a sufficiently large scale to make the plan a success. trade schools for manual training could hardly be made to reach the adults, who in addition would have to be supported for months while learning. for the young this device has proved most excellent under the wise management of the united hebrew charities, an organization that gathers to its work the best thought and effort of many of our most public-spirited citizens. one, or all, of these plans may be tried, probably will. i state but the misgivings as to the result of some of the practical minds that have busied themselves with the problem. its keynote evidently is the ignorance of the immigrants. they must be taught the language of the country they have chosen as their home, as the first and most necessary step. whatever may follow, that is essential, absolutely vital. that done, it may well be that the case in its new aspect will not be nearly so hard to deal with. evening has worn into night as we take up our homeward journey through the streets, now no longer silent. the thousands of lighted windows in the tenements glow like dull red eyes in a huge stone wall. from every door multitudes of tired men and women pour forth for a half-hour's rest in the open air before sleep closes the eyes weary with incessant working. crowds of half-naked children tumble in the street and on the sidewalk, or doze fretfully on the stone steps. as we stop in front of a tenement to watch one of these groups, a dirty baby in a single brief garment--yet a sweet, human little baby despite its dirt and tatters--tumbles off the lowest step, rolls over once, clutches my leg with unconscious grip, and goes to sleep on the flagstones, its curly head pillowed on my boot. chapter xii. the bohemians--tenement-house cigarmaking. evil as the part is which the tenement plays in jewtown as the pretext for circumventing the law that was made to benefit and relieve the tenant, we have not far to go to find it in even a worse rôle. if the tenement is here continually dragged into the eye of public condemnation and scorn, it is because in one way or another it is found directly responsible for, or intimately associated with, three-fourths of the miseries of the poor. in the bohemian quarter it is made the vehicle for enforcing upon a proud race a slavery as real as any that ever disgraced the south. not content with simply robbing the tenant, the owner, in the dual capacity of landlord and employer, reduces him to virtual serfdom by making his becoming _his_ tenant, on such terms as he sees fit to make, the condition of employment at wages likewise of his own making. it does not help the case that this landlord employer, almost always a jew, is frequently of the thrifty polish race just described. perhaps the bohemian quarter is hardly the proper name to give to the colony, for though it has distinct boundaries it is scattered over a wide area on the east side, in wedge-like streaks that relieve the monotony of the solid german population by their strong contrasts. the two races mingle no more on this side of the atlantic than on the rugged slopes of the bohemian mountains; the echoes of the thirty years' war ring in new york, after two centuries and a half, with as fierce a hatred as the gigantic combat bred among the vanquished czechs. a chief reason for this is doubtless the complete isolation of the bohemian immigrant. several causes operate to bring this about: his singularly harsh and unattractive language, which he can neither easily himself unlearn nor impart to others, his stubborn pride of race, and a popular prejudice which has forced upon him the unjust stigma of a disturber of the public peace and an enemy of organized labor. i greatly mistrust that the bohemian on our shores is a much-abused man. to his traducer, who casts up anarchism against him, he replies that the last census ( ) shows his people to have the fewest criminals of all in proportion to numbers. in new york a bohemian criminal is such a rarity that the case of two firebugs of several years ago is remembered with damaging distinctness. the accusation that he lives like the "rat" he is, cutting down wages by his underpaid labor, he throws back in the teeth of the trades unions with the counter-charge that they are the first cause of his attitude to the labor question. a little way above houston street the first of his colonies is encountered, in fifth street and thereabouts. then for a mile and a half scarce a bohemian is to be found, until thirty-eighth street is reached. fifty-fourth and seventy-third streets in their turn are the centres of populous bohemian settlements. the location of the cigar factories, upon which he depends for a living, determines his choice of home, though there is less choice about it than with any other class in the community, save perhaps the colored people. probably more than half of all the bohemians in this city are cigarmakers, and it is the herding of these in great numbers in the so-called tenement factories, where the cheapest grade of work is done at the lowest wages, that constitutes at once their greatest hardship and the chief grudge of other workmen against them. the manufacturer who owns, say, from three or four, to a dozen or more tenements contiguous to his shop, fills them up with these people, charging them outrageous rents, and demanding often even a preliminary deposit of five dollars "key money;" deals them out tobacco by the week, and devotes the rest of his energies to the paring down of wages to within a peg or two of the point where the tenant rebels in desperation. when he does rebel, he is given the alternative of submission, or eviction with entire loss of employment. his needs determine the issue. usually he is not in a position to hesitate long. unlike the polish jew, whose example of untiring industry he emulates, he has seldom much laid up against a rainy day. he is fond of a glass of beer, and likes to live as well as his means will permit. the shop triumphs, and fetters more galling than ever are forged for the tenant. in the opposite case, the newspapers have to record the throwing upon the street of a small army of people, with pitiful cases of destitution and family misery. men, women and children work together seven days in the week in these cheerless tenements to make a living for the family, from the break of day till far into the night. often the wife is the original cigarmaker from the old home, the husband having adopted her trade here as a matter of necessity, because, knowing no word of english, he could get no other work. as they state the cause of the bitter hostility of the trades unions, she was the primary bone of contention in the day of the early bohemian immigration. the unions refused to admit the women, and, as the support of the family depended upon her to a large extent, such terms as were offered had to be accepted. the manufacturer has ever since industriously fanned the antagonism between the unions and his hands, for his own advantage. the victory rests with him, since the court of appeals decided that the law, passed a few years ago, to prohibit cigarmaking in tenements was unconstitutional, and thus put an end to the struggle. while it lasted, all sorts of frightful stories were told of the shocking conditions under which people lived and worked in these tenements, from a sanitary point of view especially, and a general impression survives to this day that they are particularly desperate. the board of health, after a careful canvass, did not find them so then. i am satisfied from personal inspection, at a much later day, guided in a number of instances by the union cigarmakers themselves to the tenements which they considered the worst, that the accounts were greatly exaggerated. doubtless the people are poor, in many cases very poor; but they are not uncleanly, rather the reverse; they live much better than the clothing-makers in the tenth ward, and in spite of their sallow look, that may be due to the all-pervading smell of tobacco, they do not appear to be less healthy than other in-door workers. i found on my tours of investigation several cases of consumption, of which one at least was said by the doctor to be due to the constant inhalation of tobacco fumes. but an examination of the death records in the health department does not support the claim that the bohemian cigarmakers are peculiarly prone to that disease. on the contrary, the bohemian percentage of deaths from consumption appears quite low. this, however, is a line of scientific inquiry which i leave others to pursue, along with the more involved problem whether the falling off in the number of children, sometimes quite noticeable in the bohemian settlements, is, as has been suggested, dependent upon the character of the parents' work. the sore grievances i found were the miserable wages and the enormous rents exacted for the minimum of accommodation. and surely these stand for enough of suffering. take a row of houses in east tenth street as an instance. they contained thirty-five families of cigarmakers, with probably not half a dozen persons in the whole lot of them, outside of the children, who could speak a word of english, though many had been in the country half a lifetime. this room with two windows giving on the street, and a rear attachment without windows, called a bedroom by courtesy, is rented at $ . a month. in the front room man and wife work at the bench from six in the morning till nine at night. they make a team, stripping the tobacco leaves together; then he makes the filler, and she rolls the wrapper on and finishes the cigar. for a thousand they receive $ . , and can turn out together three thousand cigars a week. the point has been reached where the rebellion comes in, and the workers in these tenements are just now on a strike, demanding $ . and $ . for their work. the manufacturer having refused, they are expecting hourly to be served with notice to quit their homes, and the going of a stranger among them excites their resentment, until his errand is explained. while we are in the house, the ultimatum of the "boss" is received. he will give $ . a thousand, not another cent. our host is a man of seeming intelligence, yet he has been nine years in new york and knows neither english nor german. three bright little children play about the floor. his neighbor on the same floor has been here fifteen years, but shakes his head when asked if he can speak english. he answers in a few broken syllables when addressed in german. with $ . rent to pay for like accommodation, he has the advantage of his oldest boy's work besides his wife's at the bench. three properly make a team, and these three can turn out four thousand cigars a week, at $ . . this bohemian has a large family; there are four children, too small to work, to be cared for. a comparison of the domestic bill of fare between tenth and ludlow streets result, in the discovery that this bohemian's butcher's bill for the week, with meat at twelve cents a pound as in ludlow street, is from two dollars and a half to three dollars. the polish jew fed as big a family on one pound of meat a day. the difference proves to be typical. here is a suit of three rooms, two dark, three flights up. the ceiling is partly down in one of the rooms. "it is three months since we asked the landlord to fix it," says the oldest son, a very intelligent lad who has learned english in the evening school. his father has not had that advantage, and has sat at his bench, deaf and dumb to the world about him except his own, for six years. he has improved his time and become an expert at his trade. father, mother, and son together, a full team, make from fifteen to sixteen dollars a week. a man with venerable beard and keen eyes answers our questions through an interpreter, in the next house. very few brighter faces would be met in a day's walk among american mechanics, yet he has in nine years learned no syllable of english. german he probably does not want to learn. his story supplies the explanation, as did the stories of the others. in all that time he has been at work grubbing to earn bread. wife and he by constant labor make three thousand cigars a week, earning $ . when there is no lack of material; when in winter they receive from the manufacturer tobacco for only two thousand, the rent of $ for two rooms, practically one with a dark alcove, has nevertheless to be paid in full, and six mouths to be fed. he was a blacksmith in the old country, but cannot work at his trade here because he does not understand "engliska." if he could, he says, with a bright look, he could do better work than he sees done here. it would seem happiness to him to knock off at o'clock instead of working, as he now often has to do, till midnight. but how? he knows of no bohemian blacksmith who can understand him; he should starve. here, with his wife, he can make a living at least. "aye," says she, turning, from listening, to her household duties, "it would be nice for sure to have father work at his trade." then what a home she could make for them, and how happy they would be. here is an unattainable ideal, indeed, of a workman in the most prosperous city in the world! there is genuine, if unspoken, pathos in the soft tap she gives her husband's hand as she goes about her work with a half-suppressed little sigh. [illustration: bohemian cigarmakers at work in their tenement.] the very ash-barrels that stand in front of the big rows of tenements in seventy-first and seventy-third streets advertise the business that is carried on within. they are filled to the brim with the stems of stripped tobacco leaves. the rank smell that waited for us on the corner of the block follows us into the hallways, penetrates every nook and cranny of the houses. as in the settlement farther down town, every room here has its work-bench with its stumpy knife and queer pouch of bed-tick, worn brown and greasy, fastened in front the whole length of the bench to receive the scraps of waste. this landlord-employer at all events gives three rooms for $ . , if two be dark, one wholly and the other getting some light from the front room. the mother of the three bare-footed little children we met on the stairs was taken to the hospital the other day when she could no longer work. she will never come out alive. there is no waste in these tenements. lives, like clothes, are worn through and out before put aside. her place at the bench is taken already by another who divides with the head of the household his earnings of $ . a week. he has just come out successful of a strike that brought the pay of these tenements up to $ . per thousand cigars. notice to quit had already been served on them, when the employer decided to give in, frightened by the prospective loss of rent. asked how long he works, the man says: "from they can see till bed-time." bed-time proves to be eleven o'clock. seventeen hours a day, seven days in the week, at thirteen cents an hour for the two, six cents and a half for each! good average earnings for a tenement-house cigarmaker in summer. in winter it is at least one-fourth less. in spite of it all, the rooms are cleanly kept. from the bedroom farthest back the woman brings out a pile of moist tobacco-leaves to be stripped. they are kept there, under cover lest they dry and crack, from friday to friday, when an accounting is made and fresh supplies given out. the people sleep there too, but the smell, offensive to the unfamiliar nose, does not bother them. they are used to it. in a house around the corner that is not a factory-tenement, lives now the cigarmaker i spoke of as suffering from consumption which the doctor said was due to the tobacco-fumes. perhaps the lack of healthy exercise had as much to do with it. his case is interesting from its own stand-point. he too is one with a--for a bohemian--large family. six children sit at his table. by trade a shoemaker, for thirteen years he helped his wife make cigars in the manufacturer's tenement. she was a very good hand, and until his health gave out two years ago they were able to make from $ to $ a week, by lengthening the day at both ends. now that he can work no more, and the family under the doctor's orders has moved away from the smell of tobacco, the burden of its support has fallen upon her alone, for none of the children are old enough to help. she has work in the shop at eight dollars a week, and this must go round; it is all there is. happily, this being a tenement for revenue only, unmixed with cigars, the rent is cheaper: seven dollars for two bright rooms on the top floor. no housekeeping is attempted. a woman in seventy-second street supplies their cooking, which the wife and mother fetches in a basket, her husband being too weak. breakfast of coffee and hard-tack, or black bread, at twenty cents for the whole eight; a good many, the little woman says with a brave, patient smile, and there is seldom anything to spare, but----. the invalid is listening, and the sentence remains unfinished. what of dinner? one of the children brings it from the cook. oh! it is a good dinner, meat, soup, greens and bread, all for thirty cents. it is the principal family meal. does she come home for dinner? no; she cannot leave the shop, but gets a bite at her bench. the question: a bite of what? seems as merciless as the surgeon's knife, and she winces under it as one shrinks from physical pain. bread, then. but at night they all have supper together--sausage and bread. for ten cents they can eat all they want. can they not? she says, stroking the hair of the little boy at her knee; his eyes glisten hungrily at the thought, as he nods stoutly in support of his mother. only, she adds, the week the rent is due, they have to shorten rations to pay the landlord. but what of his being an anarchist, this bohemian--an infidel--i hear somebody say. almost one might be persuaded by such facts as these--and they are everyday facts, not fancy--to retort: what more natural? with every hand raised against him in the old land and the new, in the land of his hoped-for freedom, what more logical than that his should be turned against society that seems to exist only for his oppression? but the charge is not half true. naturally the bohemian loves peace, as he loves music and song. as someone has said: he does not seek war, but when attacked knows better how to die than how to surrender. the czech is the irishman of central europe, with all his genius and his strong passions, with the same bitter traditions of landlord-robbery, perpetuated here where he thought to forget them; like him ever and on principle in the opposition, "agin the government" wherever he goes. among such a people, ground by poverty until their songs have died in curses upon their oppressors, hopelessly isolated and ignorant of our language and our laws, it would not be hard for bad men at any time to lead a few astray. and this is what has been done. yet, even with the occasional noise made by the few, the criminal statistics already alluded to quite dispose of the charge that they incline to turbulence and riot. so it is with the infidel propaganda, the legacy perhaps of the fierce contention through hundreds of years between catholics and protestants on bohemia's soil, of bad faith and savage persecutions in the name of the christians' god that disgrace its history. the bohemian clergyman, who spoke for his people at the christian conference held in chickering hall two years ago, took even stronger ground. "they are roman catholics by birth, infidels by necessity, and protestants by history and inclination," he said. yet he added his testimony in the same breath to the fact that, though the freethinkers had started two schools in the immediate neighborhood of his church to counteract its influence, his flock had grown in a few years from a mere handful at the start to proportions far beyond his hopes, gathering in both anarchists and freethinkers, and making good church members of them. thus the whole matter resolves itself once more into a question of education, all the more urgent because these people are poor, miserably poor almost to a man. "there is not," said one of them, who knew thoroughly what he was speaking of, "there is not one of them all, who, if he were to sell all he was worth to-morrow, would have money enough to buy a house and lot in the country." chapter xiii. the color line in new york. the color line must be drawn through the tenements to give the picture its proper shading. the landlord does the drawing, does it with an absence of pretence, a frankness of despotism, that is nothing if not brutal. the czar of all the russias is not more absolute upon his own soil than the new york landlord in his dealings with colored tenants. where he permits them to live, they go; where he shuts the door, stay out. by his grace they exist at all in certain localities; his ukase banishes them from others. he accepts the responsibility, when laid at his door, with unruffled complacency. it is business, he will tell you. and it is. he makes the prejudice in which he traffics pay him well, and that, as he thinks it quite superfluous to tell you, is what he is there for. that his pencil does not make quite as black a mark as it did, that the hand that wields it does not bear down as hard as only a short half dozen years ago, is the hopeful sign of an awakening public conscience under the stress of which the line shows signs of wavering. but for this the landlord deserves no credit. it has come, is coming about despite him. the line may not be wholly effaced while the name of the negro, alone among the world's races, is spelled with a small n. natural selection will have more or less to do beyond a doubt in every age with dividing the races; only so, it may be, can they work out together their highest destiny. but with the despotism that deliberately assigns to the defenceless black the lowest level for the purpose of robbing him there that has nothing to do. of such slavery, different only in degree from the other kind that held him as a chattel, to be sold or bartered at the will of his master, this century, if signs fail not, will see the end in new york. ever since the war new york has been receiving the overflow of colored population from the southern cities. in the last decade this migration has grown to such proportions that it is estimated that our blacks have quite doubled in number since the tenth census. whether the exchange has been of advantage to the negro may well be questioned. trades of which he had practical control in his southern home are not open to him here. i know that it may be answered that there is no industrial proscription of color; that it is a matter of choice. perhaps so. at all events he does not choose then. how many colored carpenters or masons has anyone seen at work in new york? in the south there are enough of them and, if the testimony of the most intelligent of their people is worth anything, plenty of them have come here. as a matter of fact the colored man takes in new york, without a struggle, the lower level of menial service for which his past traditions and natural love of ease perhaps as yet fit him best. even the colored barber is rapidly getting to be a thing of the past. along shore, at any unskilled labor, he works unmolested; but he does not appear to prefer the job. his sphere thus defined, he naturally takes his stand among the poor, and in the homes of the poor. until very recent times--the years since a change was wrought can be counted on the fingers of one hand--he was practically restricted in the choice of a home to a narrow section on the west side, that nevertheless had a social top and bottom to it--the top in the tenements on the line of seventh avenue as far north as thirty-second street, where he was allowed to occupy the houses of unsavory reputation which the police had cleared and for which decent white tenants could not be found; the bottom in the vile rookeries of thompson street and south fifth avenue, the old "africa" that is now fast becoming a modern italy. to-day there are black colonies in yorkville and morrisania. the encroachment of business and the italian below, and the swelling of the population above, have been the chief agents in working out his second emancipation, a very real one, for with his cutting loose from the old tenements there has come a distinct and gratifying improvement in the tenant, that argues louder than theories or speeches the influence of vile surroundings in debasing the man. the colored citizen whom this year's census man found in his ninety-ninth street "flat" is a very different individual from the "nigger" his predecessor counted in the black-and-tan slums of thompson and sullivan streets. there is no more clean and orderly community in new york than the new settlement of colored people that is growing up on the east side from yorkville to harlem. cleanliness is the characteristic of the negro in his new surroundings, as it was his virtue in the old. in this respect he is immensely the superior of the lowest of the whites, the italians and the polish jews, below whom he has been classed in the past in the tenant scale. nevertheless, he has always had to pay higher rents than even these for the poorest and most stinted rooms. the exceptions i have come across, in which the rents, though high, have seemed more nearly on a level with what was asked for the same number and size of rooms in the average tenement, were in the case of tumble-down rookeries in which no one else would live, and were always coupled with the condition that the landlord should "make no repairs." it can readily be seen, that his profits were scarcely curtailed by his "humanity." the reason advanced for this systematic robbery is that white people will not live in the same house with colored tenants, or even in a house recently occupied by negroes, and that consequently its selling value is injured. the prejudice undoubtedly exists, but it is not lessened by the house agents, who have set up the maxim "once a colored house, always a colored house." there is method in the maxim, as shown by an inquiry made last year by the _real estate record_. it proved agents to be practically unanimous in the endorsement of the negro as a clean, orderly, and "profitable" tenant. here is the testimony of one of the largest real estate firms in the city: "we would rather have negro tenants in our poorest class of tenements than the lower grades of foreign white people. we find the former cleaner than the latter, and they do not destroy the property so much. we also get higher prices. we have a tenement on nineteenth street, where we get $ for two rooms which we could not get more than $ . for from white tenants previously. we have a four-story tenement on our books on thirty-third street, between sixth and seventh avenues, with four rooms per floor--a parlor, two bedrooms, and a kitchen. we get $ for the first floor, $ for the second, $ for the third and $ for the fourth, in all $ or $ , per annum. the size of the building is only + ." another firm declared that in a specified instance they had saved fifteen to twenty per cent. on the gross rentals since they changed their white tenants for colored ones. still another gave the following case of a front and rear tenement that had formerly been occupied by tenants of a "low european type," who had been turned out on account of filthy habits and poor pay. the negroes proved cleaner, better, and steadier tenants. instead, however, of having their rents reduced in consequence, the comparison stood as follows: _rents under white tenants._ per month. front-- st floor (store, etc.) $ d " d " th " (and rear) rear-- d " d " th " (see front) -- rear house-- st " d " d " th " ---- total $ _rents under colored tenants._ per month. front-- st floor (store, etc.) $ d " d " th " rear-- d " d " th " rear house-- st " d " d " th " ---- total $ an increased rental of $ per month, or $ a year, and an advance of nearly thirteen and one-half per cent. on the gross rental "in favor" of the colored tenant. profitable, surely! i have quoted these cases at length in order to let in light on the quality of this landlord despotism that has purposely confused the public mind, and for its own selfish ends is propping up a waning prejudice. it will be cause for congratulation if indeed its time has come at last. within a year, i am told by one of the most intelligent and best informed of our colored citizens, there has been evidence, simultaneous with the colored hegira from the low down-town tenements, of a movement toward less exorbitant rents. i cannot pass from this subject without adding a leaf from my own experience that deserves a place in this record, though, for the credit of humanity, i hope as an extreme case. it was last christmas that i had occasion to visit the home of an old colored woman in sixteenth street, as the almoner of generous friends out of town who wished me to buy her a christmas dinner. the old woman lived in a wretched shanty, occupying two mean, dilapidated rooms at the top of a sort of hen-ladder that went by the name of stairs. for these she paid ten dollars a month out of her hard-earned wages as a scrub-woman. i did not find her in and, being informed that she was "at the agent's," went around to hunt her up. the agent's wife appeared, to report that ann was out. being in a hurry it occurred to me that i might save time by making her employer the purveyor of my friend's bounty, and proposed to entrust the money, two dollars, to her to be expended for old ann's benefit. she fell in with the suggestion at once, and confided to me in the fullness of her heart that she liked the plan, inasmuch as "i generally find her a christmas dinner myself, and this money--she owes mr. ---- (her husband, the agent) a lot of rent." needless to state that there was a change of programme then and there, and that ann was saved from the sort of christmas cheer that woman's charity would have spread before her. when i had the old soul comfortably installed in her own den, with a chicken and "fixin's" and a bright fire in her stove, i asked her how much she owed of her rent. her answer was that she did not really owe anything, her month not being quite up, but that the amount yet unpaid was--two dollars! poverty, abuse, and injustice alike the negro accepts with imperturbable cheerfulness. his philosophy is of the kind that has no room for repining. whether lie lives in an eighth ward barrack or in a tenement with a brown-stone front and pretensions to the title of "flat," he looks at the sunny side of life and enjoys it. he loves fine clothes and good living a good deal more than he does a bank account. the proverbial rainy day it would be rank ingratitude, from his point of view, to look for when the sun shines unclouded in a clear sky. his home surroundings, except when he is utterly depraved, reflect his blithesome temper. the poorest negro housekeeper's room in new york is bright with gaily-colored prints of his beloved "abe linkum," general grant, president garfield, mrs. cleveland, and other national celebrities, and cheery with flowers and singing birds. in the art of putting the best foot foremost, of disguising his poverty by making a little go a long way, our negro has no equal. when a fair share of prosperity is his, he knows how to make life and home very pleasant to those about him. pianos and parlor furniture abound in the uptown homes of colored tenants and give them a very prosperous air. but even where the wolf howls at the door, he makes a bold and gorgeous front. the amount of "style" displayed on fine sundays on sixth and seventh avenues by colored holiday-makers would turn a pessimist black with wrath. the negro's great ambition is to rise in the social scale to which his color has made him a stranger and an outsider, and he is quite willing to accept the shadow for the substance where that is the best he can get. the claw-hammer coat and white tie of a waiter in a first-class summer hotel, with the chance of taking his ease in six months of winter, are to him the next best thing to mingling with the white quality he serves, on equal terms. his festive gatherings, pre-eminently his cake-walks, at which a sugared and frosted cake is the proud prize of the couple with the most aristocratic step and carriage, are comic mixtures of elaborate ceremonial and the joyous abandon of the natural man. with all his ludicrous incongruities, his sensuality and his lack of moral accountability, his superstition and other faults that are the effect of temperament and of centuries of slavery, he has his eminently good points. he is loyal to the backbone, proud of being an american and of his new-found citizenship. he is at least as easily moulded for good as for evil. his churches are crowded to the doors on sunday nights when the colored colony turns out to worship. his people own church property in this city upon which they have paid half a million dollars out of the depth of their poverty, with comparatively little assistance from their white brethren. he is both willing and anxious to learn, and his intellectual status is distinctly improving. if his emotions are not very deeply rooted, they are at least sincere while they last, and until the tempter gets the upper hand again. of all the temptations that beset him, the one that troubles him and the police most is his passion for gambling. the game of policy is a kind of unlawful penny lottery specially adapted to his means, but patronized extensively by poor white players as well. it is the meanest of swindles, but reaps for its backers rich fortunes wherever colored people congregate. between the fortune-teller and the policy shop, closely allied frauds always, the wages of many a hard day's work are wasted by the negro; but the loss causes him few regrets. penniless, but with undaunted faith in his ultimate "luck," he looks forward to the time when he shall once more be able to take a hand at "beating policy." when periodically the negro's lucky numbers, - - , come out on the slips of the alleged daily drawings, that are supposed to be held in some far-off western town, intense excitement reigns in thompson street and along the avenue, where someone is always the winner. an immense impetus is given then to the bogus business that has no existence outside of the cigar stores and candy shops where it hides from the law, save in some cunning bowery "broker's" back office, where the slips are printed and the "winnings" apportioned daily with due regard to the backer's interests. it is a question whether "africa" has been improved by the advent of the italian, with the tramp from the mulberry street bend in his train. the moral turpitude of thompson street has been notorious for years, and the mingling of the three elements does not seem to have wrought any change for the better. the borderland where the white and black races meet in common debauch, the aptly-named black-and-tan saloon, has never been debatable ground from a moral stand-point. it has always been the worst of the desperately bad. than this commingling of the utterly depraved of both sexes, white and black, on such ground, there can be no greater abomination. usually it is some foul cellar dive, perhaps run by the political "leader" of the district, who is "in with" the police. in any event it gathers to itself all the law-breakers and all the human wrecks within reach. when a fight breaks out during the dance a dozen razors are handy in as many boot-legs, and there is always a job for the surgeon and the ambulance. the black "tough" is as handy with the razor in a fight as his peaceably inclined brother is with it in pursuit of his honest trade. as the chinaman hides his knife in his sleeve and the italian his stiletto in the bosom, so the negro goes to the ball with a razor in his boot-leg, and on occasion does as much execution with it as both of the others together. more than three-fourths of the business the police have with the colored people in new york arises in the black-and-tan district, now no longer fairly representative of their color. [illustration: a black-and-tan dive in "africa."] i have touched briefly upon such facts in the negro's life as may serve to throw light on the social condition of his people in new york. if, when the account is made up between the races, it shall be claimed that he falls short of the result to be expected from twenty-five years of freedom, it may be well to turn to the other side of the ledger and see how much of the blame is borne by the prejudice and greed that have kept him from rising under a burden of responsibility to which he could hardly be equal. and in this view he may be seen to have advanced much farther and faster than before suspected, and to promise, after all, with fair treatment, quite as well as the rest of us, his white-skinned fellow-citizens, had any right to expect. chapter xiv. the common herd. there is another line not always so readily drawn in the tenements, yet the real boundary line of the other half: the one that defines the "flat." the law does not draw it at all, accounting all flats tenements without distinction. the health officer draws it from observation, lumping all those which in his judgment have nothing, or not enough, to give them claim upon the name, with the common herd, and his way is, perhaps, on the whole, the surest and best. the outside of the building gives no valuable clew. brass and brown-stone go well sometimes with dense crowds and dark and dingy rooms; but the first attempt to enter helps draw the line with tolerable distinctness. a locked door is a strong point in favor of the flat. it argues that the first step has been taken to secure privacy, the absence of which is the chief curse of the tenement. behind a locked door the hoodlum is not at home, unless there be a jailor in place of a janitor to guard it. not that the janitor and the door-bell are infallible. there may be a tenement behind a closed door; but never a "flat" without it. the hall that is a highway for all the world by night and by day is the tenement's proper badge. the other half ever receives with open doors. [illustration: the open door.] with this introduction we shall not seek it long anywhere in the city. below houston street the door-bell in our age is as extinct as the dodo. east of second avenue, and west of ninth avenue as far up as the park, it is practically an unknown institution. the nearer the river and the great workshops the more numerous the tenements. the kind of work carried on in any locality to a large extent determines their character. skilled and well-paid labor puts its stamp on a tenement even in spite of the open door, and usually soon supplies the missing bell. gas-houses, slaughter-houses and the docks, that attract the roughest crowds and support the vilest saloons, invariably form slum-centres. the city is full of such above the line of fourteenth street, that is erroneously supposed by some to fence off the good from the bad, separate the chaff from the wheat. there is nothing below that line that can outdo in wickedness hell's kitchen, in the region of three-cent whiskey, or its counterpoise at the other end of thirty-ninth street, on the east river, the home of the infamous rag gang. cherry street is not "tougher" than battle row in east sixty-third street, or "the village" at twenty-ninth street and first avenue, where stores of broken bricks, ammunition for the nightly conflicts with the police, are part of the regulation outfit of every tenement. the mulberry street bend is scarce dirtier than little italy in harlem. even across the harlem river, frog hollow challenges the admiration of the earlier slums for the boldness and pernicious activity of its home gang. there are enough of these sore spots. we shall yet have occasion to look into the social conditions of some of them; were i to draw a picture of them here as they are, the subject, i fear, would outgrow alike the limits of this book and the reader's patience. it is true that they tell only one side of the story; that there is another to tell. a story of thousands of devoted lives, laboring earnestly to make the most of their scant opportunities for good; of heroic men and women striving patiently against fearful odds and by their very courage coming off victors in the battle with the tenement; of womanhood pure and undefiled. that it should blossom in such an atmosphere is one of the unfathomable mysteries of life. and yet it is not an uncommon thing to find sweet and innocent girls, singularly untouched by the evil around them, true wives and faithful mothers, literally "like jewels in a swine's snout," in the worst of the infamous barracks. it is the experience of all who have intelligently observed this side of life in a great city, not to be explained--unless on the theory of my friend, the priest in the mulberry street bend, that inherent purity revolts instinctively from the naked brutality of vice as seen in the slums--but to be thankfully accepted as the one gleam of hope in an otherwise hopeless desert. [illustration: bird's-eye view of an east side tenement block. (from a drawing by charles f. wingate, esq.)] but the relief is not great. in the dull content of life bred on the tenement-house dead level there is little to redeem it, or to calm apprehension for a society that has nothing better to offer its toilers; while the patient efforts of the lives finally attuned to it to render the situation tolerable, and the very success of these efforts, serve only to bring out in stronger contrast the general gloom of the picture by showing how much farther they might have gone with half a chance. go into any of the "respectable" tenement neighborhoods--the fact that there are not more than two saloons on the corner, nor over three or four in the block will serve as a fair guide--where live the great body of hard-working irish and german immigrants and their descendants, who accept naturally the conditions of tenement life, because for them there is nothing else in new york; be with and among its people until you understand their ways, their aims, and the quality of their ambitions, and unless you can content yourself with the scriptural promise that the poor we shall have always with us, or with the menagerie view that, if fed, they have no cause of complaint, you shall come away agreeing with me that, humanly speaking, life there does not seem worth the living. take at random one of these uptown tenement blocks, not of the worst nor yet of the most prosperous kind, within hail of what the newspapers would call a "fine residential section." these houses were built since the last cholera scare made people willing to listen to reason. the block is not like the one over on the east side in which i actually lost my way once. there were thirty or forty rear houses in the heart of it, three or four on every lot, set at all sorts of angles, with odd, winding passages, or no passage at all, only "runways" for the thieves and toughs of the neighborhood. these yards are clear. there is air there, and it is about all there is. the view between brick walls outside is that of a stony street; inside, of rows of unpainted board fences, a bewildering maze of clothes-posts and lines; underfoot, a desert of brown, hard-baked soil from which every blade of grass, every stray weed, every speck of green, has been trodden out, as must inevitably be every gentle thought and aspiration above the mere wants of the body in those whose moral natures such home surroundings are to nourish. in self-defence, you know, all life eventually accommodates itself to its environment, and human life is no exception. within the house there is nothing to supply the want thus left unsatisfied. tenement-houses have no æsthetic resources. if any are to be brought to bear on them, they must come from the outside. there is the common hall with doors opening softly on every landing as the strange step is heard on the stairs, the air-shaft that seems always so busy letting out foul stenches from below that it has no time to earn its name by bringing down fresh air, the squeaking pumps that hold no water, and the rent that is never less than one week's wages out of the four, quite as often half of the family earnings. why complete the sketch? it is drearily familiar already. such as it is, it is the frame in which are set days, weeks, months, and years of unceasing toil, just able to fill the mouth and clothe the back. such as it is, it is the world, and all of it, to which these weary workers return nightly to feed heart and brain after wearing out the body at the bench, or in the shop. to it come the young with their restless yearnings, perhaps to pass on the threshold one of the daughters of sin, driven to the tenement by the police when they raided her den, sallying forth in silks and fine attire after her day of idleness. these in their coarse garments--girls with the love of youth for beautiful things, with this hard life before them--who shall save them from the tempter? down in the street the saloon, always bright and gay, gathering to itself all the cheer of the block, beckons the boys. in many such blocks the census-taker found two thousand men, women, and children, and over, who called them home. the picture is faithful enough to stand for its class wherever along both rivers the irish brogue is heard. as already said, the celt falls most readily victim to tenement influences since shanty-town and its original free-soilers have become things of the past. if he be thrifty and shrewd his progress thenceforward is along the plane of the tenement, on which he soon assumes to manage without improving things. the german has an advantage over his celtic neighbor in his strong love for flowers, which not all the tenements on the east side have power to smother. his garden goes with him wherever he goes. not that it represents any high moral principle in the man; rather perhaps the capacity for it. he turns his saloon into a shrubbery as soon as his back-yard. but wherever he puts it in a tenement block it does the work of a dozen police clubs. in proportion as it spreads the neighborhood takes on a more orderly character. as the green dies out of the landscape and increases in political importance, the police find more to do. where it disappears altogether from sight, lapsing into a mere sentiment, police-beats are shortened and the force patrols double at night. neither the man nor the sentiment is wholly responsible for this. it is the tenement unadorned that is. the changing of tompkins square from a sand lot into a beautiful park put an end for good and all to the bread and blood riots of which it used to be the scene, and transformed a nest of dangerous agitators into a harmless, beer-craving band of anarchists. they have scarcely been heard of since. opponents of the small parks system as a means of relieving the congested population of tenement districts, please take note. with the first hot nights in june police despatches, that record the killing of men and women by rolling off roofs and window-sills while asleep, announce that the time of greatest suffering among the poor is at hand. it is in hot weather, when life indoors is well-nigh unbearable with cooking, sleeping, and working, all crowded into the small rooms together, that the tenement expands, reckless of all restraint. then a strange and picturesque life moves upon the flat roofs. in the day and early evening mothers air their babies there, the boys fly their kites from the house-tops, undismayed by police regulations, and the young men and girls court and pass the growler. in the stifling july nights, when the big barracks are like fiery furnaces, their very walls giving out absorbed heat, men and women lie in restless, sweltering rows, panting for air and sleep. then every truck in the street, every crowded fire-escape, becomes a bedroom, infinitely preferable to any the house affords. a cooling shower on such a night is hailed as a heaven-sent blessing in a hundred thousand homes. [illustration] life in the tenements in july and august spells death to an army of little ones whom the doctor's skill is powerless to save. when the white badge of mourning flutters from every second door, sleepless mothers walk the streets in the gray of the early dawn, trying to stir a cooling breeze to fan the brow of the sick baby. there is no sadder sight than this patient devotion striving against fearfully hopeless odds. fifty "summer doctors," especially trained to this work, are then sent into the tenements by the board of health, with free advice and medicine for the poor. devoted women follow in their track with care and nursing for the sick. fresh-air excursions run daily out of new york on land and water; but despite all efforts the grave-diggers in calvary work over-time, and little coffins are stacked mountains high on the deck of the charity commissioners' boat when it makes its semi-weekly trips to the city cemetery. under the most favorable circumstances, an epidemic, which the well-to-do can afford to make light of as a thing to be got over or avoided by reasonable care, is excessively fatal among the children of the poor, by reason of the practical impossibility of isolating the patient in a tenement. the measles, ordinarily a harmless disease, furnishes a familiar example. tread it ever so lightly on the avenues, in the tenements it kills right and left. such an epidemic ravaged three crowded blocks in elizabeth street on the heels of the grippe last winter, and, when it had spent its fury, the death-maps in the bureau of vital statistics looked as if a black hand had been laid across those blocks, over-shadowing in part the contiguous tenements in mott street, and with the thumb covering a particularly packed settlement of half a dozen houses in mulberry street. the track of the epidemic through these teeming barracks was as clearly defined as the track of a tornado through a forest district. there were houses in which as many as eight little children had died in five months. the records showed that respiratory diseases, the common heritage of the grippe and the measles, had caused death in most cases, discovering the trouble to be, next to the inability to check the contagion in those crowds, in the poverty of the parents and the wretched home conditions that made proper care of the sick impossible. the fact was emphasized by the occurrence here and there of a few isolated deaths from diphtheria and scarlet fever. in the case of these diseases, considered more dangerous to the public health, the health officers exercised summary powers of removal to the hospital where proper treatment could be had, and the result was a low death-rate. these were tenements of the tall, modern type. a little more than a year ago, when a census was made of the tenements and compared with the mortality tables, no little surprise and congratulation was caused by the discovery that as the buildings grew taller the death-rate fell. the reason is plain, though the reverse had been expected by most people. the biggest tenements have been built in the last ten years of sanitary reform rule, and have been brought, in all but the crowding, under its laws. the old houses that from private dwellings were made into tenements, or were run up to house the biggest crowds in defiance of every moral and physical law, can be improved by no device short of demolition. they will ever remain the worst. that ignorance plays its part, as well as poverty and bad hygienic surroundings, in the sacrifice of life is of course inevitable. they go usually hand in hand. a message came one day last spring summoning me to a mott street tenement in which lay a child dying from some unknown disease. with the "charity doctor" i found the patient on the top floor, stretched upon two chairs in a dreadfully stifling room. she was gasping in the agony of peritonitis that had already written its death-sentence on her wan and pinched face. the whole family, father, mother, and four ragged children, sat around looking on with the stony resignation of helpless despair that had long since given up the fight against fate as useless. a glance around the wretched room left no doubt as to the cause of the child's condition. "improper nourishment," said the doctor, which, translated to suit the place, meant starvation. the father's hands were crippled from lead poisoning. he had not been able to work for a year. a contagious disease of the eyes, too long neglected, had made the mother and one of the boys nearly blind. the children cried with hunger. they had not broken their fast that day, and it was then near noon. for months the family had subsisted on two dollars a week from the priest, and a few loaves and a piece of corned beef which the sisters sent them on saturday. the doctor gave direction for the treatment of the child, knowing that it was possible only to alleviate its sufferings until death should end them, and left some money for food for the rest. an hour later, when i returned, i found them feeding the dying child with ginger ale, bought for two cents a bottle at the pedlar's cart down the street. a pitying neighbor had proposed it as the one thing she could think of as likely to make the child forget its misery. there was enough in the bottle to go round to the rest of the family. in fact, the wake had already begun; before night it was under way in dead earnest. [illustration: in poverty gap, west twenty-eighth st. an english coal-heaver's home.[ ]] [footnote : suspicions of murder, in the case of a woman who was found dead, covered with bruises, after a day's running fight with her husband, in which the beer jug had been the bone of contention, brought me to this house, a ramshackle tenement on the tail-end of a lot over near the north river docks. the family in the picture lived above the rooms where the dead woman lay on a bed of straw, overrun by rats, and had been uninterested witnesses of the affray that was an everyday occurrence in the house. a patched and shaky stairway led up to their one bare and miserable room, in comparison with which a white-washed prison-cell seemed a real palace. a heap of old rags, in which the baby slept serenely, served as the common sleeping-bunk of father, mother, and children--two bright and pretty girls, singularly out of keeping in their clean, if coarse, dresses, with their surroundings. the father, a slow-going, honest english coal-heaver, earned on the average five dollars a week, "when work was fairly brisk," at the docks. but there were long seasons when it was very "slack," he said, doubtfully. yet the prospect did not seem to discourage them. the mother, a pleasant-faced woman, was cheerful, even light-hearted. her smile seemed the most sadly hopeless of all in the utter wretchedness of the place, cheery though it was meant to be and really was. it seemed doomed to certain disappointment--the one thing there that was yet to know a greater depth of misery.] every once in a while a case of downright starvation gets into the newspapers and makes a sensation. but this is the exception. were the whole truth known, it would come home to the community with a shock that would rouse it to a more serious effort than the spasmodic undoing of its purse-strings. i am satisfied from my own observation that hundreds of men, women, and children are every day slowly starving to death in the tenements with my medical friend's complaint of "improper nourishment." within a single week i have had this year three cases of insanity, provoked directly by poverty and want. one was that of a mother who in the middle of the night got up to murder her child, who was crying for food; another was the case of an elizabeth street truck-driver whom the newspapers never heard of. with a family to provide for, he had been unable to work for many months. there was neither food, nor a scrap of anything upon which money could be raised, left in the house; his mind gave way under the combined physical and mental suffering. in the third case i was just in time with the police to prevent the madman from murdering his whole family. he had the sharpened hatchet in his pocket when we seized him. he was an irish laborer, and had been working in the sewers until the poisonous gases destroyed his health. then he was laid off, and scarcely anything had been coming in all winter but the oldest child's earnings as cash-girl in a store, $ . a week. there were seven children to provide for, and the rent of the mulberry street attic in which the family lived was $ a month. they had borrowed as long as anybody had a cent to lend. when at last the man got an odd job that would just buy the children bread, the week's wages only served to measure the depth of their misery. "it came in so on the tail-end of everything," said his wife in telling the story, with unconscious eloquence. the outlook worried him through sleepless nights until it destroyed his reason. in his madness he had only one conscious thought: that the town should not take the children. "better that i take care of them myself," he repeated to himself as he ground the axe to an edge. help came in abundance from many almost as poor as they when the desperate straits of the family became known through his arrest. the readiness of the poor to share what little they have with those who have even less is one of the few moral virtues of the tenements. their enormous crowds touch elbow in a closeness of sympathy that is scarcely to be understood out of them, and has no parallel except among the unfortunate women whom the world scorns as outcasts. there is very little professed sentiment about it to draw a sentimental tear from the eye of romantic philanthropy. the hard fact is that the instinct of self-preservation impels them to make common cause against the common misery. no doubt intemperance bears a large share of the blame for it; judging from the stand-point of the policeman perhaps the greater share. two such entries as i read in the police returns on successive days last march, of mothers in west side tenements, who, in their drunken sleep, lay upon and killed their infants, go far to support such a position. and they are far from uncommon. but my experience has shown me another view of it, a view which the last report of the society for improving the condition of the poor seems more than half inclined to adopt in allotting to "intemperance the cause of distress, or distress the cause of intemperance," forty per cent. of the cases it is called upon to deal with. even if it were all true, i should still load over upon the tenement the heaviest responsibility. a single factor, the scandalous scarcity of water in the hot summer when the thirst of the million tenants must be quenched, if not in that in something else, has in the past years more than all other causes encouraged drunkenness among the poor. but to my mind there is a closer connection between the wages of the tenements and the vices and improvidence of those who dwell in them than, with the guilt of the tenement upon our heads, we are willing to admit even to ourselves. weak tea with a dry crust is not a diet to nurse moral strength. yet how much better might the fare be expected to be in the family of this "widow with seven children, very energetic and prudent"--i quote again from the report of the society for the improvement of the condition of the poor--whose "eldest girl was employed as a learner in a tailor's shop at small wages, and one boy had a place as 'cash' in a store. there were two other little boys who sold papers and sometimes earned one dollar. the mother finishes pantaloons and can do three pairs in a day, thus earning thirty-nine cents. here is a family of eight persons with rent to pay and an income of less than six dollars a week." and yet she was better off in point of pay than this sixth street mother, who "had just brought home four pairs of pants to finish, at seven cents a pair. she was required to put the canvas in the bottom, basting and sewing three times around; to put the linings in the waist-bands; to tack three pockets, three corners to each; to put on two stays and eight buttons, and make six button-holes; to put the buckle on the back strap and sew on the ticket, all for seven cents." better off than the "church-going mother of six children," and with a husband sick to death, who to support the family made shirts, averaging an income of one dollar and twenty cents a week, while her oldest girl, aged thirteen, was "employed down-town cutting out hamburg edgings at one dollar and a half a week--two and a half cents per hour for ten hours of steady labor--making the total income of the family two dollars and seventy cents per week." than the harlem woman, who was "making a brave effort to support a sick husband and two children by taking in washing at thirty-five cents for the lot of fourteen large pieces, finding coal, soap, starch, and bluing herself, rather than depend on charity in any form." specimen wages of the tenements these, seemingly inconsistent with the charge of improvidence. but the connection on second thought is not obscure. there is nothing in the prospect of a sharp, unceasing battle for the bare necessaries of life, to encourage looking ahead, everything to discourage the effort. improvidence and wastefulness are natural results. the instalment plan secures to the tenant who lives from hand to mouth his few comforts; the evil day of reckoning is put off till a to-morrow that may never come. when it does come, with failure to pay and the loss of hard-earned dollars, it simply adds another hardship to a life measured from the cradle by such incidents. the children soon catch the spirit of this sort of thing. i remember once calling at the home of a poor washer-woman, living in an east side tenement, and finding the door locked. some children in the hallway stopped their play and eyed me attentively while i knocked. the biggest girl volunteered the information that mrs. smith was out; but while i was thinking of how i was to get a message to her, the child put a question of her own: "are you the spring man or the clock man?" when i assured her that i was neither one nor the other, but had brought work for her mother, mrs. smith, who had been hiding from the instalment collector, speedily appeared. perhaps of all the disheartening experiences of those who have devoted lives of unselfish thought and effort, and their number is not so small as often supposed, to the lifting of this great load, the indifference of those they would help is the most puzzling. they will not be helped. dragged by main force out of their misery, they slip back again on the first opportunity, seemingly content only in the old rut. the explanation was supplied by two women of my acquaintance in an elizabeth street tenement, whom the city missionaries had taken from their wretched hovel and provided with work and a decent home somewhere in new jersey. in three weeks they were back, saying that they preferred their dark rear room to the stumps out in the country. but to me the oldest, the mother, who had struggled along with her daughter making cloaks at half a dollar apiece, twelve long years since the daughter's husband was killed in a street accident and the city took the children, made the bitter confession: "we do get so kind o' downhearted living this way, that we have to be where something is going on, or we just can't stand it." and there was sadder pathos to me in her words than in the whole long story of their struggle with poverty; for unconsciously she voiced the sufferings of thousands, misjudged by a happier world, deemed vicious because they are human and unfortunate. it is a popular delusion, encouraged by all sorts of exaggerated stories when nothing more exciting demands public attention, that there are more evictions in the tenements of new york every year "than in all ireland." i am not sure that it is doing much for the tenant to upset this fallacy. to my mind, to be put out of a tenement would be the height of good luck. the fact is, however, that evictions are not nearly as common in new york as supposed. the reason is that in the civil courts, the judges of which are elected in their districts, the tenant-voter has solid ground to stand upon at last. the law that takes his side to start with is usually twisted to the utmost to give him time and save him expense. in the busiest east side court, that has been very appropriately dubbed the "poor man's court," fully five thousand dispossess warrants are issued in a year, but probably not fifty evictions take place in the district. the landlord has only one vote, while there may be forty voters hiring his rooms in the house, all of which the judge takes into careful account as elements that have a direct bearing on the case. and so they have--on his case. there are sad cases, just as there are "rounders" who prefer to be moved at the landlord's expense and save the rent, but the former at least are unusual enough to attract more than their share of attention. [illustration: dispossessed.] if his very poverty compels the tenant to live at a rate if not in a style that would beggar a vanderbilt, paying four prices for everything he needs, from his rent and coal down to the smallest item in his housekeeping account, fashion, no less inexorable in the tenements than on the avenue, exacts of him that he must die in a style that is finally and utterly ruinous. the habit of expensive funerals--i know of no better classification for it than along with the opium habit and similar grievous plagues of mankind--is a distinctively irish inheritance, but it has taken root among all classes of tenement dwellers, curiously enough most firmly among the italians, who have taken amazingly to the funeral coach, perhaps because it furnishes the one opportunity of their lives for a really grand turn-out with a free ride thrown in. it is not at all uncommon to find the hoards of a whole lifetime of hard work and self denial squandered on the empty show of a ludicrous funeral parade and a display of flowers that ill comports with the humble life it is supposed to exalt. it is easier to understand the wake as a sort of consolation cup for the survivors for whom there is--as one of them, doubtless a heathenish pessimist, put it to me once--"no such luck." the press and the pulpit have denounced the wasteful practice that often entails bitter want upon the relatives of the one buried with such pomp, but with little or no apparent result. rather, the undertaker's business prospers more than ever in the tenements since the genius of politics has seen its way clear to make capital out of the dead voter as well as of the living, by making him the means of a useful "show of strength" and count of noses. one free excursion awaits young and old whom bitter poverty has denied the poor privilege of the choice of the home in death they were denied in life, the ride up the sound to the potter's field, charitably styled the city cemetery. but even there they do not escape their fate. in the common trench of the poor burying ground they lie packed three stories deep, shoulder to shoulder, crowded in death as they were in life, to "save space;" for even on that desert island the ground is not for the exclusive possession of those who cannot afford to pay for it. there is an odd coincidence in this, that year by year the lives that are begun in the gutter, the little nameless waifs whom the police pick up and the city adopts as its wards, are balanced by the even more forlorn lives that are ended in the river. i do not know how or why it happens, or that it is more than a mere coincidence. but there it is. year by year the balance is struck--a few more, a few less--substantially the same when the record is closed. [illustration: the trench in the potter's field.] chapter xv. the problem of the children. the problem of the children becomes, in these swarms, to the last degree perplexing. their very number make one stand aghast. i have already given instances of the packing of the child population in east side tenements. they might be continued indefinitely until the array would be enough to startle any community. for, be it remembered, these children with the training they receive--or do not receive--with the instincts they inherit and absorb in their growing up, are to be our future rulers, if our theory of government is worth anything. more than a working majority of our voters now register from the tenements. i counted the other day the little ones, up to ten years or so, in a bayard street tenement that for a yard has a triangular space in the centre with sides fourteen or fifteen feet long, just room enough for a row of ill-smelling closets at the base of the triangle and a hydrant at the apex. there was about as much light in this "yard" as in the average cellar. i gave up my self-imposed task in despair when i had counted one hundred and twenty-eight in forty families. thirteen i had missed, or not found in. applying the average for the forty to the whole fifty-three, the house contained one hundred and seventy children. it is not the only time i have had to give up such census work. i have in mind an alley--an inlet rather to a row of rear tenements--that is either two or four feet wide according as the wall of the crazy old building that gives on it bulges out or in. i tried to count the children that swarmed there, but could not. sometimes i have doubted that anybody knows just how many there are about. bodies of drowned children turn up in the rivers right along in summer whom no one seems to know anything about. when last spring some workmen, while moving a pile of lumber on a north river pier, found under the last plank the body of a little lad crushed to death, no one had missed a boy, though his parents afterward turned up. the truant officer assuredly does not know, though he spends his life trying to find out, somewhat illogically, perhaps, since the department that employs him admits that thousands of poor children are crowded out of the schools year by year for want of room. there was a big tenement in the sixth ward, now happily appropriated by the beneficent spirit of business that blots out so many foul spots in new york--it figured not long ago in the official reports as "an out-and-out hog-pen"--that had a record of one hundred and two arrests in four years among its four hundred and seventy-eight tenants, fifty-seven of them for drunken and disorderly conduct. i do not know how many children there were in it, but the inspector reported that he found only seven in the whole house who owned that they went to school. the rest gathered all the instruction they received running for beer for their elders. some of them claimed the "flat" as their home as a mere matter of form. they slept in the streets at night. the official came upon a little party of four drinking beer out of the cover of a milk-can in the hallway. they were of the seven good boys and proved their claim to the title by offering him some. the old question, what to do with the boy, assumes a new and serious phase in the tenements. under the best conditions found there, it is not easily answered. in nine cases out of ten he would make an excellent mechanic, if trained early to work at a trade, for he is neither dull nor slow, but the short-sighted despotism of the trades unions has practically closed that avenue to him. trade-schools, however excellent, cannot supply the opportunity thus denied him, and at the outset the boy stands condemned by his own to low and ill-paid drudgery, held down by the hand that of all should labor to raise him. home, the greatest factor of all in the training of the young, means nothing to him but a pigeon-hole in a coop along with so many other human animals. its influence is scarcely of the elevating kind, if it have any. the very games at which he takes a hand in the street become polluting in its atmosphere. with no steady hand to guide him, the boy takes naturally to idle ways. caught in the street by the truant officer, or by the agents of the children's societies, peddling, perhaps, or begging, to help out the family resources, he runs the risk of being sent to a reformatory, where contact with vicious boys older than himself soon develop the latent possibilities for evil that lie hidden in him. the city has no truant home in which to keep him, and all efforts of the children's friends to enforce school attendance are paralyzed by this want. the risk of the reformatory is too great. what is done in the end is to let him take chances--with the chances all against him. the result is the rough young savage, familiar from the street. rough as he is, if any one doubt that this child of common clay have in him the instinct of beauty, of love for the ideal of which his life has no embodiment, let him put the matter to the test. let him take into a tenement block a handful of flowers from the fields and watch the brightened faces, the sudden abandonment of play and fight that go ever hand in hand where there is no elbow-room, the wild entreaty for "posies," the eager love with which the little messengers of peace are shielded, once possessed; then let him change his mind. i have seen an armful of daisies keep the peace of a block better than a policeman and his club, seen instincts awaken under their gentle appeal, whose very existence the soil in which they grew made seem a mockery. i have not forgotten the deputation of ragamuffins from a mulberry street alley that knocked at my office door one morning on a mysterious expedition for flowers, not for themselves, but for "a lady," and having obtained what they wanted, trooped off to bestow them, a ragged and dirty little band, with a solemnity that was quite unusual. it was not until an old man called the next day to thank me for the flowers that i found out they had decked the bier of a pauper, in the dark rear room where she lay waiting in her pine-board coffin for the city's hearse. yet, as i knew, that dismal alley with its bare brick walls, between which no sun ever rose or set, was the world of those children. it filled their young lives. probably not one of them had ever been out of the sight of it. they were too dirty, too ragged, and too generally disreputable, too well hidden in their slum besides, to come into line with the fresh air summer boarders. with such human instincts and cravings, forever unsatisfied, turned into a haunting curse; with appetite ground to keenest edge by a hunger that is never fed, the children of the poor grow up in joyless homes to lives of wearisome toil that claims them at an age when the play of their happier fellows has but just begun. has a yard of turf been laid and a vine been coaxed to grow within their reach, they are banished and barred out from it as from a heaven that is not for such as they. i came upon a couple of youngsters in a mulberry street yard a while ago that were chalking on the fence their first lesson in "writin'." and this is what they wrote: "keeb of te grass." they had it by heart, for there was not, i verily believe, a green sod within a quarter of a mile. home to them is an empty name. pleasure? a gentleman once catechized a ragged class in a down-town public school on this point, and recorded the result: out of forty-eight boys twenty had never seen the brooklyn bridge that was scarcely five minutes' walk away, three only had been in central park, fifteen had known the joy of a ride in a horse-car. the street, with its ash-barrels and its dirt, the river that runs foul with mud, are their domain. what training they receive is picked up there. and they are apt pupils. if the mud and the dirt are easily reflected in their lives, what wonder? scarce half-grown, such lads as these confront the world with the challenge to give them their due, too long withheld, or----. our jails supply the answer to the alternative. a little fellow who seemed clad in but a single rag was among the flotsam and jetsam stranded at police headquarters one day last summer. no one knew where he came from or where he belonged. the boy himself knew as little about it as anybody, and was the least anxious to have light shed on the subject after he had spent a night in the matron's nursery. the discovery that beds were provided for boys to sleep in there, and that he could have "a whole egg" and three slices of bread for breakfast put him on the best of terms with the world in general, and he decided that headquarters was "a bully place." he sang "mcginty" all through, with tenth avenue variations, for the police, and then settled down to the serious business of giving an account of himself. the examination went on after this fashion: "where do you go to church, my boy?" "we don't have no clothes to go to church." and indeed his appearance, as he was, in the door of any new york church would have caused a sensation. "well, where do you go to school, then?" "i don't go to school," with a snort of contempt. "where do you buy your bread?" "we don't buy no bread; we buy beer," said the boy, and it was eventually the saloon that led the police as a landmark to his "home." it was worthy of the boy. as he had said, his only bed was a heap of dirty straw on the floor, his daily diet a crust in the morning, nothing else. into the rooms of the children's aid society were led two little girls whose father had "busted up the house" and put them on the street after their mother died. another, who was turned out by her step-mother "because she had five of her own and could not afford to keep her," could not remember ever having been in church or sunday-school, and only knew the name of jesus through hearing people swear by it. she had no idea what they meant. these were specimens of the overflow from the tenements of our home-heathen that are growing up in new york's streets to-day, while tender-hearted men and women are busying themselves with the socks and the hereafter of well-fed little hottentots thousands of miles away. according to canon taylor, of york, one hundred and nine missionaries in the four fields of persia, palestine, arabia, and egypt spent one year and sixty thousand dollars in converting one little heathen girl. if there is nothing the matter with those missionaries, they might come to new york with a good deal better prospect of success. by those who lay flattering unction to their souls in the knowledge that to-day new york has, at all events, no brood of the gutters of tender years that can be homeless long unheeded, let it be remembered well through what effort this judgment has been averted. in thirty-seven years the children's aid society, that came into existence as an emphatic protest against the tenement corruption of the young, has sheltered quite three hundred thousand outcast, homeless, and orphaned children in its lodging-houses, and has found homes in the west for seventy thousand that had none. doubtless, as a mere stroke of finance, the five millions and a half thus spent were a wiser investment than to have let them grow up thieves and thugs. in the last fifteen years of this tireless battle for the safety of the state the intervention of the society for the prevention of cruelty to children has been invoked for , little ones: it has thrown its protection around more than twenty-five thousand helpless children, and has convicted nearly sixteen thousand wretches of child-beating and abuse. add to this the standing army of fifteen thousand dependent children in new york's asylums and institutions, and some idea is gained of the crop that is garnered day by day in the tenements, of the enormous force employed to check their inroads on our social life, and of the cause for apprehension that would exist did their efforts flag for ever so brief a time. nothing is now better understood than that the rescue of the children is the key to the problem of city poverty, as presented for our solution to-day: that character may be formed where to reform it would be a hopeless task. the concurrent testimony of all who have to undertake it at a later stage: that the young are naturally neither vicious nor hardened, simply weak and undeveloped, except by the bad influences of the street, makes this duty all the more urgent as well as hopeful. helping hands are held out on every side. to private charity the municipality leaves the entire care of its proletariat of tender years, lulling its conscience to sleep with liberal appropriations of money to foot the bills. indeed, it is held by those whose opinions are entitled to weight that it is far too liberal a paymaster for its own best interests and those of its wards. it deals with the evil in the seed to a limited extent in gathering in the outcast babies from the streets. to the ripe fruit the gates of its prisons, its reformatories, and its workhouses are opened wide the year round. what the showing would be at this end of the line were it not for the barriers wise charity has thrown across the broad highway to ruin--is building day by day--may be measured by such results as those quoted above in the span of a single life. chapter xvi. waifs of the city's slums. first among these barriers is the foundling asylum. it stands at the very outset of the waste of life that goes on in a population of nearly two millions of people; powerless to prevent it, though it gather in the outcasts by night and by day. in a score of years an army of twenty-five thousand of these forlorn little waifs have cried out from the streets of new york in arraignment of a christian civilization under the blessings of which the instinct of motherhood even was smothered by poverty and want. only the poor abandon their children. the stories of richly-dressed foundlings that are dished up in the newspapers at intervals are pure fiction. not one instance of even a well-dressed infant having been picked up in the streets is on record. they come in rags, a newspaper often the only wrap, semi-occasionally one in a clean slip with some evidence of loving care; a little slip of paper pinned on, perhaps, with some such message as this i once read, in a woman's trembling hand: "take care of johnny, for god's sake. i cannot." but even that is the rarest of all happenings. the city divides with the sisters of charity the task of gathering them in. the real foundlings, the children of the gutter that are picked up by the police, are the city's wards. in midwinter, when the poor shiver in their homes, and in the dog-days when the fierce heat and foul air of the tenements smother their babies by thousands, they are found, sometimes three and four in a night, in hallways, in areas and on the doorsteps of the rich, with whose comfort in luxurious homes the wretched mother somehow connects her own misery. perhaps, as the drowning man clutches at a straw, she hopes that these happier hearts may have love to spare even for her little one. in this she is mistaken. unauthorized babies especially are not popular in the abodes of the wealthy. it never happens outside of the story-books that a baby so deserted finds home and friends at once. its career, though rather more official, is less romantic, and generally brief. after a night spent at police headquarters it travels up to the infants' hospital on randall's island in the morning, fitted out with a number and a bottle, that seldom see much wear before they are laid aside for a fresh recruit. few outcast babies survive their desertion long. murder is the true name of the mother's crime in eight cases out of ten. of babies received at the randall's island hospital last year died, . per cent. but of the only were picked up in the streets, and among these the mortality was much greater, probably nearer ninety per cent., if the truth were told. the rest were born in the hospitals. the high mortality among the foundlings is not to be marvelled at. the wonder is, rather, that any survive. the stormier the night, the more certain is the police nursery to echo with the feeble cries of abandoned babes. often they come half dead from exposure. one live baby came in a little pine coffin which a policeman found an inhuman wretch trying to bury in an up-town lot. but many do not live to be officially registered as a charge upon the county. seventy-two dead babies were picked up in the streets last year. some of them were doubtless put out by very poor parents to save funeral expenses. in hard times the number of dead and live foundlings always increases very noticeably. but whether travelling by way of the morgue or the infants' hospital, the little army of waifs meets, reunited soon, in the trench in the potter's field where, if no medical student is in need of a subject, they are laid in squads of a dozen. most of the foundlings come from the east side, where they are left by young mothers without wedding-rings or other name than their own to bestow upon the baby, returning from the island hospital to face an unpitying world with the evidence of their shame. not infrequently they wear the bed-tick regimentals of the public charities, and thus their origin is easily enough traced. oftener no ray of light penetrates the gloom, and no effort is made to probe the mystery of sin and sorrow. this also is the policy pursued in the great foundling asylum of the sisters of charity in sixty-eighth street, known all over the world as sister irene's asylum. years ago the crib that now stands just inside the street door, under the great main portal, was placed outside at night; but it filled up too rapidly. the babies took to coming in little squads instead of in single file, and in self-defence the sisters were forced to take the cradle in. now the mother must bring her child inside and put it in the crib where she is seen by the sister on guard. no effort is made to question her, or discover the child's antecedents, but she is asked to stay and nurse her own and another baby. if she refuses, she is allowed to depart unhindered. if willing, she enters at once into the great family of the good sister who in twenty-one years has gathered as many thousand homeless babies into her fold. one was brought in when i was last in the asylum, in the middle of july, that received in its crib the number . the death-rate is of course lowered a good deal where exposure of the child is prevented. among the eleven hundred infants in the asylum it was something over nineteen per cent. last year; but among those actually received in the twelvemonth nearer twice that figure. even the nineteen per cent., remarkably low for a foundling asylum, was equal to the startling death-rate of gotham court in the cholera scourge. four hundred and sixty mothers, who could not or would not keep their own babies, did voluntary penance for their sin in the asylum last year by nursing a strange waif besides their own until both should be strong enough to take their chances in life's battle. an even larger number than the eleven hundred were "pay babies," put out to be nursed by "mothers" outside the asylum. the money thus earned pays the rent of hundreds of poor families. it is no trifle, quite half of the quarter of a million dollars contributed annually by the city for the support of the asylum. the procession of these nurse-mothers, when they come to the asylum on the first wednesday of each month to receive their pay and have the babies inspected by the sisters, is one of the sights of the city. the nurses, who are under strict supervision, grow to love their little charges and part from them with tears when, at the age of four or five, they are sent to western homes to be adopted. the sisters carefully encourage the home-feeling in the child as their strongest ally in seeking its mental and moral elevation, and the toddlers depart happy to join their "papas and mammas" in the far-away, unknown home. an infinitely more fiendish, if to surface appearances less deliberate, plan of child-murder than desertion has flourished in new york for years under the title of baby-farming. the name, put into plain english, means starving babies to death. the law has fought this most heinous of crimes by compelling the registry of all baby-farms. as well might it require all persons intending murder to register their purpose with time and place of the deed under the penalty of exemplary fines. murderers do not hang out a shingle. "baby-farms," said once mr. elbridge t. gerry, the president of the society charged with the execution of the law that was passed through his efforts, "are concerns by means of which persons, usually of disreputable character, eke out a living by taking two, or three, or four babies to board. they are the charges of outcasts, or illegitimate children. they feed them on sour milk, and give them paregoric to keep them quiet, until they die, when they get some young medical man without experience to sign a certificate to the board of health that the child died of inanition, and so the matter ends. the baby is dead, and there is no one to complain." a handful of baby-farms have been registered and licensed by the board of health with the approval of the society for the prevention of cruelty to children in the last five years, but none of this kind. the devil keeps the only complete register to be found anywhere. their trace is found oftenest by the coroner or the police; sometimes they may be discovered hiding in the advertising columns of certain newspapers, under the guise of the scarcely less heartless traffic in helpless children that is dignified with the pretence of adoption--for cash. an idea of how this scheme works was obtained through the disclosures in a celebrated divorce case, a year or two ago. the society has among its records a very recent case[ ] of a baby a week old (baby "blue eyes") that was offered for sale--adoption, the dealer called it--in a newspaper. the agent bought it after some haggling for a dollar, and arrested the woman slave-trader; but the law was powerless to punish her for her crime. twelve unfortunate women awaiting dishonored motherhood were found in her house. [footnote : society for the prevention of cruelty to children, case , , may , .] one gets a glimpse of the frightful depths to which human nature, perverted by avarice bred of ignorance and rasping poverty, can descend, in the mere suggestion of systematic insurance _for profit_ of children's lives. a woman was put on trial in this city last year for incredible cruelty in her treatment of a step-child. the evidence aroused a strong suspicion that a pitifully small amount of insurance on the child's life was one of the motives for the woman's savagery. a little investigation brought out the fact that three companies that were in the business of insuring children's lives, for sums varying from $ up, had issued not less than a million such policies! the premiums ranged from five to twenty-five cents a week. what untold horrors this business may conceal was suggested by a formal agreement entered into by some of the companies, "for the purpose of preventing speculation in the insurance of children's lives." by the terms of this compact, "no higher premium than ten cents could be accepted on children under six years old." barbarism forsooth! did ever heathen cruelty invent a more fiendish plot than the one written down between the lines of this legal paper? it is with a sense of glad relief that one turns from this misery to the brighter page of the helping hands stretched forth on every side to save the young and the helpless. new york is, i firmly believe, the most charitable city in the world. nowhere is there so eager a readiness to help, when it is known that help is worthily wanted; nowhere are such armies of devoted workers, nowhere such abundance of means ready to the hand of those who know the need and how rightly to supply it. its poverty, its slums, and its suffering are the result of unprecedented growth with the consequent disorder and crowding, and the common penalty of metropolitan greatness. if the structure shows signs of being top-heavy, evidences are not wanting--they are multiplying day by day--that patient toilers are at work among the underpinnings. the day nurseries, the numberless kindergartens and charitable schools in the poor quarters, the fresh air funds, the thousand and one charities that in one way or another reach the homes and the lives of the poor with sweetening touch, are proof that if much is yet to be done, if the need only grows with the effort, hearts and hands will be found to do it in ever-increasing measure. black as the cloud is it has a silver lining, bright with promise. new york is to-day a hundredfold cleaner, better, purer, city than it was even ten years ago. two powerful agents that were among the pioneers in this work of moral and physical regeneration stand in paradise park to-day as milestones on the rocky, uphill road. the handful of noble women, who braved the foul depravity of the old brewery to rescue its child victims, rolled away the first and heaviest bowlder, which legislatures and city councils had tackled in vain. the five points mission and the five points house of industry have accomplished what no machinery of government availed to do. sixty thousand children have been rescued by them from the streets and had their little feet set in the better way. their work still goes on, increasing and gathering in the waifs, instructing and feeding them, and helping their parents with advice and more substantial aid. their charity knows not creed or nationality. the house of industry is an enormous nursery-school with an average of more than four hundred day scholars and constant boarders--"outsiders" and "insiders." its influence is felt for many blocks around in that crowded part of the city. it is one of the most touching sights in the world to see a score of babies, rescued from homes of brutality and desolation, where no other blessing than a drunken curse was ever heard, saying their prayers in the nursery at bedtime. too often their white night-gowns hide tortured little bodies and limbs cruelly bruised by inhuman hands. in the shelter of this fold they are safe, and a happier little group one may seek long and far in vain. [illustration: prayer-time in the nursery--five points house of industry.] chapter xvii. the street arab. not all the barriers erected by society against its nether life, not the labor of unnumbered societies for the rescue and relief of its outcast waifs, can dam the stream of homelessness that issues from a source where the very name of home is a mockery. the street arab is as much of an institution in new york as newspaper row, to which he gravitates naturally, following his bohemian instinct. crowded out of the tenements to shift for himself, and quite ready to do it, he meets there the host of adventurous runaways from every state in the union and from across the sea, whom new york attracts with a queer fascination, as it attracts the older emigrants from all parts of the world. a census of the population in the newsboys' lodging-house on any night will show such an odd mixture of small humanity as could hardly be got together in any other spot. it is a mistake to think that they are helpless little creatures, to be pitied and cried over because they are alone in the world. the unmerciful "guying" the good man would receive, who went to them with such a programme, would soon convince him that that sort of pity was wasted, and would very likely give him the idea that they were a set of hardened little scoundrels, quite beyond the reach of missionary effort. but that would only be his second mistake. the street arab has all the faults and all the virtues of the lawless life he leads. vagabond that he is, acknowledging no authority and owing no allegiance to anybody or anything, with his grimy fist raised against society whenever it tries to coerce him, he is as bright and sharp as the weasel, which, among all the predatory beasts, he most resembles. his sturdy independence, love of freedom and absolute self-reliance, together with his rude sense of justice that enables him to govern his little community, not always in accordance with municipal law or city ordinances, but often a good deal closer to the saving line of "doing to others as one would be done by"--these are strong handles by which those who know how can catch the boy and make him useful. successful bankers, clergymen, and lawyers all over the country, statesmen in some instances of national repute, bear evidence in their lives to the potency of such missionary efforts. there is scarcely a learned profession, or branch of honorable business, that has not in the last twenty years borrowed some of its brightest light from the poverty and gloom of new york's streets. anyone, whom business or curiosity has taken through park row or across printing house square in the midnight hour, when the air is filled with the roar of great presses spinning with printers' ink on endless rolls of white paper the history of the world in the twenty-four hours that have just passed away, has seen little groups of these boys hanging about the newspaper offices; in winter, when snow is on the streets, fighting for warm spots around the grated vent-holes that let out the heat and steam from the underground press-rooms with their noise and clatter, and in summer playing craps and - on the curb for their hard-earned pennies, with all the absorbing concern of hardened gamblers. this is their beat. here the agent of the society for the prevention of cruelty to children finds those he thinks too young for "business," but does not always capture them. like rabbits in their burrows, the little ragamuffins sleep with at least one eye open, and every sense alert to the approach of danger: of their enemy, the policeman, whose chief business in life is to move them on, and of the agent bent on robbing them of their cherished freedom. at the first warning shout they scatter and are off. to pursue them would be like chasing the fleet-footed mountain goat in his rocky fastnesses. there is not an open door, a hidden turn or runway which they do not know, with lots of secret passages and short cuts no one else ever found. to steal a march on them is the only way. there is a coal chute from the sidewalk to the boiler-room in the sub-cellar of the post office which the society's officer found the boys had made into a sort of toboggan slide to a snug berth in wintry weather. they used to slyly raise the cover in the street, slide down in single file, and snuggle up to the warm boiler out of harm's way, as they thought. it proved a trap, however. the agent slid down himself one cold night--there was no other way of getting there--and, landing right in the midst of the sleeping colony, had it at his mercy. after repeated raids upon their headquarters, the boys forsook it last summer, and were next found herding under the shore-end of one of the east river banana docks, where they had fitted up a regular club-room that was shared by thirty or forty homeless boys and about a million rats. newspaper row is merely their headquarters. they are to be found all over the city, these street arabs, where the neighborhood offers a chance of picking up a living in the daytime and of "turning in" at night with a promise of security from surprise. in warm weather a truck in the street, a convenient out-house, or a dug-out in a hay-barge at the wharf make good bunks. two were found making their nest once in the end of a big iron pipe up by the harlem bridge, and an old boiler at the east river served as an elegant flat for another couple, who kept house there with a thief the police had long sought, little suspecting that he was hiding under their very noses for months together. when the children's aid society first opened its lodging-houses, and with some difficulty persuaded the boys that their charity was no "pious dodge" to trap them into a treasonable "sunday-school racket," its managers overheard a laughable discussion among the boys in their unwontedly comfortable beds--perhaps the first some of them had ever slept in--as to the relative merits of the different styles of their everyday berths. preferences were divided between the steam-grating and a sand-box; but the weight of the evidence was decided to be in favor of the sand-box, because, as its advocate put it, "you could curl all up in it." the new "find" was voted a good way ahead of any previous experience, however. "my eyes, ain't it nice!" said one of the lads, tucked in under his blanket up to the chin, and the roomful of boys echoed the sentiment. the compact silently made that night between the street arabs and their hosts has never been broken. they have been fast friends ever since. whence this army of homeless boys? is a question often asked. the answer is supplied by the procession of mothers that go out and in at police headquarters the year round, inquiring for missing boys, often not until they have been gone for weeks and months, and then sometimes rather as a matter of decent form than from any real interest in the lad's fate. the stereotyped promise of the clerks who fail to find his name on the books among the arrests, that he "will come back when he gets hungry," does not always come true. more likely he went away because he was hungry. some are orphans, actually or in effect, thrown upon the world when their parents were "sent up" to the island or to sing sing, and somehow overlooked by the "society," which thenceforth became the enemy to be shunned until growth and dirt and the hardships of the street, that make old early, offer some hope of successfully floating the lie that they are "sixteen." a drunken father explains the matter in other cases, as in that of john and willie, aged ten and eight, picked up by the police. they "didn't live nowhere," never went to school, could neither read nor write. their twelve-year-old sister kept house for the father, who turned the boys out to beg, or steal, or starve. grinding poverty and hard work beyond the years of the lad; blows and curses for breakfast, dinner, and supper; all these are recruiting agents for the homeless army. sickness in the house, too many mouths to feed: [illustration: "didn't live nowhere."] "we wuz six," said an urchin of twelve or thirteen i came across in the newsboys' lodging house, "and we ain't got no father. some on us had to go." and so he went, to make a living by blacking boots. the going is easy enough. there is very little to hold the boy who has never known anything but a home in a tenement. very soon the wild life in the streets holds him fast, and thenceforward by his own effort there is no escape. left alone to himself, he soon enough finds a place in the police books, and there would be no other answer to the second question: "what becomes of the boy?" than that given by the criminal courts every day in the week. but he is not left alone. society in our day has no such suicidal intention. right here, at the parting of the ways, it has thrown up the strongest of all its defences for itself and for the boy. what the society for the prevention of cruelty to children is to the baby-waif, the children's aid society is to the homeless boy at this real turning-point in his career. the good it has done cannot easily be over-estimated. its lodging-houses, its schools and its homes block every avenue of escape with their offer of shelter upon terms which the boy soon accepts, as on the whole cheap and fair. in the great duane street lodging-house for newsboys, they are succinctly stated in a "notice" over the door that reads thus: "boys who swear and chew tobacco cannot sleep here." there is another unwritten condition, viz.: that the boy shall be really without a home; but upon this the managers wisely do not insist too obstinately, accepting without too close inquiry his account of himself where that seems advisable, well knowing that many a home that sends forth such lads far less deserves the name than the one they are able to give them. [illustration: street arabs in sleeping quarters.] with these simple preliminaries the outcast boy may enter. rags do not count; to ignorance the door is only opened wider. dirt does not survive long, once within the walls of the lodging-house. it is the settled belief of the men who conduct them that soap and water are as powerful moral agents in their particular field as preaching, and they have experience to back them. the boy may come and go as he pleases, so long as he behaves himself. no restraint of any sort is put on his independence. he is as free as any other guest at a hotel, and, like him, he is expected to pay for what he gets. how wisely the men planned who laid the foundation of this great rescue work and yet carry it on, is shown by no single feature of it better than by this. no pauper was ever bred within these houses. nothing would have been easier with such material, or more fatal. but charity of the kind that pauperizes is furthest from their scheme. self-help is its very key-note, and it strikes a response in the boy's sturdiest trait that raises him at once to a level with the effort made in his behalf. recognized as an independent trader, capable of and bound to take care of himself, he is in a position to ask trust if trade has gone against him and he cannot pay cash for his "grub" and his bed, and to get it without question. he can even have the loan of the small capital required to start him in business with a boot-black's kit, or an armful of papers, if he is known or vouched for; but every cent is charged to him as carefully as though the transaction involved as many hundreds of dollars, and he is expected to pay back the money as soon as he has made enough to keep him going without it. he very rarely betrays the trust reposed in him. quite on the contrary, around this sound core of self-help, thus encouraged, habits of thrift and ambitious industry are seen to grow up in a majority of instances. the boy is "growing" a character, and he goes out to the man's work in life with that which for him is better than if he had found a fortune. six cents for his bed, six for his breakfast of bread and coffee, and six for his supper of pork and beans, as much as he can eat, are the rates of the boys' "hotel" for those who bunk together in the great dormitories that sometimes hold more than a hundred berths, two tiers high, made of iron, clean and neat. for the "upper ten," the young financiers who early take the lead among their fellows, hire them to work for wages and add a share of their profits to their own, and for the lads who are learning a trade and getting paid by the week, there are ten-cent beds with a locker and with curtains hung about. night schools and sunday night meetings are held in the building and are always well attended, in winter especially, when the lodging-houses are crowded. in summer the tow-path and the country attract their share of the bigger boys. the "sunday-school racket" has ceased to have terror for them. they follow the proceedings with the liveliest interest, quick to detect cant of any sort, should any stray in. no one has any just conception of what congregational singing is until he has witnessed a roomful of these boys roll up their sleeves and start in on "i am a lily of the valley." the swinging trapeze in the gymnasium on the top floor is scarcely more popular with the boys than this tremendously vocal worship. the street arab puts his whole little soul into what interests him for the moment, whether it be pulverizing a rival who has done a mean trick to a smaller boy, or attending at the "gospel shop" on sundays. this characteristic made necessary some extra supervision when recently the lads in the duane street lodging house "chipped in" and bought a set of boxing gloves. the trapeze suffered a temporary eclipse until this new toy had been tested to the extent of several miniature black eyes upon which soap had no effect, and sundry little scores had been settled that evened things up, as it were, for a fresh start. [illustration: getting ready for supper in the newsboys' lodging house.] i tried one night, not with the best of success i confess, to photograph the boys in their wash-room, while they were cleaning up for supper. they were quite turbulent, to the disgust of one of their number who assumed, unasked, the office of general manager of the show, and expressed his mortification to me in very polite language. "if they would only behave, sir!" he complained, "you could make a good picture." "yes," i said, "but it isn't in them, i suppose." "no, b'gosh!" said he, lapsing suddenly from grace under the provocation, "them kids ain't got no sense, nohow!" the society maintains five of these boys' lodging houses, and one for girls, in the city. the duane street lodging house alone has sheltered since its foundation in nearly a quarter of a million different boys, at a total expense of a good deal less than half a million dollars. of this amount, up to the beginning of the present year, the boys and the earnings of the house had contributed no less than $ , . . in all of the lodging-houses together, , boys and girls were sheltered and taught last year. the boys saved up no inconsiderable amount of money in the savings banks provided for them in the houses, a simple system of lock-boxes that are emptied for their benefit once a month. besides these, the society has established and operates in the tenement districts twenty-one industrial schools, co-ordinate with the public schools in authority, for the children of the poor who cannot find room in the city's school-houses, or are too ragged to go there; two free reading-rooms, a dressmaking and typewriting school and a laundry for the instruction of girls; a sick-children's mission in the city and two on the sea-shore, where poor mothers may take their babies; a cottage by the sea for crippled girls, and a brush factory for crippled boys in forty-fourth street. the italian school in leonard street, alone, had an average attendance of over six hundred pupils last year. the daily average attendance at all of them was , , while , children were registered and taught. when the fact that there were among these , children of drunken parents, and that had been found begging in the street, is contrasted with the showing of $ , . deposited in the school savings banks by , pupils, something like an adequate idea is gained of the scope of the society's work in the city. a large share of it, in a sense the largest, certainly that productive of the happiest results, lies outside of the city, however. from the lodging-houses and the schools are drawn the battalions of young emigrants that go every year to homes in the far west, to grow up self-supporting men and women safe from the temptations and the vice of the city. their number runs far up in the thousands. the society never loses sight of them. the records show that the great mass, with this start given them, become useful citizens, an honor to the communities in which their lot is cast. not a few achieve place and prominence in their new surroundings. rarely bad reports come of them. occasionally one comes back, lured by homesickness even for the slums; but the briefest stay generally cures the disease for good. i helped once to see a party off for michigan, the last sent out by that great friend of the homeless children, mrs. astor, before she died. in the party was a boy who had been an "insider" at the five points house of industry, and brought along as his only baggage a padlocked and iron-bound box that contained all his wealth, two little white mice of the friendliest disposition. they were going with him out to live on the fat of the land in the fertile west, where they would never be wanting for a crust. alas! for the best-laid plans of mice and men. the western diet did not agree with either. i saw their owner some months later in the old home at the five points. he had come back, walking part of the way, and was now pleading to be sent out once more. he had at last had enough of the city. his face fell when i asked him about the mice. it was a sad story, indeed. "they had so much corn to eat," he said, "and they couldn't stand it. they burned all up inside, and then they busted." mrs. astor set an example during her noble and useful life in gathering every year a company of homeless boys from the streets and sending them to good homes, with decent clothes on their backs--she had sent out no less than thirteen hundred when she died, and left funds to carry on her work--that has been followed by many who, like her, had the means and the heart for such a labor of love. most of the lodging-houses and school-buildings of the society were built by some one rich man or woman who paid all the bills, and often objected to have even the name of the giver made known to the world. it is one of the pleasant experiences of life that give one hope and courage in the midst of all this misery to find names, that stand to the unthinking mass only for money-getting and grasping, associated with such unheralded benefactions that carry their blessings down to generations yet unborn. it is not so long since i found the carriage of a woman, whose name is synonymous with millions, standing in front of the boys' lodging-house in thirty-fifth street. its owner was at that moment busy with a surgeon making a census of the crippled lads in the brush-shop, the most miserable of all the society's charges, as a preliminary to fitting them out with artificial limbs. farther uptown than any reared by the children's aid society, in sixty-seventh street, stands a lodging-house intended for boys of a somewhat larger growth than most of those whom the society shelters. unlike the others, too, it was built by the actual labor of the young men it was designed to benefit. in the day when more of the boys from our streets shall find their way to it and to the new york trade schools, of which it is a kind of home annex, we shall be in a fair way of solving in the most natural of all ways the question what to do with this boy, in spite of the ignorant opposition of the men whose tyrannical policy is now to blame for the showing that, out of twenty-three millions of dollars paid annually to mechanics in the building trades in this city, less than six millions go to the workman born in new york, while his boy roams the streets with every chance of growing up a vagabond and next to none of becoming an honest artisan. colonel auchmuty is a practical philanthropist to whom the growing youth of new york will one day owe a debt of gratitude not easily paid. the progress of the system of trade schools established by him, at which a young man may acquire the theory as well as the practice of a trade in a few months at a merely nominal outlay, has not been nearly as rapid as was to be desired, though the fact that other cities are copying the model, with their master mechanics as the prime movers in the enterprise, testifies to its excellence. but it has at last taken a real start, and with union men and even the officers of unions now sending their sons to the trade schools to be taught,[ ] one may perhaps be permitted to hope that an era of better sense is dawning that shall witness a rescue work upon lines which, when the leaven has fairly had time to work, will put an end to the existence of the new york street arab, of the native breed at least. [footnote : colonel auchmuty's own statement.] chapter xviii. the reign of rum. where god builds a church the devil builds next door--a saloon, is an old saying that has lost its point in new york. either the devil was on the ground first, or he has been doing a good deal more in the way of building. i tried once to find out how the account stood, and counted to protestant churches, chapels, and places of worship of every kind below fourteenth street, , saloons. the worst half of the tenement population lives down there, and it has to this day the worst half of the saloons. uptown the account stands a little better, but there are easily ten saloons to every church to-day. i am afraid, too, that the congregations are larger by a good deal; certainly the attendance is steadier and the contributions more liberal the week round, sunday included. turn and twist it as we may, over against every bulwark for decency and morality which society erects, the saloon projects its colossal shadow, omen of evil wherever it falls into the lives of the poor. nowhere is its mark so broad or so black. to their misery it sticketh closer than a brother, persuading them that within its doors only is refuge, relief. it has the best of the argument, too, for it is true, worse pity, that in many a tenement-house block the saloon is the one bright and cheery and humanly decent spot to be found. it is a sorry admission to make, that to bring the rest of the neighborhood up to the level of the saloon would be one way of squelching it; but it is so. wherever the tenements thicken, it multiplies. upon the direst poverty of their crowds it grows fat and prosperous, levying upon it a tax heavier than all the rest of its grievous burdens combined. it is not yet two years since the excise board made the rule that no three corners of any street-crossing, not already so occupied, should thenceforward be licensed for rum-selling. and the tardy prohibition was intended for the tenement districts. nowhere else is there need of it. one may walk many miles through the homes of the poor searching vainly for an open reading-room, a cheerful coffee-house, a decent club that is not a cloak for the traffic in rum. the dramshop yawns at every step, the poor man's club, his forum and his haven of rest when weary and disgusted with the crowding, the quarrelling, and the wretchedness at home. with the poison dealt out there he takes his politics, in quality not far apart. as the source, so the stream. the rumshop turns the political crank in new york. the natural yield is rum politics. of what that means, successive boards of aldermen, composed in a measure, if not of a majority, of dive-keepers, have given new york a taste. the disgrace of the infamous "boodle board" will be remembered until some corruption even fouler crops out and throws it into the shade. what relation the saloon bears to the crowds, let me illustrate by a comparison. below fourteenth street were, when the health department took its first accurate census of the tenements a year and a half ago, , of the , buildings classed as such in the whole city. of the eleven hundred thousand tenants, not quite half a million, embracing a host of more than sixty-three thousand children under five years of age, lived below that line. below it, also, were of the cheap lodging-houses accounted for by the police last year, with a total of four millions and a half of lodgers for the twelvemonth, of the city's pawnshops, and , of its , saloons. the four most densely peopled precincts, the fourth, sixth, tenth, and eleventh, supported together in round numbers twelve hundred saloons, and their returns showed twenty-seven per cent. of the whole number of arrests for the year. the eleventh precinct, that has the greatest and the poorest crowds of all--it is the tenth ward--and harbored one-third of the army of homeless lodgers and fourteen per cent. of all the prisoners of the year, kept saloons going in . it is not on record that one of them all failed for want of support. a number of them, on the contrary, had brought their owners wealth and prominence. from their bars these eminent citizens stepped proudly into the councils of the city and the state. the very floor of one of the bar-rooms, in a neighborhood that lately resounded with the cry for bread of starving workmen, is paved with silver dollars! east side poverty is not alone in thus rewarding the tyrants that sweeten its cup of bitterness with their treacherous poison. the fourth ward points with pride to the honorable record of the conductors of its "tub of blood," and a dozen bar-rooms with less startling titles; the west side to the wealth and "social" standing of the owners of such resorts as the "witches' broth" and the "plug hat" in the region of hell's kitchen three-cent whiskey, names ominous of the concoctions brewed there and of their fatally generous measure. another ward, that boasts some of the best residences and the bluest blood on manhattan island, honors with political leadership in the ruling party the proprietor of one of the most disreputable black-and-tan dives and dancing-hells to be found anywhere. criminals and policemen alike do him homage. the list might be strung out to make texts for sermons with a stronger home flavor than many that are preached in our pulpits on sunday. but i have not set out to write the political history of new york. besides, the list would not be complete. secret dives are skulking in the slums and out of them, that are not labelled respectable by a board of excise and support no "family entrance." their business, like that of the stale-beer dives, is done through a side-door the week through. no one knows the number of unlicensed saloons in the city. those who have made the matter a study estimate it at a thousand, more or less. the police make occasional schedules of a few and report them to headquarters. perhaps there is a farce in the police court, and there the matter ends. rum and "influence" are synonymous terms. the interests of the one rarely suffer for the want of attention from the other. [illustration: a downtown "morgue."] with the exception of these free lances that treat the law openly with contempt, the saloons all hang out a sign announcing in fat type that no beer or liquor is sold to children. in the down-town "morgues" that make the lowest degradation of tramp-humanity pan out a paying interest, as in the "reputable resorts" uptown where inspector byrnes's men spot their worthier quarry elbowing citizens whom the idea of associating with a burglar would give a shock they would not get over for a week, this sign is seen conspicuously displayed. though apparently it means submission to a beneficent law, in reality the sign is a heartless, cruel joke. i doubt if one child in a thousand, who brings his growler to be filled at the average new york bar, is sent away empty-handed, if able to pay for what he wants. i once followed a little boy, who shivered in bare feet on a cold november night so that he seemed in danger of smashing his pitcher on the icy pavement, into a mulberry street saloon where just such a sign hung on the wall, and forbade the barkeeper to serve the boy. the man was as astonished at my interference as if i had told him to shut up his shop and go home, which in fact i might have done with as good a right, for it was after a.m., the legal closing hour. he was mighty indignant too, and told me roughly to go away and mind my business, while he filled the pitcher. the law prohibiting the selling of beer to minors is about as much respected in the tenement-house districts as the ordinance against swearing. newspaper readers will recall the story, told little more than a year ago, of a boy who after carrying beer a whole day for a shopful of men over on the east side, where his father worked, crept into the cellar to sleep off the effects of his own share in the rioting. it was saturday evening. sunday his parents sought him high and low; but it was not until monday morning, when the shop was opened, that he was found, killed and half-eaten by the rats that overran the place. all the evil the saloon does in breeding poverty and in corrupting politics; all the suffering it brings into the lives of its thousands of innocent victims, the wives and children of drunkards it sends forth to curse the community; its fostering of crime and its shielding of criminals--it is all as nothing to this, its worst offence. in its affinity for the thief there is at least this compensation that, as it makes, it also unmakes him. it starts him on his career only to trip him up and betray him into the hands of the law, when the rum he exchanged for his honesty has stolen his brains as well. for the corruption of the child there is no restitution. none is possible. it saps the very vitals of society; undermines its strongest defences, and delivers them over to the enemy. fostered and filled by the saloon, the "growler" looms up in the new york street boy's life, baffling the most persistent efforts to reclaim him. there is no escape from it; no hope for the boy, once its blighting grip is upon him. thenceforward the logic of the slums, that the world which gave him poverty and ignorance for his portion "owes him a living," is his creed, and the career of the "tough" lies open before him, a beaten track to be blindly followed to a bad end in the wake of the growler. chapter xix. the harvest of tares. the "growler" stood at the cradle of the tough. it bosses him through his boyhood apprenticeship in the "gang," and leaves him, for a time only, at the door of the jail that receives him to finish his training and turn him loose upon the world a thief, to collect by stealth or by force the living his philosophy tells him that it owes him, and will not voluntarily surrender without an equivalent in the work which he hates. from the moment he, almost a baby, for the first time carries the growler for beer, he is never out of its reach, and the two soon form a partnership that lasts through life. it has at least the merit, such as it is, of being loyal. the saloon is the only thing that takes kindly to the lad. honest play is interdicted in the streets. the policeman arrests the ball-tossers, and there is no room in the back-yard. in one of these, between two enormous tenements that swarmed with children, i read this ominous notice: "_all boys caught in this yard will be delt with accorden to law._" along the water-fronts, in the holes of the dock-rats, and on the avenues, the young tough finds plenty of kindred spirits. every corner has its gang, not always on the best of terms with the rivals in the next block, but all with a common programme: defiance of law and order, and with a common ambition: to get "pinched," _i.e._, arrested, so as to pose as heroes before their fellows. a successful raid on the grocer's till is a good mark, "doing up" a policeman cause for promotion. the gang is an institution in new york. the police deny its existence while nursing the bruises received in nightly battles with it that tax their utmost resources. the newspapers chronicle its doings daily, with a sensational minuteness of detail that does its share toward keeping up its evil traditions and inflaming the ambition of its members to be as bad as the worst. the gang is the ripe fruit of tenement-house growth. it was born there, endowed with a heritage of instinctive hostility to restraint by a generation that sacrificed home to freedom, or left its country for its country's good. the tenement received and nursed the seed. the intensity of the american temper stood sponsor to the murderer in what would have been the common "bruiser" of a more phlegmatic clime. new york's tough represents the essence of reaction against the old and the new oppression, nursed in the rank soil of its slums. its gangs are made up of the american-born sons of english, irish, and german parents. they reflect exactly the conditions of the tenements from which they sprang. murder is as congenial to cherry street or to battle row, as quiet and order to murray hill. the "assimilation" of europe's oppressed hordes, upon which our fourth of july orators are fond of dwelling, is perfect. the product is our own. such is the genesis of new york's gangs. their history is not so easily written. it would embrace the largest share of our city's criminal history for two generations back, every page of it dyed red with blood. the guillotine paris set up a century ago to avenge its wrongs was not more relentless, or less discriminating, than this nemesis of new york. the difference is of intent. murder with that was the serious purpose; with ours it is the careless incident, the wanton brutality of the moment. bravado and robbery are the real purposes of the gangs; the former prompts the attack upon the policeman, the latter that upon the citizen. within a single week last spring, the newspapers recorded six murderous assaults on unoffending people, committed by young highwaymen in the public streets. how many more were suppressed by the police, who always do their utmost to hush up such outrages "in the interests of justice," i shall not say. there has been no lack of such occurrences since, as the records of the criminal courts show. in fact, the past summer has seen, after a period of comparative quiescence of the gangs, a reawakening to renewed turbulence of the east side tribes, and over and over again the reserve forces of a precinct have been called out to club them into submission. it is a peculiarity of the gangs that they usually break out in spots, as it were. when the west side is in a state of eruption, the east side gangs "lie low," and when the toughs along the north river are nursing broken heads at home, or their revenge in sing sing, fresh trouble breaks out in the tenements east of third avenue. this result is brought about by the very efforts made by the police to put down the gangs. in spite of local feuds, there is between them a species of ruffianly freemasonry that readily admits to full fellowship a hunted rival in the face of the common enemy. the gangs belt the city like a huge chain from the battery to harlem--the collective name of the "chain gang" has been given to their scattered groups in the belief that a much closer connection exists between them than commonly supposed--and the ruffian for whom the east side has became too hot, has only to step across town and change his name, a matter usually much easier for him than to change his shirt, to find a sanctuary in which to plot fresh outrages. the more notorious he is, the warmer the welcome, and if he has "done" his man he is by common consent accorded the leadership in his new field. from all this it might be inferred that the new york tough is a very fierce individual, of indomitable courage and naturally as blood-thirsty as a tiger. on the contrary he is an arrant coward. his instincts of ferocity are those of the wolf rather than the tiger. it is only when he hunts with the pack that he is dangerous. then his inordinate vanity makes him forget all fear or caution in the desire to distinguish himself before his fellows, a result of his swallowing all the flash literature and penny-dreadfuls he can beg, borrow, or steal--and there is never any lack of them--and of the strongly dramatic element in his nature that is nursed by such a diet into rank and morbid growth. he is a queer bundle of contradictions at all times. drunk and foul-mouthed, ready to cut the throat of a defenceless stranger at the toss of a cent, fresh from beating his decent mother black and blue to get money for rum,[ ] he will resent as an intolerable insult the imputation that he is "no gentleman." fighting his battles with the coward's weapons, the brass-knuckles and the deadly sand-bag, or with brick-bats from the housetops, he is still in all seriousness a lover of fair play, and as likely as not, when his gang has downed a policeman in a battle that has cost a dozen broken heads, to be found next saving a drowning child or woman at the peril of his own life. it depends on the angle at which he is seen, whether he is a cowardly ruffian, or a possible hero with different training and under different social conditions. ready wit he has at all times, and there is less meanness in his make-up than in that of the bully of the london slums; but an intense love of show and applause, that carries him to any length of bravado, which his twin-brother across the sea entirely lacks. i have a very vivid recollection of seeing one of his tribe, a robber and murderer before he was nineteen, go to the gallows unmoved, all fear of the rope overcome, as it seemed, by the secret, exultant pride of being the centre of a first-class show, shortly to be followed by that acme of tenement-life bliss, a big funeral. he had his reward. his name is to this day a talisman among west side ruffians, and is proudly borne by the gang of which, up till the night when he "knocked out his man," he was an obscure though aspiring member. [footnote : this very mother will implore the court with tears, the next morning, to let her renegade son off. a poor woman, who claimed to be the widow of a soldier, applied to the tenement-house relief committee of the king's daughters last summer, to be sent to some home, as she had neither kith nor kin to care for her. upon investigation it was found that she had four big sons, all toughs, who beat her regularly and took from her all the money she could earn or beg; she was "a respectable woman, of good habits," the inquiry developed, and lied only to shield her rascally sons.] [illustration: a growler gang in session.] the crime that made mcgloin famous was the cowardly murder of an unarmed saloonkeeper who came upon the gang while it was sacking his bar-room at the dead of night. mcgloin might easily have fled, but disdained to "run for a dutchman." his act was a fair measure of the standard of heroism set up by his class in its conflicts with society. the finish is worthy of the start. the first long step in crime taken by the half-grown boy, fired with ambition to earn a standing in his gang, is usually to rob a "lush," _i.e._, a drunken man who has strayed his way, likely enough is lying asleep in a hallway. he has served an apprenticeship on copper-bottom wash-boilers and like articles found lying around loose, and capable of being converted into cash enough to give the growler a trip or two; but his first venture at robbery moves him up into full fellowship at once. he is no longer a "kid," though his years may be few, but a tough with the rest. he may even in time--he is reasonably certain of it--get his name in the papers as a murderous scoundrel, and have his cup of glory filled to the brim. i came once upon a gang of such young rascals passing the growler after a successful raid of some sort, down at the west thirty-seventh street dock, and, having my camera along, offered to "take" them. they were not old and wary enough to be shy of the photographer, whose acquaintance they usually first make in handcuffs and the grip of a policeman; or their vanity overcame their caution. it is entirely in keeping with the tough's character that he should love of all things to pose before a photographer, and the ambition is usually the stronger the more repulsive the tough. these were of that sort, and accepted the offer with great readiness, dragging into their group a disreputable-looking sheep that roamed about with them (the slaughter-houses were close at hand) as one of the band. the homeliest ruffian of the lot, who insisted on being taken with the growler to his "mug," took the opportunity to pour what was left in it down his throat and this caused a brief unpleasantness, but otherwise the performance was a success. while i was getting the camera ready, i threw out a vague suggestion of cigarette-pictures, and it took root at once. nothing would do then but that i must take the boldest spirits of the company "in character." one of them tumbled over against a shed, as if asleep, while two of the others bent over him, searching his pockets with a deftness that was highly suggestive. this, they explained for my benefit, was to show how they "did the trick." the rest of the band were so impressed with the importance of this exhibition that they insisted on crowding into the picture by climbing upon the shed, sitting on the roof with their feet dangling over the edge, and disposing themselves in every imaginable manner within view, as they thought. lest any reader be led into the error of supposing them to have been harmless young fellows enjoying themselves in peace, let me say that within half an hour after our meeting, when i called at the police station three blocks away, i found there two of my friends of the "montgomery guards" under arrest for robbing a jewish pedlar who had passed that way after i left them, and trying to saw his head off, as they put it, "just for fun. the sheeny cum along an' the saw was there, an' we socked it to him." the prisoners were described to me by the police as dennis, "the bum," and "mud" foley. it is not always that their little diversions end as harmlessly as did this, even from the standpoint of the jew, who was pretty badly hurt. not far from the preserves of the montgomery guards, in poverty gap, directly opposite the scene of the murder to which i have referred in a note explaining the picture of the cunningham family (p. ), a young lad, who was the only support of his aged parents, was beaten to death within a few months by the "alley gang," for the same offence that drew down the displeasure of its neighbors upon the pedlar: that of being at work trying to earn an honest living. i found a part of the gang asleep the next morning, before young healey's death was known, in a heap of straw on the floor of an unoccupied room in the same row of rear tenements in which the murdered boy's home was. one of the tenants, who secretly directed me to their lair, assuring me that no worse scoundrels went unhung, ten minutes later gave the gang, to its face, an official character for sobriety and inoffensiveness that very nearly startled me into an unguarded rebuke of his duplicity. i caught his eye in time and held my peace. the man was simply trying to protect his own home, while giving such aid as he safely could toward bringing the murderous ruffians to justice. the incident shows to what extent a neighborhood may be terrorized by a determined gang of these reckless toughs. in poverty gap there were still a few decent people left. when it comes to hell's kitchen, or to its compeers at the other end of thirty-ninth street over by the east river, and further down first avenue in "the village," the rag gang and its allies have no need of fearing treachery in their periodical battles with the police. the entire neighborhood takes a hand on these occasions, the women in the front rank, partly from sheer love of the "fun," but chiefly because husbands, brothers, and sweet-hearts are in the fight to a man and need their help. chimney-tops form the staple of ammunition then, and stacks of loose brick and paving-stones, carefully hoarded in upper rooms as a prudent provision against emergencies. regular patrol posts are established by the police on the housetops in times of trouble in these localities, but even then they do not escape whole-skinned, if, indeed, with their lives; neither does the gang. the policeman knows of but one cure for the tough, the club, and he lays it on without stint whenever and wherever he has the chance, knowing right well that, if caught at a disadvantage, he will get his outlay back with interest. words are worse than wasted in the gang-districts. it is a blow at sight, and the tough thus accosted never stops to ask questions. unless he is "wanted" for some signal outrage, the policeman rarely bothers with arresting him. he can point out half a dozen at sight against whom indictments are pending by the basketful, but whom no jail ever held many hours. they only serve to make him more reckless, for he knows that the political backing that has saved him in the past can do it again. it is a commodity that is only exchangeable "for value received," and it is not hard to imagine what sort of value is in demand. the saloon, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, stands behind the bargain. for these reasons, as well as because he knows from frequent experience his own way to be the best, the policeman lets the gangs alone except when they come within reach of his long night-stick. they have their "club-rooms" where they meet, generally in a tenement, sometimes under a pier or a dump, to carouse, play cards, and plan their raids; their "fences," who dispose of the stolen property. when the necessity presents itself for a descent upon the gang after some particularly flagrant outrage, the police have a task on hand that is not of the easiest. the gangs, like foxes, have more than one hole to their dens. in some localities, where the interior of a block is filled with rear tenements, often set at all sorts of odd angles, surprise alone is practicable. pursuit through the winding ways and passages is impossible. the young thieves know them all by heart. they have their runways over roofs and fences which no one else could find. their lair is generally selected with special reference to its possibilities of escape. once pitched upon, its occupation by the gang, with its ear-mark of nightly symposiums, "can-rackets" in the slang of the street, is the signal for a rapid deterioration of the tenement, if that is possible. relief is only to be had by ousting the intruders. an instance came under my notice in which valuable property had been well-nigh ruined by being made the thoroughfare of thieves by night and by day. they had chosen it because of a passage that led through the block by way of several connecting halls and yards. the place came soon to be known as "murderers alley." complaint was made to the board of health, as a last resort, of the condition of the property. the practical inspector who was sent to report upon it suggested to the owner that he build a brick-wall in a place where it would shut off communication between the streets, and he took the advice. within the brief space of a few months the house changed character entirely, and became as decent as it had been before the convenient runway was discovered. [illustration: typical toughs (from the rogues' gallery).] this was in the sixth ward, where the infamous whyo gang until a few years ago absorbed the worst depravity of the bend and what is left of the five points. the gang was finally broken up when its leader was hanged for murder after a life of uninterrupted and unavenged crimes, the recital of which made his father confessor turn pale, listening in the shadow of the scaffold, though many years of labor as chaplain of the tombs had hardened him to such rehearsals. the great whyo had been a "power in the ward," handy at carrying elections for the party or faction that happened to stand in need of his services and was willing to pay for them in money or in kind. other gangs have sprung up since with as high ambition and a fair prospect of outdoing their predecessor. the conditions that bred it still exist, practically unchanged. inspector byrnes is authority for the statement that throughout the city the young tough has more "ability" and "nerve" than the thief whose example he successfully emulates. he begins earlier, too. speaking of the increase of the native element among criminal prisoners exhibited in the census returns of the last thirty years,[ ] the rev. fred. h. wines says, "their youth is a very striking fact." had he confined his observations to the police courts of new york, he might have emphasized that remark and found an explanation of the discovery that "the ratio of prisoners in cities is two and one-quarter times as great as in the country at large," a computation that takes no account of the reformatories for juvenile delinquents, or the exhibit would have been still more striking. of the , persons arrested by the police in , , were under twenty years old. the last report of the society for the prevention of cruelty to children enumerates, as "a few typical cases," eighteen "professional cracksmen," between nine and fifteen years old, who had been caught with burglars' tools, or in the act of robbery. four of them, hardly yet in long trousers, had "held up" a wayfarer in the public street and robbed him of $ . one, aged sixteen, "was the leader of a noted gang of young robbers in forty-ninth street. he committed murder, for which he is now serving a term of nineteen years in state's prison." four of the eighteen were girls and quite as bad as the worst. in a few years they would have been living with the toughs of their choice without the ceremony of a marriage, egging them on by their pride in their lawless achievements, and fighting side by side with them in their encounters with the "cops." [footnote : "the percentage of foreign-born prisoners in , as compared with that of natives, was more than five times that of native prisoners, now ( ) it is less than double."--american prisons in the tenth census.] the exploits of the paradise park gang in the way of highway robbery showed last summer that the embers of the scattered whyo gang, upon the wreck of which it grew, were smouldering still. the hanging of driscoll broke up the whyos because they were a comparatively small band, and, with the incomparable master-spirit gone, were unable to resist the angry rush of public indignation that followed the crowning outrage. this is the history of the passing away of famous gangs from time to time. the passing is more apparent than real, however. some other daring leader gathers the scattered elements about him soon, and the war on society is resumed. a bare enumeration of the names of the best-known gangs would occupy pages of this book. the rock gang, the rag gang, the stable gang, and the short tail gang down about the "hook" have all achieved bad eminence, along with scores of others that have not paraded so frequently in the newspapers. by day they loaf in the corner-groggeries on their beat, at night they plunder the stores along the avenues, or lie in wait at the river for unsteady feet straying their way. the man who is sober and minds his own business they seldom molest, unless he be a stranger inquiring his way, or a policeman and the gang twenty against the one. the tipsy wayfarer is their chosen victim, and they seldom have to look for him long. one has not far to go to the river from any point in new york. the man who does not know where he is going is sure to reach it sooner or later. should he foolishly resist or make an outcry--dead men tell no tales. "floaters" come ashore every now and then with pockets turned inside out, not always evidence of a post-mortem inspection by dock-rats. police patrol the rivers as well as the shore on constant look-out for these, but seldom catch up with them. if overtaken after a race during which shots are often exchanged from the boats, the thieves have an easy way of escaping and at the same time destroying the evidence against them; they simply upset the boat. they swim, one and all, like real rats; the lost plunder can be recovered at leisure the next day by diving or grappling. the loss of the boat counts for little. another is stolen, and the gang is ready for business again. [illustration: hunting river thieves.] the fiction of a social "club," which most of the gangs keep up, helps them to a pretext for blackmailing the politicians and the storekeepers in their bailiwick at the annual seasons of their picnic, or ball. the "thieves' ball" is as well known and recognized an institution on the east side as the charity ball in a different social stratum, although it does not go by that name, in print at least. indeed, the last thing a new york tough will admit is that he is a thief. he dignifies his calling with the pretence of gambling. he does not steal: he "wins" your money or your watch, and on the police returns he is a "speculator." if, when he passes around the hat for "voluntary" contributions, any storekeeper should have the temerity to refuse to chip in, he may look for a visit from the gang on the first dark night, and account himself lucky if his place escapes being altogether wrecked. the hell's kitchen gang and the rag gang have both distinguished themselves within recent times by blowing up objectionable stores with stolen gunpowder. but if no such episode mar the celebration, the excursion comes off and is the occasion for a series of drunken fights that as likely as not end in murder. no season has passed within my memory that has not seen the police reserves called out to receive some howling pandemonium returning from a picnic grove on the hudson or on the sound. at least one peaceful community up the river, that had borne with this nuisance until patience had ceased to be a virtue, received a boat-load of such picnickers in a style befitting the occasion and the cargo. the outraged citizens planted a howitzer on the dock, and bade the party land at their peril. with the loaded gun pointed dead at them, the furious toughs gave up and the peace was not broken on the hudson that day, at least not ashore. it is good cause for congratulation that the worst of all forms of recreation popular among the city's toughs, the moonlight picnic, has been effectually discouraged. its opportunities for disgraceful revelry and immorality were unrivalled anywhere. in spite of influence and protection, the tough reaches eventually the end of his rope. occasionally--not too often--there is a noose on it. if not, the world that owes him a living, according to his creed, will insist on his earning it on the safe side of a prison wall. a few, a very few, have been clubbed into an approach to righteousness from the police standpoint. the condemned tough goes up to serve his "bit" or couple of "stretches," followed by the applause of his gang. in the prison he meets older thieves than himself, and sits at their feet listening with respectful admiration to their accounts of the great doings that sent them before. he returns with the brand of the jail upon him, to encounter the hero-worship of his old associates as an offset to the cold shoulder given him by all the rest of the world. even if he is willing to work, disgusted with the restraint and hard labor of prison life, and in a majority of cases that thought is probably uppermost in his mind, no one will have him around. if, with the assistance of inspector byrnes, who is a philanthropist in his own practical way, he secures a job, he is discharged on the slightest provocation, and for the most trifling fault. very soon he sinks back into his old surroundings, to rise no more until he is lost to view in the queer, mysterious way in which thieves and fallen women disappear. no one can tell how. in the ranks of criminals he never rises above that of the "laborer," the small thief or burglar, or general crook, who blindly does the work planned for him by others, and runs the biggest risk for the poorest pay. it cannot be said that the "growler" brought him luck, or its friendship fortune. and yet, if his misdeeds have helped to make manifest that all effort to reclaim his kind must begin with the conditions of life against which his very existence is a protest, even the tough has not lived in vain. this measure of credit at least should be accorded him, that, with or without his good-will, he has been a factor in urging on the battle against the slums that bred him. it is a fight in which eternal vigilance is truly the price of liberty and the preservation of society. chapter xx. the working girls of new york. of the harvest of tares, sown in iniquity and reaped in wrath, the police returns tell the story. the pen that wrote the "song of the shirt" is needed to tell of the sad and toil-worn lives of new york's working-women. the cry echoes by night and by day through its tenements: oh, god! that bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap! six months have not passed since at a great public meeting in this city, the working women's society reported: "it is a known fact that men's wages cannot fall below a limit upon which they can exist, but woman's wages have no limit, since the paths of shame are always open to her. it is simply impossible for any woman to live without assistance on the low salary a saleswoman earns, without depriving herself of real necessities.... it is inevitable that they must in many instances resort to evil." it was only a few brief weeks before that verdict was uttered, that the community was shocked by the story of a gentle and refined woman who, left in direst poverty to earn her own living alone among strangers, threw herself from her attic window, preferring death to dishonor. "i would have done any honest work, even to scrubbing," she wrote, drenched and starving, after a vain search for work in a driving storm. she had tramped the streets for weeks on her weary errand, and the only living wages that were offered her were the wages of sin. the ink was not dry upon her letter before a woman in an east side tenement wrote down her reason for self-murder: "weakness, sleeplessness, and yet obliged to work. my strength fails me. sing at my coffin: 'where does the soul find a home and rest?'" her story may be found as one of two typical "cases of despair" in one little church community, in the _city mission society's monthly_ for last february. it is a story that has many parallels in the experience of every missionary, every police reporter and every family doctor whose practice is among the poor. it is estimated that at least one hundred and fifty thousand women and girls earn their own living in new york; but there is reason to believe that this estimate falls far short of the truth when sufficient account is taken of the large number who are not wholly dependent upon their own labor, while contributing by it to the family's earnings. these alone constitute a large class of the women wage-earners, and it is characteristic of the situation that the very fact that some need not starve on their wages condemns the rest to that fate. the pay they are willing to accept all have to take. what the "everlasting law of supply and demand," that serves as such a convenient gag for public indignation, has to do with it, one learns from observation all along the road of inquiry into these real woman's wrongs. to take the case of the saleswomen for illustration: the investigation of the working women's society disclosed the fact that wages averaging from $ to $ . a week were reduced by excessive fines, the employers placing a value upon time lost that is not given to services rendered." a little girl, who received two dollars a week, made cash-sales amounting to $ in a single day, while the receipts of a fifteen-dollar male clerk in the same department footed up only $ ; yet for some trivial mistake the girl was fined sixty cents out of her two dollars. the practice prevailed in some stores of dividing the fines between the superintendent and the time-keeper at the end of the year. in one instance they amounted to $ , , and "the superintendent was heard to charge the time-keeper with not being strict enough in his duties." one of the causes for fine in a certain large store was sitting down. the law requiring seats for saleswomen, generally ignored, was obeyed faithfully in this establishment. the seats were there, but the girls were fined when found using them. cash-girls receiving $ . a week for work that at certain seasons lengthened their day to sixteen hours were sometimes required to pay for their aprons. a common cause for discharge from stores in which, on account of the oppressive heat and lack of ventilation, "girls fainted day after day and came out looking like corpses," was too long service. no other fault was found with the discharged saleswomen than that they had been long enough in the employ of the firm to justly expect an increase of salary. the reason was even given with brutal frankness, in some instances. these facts give a slight idea of the hardships and the poor pay of a business that notoriously absorbs child-labor. the girls are sent to the store before they have fairly entered their teens, because the money they can earn there is needed for the support of the family. if the boys will not work, if the street tempts them from home, among the girls at least there must be no drones. to keep their places they are told to lie about their age and to say that they are over fourteen. the precaution is usually superfluous. the women's investigating committee found the majority of the children employed in the stores to be under age, but heard only in a single instance of the truant officers calling. in that case they came once a year and sent the youngest children home; but in a month's time they were all back in their places, and were not again disturbed. when it comes to the factories, where hard bodily labor is added to long hours, stifling rooms, and starvation wages, matters are even worse. the legislature has passed laws to prevent the employment of children, as it has forbidden saloon-keepers to sell them beer, and it has provided means of enforcing its mandate, so efficient, that the very number of factories in new york is _guessed_ at as in the neighborhood of twelve thousand. up till this summer, a single inspector was charged with the duty of keeping the run of them all, and of seeing to it that the law was respected by the owners. [illustration: sewing and starving in an elizabeth street attic.] sixty cents is put as the average day's earnings of the , , but into this computation enters the stylish "cashier's" two dollars a day, as well as the thirty cents of the poor little girl who pulls threads in an east side factory, and, if anything, the average is probably too high. such as it is, however, it represents board, rent, clothing, and "pleasure" to this army of workers. here is the case of a woman employed in the manufacturing department of a broadway house. it stands for a hundred like her own. she averages three dollars a week. pays $ . for her room; for breakfast she has a cup of coffee; lunch she cannot afford. one meal a day is her allowance. this woman is young, she is pretty. she has "the world before her." is it anything less than a miracle if she is guilty of nothing worse than the "early and improvident marriage," against which moralists exclaim as one of the prolific causes of the distress of the poor? almost any door might seem to offer welcome escape from such slavery as this. "i feel so much healthier since i got three square meals a day," said a lodger in one of the girls' homes. two young sewing-girls came in seeking domestic service, so that they might get enough to eat. they had been only half-fed for some time, and starvation had driven them to the one door at which the pride of the american-born girl will not permit her to knock, though poverty be the price of her independence. the tenement and the competition of public institutions and farmers' wives and daughters, have done the tyrant shirt to death, but they have not bettered the lot of the needle-women. the sweater of the east side has appropriated the flannel shirt. he turns them out to-day at forty-five cents a dozen, paying his jewish workers from twenty to thirty-five cents. one of these testified before the state board of arbitration, during the shirtmakers' strike, that she worked eleven hours in the shop and four at home, and had never in the best of times made over six dollars a week. another stated that she worked from o'clock in the morning to at night. these girls had to find their own thread and pay for their own machines out of their wages. the white shirt has gone to the public and private institutions that shelter large numbers of young girls, and to the country. there are not half as many shirtmakers in new york to-day as only a few years ago, and some of the largest firms have closed their city shops. the same is true of the manufacturers of underwear. one large broadway firm has nearly all its work done by farmers' girls in maine, who think themselves well off if they can earn two or three dollars a week to pay for a sunday silk, or the wedding outfit, little dreaming of the part they are playing in starving their city sisters. literally, they sew "with double thread, a shroud as well as a shirt." their pin-money sets the rate of wages for thousands of poor sewing-girls in new york. the average earnings of the worker on underwear to-day do not exceed the three dollars which her competitor among the eastern hills is willing to accept as the price of her play. the shirtmaker's pay is better only because the very finest custom work is all there is left for her to do. calico wrappers at a dollar and a half a dozen--the very expert sewers able to make from eight to ten, the common run five or six--neckties at from to cents a dozen, with a dozen as a good day's work, are specimens of women's wages. and yet people persist in wondering at the poor quality of work done in the tenements! italian cheap labor has come of late also to possess this poor field, with the sweater in its train. there is scarce a branch of woman's work outside of the home in which wages, long since at low-water mark, have not fallen to the point of actual starvation. a case was brought to my notice recently by a woman doctor, whose heart as well as her life-work is with the poor, of a widow with two little children she found at work in an east side attic, making paper-bags. her father, she told the doctor, had made good wages at it; but she received only five cents for six hundred of the little three-cornered bags, and her fingers had to be very swift and handle the paste-brush very deftly to bring her earnings up to twenty-five and thirty cents a day. she paid four dollars a month for her room. the rest went to buy food for herself and the children. the physician's purse, rather than her skill, had healing for their complaint. i have aimed to set down a few dry facts merely. they carry their own comment. back of the shop with its weary, grinding toil--the home in the tenement, of which it was said in a report of the state labor bureau: "decency and womanly reserve cannot be maintained there--what wonder so many fall away from virtue?" of the outlook, what? last christmas eve my business took me to an obscure street among the west side tenements. an old woman had just fallen on the doorstep, stricken with paralysis. the doctor said she would never again move her right hand or foot. the whole side was dead. by her bedside, in their cheerless room, sat the patient's aged sister, a hopeless cripple, in dumb despair. forty years ago the sisters had come, five in number then, with their mother, from the north of ireland to make their home and earn a living among strangers. they were lace embroiderers and found work easily at good wages. all the rest had died as the years went by. the two remained and, firmly resolved to lead an honest life, worked on though wages fell and fell as age and toil stiffened their once nimble fingers and dimmed their sight. then one of them dropped out, her hands palsied and her courage gone. still the other toiled on, resting neither by night nor by day, that the sister might not want. now that she too had been stricken, as she was going to the store for the work that was to keep them through the holidays, the battle was over at last. there was before them starvation, or the poor-house. and the proud spirits of the sisters, helpless now, quailed at the outlook. these were old, with life behind them. for them nothing was left but to sit in the shadow and wait. but of the thousands, who are travelling the road they trod to the end, with the hot blood of youth in their veins, with the love of life and of the beautiful world to which not even sixty cents a day can shut their eyes--who is to blame if their feet find the paths of shame that are "always open to them?" the very paths that have effaced the saving "limit," and to which it is declared to be "inevitable that they must in many instances resort." let the moralist answer. let the wise economist apply his rule of supply and demand, and let the answer be heard in this city of a thousand charities where justice goes begging. to the everlasting credit of new york's working-girl let it be said that, rough though her road be, all but hopeless her battle with life, only in the rarest instances does she go astray. as a class she is brave, virtuous, and true. new york's army of profligate women is not, as in some foreign cities, recruited from her ranks. she is as plucky as she is proud. that "american girls never whimper" became a proverb long ago, and she accepts her lot uncomplainingly, doing the best she can and holding her cherished independence cheap at the cost of a meal, or of half her daily ration, if need be. the home in the tenement and the traditions of her childhood have neither trained her to luxury nor predisposed her in favor of domestic labor in preference to the shop. so, to the world she presents a cheerful, uncomplaining front that sometimes deceives it. her courage will not be without its reward. slowly, as the conviction is thrust upon society that woman's work must enter more and more into its planning, a better day is dawning. the organization of working girls' clubs, unions, and societies with a community of interests, despite the obstacles to such a movement, bears testimony to it, as to the devotion of the unselfish women who have made their poorer sisters' cause their own, and will yet wring from an unfair world the justice too long denied her. chapter xxi. pauperism in the tenements. the reader who has followed with me the fate of the other half thus far, may not experience much of a shock at being told that in eight years , families in new york were registered as asking or receiving charity. perhaps, however, the intelligence will rouse him that for five years past one person in every ten who died in this city was buried in the potter's field. these facts tell a terrible story. the first means that in a population of a million and a half, very nearly, if not quite, half a million persons were driven, or chose, to beg for food, or to accept it in charity at some period of the eight years, if not during the whole of it. there is no mistake about these figures. they are drawn from the records of the charity organization society, and represent the time during which it has been in existence. it is not even pretended that the record is complete. to be well within the limits, the society's statisticians allow only three and a half to the family, instead of the four and a half that are accepted as the standard of calculations which deal with new york's population as a whole. they estimate upon the basis of their every-day experience that, allowing for those who have died, moved away, or become for the time being at least self-supporting, eighty-five per cent. of the registry are still within, or lingering upon, the borders of dependence. precisely how the case stands with this great horde of the indigent is shown by a classification of , cases that were investigated by the society in one year. this was the way it turned out: worthy of continuous relief, or . per cent.; , worthy of temporary relief, or . per cent.; , in need of work, rather than relief, or . per cent.; unworthy of relief, or per cent. that is, nearly six and a half per cent, of all were utterly helpless--orphans, cripples, or the very aged; nearly one-fourth needed just a lift to start them on the road of independence, or of permanent pauperism, according to the wisdom with which the lever was applied. more than half were destitute because they had no work and were unable to find any, and one-sixth were frauds, professional beggars, training their children to follow in their foot-steps--a veritable "tribe of ishmael," tightening its grip on society as the years pass, until society shall summon up pluck to say with paul, "if any man will not work neither shall he eat," and stick to it. it is worthy of note that almost precisely the same results followed a similar investigation in boston. there were a few more helpless cases of the sort true charity accounts it a gain to care for, but the proportion of a given lot that was crippled for want of work, or unworthy, was exactly the same as in this city. the bankrupt in hope, in courage, in purse, and in purpose, are not peculiar to new york. they are found the world over, but we have our full share. if further proof were wanted, it is found in the prevalence of pauper burials. the potter's field stands ever for utter, hopeless surrender. the last the poor will let go, however miserable their lot in life, is the hope of a decent burial. but for the five years ending with the average of burials in the potter's field has been . per cent. of all. in it was . . in that year the proportion to the total mortality of those who died in hospitals, institutions, and in the almshouse was as in . [illustration: a flat in the pauper barracks, west thirty-eighth street, with all its furniture.] the , families inhabited no fewer than , different tenements. i say tenements advisedly, though the society calls them buildings, because at least ninety-nine per cent. were found in the big barracks, the rest in shanties scattered here and there, and now and then a fraud or an exceptional case of distress in a dwelling-house of better class. here, undoubtedly, allowance must be made for the constant moving about of those who live on charity, which enables one active beggar to blacklist a dozen houses in the year. still the great mass of the tenements are shown to be harboring alms-seekers. they might almost as safely harbor the small-pox. that scourge is not more contagious than the alms-seeker's complaint. there are houses that have been corrupted through and through by this pestilence, until their very atmosphere breathes beggary. more than a hundred and twenty pauper families have been reported from time to time as living in one such tenement. the truth is that pauperism grows in the tenements as naturally as weeds in a garden lot. a moral distemper, like crime, it finds there its most fertile soil. all the surroundings of tenement-house life favor its growth, and where once it has taken root it is harder to dislodge than the most virulent of physical diseases. the thief is infinitely easier to deal with than the pauper, because the very fact of his being a thief presupposes some bottom to the man. granted that it is bad, there is still something, a possible handle by which to catch him. to the pauper there is none. he is as hopeless as his own poverty. i speak of the _pauper_, not of the honestly poor. there is a sharp line between the two; but athwart it stands the tenement, all the time blurring and blotting it out. "it all comes down to character in the end," was the verdict of a philanthropist whose life has been spent wrestling with this weary problem. and so it comes down to the tenement, the destroyer of individuality and character everywhere. "in nine years," said a wise and charitable physician, sadly, to me, "i have known of but a single case of permanent improvement in a poor tenement family." i have known of some, whose experience, extending over an even longer stretch, was little better. the beggar follows the "tough's" rule of life that the world owes him a living, but his scheme of collecting it stops short of violence. he has not the pluck to rob even a drunken man. his highest flights take in at most an unguarded clothes-line, or a little child sent to buy bread or beer with the pennies he clutches tightly as he skips along. even then he prefers to attain his end by stratagem rather than by force, though occasionally, when the coast is clear, he rises to the height of the bully. the ways he finds of "collecting" under the cloak of undeserved poverty are numberless, and often reflect credit on the man's ingenuity, if not on the man himself. i remember the shock with which my first experience with his kind--her kind, rather, in this case: the beggar was a woman--came home to me. on my way to and from the office i had been giving charity regularly, as i fondly believed, to an old woman who sat in chatham square with a baby done up in a bundle of rags, moaning piteously in sunshine and rain, "please, help the poor." it was the baby i pitied and thought i was doing my little to help, until one night i was just in time to rescue it from rolling out of her lap, and found the bundle i had been wasting my pennies upon just rags and nothing more, and the old hag dead drunk. since then i have encountered bogus babies, borrowed babies, and drugged babies in the streets, and fought shy of them all. most of them, i am glad to say, have been banished from the street since; but they are still occasionally to be found. it was only last winter that the officers of the society for the prevention of cruelty to children arrested an italian woman who was begging along madison avenue with a poor little wreck of a girl, whose rags and pinched face were calculated to tug hard at the purse-strings of a miser. over five dollars in nickles and pennies were taken from the woman's pockets, and when her story of poverty and hunger was investigated at the family's home in a baxter street tenement, bank-books turned up that showed the masonis to be regular pauper capitalists, able to draw their check for three thousand dollars, had they been so disposed. the woman was fined $ , a worse punishment undoubtedly than to have sent her to prison for the rest of her natural life. her class has, unhappily, representatives in new york that have not yet been brought to grief. nothing short of making street begging a crime has availed to clear our city of this pest to an appreciable extent. by how much of an effort this result has been accomplished may be gleaned from the fact that the charity organization society alone, in five years, caused the taking up of , street beggars, and the arrest and conviction of , persistent offenders. last year it dealt with perambulating mendicants. the police report only arrests for begging during the year , but the real facts of the case are found under the heading "vagrancy." in all, , persons were charged with this offence, of them women. a goodly proportion of these latter came from the low groggeries of the tenth ward, where a peculiar variety of the female tramp-beggar is at home, the "scrub." the scrub is one degree perhaps above the average pauper in this, that she is willing to work at least one day in the week, generally the jewish sabbath. the orthodox jew can do no work of any sort from friday evening till sunset on saturday, and this interim the scrub fills out in ludlow street. the pittance she receives for this vicarious sacrifice of herself upon the altar of the ancient faith buys her rum for at least two days of the week at one of the neighborhood "morgues." she lives through the other four by begging. there are distilleries in jewtown, or just across its borders, that depend almost wholly on her custom. recently, when one in hester street was raided because the neighbors had complained of the boisterous hilarity of the hags over their beer, thirty two aged "scrubs" were marched off to the station-house. it is curious to find preconceived notions quite upset in a review of the nationalities that go to make up this squad of street beggars. the irish head the list with fifteen per cent., and the native american is only a little way behind with twelve per cent., while the italian, who in his own country turns beggary into a fine art, has less than two per cent. eight per cent. were germans. the relative prevalence of the races in our population does not account for this showing. various causes operate, no doubt, to produce it. chief among them is, i think, the tenement itself. it has no power to corrupt the italian, who comes here in almost every instance to work--no beggar would ever emigrate from anywhere unless forced to do so. he is distinctly on its lowest level from the start. with the irishman the case is different. the tenement, especially its lowest type, appears to possess a peculiar affinity for the worse nature of the celt, to whose best and strongest instincts it does violence, and soonest and most thoroughly corrupts him. the "native" twelve per cent. represent the result of this process, the hereditary beggar of the second or third generation in the slums. the blind beggar alone is winked at in new york's streets, because the authorities do not know what else to do with him. there is no provision for him anywhere after he is old enough to strike out for himself. the annual pittance of thirty or forty dollars which he receives from the city serves to keep his landlord in good humor; for the rest his misfortune and his thin disguise of selling pencils on the street corners must provide. until the city affords him some systematic way of earning his living by work (as philadelphia has done, for instance) to banish him from the street would be tantamount to sentencing him to death by starvation. so he possesses it in peace, that is, if he is blind in good earnest, and begs without "encumbrance." professional mendicancy does not hesitate to make use of the greatest of human afflictions as a pretence for enlisting the sympathy upon which it thrives. many new yorkers will remember the french school-master who was "blinded by a shell at the siege of paris," but miraculously recovered his sight when arrested and deprived of his children by the officers of mr. gerry's society. when last heard of he kept a "museum" in hartford, and acted the overseer with financial success. his sign with its pitiful tale, that was a familiar sight in our streets for years and earned for him the capital upon which he started his business, might have found a place among the curiosities exhibited there, had it not been kept in a different sort of museum here as a memento of his rascality. there was another of his tribe, a woman, who begged for years with a deformed child in her arms, which she was found to have hired at an almshouse in genoa for fifteen francs a month. it was a good investment, for she proved to be possessed of a comfortable fortune. some time before that, the society for the prevention of cruelty to children, that found her out, had broken up the dreadful padrone system, a real slave trade in italian children, who were bought of poor parents across the sea and made to beg their way on foot through france to the port whence they were shipped to this city, to be beaten and starved here by their cruel masters and sent out to beg, often after merciless mutilation to make them "take" better with a pitying public. but, after all, the tenement offers a better chance of fraud on impulsive but thoughtless charity, than all the wretchedness of the street, and with fewer risks. to the tender-hearted and unwary it is, in itself, the strongest plea for help. when such a cry goes up as was heard recently from a mott street den, where the family of a "sick" husband, a despairing mother, and half a dozen children in rags and dirt were destitute of the "first necessities of life," it is not to be wondered at that a stream of gold comes pouring in to relieve. it happens too often, as in that case, that a little critical inquiry or reference to the "black list" of the charity organization society, justly dreaded only by the frauds, discovers the "sickness" to stand for laziness, and the destitution to be the family's stock in trade; and the community receives a shock that for once is downright wholesome, if it imposes a check on an undiscriminating charity that is worse than none at all. the case referred to furnished an apt illustration of how thoroughly corrupting pauperism is in such a setting. the tenement woke up early to the gold mine that was being worked under its roof, and before the day was three hours old the stream of callers who responded to the newspaper appeal found the alley blocked by a couple of "toughs," who exacted toll of a silver quarter from each tearful sympathizer with the misery in the attic. a volume might be written about the tricks of the professional beggar, and the uses to which he turns the tenement in his trade. the boston "widow" whose husband turned up alive and well after she had buried him seventeen times with tears and lamentation, and made the public pay for the weekly funerals, is not without representatives in new york. the "gentleman tramp" is a familiar type from our streets, and the "once respectable methodist" who patronized all the revivals in town with his profitable story of repentance, only to fall from grace into the saloon door nearest the church after the service was over, merely transferred the scene of his operations from the tenement to the church as the proper setting for his specialty. there is enough of real suffering in the homes of the poor to make one wish that there were some effective way of enforcing paul's plan of starving the drones into the paths of self-support: no work, nothing to eat. [illustration: coffee at one cent.] the message came from one of the health department's summer doctors, last july, to the king's daughters' tenement-house committee, that a family with a sick child was absolutely famishing in an uptown tenement. the address was not given. the doctor had forgotten to write it down, and before he could be found and a visitor sent to the house the baby was dead, and the mother had gone mad. the nurse found the father, who was an honest laborer long out of work, packing the little corpse in an orange-box partly filled with straw, that he might take it to the morgue for pauper burial. there was absolutely not a crust to eat in the house, and the other children were crying for food. the great immediate need in that case, as in more than half of all according to the record, was work and living wages. alms do not meet the emergency at all. they frequently aggravate it, degrading and pauperizing where true help should aim at raising the sufferer to self-respect and self-dependence. the experience of the charity organization society in raising, in eight years, , families out of the rut of pauperism into proud, if modest, independence, without alms, but by a system of "friendly visitation," and the work of the society for improving the condition of the poor and kindred organizations along the same line, shows what can be done by well-directed effort. it is estimated that new york spends in public and private charity every year a round $ , , . a small part of this sum intelligently invested in a great labor bureau, that would bring the seeker of work and the one with work to give together under auspices offering some degree of mutual security, would certainly repay the amount of the investment in the saving of much capital now worse than wasted, and would be prolific of the best results. the ultimate and greatest need, however, the real remedy, is to remove the cause--the tenement that was built for "a class of whom nothing was expected," and which has come fully up to the expectation. tenement-house reform holds the key to the problem of pauperism in the city. we can never get rid of either the tenement or the pauper. the two will always exist together in new york. but by reforming the one, we can do more toward exterminating the other than can be done by all other means together that have yet been invented, or ever will be. chapter xxii. the wrecks and the waste. pauperdom is to blame for the unjust yoking of poverty with punishment, "charities" with "correction," in our municipal ministering to the needs of the nether half. the shadow of the workhouse points like a scornful finger toward its neighbor, the almshouse, when the sun sets behind the teeming city across the east river, as if, could its stones speak, it would say before night drops its black curtain between them: "you and i are brothers. i am not more bankrupt in moral purpose than you. a common parent begat us. twin breasts, the tenement and the saloon, nourished us. vice and unthrift go hand in hand. pauper, behold thy brother!" and the almshouse owns the bitter relationship in silence. over on the islands that lie strung along the river and far up the sound the nether half hides its deformity, except on show-days, when distinguished visitors have to be entertained and the sore is uncovered by the authorities with due municipal pride in the exhibit. i shall spare the reader the sight. the aim of these pages has been to lay bare its source. but a brief glance at our proscribed population is needed to give background and tone to the picture. the review begins with the charity hospital with its thousand helpless human wrecks; takes in the penitentiary, where the "tough" from battle row and poverty gap is made to earn behind stone walls the living the world owes him; a thoughtless, jolly convict-band with opportunity at last "to think" behind the iron bars, but little desire to improve it; governed like unruly boys, which in fact most of them are. three of them were taken from the dinner-table while i was there one day, for sticking pins into each other, and were set with their faces to the wall in sight of six hundred of their comrades for punishment. pleading incessantly for tobacco, when the keeper's back is turned, as the next best thing to the whiskey they cannot get, though they can plainly make out the saloon-signs across the stream where they robbed or "slugged" their way to prison. every once in a while the longing gets the best of some prisoner from the penitentiary or the workhouse, and he risks his life in the swift currents to reach the goal that tantilizes him with the promise of "just one more drunk." the chances are at least even of his being run down by some passing steamer and drowned, even if he is not overtaken by the armed guards who patrol the shore in boats, or his strength does not give out. this workhouse comes next, with the broken-down hordes from the dives, the lodging-houses, and the tramps' nests, the "hell-box"[ ] rather than the repair-shop of the city. in the registry at the workhouse footed up , , of whom some had been there as many as twenty times before. it is the popular summer resort of the slums, but business is brisk at this stand the year round. not a few of its patrons drift back periodically without the formality of a commitment, to take their chances on the island when there is no escape from the alternative of work in the city. work, but not too much work, is the motto of the establishment. the "workhouse step" is an institution that must be observed on the island, in order to draw any comparison between it and the snail's pace that shall do justice to the snail. nature and man's art have made these islands beautiful; but weeds grow luxuriantly in their gardens, and spiders spin their cobwebs unmolested in the borders of sweet-smelling box. the work which two score of hired men could do well is too much for these thousands. [footnote : in printing-offices the broken, worn-out, and useless type is thrown into the "hell-box," to be recast at the foundry.] rows of old women, some smoking stumpy, black clay-pipes, others knitting or idling, all grumbling, sit or stand under the trees that hedge in the almshouse, or limp about in the sunshine, leaning on crutches or bean-pole staffs. they are a "growler-gang" of another sort than may be seen in session on the rocks of the opposite shore at that very moment. they grumble and growl from sunrise to sunset, at the weather, the breakfast, the dinner, the supper; at pork and beans as at corned beef and cabbage; at their thanksgiving dinner as at the half rations of the sick ward; at the past that had no joy, at the present whose comfort they deny, and at the future without promise. the crusty old men in the next building are not a circumstance to them. the warden, who was in charge of the almshouse for many years, had become so snappish and profane by constant association with a thousand cross old women that i approached him with some misgivings, to request his permission to "take" a group of a hundred or so who were within shot of my camera. he misunderstood me. "take them?" he yelled. "take the thousand of them and be welcome. they will never be still, by ----, till they are sent up on hart's island in a box, and i'll be blamed if i don't think they will growl then at the style of the funeral." and he threw his arms around me in an outburst of enthusiasm over the wondrous good luck that had sent a friend indeed to his door. i felt it to be a painful duty to undeceive him. when i told him that i simply wanted the old women's picture, he turned away in speechless disgust, and to his dying day, i have no doubt, remembered my call as the day of the champion fool's visit to the island. when it is known that many of these old people have been sent to the almshouse to die by their heartless children, for whom they had worked faithfully as long as they were able, their growling and discontent is not hard to understand. bitter poverty threw them all "on the county," often on the wrong county at that. very many of them are old-country poor, sent, there is reason to believe, to america by the authorities to get rid of the obligation to support them. "the almshouse," wrote a good missionary, "affords a sad illustration of st. paul's description of the 'last days.' the class from which comes our poorhouse population is to a large extent 'without natural affection.'" i was reminded by his words of what my friend, the doctor, had said to me a little while before: "many a mother has told me at her child's death-bed, 'i cannot afford to lose it. it costs too much to bury it.' and when the little one did die there was no time for the mother's grief. the question crowded on at once, 'where shall the money come from?' natural feelings and affections are smothered in the tenements." the doctor's experience furnished a sadly appropriate text for the priest's sermon. pitiful as these are, sights and sounds infinitely more saddening await us beyond the gate that shuts this world of woe off from one whence the light of hope and reason have gone out together. the shuffling of many feet on the macadamized roads heralds the approach of a host of women, hundreds upon hundreds--beyond the turn in the road they still keep coming, marching with the faltering step, the unseeing look and the incessant, senseless chatter that betrays the darkened mind. the lunatic women of the blackwell's island asylum are taking their afternoon walk. beyond, on the wide lawn, moves another still stranger procession, a file of women in the asylum dress of dull gray, hitched to a queer little wagon that, with its gaudy adornments, suggests a cross between a baby-carriage and a circus-chariot. one crazy woman is strapped in the seat; forty tug at the rope to which they are securely bound. this is the "chain-gang," so called once in scoffing ignorance of the humane purpose the contrivance serves. these are the patients afflicted with suicidal mania, who cannot be trusted at large for a moment with the river in sight, yet must have their daily walk as a necessary part of their treatment. so this wagon was invented by a clever doctor to afford them at once exercise and amusement. a merry-go-round in the grounds suggests a variation of this scheme. ghastly suggestion of mirth, with that stricken host advancing on its aimless journey! as we stop to see it pass, the plaintive strains of a familiar song float through a barred window in the gray stone building. the voice is sweet, but inexpressibly sad: "oh, how my heart grows weary, far from----" the song breaks off suddenly in a low, troubled laugh. she has forgotten, forgotten----. a woman in the ranks, whose head has been turned toward the window, throws up her hands with a scream. the rest stir uneasily. the nurse is by her side in an instant with words half soothing, half stern. a messenger comes in haste from the asylum to ask us not to stop. strangers may not linger where the patients pass. it is apt to excite them. as we go in with him the human file is passing yet, quiet restored. the troubled voice of the unseen singer still gropes vainly among the lost memories of the past for the missing key: "oh! how my heart grows weary, far from----" "who is she, doctor?" "hopeless case. she will never see home again." an average of seventeen hundred women this asylum harbors; the asylum for men up on ward's island even more. altogether , patients were admitted to the city asylums for the insane in , and at the end of the year , remained in them. there is a constant ominous increase in this class of helpless unfortunates that are thrown on the city's charity. quite two hundred are added year by year, and the asylums were long since so overcrowded that a great "farm" had to be established on long island to receive the surplus. the strain of our hurried, over-worked life has something to do with this. poverty has more. for these are all of the poor. it is the harvest of sixty and a hundred-fold, the "fearful rolling up and rolling down from generation to generation, through all the ages, of the weakness, vice, and moral darkness of the past."[ ] the curse of the island haunts all that come once within its reach. "no man or woman," says dr. louis l. seaman, who speaks from many years' experience in a position that gave him full opportunity to observe the facts, "who is 'sent up' to these colonies ever returns to the city scot-free. there is a lien, visible or hidden, upon his or her present or future, which too often proves stronger than the best purposes and fairest opportunities of social rehabilitation. the under world holds in rigorous bondage every unfortunate or miscreant who has once 'served time.' there is often tragic interest in the struggles of the ensnared wretches to break away from the meshes spun about them. but the maelstrom has no bowels of mercy; and the would-be fugitives are flung back again and again into the devouring whirlpool of crime and poverty, until the end is reached on the dissecting-table, or in the potter's field. what can the moralist or scientist do by way of resuscitation? very little at best. the flotsam and jetsam are mere shreds and fragments of wasted lives. such a ministry must begin at the sources--is necessarily prophylactic, nutritive, educational. on these islands there are no flexible twigs, only gnarled, blasted, blighted trunks, insensible to moral or social influences." [footnote : dr. louis l. seaman, late chief of staff of the blackwell's island hospitals: "social waste of a great city," read before the american association for the advancement of science, .] sad words, but true. the commonest keeper soon learns to pick out almost at sight the "cases" that will leave the penitentiary, the workhouse, the almshouse, only to return again and again, each time more hopeless, to spend their wasted lives in the bondage of the island. the alcoholic cells in bellevue hospital are a way-station for a goodly share of them on their journeys back and forth across the east river. last year they held altogether , prisoners, considerably more than one-fourth of the whole number of , patients that went in through the hospital gates. the daily average of "cases" in this, the hospital of the poor, is over six hundred. the average daily census of all the prisons, hospitals, workhouses, and asylums in the charge of the department of charities and correction last year was about , , and about one employee was required for every ten of this army to keep its machinery running smoothly. the total number admitted in to all the jails and institutions in the city and on the islands was , . to the almshouse alone , were admitted; , were there to start the new year with, and were born with the dark shadow of the poorhouse overhanging their lives, making a total of , . in the care of all their wards the commissioners expended $ , , . the appropriation for the police force in was $ , , . , and for the criminal courts and their machinery $ , . thus the first cost of maintaining our standing army of paupers, criminals, and sick poor, by direct taxation, was last year $ , , . . chapter xxiii. the man with the knife. a man stood at the corner of fifth avenue and fourteenth street the other day, looking gloomily at the carriages that rolled by, carrying the wealth and fashion of the avenues to and from the big stores down town. he was poor, and hungry, and ragged. this thought was in his mind: "they behind their well-fed teams have no thought for the morrow; they know hunger only by name, and ride down to spend in an hour's shopping what would keep me and my little ones from want a whole year." there rose up before him the picture of those little ones crying for bread around the cold and cheerless hearth--then he sprang into the throng and slashed about him with a knife, blindly seeking to kill, to revenge. the man was arrested, of course, and locked up. to-day he is probably in a mad-house, forgotten. and the carriages roll by to and from the big stores with their gay throng of shoppers. the world forgets easily, too easily, what it does not like to remember. nevertheless the man and his knife had a mission. they spoke in their ignorant, impatient way the warning one of the most conservative, dispassionate of public bodies had sounded only a little while before: "our only fear is that reform may come in a burst of public indignation destructive to property and to good morals."[ ] they represented, one solution of the problem of ignorant poverty _versus_ ignorant wealth that has come down to us unsolved, the danger-cry of which we have lately heard in the shout that never should have been raised on american soil--the shout of "the masses against the classes"--the solution of violence. [footnote : forty-fourth annual report of the association for improving the condition of the poor. .] there is another solution, that of justice. the choice is between the two. which shall it be? "well!" say some well-meaning people; "we don't see the need of putting it in that way. we have been down among the tenements, looked them over. there are a good many people there; they are not comfortable, perhaps. what would you have? they are poor. and their houses are not such hovels as we have seen and read of in the slums of the old world. they are decent in comparison. why, some of them have brown-stone fronts. you will own at least that they make a decent show." yes! that is true. the worst tenements in new york do not, as a rule, _look bad_. neither hell's kitchen, nor murderers' row bears its true character stamped on the front. they are not quite old enough, perhaps. the same is true of their tenants. the new york tough may be ready to kill where his london brother would do little more than scowl; yet, as a general thing he is less repulsively brutal in looks. here again the reason may be the same: the breed is not so old. a few generations more in the slums, and all that will be changed. to get at the pregnant facts of tenement-house life one must look beneath the surface. many an apple has a fair skin and a rotten core. there is a much better argument for the tenements in the assurance of the registrar of vital statistics that the death-rate of these houses has of late been brought below the general death-rate of the city, and that it is lowest in the biggest houses. this means two things: one, that the almost exclusive attention given to the tenements by the sanitary authorities in twenty years has borne some fruit, and that the newer tenements are better than the old--there is some hope in that; the other, that the whole strain of tenement-house dwellers has been bred down to the conditions under which it exists, that the struggle with corruption has begotten the power to resist it. this is a familiar law of nature, necessary to its first and strongest impulse of self-preservation. to a certain extent, we are all creatures of the conditions that surround us, physically and morally. but is the knowledge reassuring? in the light of what we have seen, does not the question arise: what sort of creature, then, this of the tenement? i tried to draw his likeness from observation in telling the story of the "tough." has it nothing to suggest the man with the knife? i will go further. i am not willing even to admit it to be an unqualified advantage that our new york tenements have less of the slum look than those of older cities. it helps to delay the recognition of their true character on the part of the well-meaning, but uninstructed, who are always in the majority. the "dangerous classes" of new york long ago compelled recognition. they are dangerous less because of their own crimes than because of the criminal ignorance of those who are not of their kind. the danger to society comes not from the poverty of the tenements, but from the ill-spent wealth that reared them, that it might earn a usurious interest from a class from which "nothing else was expected." that was the broad foundation laid down, and the edifice built upon it corresponds to the groundwork. that this is well understood on the "unsafe" side of the line that separates the rich from the poor, much better than by those who have all the advantages of discriminating education, is good cause for disquietude. in it a keen foresight may again dimly discern the shadow of the man with the knife. two years ago a great meeting was held at chickering hall--i have spoken of it before--a meeting that discussed for days and nights the question how to banish this spectre; how to lay hold with good influences of this enormous mass of more than a million people, who were drifting away faster and faster from the safe moorings of the old faith. clergymen and laymen from all the protestant denominations took part in the discussion; nor was a good word forgotten for the brethren of the other great christian fold who labor among the poor. much was said that was good and true, and ways were found of reaching the spiritual needs of the tenement population that promise success. but at no time throughout the conference was the real key-note of the situation so boldly struck as has been done by a few far-seeing business men, who had listened to the cry of that christian builder: "how shall the love of god be understood by those who have been nurtured in sight only of the greed of man?" their practical programme of "philanthropy and five per cent." has set examples in tenement building that show, though they are yet few and scattered, what may in time be accomplished even with such poor, opportunities as new york offers to-day of undoing the old wrong. this is the gospel of justice, the solution that must be sought as the one alternative to the man with the knife. "are you not looking too much to the material condition of these people," said a good minister to me after a lecture in a harlem church last winter, "and forgetting the inner man?" i told him, "no! for you cannot expect to find an inner man to appeal to in the worst tenement-house surroundings. you must first put the man where he can respect himself. to reverse the argument of the apple: you cannot expect to find a sound core in a rotten fruit." chapter xxiv. what has been done. in twenty years what has been done in new york to solve the tenement-house problem? the law has done what it could. that was not always a great deal, seldom more than barely sufficient for the moment. an aroused municipal conscience endowed the health department with almost autocratic powers in dealing with this subject, but the desire to educate rather than force the community into a better way dictated their exercise with a slow conservatism that did not always seem wise to the impatient reformer. new york has its st. antoine, and it has often sadly missed a napoleon iii. to clean up and make light in the dark corners. the obstacles, too, have been many and great. nevertheless the authorities have not been idle, though it is a grave question whether all the improvements made under the sanitary regulations of recent years deserve the name. tenements quite as bad as the worst are too numerous yet; but one tremendous factor for evil in the lives of the poor has been taken by the throat, and something has unquestionably been done, where that was possible, to lift those lives out of the rut where they were equally beyond the reach of hope and of ambition. it is no longer lawful to construct barracks to cover the whole of a lot. air and sunlight have a legal claim, and the day of rear tenements is past. two years ago a hundred thousand people burrowed in these inhuman dens; but some have been torn down since. their number will decrease steadily until they shall have become a bad tradition of a heedless past. the dark, unventilated bedroom is going with them, and the open sewer. the day is at hand when the greatest of all evils that now curse life in the tenements--the dearth of water in the hot summer days--will also have been remedied, and a long step taken toward the moral and physical redemption of their tenants. [illustration: evolution of the tenement in twenty years. old style tenement. single lot tenement of to-day.] public sentiment has done something also, but very far from enough. as a rule, it has slumbered peacefully until some flagrant outrage on decency and the health of the community aroused it to noisy but ephemeral indignation, or until a dreaded epidemic knocked at our door. it is this unsteadiness of purpose that has been to a large extent responsible for the apparent lagging of the authorities in cases not involving immediate danger to the general health. the law needs a much stronger and readier backing of a thoroughly enlightened public sentiment to make it as effective as it might be made. it is to be remembered that the health officers, in dealing with this subject of dangerous houses, are constantly trenching upon what each landlord considers his private rights, for which he is ready and bound to fight to the last. nothing short of the strongest pressure will avail to convince him that these individual rights are to be surrendered for the clear benefit of the whole. it is easy enough to convince a man that he ought not to harbor the thief who steals people's property; but to make him see that he has no right to slowly kill his neighbors, or his tenants, by making a death-trap of his house, seems to be the hardest of all tasks. it is apparently the slowness of the process that obscures his mental sight. the man who will fight an order to repair the plumbing in his house through every court he can reach, would suffer tortures rather than shed the blood of a fellow-man by actual violence. clearly, it is a matter of education on the part of the landlord no less than the tenant. in spite of this, the landlord has done his share; chiefly perhaps by yielding--not always gracefully--when it was no longer of any use to fight. there have been exceptions, however: men and women who have mended and built with an eye to the real welfare of their tenants as well as to their own pockets. let it be well understood that the two are inseparable, if any good is to come of it. the business of housing the poor, if it is to amount to anything, must be business, as it was business with our fathers to put them where they are. as charity, pastime, or fad, it will miserably fail, always and everywhere. this is an inexorable rule, now thoroughly well understood in england and continental europe, and by all who have given the matter serious thought here. call it poetic justice, or divine justice, or anything else, it is a hard fact, not to be gotten over. upon any other plan than the assumption that the workman has a just claim to a decent home, and the right to demand it, any scheme for his relief fails. it must be a fair exchange of the man's money for what he can afford to buy at a reasonable price. any charity scheme merely turns him into a pauper, however it may be disguised, and drowns him hopelessly in the mire out of which it proposed to pull him. and this principle must pervade the whole plan. expert management of model tenements succeeds where amateur management, with the best intentions, gives up the task, discouraged, as a flat failure. some of the best-conceived enterprises, backed by abundant capital and good-will, have been wrecked on this rock. sentiment, having prompted the effort, forgot to stand aside and let business make it. business, in a wider sense, has done more than all other agencies together to wipe out the worst tenements. it has been new york's real napoleon iii., from whose decree there was no appeal. in ten years i have seen plague-spots disappear before its onward march, with which health officers, police, and sanitary science had struggled vainly since such struggling began as a serious business. and the process goes on still. unfortunately, the crowding in some of the most densely packed quarters down town has made the property there so valuable, that relief from this source is less confidently to be expected, at all events in the near future. still, their time may come also. it comes so quickly sometimes as to fairly take one's breath away. more than once i have returned, after a few brief weeks, to some specimen rookery in which i was interested, to find it gone and an army of workmen delving twenty feet underground to lay the foundation of a mighty warehouse. that was the case with the "big flat" in mott street. i had not had occasion to visit it for several months last winter, and when i went there, entirely unprepared for a change, i could not find it. it had always been conspicuous enough in the landscape before, and i marvelled much at my own stupidity until, by examining the number of the house, i found out that i had gone right. it was the "flat" that had disappeared. in its place towered a six-story carriage factory with business going on on every floor, as if it had been there for years and years. this same "big flat" furnished a good illustration of why some well-meant efforts in tenement building have failed. like gotham court, it was originally built as a model tenement, but speedily came to rival the court in foulness. it became a regular hot-bed of thieves and peace-breakers, and made no end of trouble for the police. the immediate reason, outside of the lack of proper supervision, was that it had open access to two streets in a neighborhood where thieves and "toughs" abounded. these took advantage of an arrangement that had been supposed by the builders to be a real advantage as a means of ventilation, and their occupancy drove honest folk away. murderers' alley, of which i have spoken elsewhere, and the sanitary inspector's experiment with building a brick wall athwart it to shut off travel through the block, is a parallel case. the causes that operate to obstruct efforts to better the lot of the tenement population are, in our day, largely found among the tenants themselves. this is true particularly of the poorest. they are shiftless, destructive, and stupid; in a word, they are what the tenements have made them. it is a dreary old truth that those who would fight for the poor must fight the poor to do it. it must be confessed that there is little enough in their past experience to inspire confidence in the sincerity of the effort to help them. i recall the discomfiture of a certain well-known philanthropist, since deceased, whose heart beat responsive to other suffering than that of human kind. he was a large owner of tenement property, and once undertook to fit out his houses with stationary tubs, sanitary plumbing, wood-closets, and all the latest improvements. he introduced his rough tenants to all this magnificence without taking the precaution of providing a competent housekeeper, to see that the new acquaintances got on together. he felt that his tenants ought to be grateful for the interest he took in them. they were. they found the boards in the wood-closets fine kindling wood, while the pipes and faucets were as good as cash at the junk shop. in three months the owner had to remove what was left of his improvements. the pipes were cut and the houses running full of water, the stationary tubs were put to all sorts of uses except washing, and of the wood-closets not a trace was left. the philanthropist was ever after a firm believer in the total depravity of tenement-house people. others have been led to like reasoning by as plausible arguments, without discovering that the shiftlessness and ignorance that offended them were the consistent crop of the tenement they were trying to reform, and had to be included in the effort. the owners of a block of model tenements uptown had got their tenants comfortably settled, and were indulging in high hopes of their redemption under proper management, when a contractor ran up a row of "skin" tenements, shaky but fair to look at, with brown-stone trimmings and gewgaws. the result was to tempt a lot of the well-housed tenants away. it was a very astonishing instance of perversity to the planners of the benevolent scheme; but, after all, there was nothing strange in it. it is all a matter of education, as i said about the landlord. that the education comes slowly need excite no surprise. the forces on the other side are ever active. the faculty of the tenement for appropriating to itself every foul thing that comes within its reach, and piling up and intensifying its corruption until out of all proportion to the beginning, is something marvellous. drop a case of scarlet fever, of measles, or of diphtheria into one of these barracks, and, unless it is caught at the very start and stamped out, the contagion of the one case will sweep block after block, and half people a graveyard. let the police break up a vile dive, goaded by the angry protests of the neighborhood--forthwith the outcasts set in circulation by the raid betake themselves to the tenements, where in their hired rooms, safe from interference, they set up as many independent centres of contagion, infinitely more destructive, each and every one, than was the known dive before. i am not willing to affirm that this is the police reason for letting so many of the dives alone; but it might well be. they are perfectly familiar with the process, and entirely helpless to prevent it. this faculty, as inherent in the problem itself--the prodigious increase of the tenement-house population that goes on without cessation, and its consequent greater crowding--is the chief obstacle to its solution. in there were , tenements in new york, with a population of , persons. in the number of the tenements was estimated at , , and their tenants had passed the half-million mark. at the end of the year , when a regular census was made for the first time since , the showing was: , tenements, with a population of , , souls. to-day we have , tenements, including , rear houses, and their population is over , , . a large share of this added population, especially of that which came to us from abroad, crowds in below fourteenth street, where the population is already packed beyond reason, and confounds all attempts to make matters better there. at the same time new slums are constantly growing up uptown, and have to be kept down with a firm hand. this drift of the population to the great cities has to be taken into account as a steady factor. it will probably increase rather than decrease for many years to come. at the beginning of the century the percentage of our population that lived in cities was as one in twenty-five. in it was one in four and one-half, and in the census will in all probability show it to be one in four. against such tendencies, in the absence of suburban outlets for the crowding masses, all remedial measures must prove more or less ineffective. the "confident belief" expressed by the board of health in , that rapid transit would solve the problem, is now known to have been a vain hope. workingmen, in new york at all events, will live near their work, no matter at what sacrifice of comfort--one might almost say at whatever cost, and the city will never be less crowded than it is. to distribute the crowds as evenly as possible is the effort of the authorities, where nothing better can be done. in the first six months of the present year , persons were turned out of not quite two hundred tenements below houston street by the sanitary police on their midnight inspections, and this covered only a very small part of that field. the uptown tenements were practically left to take care of themselves in this respect. the quick change of economic conditions in the city that often out-paces all plans of relief, rendering useless to-day what met the demands of the situation well enough yesterday, is another cause of perplexity. a common obstacle also--i am inclined to think quite as common as in ireland, though we hear less of it in the newspapers--is the absentee landlord. the home article, who fights for his rights, as he chooses to consider them, is bad enough; but the absentee landlord is responsible for no end of trouble. he was one of the first obstructions the sanitary reformers stumbled over, when the health department took hold. it reported in that many of the tenants were entirely uncared for, and that the only answer to their requests to have the houses put in order was an invitation to pay their rent or get out. "inquiry often disclosed the fact that the owner of the property was a wealthy gentleman or lady, either living in an aristocratic part of the city, or in a neighboring city, or, as was occasionally found to be the case, in europe. the property is usually managed entirely by an agent, whose instructions are simple but emphatic: collect the rent in advance, or, failing, eject the occupants." the committee having the matter in charge proposed to compel owners of tenements with ten families or more to put a housekeeper in the house, who should be held responsible to the health department. unluckily the powers of the board gave out at that point, and the proposition was never acted upon. could it have been, much trouble would have been spared the health board, and untold suffering the tenants in many houses. the tribe of absentee landlords is by no means extinct in new york. not a few who fled from across the sea to avoid being crushed by his heel there have groaned under it here, scarcely profiting by the exchange. sometimes--it can hardly be said in extenuation--the heel that crunches is applied in saddening ignorance. i recall the angry indignation of one of these absentee landlords, a worthy man who, living far away in the country, had inherited city property, when he saw the condition of his slum tenements. the man was shocked beyond expression, all the more because he did not know whom to blame except himself for the state of things that had aroused his wrath, and yet, conscious of the integrity of his intentions, felt that he should not justly be held responsible. the experience of this landlord points directly to the remedy which the law failed to supply to the early reformers. it has since been fully demonstrated that a competent agent on the premises, a man of the best and the highest stamp, who knows how to instruct and guide with a firm hand, is a prerequisite to the success of any reform tenement scheme. this is a plain business proposition, that has been proved entirely sound in some notable instances of tenement building, of which more hereafter. even among the poorer tenements, those are always the best in which the owner himself lives. it is a hopeful sign in any case. the difficulty of procuring such assistance without having to pay a ruinous price, is one of the obstructions that have vexed in this city efforts to solve the problem of housing the poor properly, because it presupposes that the effort must be made on a larger scale than has often been attempted. the readiness with which the tenants respond to intelligent efforts in their behalf, when made under fair conditions, is as surprising as it is gratifying, and fully proves the claim that tenants are only satisfied in filthy and unwholesome surroundings because nothing better is offered. the moral effect is as great as the improvement of their physical health. it is clearly discernible in the better class of tenement dwellers to-day. the change in the character of the colored population in the few years since it began to move out of the wicked rookeries of the old "africa" to the decent tenements in yorkville, furnishes a notable illustration, and a still better one is found in the contrast between the model tenement in the mulberry street bend and the barracks across the way, of which i spoke in the chapter devoted to the italian. the italian himself is the strongest argument of all. with his fatal contentment in the filthiest surroundings, he gives undoubted evidence of having in him the instinct of cleanliness that, properly cultivated, would work his rescue in a very little while. it is a queer contradiction, but the fact is patent to anyone who has observed the man in his home-life. and he is not alone in this. i came across an instance, this past summer, of how a refined, benevolent personality works like a leaven in even the roughest tenement-house crowd. this was no model tenement; far from it. it was a towering barrack in the tenth ward, sheltering more than twenty families. all the light and air that entered its interior came through an air-shaft two feet square, upon which two bedrooms and the hall gave in every story. in three years i had known of two domestic tragedies, prompted by poverty and justifiable disgust with life, occurring in the house, and had come to look upon it as a typically bad tenement, quite beyond the pale of possible improvement. what was my surprise, when chance led me to it once more after a while, to find the character of the occupants entirely changed. some of the old ones were there still, but they did not seem to be the same people. i discovered the secret to be the new housekeeper, a tidy, mild-mannered, but exceedingly strict little body, who had a natural faculty of drawing her depraved surroundings within the beneficent sphere of her strong sympathy, and withal of exacting respect for her orders. the worst elements had been banished from the house in short order under her management, and for the rest a new era of self-respect had dawned. they were, as a body, as vastly superior to the general run of their class as they had before seemed below it. and this had been effected in the short space of a single year. my observations on this point are more than confirmed by those of nearly all the practical tenement reformers i have known, who have patiently held to the course they had laid down. one of these, whose experience exceeds that of all of the rest together, and whose influence for good has been very great, said to me recently: "i hold that not ten per cent. of the people now living in tenements would refuse to avail themselves of the best improved conditions offered, and come fully up to the use of them, properly instructed; but they cannot get them. they are up to them now, fully, if the chances were only offered. they don't have to come up. it is all a gigantic mistake on the part of the public, of which these poor people are the victims. i have built homes for more than five hundred families in fourteen years, and i have been getting daily more faith in human nature from my work among the poor tenants, though approaching that nature on a plane and under conditions that could scarcely promise better for disappointment." it is true that my friend has built his houses in brooklyn; but human nature does not differ greatly on the two shores of the east river. for those who think it does, it may be well to remember that only five years ago the tenement house commission summed up the situation in this city in the declaration that, "the condition of the tenants is in advance of the houses which they occupy," quite the severest arraignment of the tenement that had yet been uttered. the many philanthropic efforts that have been made in the last few years to render less intolerable the lot of the tenants in the homes where many of them must continue to live, have undoubtedly had their effect in creating a disposition to accept better things, that will make plainer sailing for future builders of model tenements. in many ways, as in the "college settlement" of courageous girls, the neighborhood guilds, through the efforts of the king's daughters, and numerous other schemes of practical mission work, the poor and the well-to-do have been brought closer together, in an every-day companionship that cannot but be productive of the best results, to the one who gives no less than to the one who receives. and thus, as a good lady wrote to me once, though the problem stands yet unsolved, more perplexing than ever; though the bright spots in the dreary picture be too often bright only by comparison, and many of the expedients hit upon for relief sad makeshifts, we can dimly discern behind it all that good is somehow working out of even this slough of despond the while it is deepening and widening in our sight, and in his own good season, if we labor on with courage and patience, will bear fruit sixty and a hundred fold. chapter xxv. how the case stands. what, then, are the bald facts with which we have to deal in new york? i. that we have a tremendous, ever swelling crowd of wage-earners which it is our business to house decently. ii. that it is not housed decently. iii. that it must be so housed _here_ for the present, and for a long time to come, all schemes of suburban relief being as yet utopian, impracticable. iv. that it pays high enough rents to entitle it to be so housed, as a right. v. that nothing but our own slothfulness is in the way of so housing it, since "the condition of the tenants is in advance of the condition of the houses which they occupy" (report of tenement-house commission). vi. that the security of the one no less than of the other half demands, on sanitary, moral, and economic grounds, that it be decently housed. vii. that it will pay to do it. as an investment, i mean, and in hard cash. this i shall immediately proceed to prove. viii. that the tenement has come to stay, and must itself be the solution of the problem with which it confronts us. this is the fact from which we cannot get away, however we may deplore it. doubtless the best would be to get rid of it altogether; but as we cannot, all argument on that score may at this time be dismissed as idle. the practical question is what to do with the tenement. i watched a mott street landlord, the owner of a row of barracks that have made no end of trouble for the health authorities for twenty years, solve that question for himself the other day. his way was to give the wretched pile a coat of paint, and put a gorgeous tin cornice on with the year in letters a yard long. from where i stood watching the operation, i looked down upon the same dirty crowds camping on the roof, foremost among them an italian mother with two stark-naked children who had apparently never made the acquaintance of a wash-tub. that was a landlord's way, and will not get us out of the mire. the "flat" is another way that does not solve the problem. rather, it extends it. the flat is not a model, though it is a modern, tenement. it gets rid of some of the nuisances of the low tenement, and of the worst of them, the overcrowding--if it gets rid of them at all--at a cost that takes it at once out of the catalogue of "homes for the poor," while imposing some of the evils from which they suffer upon those who ought to escape from them. there are three effective ways of dealing with the tenements in new york: i. by law. ii. by remodelling and making the most out of the old houses. iii. by building new, model tenements. private enterprise--conscience, to put it in the category of duties, where it belongs--must do the lion's share under these last two heads. of what the law has effected i have spoken already. the drastic measures adopted in paris, in glasgow, and in london are not practicable here on anything like as large a scale. still it can, under strong pressure of public opinion, rid us of the worst plague-spots. the mulberry street bend will go the way of the five points when all the red tape that binds the hands of municipal effort has been unwound. prizes were offered in public competition, some years ago, for the best plans of modern tenement-houses. it may be that we shall see the day when the building of model tenements will be encouraged by subsidies in the way of a rebate of taxes. meanwhile the arrest and summary punishment of landlords, or their agents, who persistently violate law and decency, will have a salutary effect. if a few of the wealthy absentee landlords, who are the worst offenders, could be got within the jurisdiction of the city, and by arrest be compelled to employ proper overseers, it would be a proud day for new york. to remedy the overcrowding, with which the night inspections of the sanitary police cannot keep step, tenements may eventually have to be licensed, as now the lodging-houses, to hold so many tenants, and no more; or the state may have to bring down the rents that cause the crowding, by assuming the right to regulate them as it regulates the fares on the elevated roads. i throw out the suggestion, knowing quite well that it is open to attack. it emanated originally from one of the brightest minds that have had to struggle officially with this tenement-house question in the last ten years. in any event, to succeed, reform by law must aim at making it unprofitable to own a bad tenement. at best, it is apt to travel at a snail's pace, while the enemy it pursues is putting the best foot foremost. in this matter of profit the law ought to have its strongest ally in the landlord himself, though the reverse is the case. this condition of things i believe to rest on a monstrous error. it cannot be that tenement property that is worth preserving at all can continue to yield larger returns, if allowed to run down, than if properly cared for and kept in good repair. the point must be reached, and soon, where the cost of repairs, necessary with a house full of the lowest, most ignorant tenants, must overbalance the saving of the first few years of neglect; for this class is everywhere the most destructive, as well as the poorest paying. i have the experience of owners, who have found this out to their cost, to back me up in the assertion, even if it were not the statement of a plain business fact that proves itself. i do not include tenement property that is deliberately allowed to fall into decay because at some future time the ground will be valuable for business or other purposes. there is unfortunately enough of that kind in new york, often leasehold property owned by wealthy estates or soul-less corporations that oppose all their great influence to the efforts of the law in behalf of their tenants. there is abundant evidence, on the other hand, that it can be made to pay to improve and make the most of the worst tenement property, even in the most wretched locality. the example set by miss ellen collins in her water street houses will always stand as a decisive answer to all doubts on this point. it is quite ten years since she bought three old tenements at the corner of water and roosevelt streets, then as now one of the lowest localities in the city. since then she has leased three more adjoining her purchase, and so much of water street has at all events been purified. her first effort was to let in the light in the hallways, and with the darkness disappeared, as if by magic, the heaps of refuse that used to be piled up beside the sinks. a few of the most refractory tenants disappeared with them, but a very considerable proportion stayed, conforming readily to the new rules, and are there yet. it should here be stated that miss collins's tenants are distinctly of the poorest. her purpose was to experiment with this class, and her experiment has been more than satisfactory. her plan was, as she puts it herself, fair play between tenant and landlord. to this end the rents were put as low as consistent with the idea of a business investment that must return a reasonable interest to be successful. the houses were thoroughly refitted with proper plumbing. a competent janitor was put in charge to see that the rules were observed by the tenants, when miss collins herself was not there. of late years she has had to give very little time to personal superintendence, and the care-taker told me only the other day that very little was needed. the houses seemed to run themselves in the groove once laid down. once the reputed haunt of thieves, they have become the most orderly in the neighborhood. clothes are left hanging on the lines all night with impunity, and the pretty flower-beds in the yard where the children not only from the six houses, but of the whole block, play, skip, and swing, are undisturbed. the tenants, by the way, provide the flowers themselves in the spring, and take all the more pride in them because they are their own. the six houses contain forty-five families, and there "has never been any need of putting up a bill." as to the income from the property, miss collins said to me last august: "i have had six and even six and three-quarters per cent. on the capital invested; on the whole, you may safely say five and a half per cent. this i regard as entirely satisfactory." it should be added that she has persistently refused to let the corner-store, now occupied by a butcher, as a saloon; or her income from it might have been considerably increased. miss collins's experience is of value chiefly as showing what can be accomplished with the worst possible material, by the sort of personal interest in the poor that alone will meet their real needs. all the charity in the world, scattered with the most lavish hand, will not take its place. "fair play" between landlord and tenant is the key, too long mislaid, that unlocks the door to success everywhere as it did for miss collins. she has not lacked imitators whose experience has been akin to her own. the case of gotham court has been already cited. on the other hand, instances are not wanting of landlords who have undertaken the task, but have tired of it or sold their property before it had been fully redeemed, with the result that it relapsed into its former bad condition faster than it had improved, and the tenants with it. i am inclined to think that such houses are liable to fall even below the average level. backsliding in brick and mortar does not greatly differ from similar performances in flesh and blood. backed by a strong and steady sentiment, such as these pioneers have evinced, that would make it the personal business of wealthy owners with time to spare to look after their tenants, the law would be able in a very short time to work a salutary transformation in the worst quarters, to the lasting advantage, i am well persuaded, of the landlord no less than the tenant. unfortunately, it is in this quality of personal effort that the sentiment of interest in the poor, upon which we have to depend, is too often lacking. people who are willing to give money feel that that ought to be enough. it is not. the money thus given is too apt to be wasted along with the sentiment that prompted the gift. even when it comes to the third of the ways i spoke of as effective in dealing with the tenement-house problem, the building of model structures, the personal interest in the matter must form a large share of the capital invested, if it is to yield full returns. where that is the case, there is even less doubt about its paying, with ordinary business management, than in the case of reclaiming an old building, which is, like putting life into a defunct newspaper, pretty apt to be up-hill work. model tenement building has not been attempted in new york on anything like as large a scale as in many other great cities, and it is perhaps owing to this, in a measure, that a belief prevails that it cannot succeed here. this is a wrong notion entirely. the various undertakings of that sort that have been made here under intelligent management have, as far as i know, all been successful. from the managers of the two best-known experiments in model tenement building in the city, the improved dwellings association and the tenement-house building company, i have letters dated last august, declaring their enterprises eminently successful. there is no reason why their experience should not be conclusive. that the philadelphia plan is not practicable in new york is not a good reason why our own plan, which is precisely the reverse of our neighbor's, should not be. in fact it is an argument for its success. the very reason why we cannot house our working masses in cottages, as has been done in philadelphia--viz., that they must live on manhattan island, where the land is too costly for small houses--is the best guarantee of the success of the model tenement house, properly located and managed. the drift in tenement building, as in everything else, is toward concentration, and helps smooth the way. four families on the floor, twenty in the house, is the rule of to-day. as the crowds increase, the need of guiding this drift into safe channels becomes more urgent. the larger the scale upon which the model tenement is planned, the more certain the promise of success. the utmost ingenuity cannot build a house for sixteen or twenty families on a lot Ã� feet in the middle of a block like it, that shall give them the amount of air and sunlight to be had by the erection of a dozen or twenty houses on a common plan around a central yard. this was the view of the committee that awarded the prizes for the best plan for the conventional tenement, ten years ago. it coupled its verdict with the emphatic declaration that, in its view, it was "impossible to secure the requirements of physical and moral health within these narrow and arbitrary limits." houses have been built since on better plans than any the committee saw, but its judgment stands unimpaired. a point, too, that is not to be overlooked, is the reduced cost of expert superintendence--the first condition of successful management--in the larger buildings. the improved dwellings association put up its block of thirteen houses in east seventy-second street nine years ago. their cost, estimated at about $ , with the land, was increased to $ , by troubles with the contractor engaged to build them. thus the association's task did not begin under the happiest auspices. unexpected expenses came to deplete its treasury. the neighborhood was new and not crowded at the start. no expense was spared, and the benefit of all the best and most recent experience in tenement building was given to the tenants. the families were provided with from two to four rooms, all "outer" rooms, of course, at rents ranging from $ per month for the four on the ground floor, to $ . for two rooms on the top floor. coal lifts, ash-chutes, common laundries in the basement, and free baths, are features of these buildings that were then new enough to be looked upon with suspicion by the doubting thomases who predicted disaster. there are rooms in the block for families, and when i looked in recently all but nine of the apartments were let. one of the nine was rented while i was in the building. the superintendent told me that he had little trouble with disorderly tenants, though the buildings shelter all sorts of people. mr. w. bayard cutting, the president of the association, writes to me: "by the terms of subscription to the stock before incorporation, dividends were limited to five per cent. on the stock of the improved dwellings association. these dividends have been paid (two per cent. each six months) ever since the expiration of the first six months of the buildings operation. all surplus has been expended upon the buildings. new and expensive roofs have been put on for the comfort of such tenants as might choose to use them. the buildings have been completely painted inside and out in a manner not contemplated at the outset. an expensive set of fire-escapes has been put on at the command of the fire department, and a considerable number of other improvements made. _i regard the experiment as eminently successful and satisfactory_, particularly when it is considered that the buildings were the first erected in this city upon anything like a large scale, where it was proposed to meet the architectural difficulties that present themselves in the tenement-house problem. i have no doubt that the experiment could be tried to-day with the improved knowledge which has come with time, and a much larger return be shown upon the investment. the results referred to have been attained in spite of the provision which prevents the selling of liquor upon the association's premises. you are aware, of course, how much larger rent can be obtained for a liquor saloon than for an ordinary store. an investment at five per cent. net upon real estate security worth more than the principal sum, ought to be considered desirable." the tenement house building company made its "experiment" in a much more difficult neighborhood, cherry street, some six years later. its houses shelter many russian jews, and the difficulty of keeping them in order is correspondingly increased, particularly as there are no ash-chutes in the houses. it has been necessary even to shut the children out of the yards upon which the kitchen windows give, lest they be struck by something thrown out by the tenants, and killed. it is the cherry street style, not easily got rid of. nevertheless, the houses are well kept. of the one hundred and six "apartments," only four were vacant in august. professor edwin r. a. seligman, the secretary of the company, writes to me: "the tenements are now a decided success." in the three years since they were built, they have returned an interest of from five to five and a half per cent. on the capital invested. the original intention of making the tenants profit-sharers on a plan of rent insurance, under which all earnings above four per cent. would be put to the credit of the tenants, has not yet been carried out. [illustration: general plan of the riverside buildings (a. t. white's) in brooklyn.] [illustration: floor plan of one division in the riverside buildings, showing six "apartments."] a scheme of dividends to tenants on a somewhat similar plan has been carried out by a brooklyn builder, mr. a. t. white, who has devoted a life of beneficent activity to tenement building, and whose experience, though it has been altogether across the east river, i regard as justly applying to new york as well. he so regards it himself. discussing the cost of building, he says: "there is not the slightest reason to doubt that the financial result of a similar undertaking in any tenement-house district of new york city would be equally good.... high cost of land is no detriment, provided the value is made by the pressure of people seeking residence there. rents in new york city bear a higher ratio to brooklyn rents than would the cost of land and building in the one city to that in the other." the assertion that brooklyn furnishes a better class of tenants than the tenement districts in new york would not be worth discussing seriously, even if mr. white did not meet it himself with the statement that the proportion of day-laborers and sewing-women in his houses is greater than in any of the london model tenements, showing that they reach the humblest classes. mr. white has built homes for five hundred poor families since he began his work, and has made it pay well enough to allow good tenants a share in the profits, averaging nearly one month's rent out of the twelve, as a premium upon promptness and order. the plan of his last tenements, reproduced on p. , may be justly regarded as the _beau ideal_ of the model tenement for a great city like new york. it embodies all the good features of sir sydney waterlow's london plan, with improvements suggested by the builder's own experience. its chief merit is that it gathers three hundred real homes, not simply three hundred families, under one roof. three tenants, it will be seen, everywhere live together. of the rest of the three hundred they may never know, rarely see, one. each has his private front-door. the common hall, with all that it stands for, has disappeared. the fire-proof stairs are outside the house, a perfect fire-escape. each tenant has his own scullery and ash-flue. there are no air-shafts, for they are not needed. every room, under the admirable arrangement of the plan, looks out either upon the street or the yard, that is nothing less than a great park with a play-ground set apart for the children, where they may dig in the sand to their heart's content. weekly concerts are given in the park by a brass band. the drying of clothes is done on the roof, where racks are fitted up for the purpose. the outside stairways end in turrets that give the buildings a very smart appearance. mr. white never has any trouble with his tenants, though he gathers in the poorest; nor do his tenements have anything of the "institution character" that occasionally attaches to ventures of this sort, to their damage. they are like a big village of contented people, who live in peace with one another because they have elbow-room even under one big roof. enough has been said to show that model tenements can be built successfully and made to pay in new york, if the owner will be content with the five or six per cent. he does not even dream of when investing his funds in "governments" at three or four. it is true that in the latter case he has only to cut off his coupons and cash them. but the extra trouble of looking after his tenement property, that is the condition of his highest and lasting success, is the penalty exacted for the sins of our fathers that "shall be visited upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation." we shall indeed be well off, if it stop there. i fear there is too much reason to believe that our own iniquities must be added to transmit the curse still further. and yet, such is the leavening influence of a good deed in that dreary desert of sin and suffering, that the erection of a single good tenement has the power to change, gradually but surely, the character of a whole bad block. it sets up a standard to which the neighborhood must rise, if it cannot succeed in dragging it down to its own low level. * * * * * and so this task, too, has come to an end. whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. i have aimed to tell the truth as i saw it. if this book shall have borne ever so feeble a hand in garnering a harvest of justice, it has served its purpose. while i was writing these lines i went down to the sea, where thousands from the city were enjoying their summer rest. the ocean slumbered under a cloudless sky. gentle waves washed lazily over the white sand, where children fled before them with screams of laughter. standing there and watching their play, i was told that during the fierce storms of winter it happened that this sea, now so calm, rose in rage and beat down, broke over the bluff, sweeping all before it. no barrier built by human hands had power to stay it then. the sea of a mighty population, held in galling fetters, heaves uneasily in the tenements. once already our city, to which have come the duties and responsibilities of metropolitan greatness before it was able to fairly measure its task, has felt the swell of its resistless flood. if it rise once more, no human power may avail to check it. the gap between the classes in which it surges, unseen, unsuspected by the thoughtless, is widening day by day. no tardy enactment of law, no political expedient, can close it. against all other dangers our system of government may offer defence and shelter; against this not. i know of but one bridge that will carry us over safe, a bridge founded upon justice and built of human hearts. i believe that the danger of such conditions as are fast growing up around us is greater for the very freedom which they mock. the words of the poet, with whose lines i prefaced this book, are truer to-day, have far deeper meaning to us, than when they were penned forty years ago: "--think ye that building shall endure which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?" appendix. statistics bearing on the tenement problem. statistics of population were left out of the text in the hope that the results of this year's census would be available as a basis for calculation before the book went to press. they are now at hand, but their correctness is disputed. the statisticians of the health department claim that new york's population has been underestimated a hundred thousand at least, and they appear to have the best of the argument. a re-count is called for, and the printer will not wait. such statistics as follow have been based on the health department estimates, except where the census source is given. the extent of the quarrel of official figures may be judged from this one fact, that the ordinarily conservative and careful calculations of the sanitary bureau make the death-rate of new york, in , . for the thousand of a population of , , , while the census would make it . in a population of , , . population of new york, (census) , , " london, " , , " philadelphia, " , " brooklyn, " , " boston, " , " new york, (estimated) , , " london, " , , " philadelphia, " , , " brooklyn, " " , " boston, " " , " new york under five years of age, in , " " " " " (estimated) , population of tenements in new york in [ ] (census) , " " " " [ ] " , , " " " " " under five years of age , population of new york in (census) , , " manhattan island in (census) , , " tenth ward in (census) , " eleventh ward " " , " thirteenth ward in (census) , " new york in (census) , , " manhattan island in (census) , , " tenth ward in (census) , " eleventh ward " " , " thirteenth ward in (census) , number of acres in new york city , " " manhattan island , " " tenth ward " " eleventh ward " " thirteenth ward density of population per acre in , new york city . density of population per acre in , manhattan island . density of population per acre in , tenth ward . density of population per acre in , eleventh ward . density of population per acre in , thirteenth ward . density of population per acre in , new york city (census) . density of population per acre in , manhattan island (census) . density of population per acre in , tenth ward (census) . density of population per acre in , eleventh ward (census) . density of population per acre in , thirteenth ward (census) . density of population to the square mile in , new york city (census) , density of population to the square mile in , manhattan island (census) , density of population to the square mile in , tenth ward (census) , density of population to the square mile in , eleventh ward (census) , density of population to the square mile in , thirteenth ward (census) , density of population to the square mile in , new york city (census) , density of population to the square mile in , manhattan island (census) , density of population to the square mile in , tenth ward (census) , density of population to the square mile in , eleventh ward (census) , density of population to the square mile in , thirteenth ward (census) , number of persons to a dwelling in new york, (census) . number of persons to a dwelling in london, (census) . number of persons to a dwelling in philadelphia, (census) . number of persons to a dwelling in brooklyn, (census) . number of persons to a dwelling in boston, (census) . number of deaths in new york, , " " london, , " " philadelphia, , " " brooklyn, , " " boston, , death-rate of new york, . " london, . " philadelphia, . " brooklyn, . " boston, . number of deaths in new york, , number of deaths in london, , " " philadelphia, , " " brooklyn, , " " boston, , death-rate of new york, . " london, . " philadelphia, . " brooklyn, . " boston, . [footnote : in , a tenement was a house occupied by four families or more] [footnote : in , a tenement was a house occupied by three families or more] for every person who dies there are always two disabled by illness, so that there was a regular average of , new yorkers on the sick-list at any moment last year. it is usual to count cases of sickness the year round for every death, and this would give a total for the year of , , of illness of all sorts. number of deaths in tenements in new york, , " " " " " " , death-rate in tenements in new york, . " " " " " . this is exclusive of deaths in institutions, properly referable to the tenements in most cases. the adult death-rate is found to decrease in the larger tenements of newer construction. the child mortality increases, reaching . per cent. of , living in houses containing between and tenants. from this point it decreases with the adult death-rate. number of deaths in prisons, new york, " " hospitals, new york, , " " lunatic asylums, new york, " " institutions for children, new york, " " homes for aged, new york, " " almshouse, new york, " " other institutions, new york, number of burials in city cemetery (paupers), new york, , percentage of such burials on total . number of tenants weeded out of overcrowded tenements, new york, , number of tenants weeded out of overcrowded tenements, in first half of [ ] , number of sick poor visited by summer corps of doctors, new york, , [footnote : these figures represent less than two hundred of the worst tenements below houston street.] police statistics. males. females. arrests made by the police in , , number of arrests for drunkenness and disorderly , , number of arrests for disorderly conduct , , " " assault and battery , " " theft , " " robbery " " vagrancy , prisoners unable to read or write , , number of lost children found in the streets, , " sick and destitute cared for, , found sick in the streets , number of pawnshops in city, " cheap lodging-houses, " saloons, , immigration. immigrants landed at castle garden in years, ending with , , immigrants landed at castle garden in , immigrants from england landed at castle garden in , immigrants from scotland landed at castle garden in , immigrants from ireland landed at castle garden in , immigrants from germany landed at castle garden in , --------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+-------- | . | . | . | . | . | . | . --------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+-------- italy | , | , | , | , | , | , | , russia} | , | , | , | , | , | , | , poland} | | | | | | | hungary | , | , | , | , | , | , | , bohemia | , | , | , | , | , | , | , --------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+-------- tenements. number of tenements in new york, december , , number built from june , , to august , , rear tenements in existence, august , , total number of tenements, august , , estimated population of tenements, august , , , estimated number of children under five years in tenements, , corner tenements may cover all of the lot, except feet at the rear. tenements in the block may only cover seventy-eight per cent. of the lot. they must have a rear yard feet wide, and air-shafts or open courts equal to twelve per cent. of the lot. tenements or apartment houses must not be built over feet high in streets feet wide. tenements or apartment houses must not be built over feet high in streets wider than feet. transcriber's note incidental inconsistencies of punctuation are resolved silently. the following list contains other textual issues that are encountered. if there were no other correct instances of misspelled words (in current usage) they were allowed to stand. p. disenfecting _sic_ p. loadstone _sic_ p. caravanseries _sic_ p. tha[t/n] corrected. p. tantilizes _sic_ a ten years' war an account of the battle with the slum in new york by jacob a. riis author of "how the other half lives" _with illustrations_ [illustration: the riverside press] boston and new york houghton, mifflin and company the riverside press, cambridge copyright, , by jacob a. riis all rights reserved to the faint-hearted and those of little faith this volume is reproachfully inscribed by the author [illustration: colonel george e. waring, jr.] contents chap. page i. the battle with the slum ii. the tenement house blight iii. the tenement: curing its blight iv. the tenant v. the genesis of the gang vi. letting in the light vii. justice for the boy viii. reform by humane touch list of illustrations page colonel george e. waring, jr. _frontispiece_ police station lodging room on east side the mott street barracks alfred corning clark buildings--_model tenements of city and suburban homes company_ evening in one of the courts of mills house no. bone alley mulberry bend park letter h plan of public school no. (showing front on west th street) playground on roof of new east broadway schoolhouse (area , square feet) a tammany-swept east side street before waring the same east side street when colonel waring wielded the broom theodore roosevelt a ten years' war i the battle with the slum the slum is as old as civilization. civilization implies a race, to get ahead. in a race there are usually some who for one cause or another cannot keep up, or are thrust out from among their fellows. they fall behind, and when they have been left far in the rear they lose hope and ambition, and give up. thenceforward, if left to their own resources, they are the victims, not the masters, of their environment; and it is a bad master. they drag one another always farther down. the bad environment becomes the heredity of the next generation. then, given the crowd, you have the slum ready-made. the battle with the slum began the day civilization recognized in it her enemy. it was a losing fight until conscience joined forces with fear and self-interest against it. when common sense and the golden rule obtain among men as a rule of practice, it will be over. the two have not always been classed together, but here they are plainly seen to belong together. justice to the individual is accepted in theory as the only safe groundwork of the commonwealth. when it is practiced in dealing with the slum, there will shortly be no slum. we need not wait for the millennium, to get rid of it. we can do it now. all that is required is that it shall not be left to itself. that is justice to it and to us, since its grievous ailment is that it cannot help itself. when a man is drowning, the thing to do is to pull him out of the water; afterward there will be time for talking it over. we got at it the other way in dealing with our social problems. the doctrinaires had their day, and they decided to let bad enough alone; that it was unsafe to interfere with "causes that operate sociologically," as one survivor of these unfittest put it to me. it was a piece of scientific humbug that cost the age which listened to it dear. "causes that operate sociologically" are the opportunity of the political and every other kind of scamp who trades upon the depravity and helplessness of the slum, and the refuge of the pessimist who is useless in the fight against them. we have not done yet paying the bills he ran up for us. some time since we turned to, to pull the drowning man out, and it was time. a little while longer, and we should have been in danger of being dragged down with him. the slum complaint had been chronic in all ages, but the great changes which the nineteenth century saw, the new industry, political freedom, brought on an acute attack which threatened to become fatal. too many of us had supposed that, built as our commonwealth was on universal suffrage, it would be proof against the complaints that harassed older states; but in fact it turned out that there was extra hazard in that. having solemnly resolved that all men are created equal and have certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we shut our eyes and waited for the formula to work. it was as if a man with a cold should take the doctor's prescription to bed with him, expecting it to cure him. the formula was all right, but merely repeating it worked no cure. when, after a hundred years, we opened our eyes, it was upon sixty cents a day as the living wage of the working-woman in our cities; upon "knee pants" at forty cents a dozen for the making; upon the potter's field taking tithe of our city life, ten per cent, each year for the trench, truly the lost tenth of the slum. our country had grown great and rich; through our ports was poured food for the millions of europe. but in the back streets multitudes huddled in ignorance and want. the foreign oppressor had been vanquished, the fetters stricken from the black man at home; but his white brother, in his bitter plight, sent up a cry of distress that had in it a distinct note of menace. political freedom we had won; but the problem of helpless poverty, grown vast with the added offscourings of the old world, mocked us, unsolved. liberty at sixty cents a day set presently its stamp upon the government of our cities, and it became the scandal and the peril of our political system. so the battle began. three times since the war that absorbed the nation's energies and attention had the slum confronted us in new york with its challenge. in the darkest days of the great struggle it was the treacherous mob; later on, the threat of the cholera, which found swine foraging in the streets as the only scavengers, and a swarming host, but little above the hog in its appetites and in the quality of the shelter afforded it, peopling the back alleys. still later, the mob, caught looting the city's treasury with its idol, the thief tweed, at its head, drunk with power and plunder, had insolently defied the outraged community to do its worst. there were meetings and protests. the rascals were turned out for a season; the arch-thief died in jail. i see him now, going through the gloomy portals of the tombs, whither, as a newspaper reporter, i had gone with him, his stubborn head held high as ever. i asked myself more than once, at the time when the vile prison was torn down, whether the comic clamor to have the ugly old gates preserved and set up in central park had anything to do with the memory of the "martyred" thief, or whether it was in joyful celebration of the fact that others had escaped. his name is even now one to conjure with in the sixth ward. he never "squealed," and he was "so good to the poor"--evidence that the slum is not laid by the heels by merely destroying five points and the mulberry bend. there are other fights to be fought in that war, other victories to be won, and it is slow work. it was nearly ten years after the great robbery before decency got the upper grip in good earnest. that was when the civic conscience awoke in . in that year the slum was arraigned in the churches. the sad and shameful story was told of how it grew and was fostered by avarice, that saw in the homeless crowds from over the sea only a chance for business, and exploited them to the uttermost, making sometimes a hundred per cent, on the capital invested,--always most out of the worst houses, from the tenants of which "nothing was expected" save that they pay the usurious rents; how christianity, citizenship, human fellowship, shook their skirts clear of the rabble that was only good enough to fill the greedy purse, and how the rabble, left to itself, improved such opportunities as it found after such fashion as it knew; how it ran elections merely to count its thugs in, and fattened at the public crib; and how the whole evil thing had its root in the tenements, where the home had ceased to be sacred,--those dark and deadly dens in which the family ideal was tortured to death, and character was smothered; in which children were "damned rather than born" into the world, thus realizing a slum kind of foreordination to torment, happily brief in many cases. the tenement house committee long afterward called the worst of the barracks "infant slaughter houses," and showed, by reference to the mortality lists, that they killed one in every five babies born in them. the story shocked the town into action. plans for a better kind of tenement were called for, and a premium was put on every ray of light and breath of air that could be let into it. money was raised to build model houses, and a bill to give the health authorities summary powers in dealing with tenements was sent to the legislature. the landlords held it up until the last day of the session, when it was forced through by an angered public opinion. the power of the cabal was broken. the landlords had found their waterloo. many of them got rid of their property, which in a large number of cases they had never seen, and tried to forget the source of their ill-gotten wealth. light and air did find their way into the tenements in a half-hearted fashion, and we began to count the tenants as "souls." that is one of our milestones in the history of new york. they were never reckoned so before; no one ever thought of them as "souls." so, restored to human fellowship, in the twilight of the air shaft that had penetrated to their dens, the first tenement house committee was able to make them out "better than the houses" they lived in, and a long step forward was taken. the mulberry bend, the wicked core of the "bloody sixth ward," was marked for destruction, and all slumdom held its breath to see it go. with that gone, it seemed as if the old days must be gone too, never to return. there would not be another mulberry bend. as long as it stood, there was yet a chance. the slum had backing, as it were. the civic conscience was not very robust yet, and required many and protracted naps. it slumbered fitfully eight long years, waking up now and then with a start, while the politicians did their best to lull it back to its slumbers. i wondered often, in those years of delay, if it was just plain stupidity that kept the politicians from spending the money which the law had put within their grasp; for with every year that passed a million dollars that could have been used for small park purposes was lost. but they were wiser than i. i understood when i saw the changes which letting in the sunshine worked. we had all believed it, but they knew it all along. at the same time, they lost none of the chances that offered. they helped the landlords, who considered themselves greatly aggrieved because their property was thereafter to front on a park instead of a pigsty, to transfer the whole assessment of half a million dollars for park benefit to the city. they undid in less than six weeks what it had taken considerably more than six years to do; but the park was cheap at the price. we could afford to pay all it cost to wake us up. when finally, upon the wave of wrath excited by the parkhurst and lexow disclosures, reform came with a shock that dislodged tammany, it found us wide awake, and, it must be admitted, not a little astonished at our sudden access of righteousness. the battle went against the slum in the three years that followed, until it found backing in the "odium of reform" that became the issue in the municipal organization of the greater city. tammany made notes. of what was done, how it was done, and why, during those years, i shall have occasion to speak further in these pages. here i wish to measure the stretch we have come since i wrote "how the other half lives," ten years ago. some of it we came plodding, and some at full speed; some of it in the face of every obstacle that could be thrown in our way, wresting victory from defeat at every step; some of it with the enemy on the run. take it altogether, it is a long way. most of it will not have to be traveled over again. the engine of municipal progress, once started as it has been in new york, may slip many a cog with tammany as the engineer; it may even be stopped for a season; but it can never be made to work backward. even tammany knows that, and is building the schools she so long neglected, and so is hastening the day when she shall be but an unsavory memory. how we strove for those schools, to no purpose! our arguments, our anger, the anxious pleading of philanthropists who saw the young on the east side going to ruin, the warning year after year of the superintendent of schools that the compulsory education law was but an empty mockery where it was most needed, the knocking of uncounted thousands of children for whom there was no room,--uncounted in sober fact; there was not even a way of finding out how many were adrift,--brought only the response that the tax rate must be kept down. kept down it was. "waste" was successfully averted at the spigot; at the bunghole it went on unchecked. in a swarming population like that you must have either schools or jails, and the jails waxed fat with the overflow. the east side, that had been orderly, became a hotbed of child crime. and when, in answer to the charge made by a legislative committee that the father forced his child into the shop, on a perjured age certificate, to labor when he ought to have been at play, that father, bent and heavy-eyed with unceasing toil, flung back the charge with the bitter reproach that we gave him no other choice, that it was either the street or the shop for his boy, and that perjury for him was cheaper than the ruin of the child, we were mute. what, indeed, was there to say? the crime was ours, not his. that was but yesterday. to-day we can count the months to the time when every child who knocks shall find a seat in our schools. we have a school census to tell us of the need. in that most crowded neighborhood in all the world, where the superintendent lately pleaded in vain for three new schools, five have been built, the finest in this or any other land,--great, light, and airy structures, with playgrounds on the roof; and all over the city the like are going up. the briefest of our laws, every word of which is like the blow of a hammer driving the nails home in the coffin of the bad old days, says that never one shall be built without its playground. so the boy is coming to his rights. the streets are cleaned,--not necessarily clean just now; colonel waring is dead, with his doctrine of putting a man instead of a voter behind every broom, killed by politics, he and his doctrine both,--but cleaned. the slum has even been washed. we tried that on hester street years ago, in the age of cobblestone pavements, and the result fairly frightened us. i remember the indignant reply of a well-known citizen, a man of large business responsibility and experience in the handling of men, to whom the office of street-cleaning commissioner had been offered, when i asked him if he would accept. "i have lived," he said, "a blameless life for forty years, and have a character in the community. i cannot afford--no man with a reputation can afford--to hold that office; it will surely wreck it." that was then. it made colonel waring's reputation. he took the trucks from the streets. tammany, in a brief interregnum of vigor under mayor grant, had laid the axe to the unsightly telegraph poles and begun to pave the streets with asphalt, but it left the trucks and the ash barrels to colonel waring as hopeless. trucks have votes; at least their drivers have. now that they are gone, the drivers would be the last to bring them back; for they have children, too, and the rescued streets gave them their first playground. perilous, begrudged by policeman and storekeeper, though it was, it was still a playground. but one is coming in which the boy shall rule unchallenged. the mulberry bend park kept its promise. before the sod was laid in it two more were under way in the thickest of the tenement house crowding, and each, under the law which brought them into existence, is to be laid out in part as a playground. they are not yet finished, but they will be; for the people have taken to the idea, and the politician has made a note of the fact. he saw a great light when the play piers were opened. in half a dozen localities where the slum was striking its roots deep into the soil such piers are now being built, and land is being acquired for small parks. we shall yet settle the "causes that operated sociologically" on the boy with a lawn mower and a sand heap. you have got your boy, and the heredity of the next one, when you can order his setting. even while i am writing, a bill is urged in the legislature to build in every senatorial district in the city a gymnasium and a public bath. it matters little whether it passes at this session or not. the important thing is that it is there. the rest will follow. a people's club is being organized, to crowd out the saloon that has had a monopoly of the brightness and the cheer in the tenement streets too long. the labor unions are bestirring themselves to deal with the sweating curse, and the gospel of less law and more enforcement sits enthroned at albany. theodore roosevelt will teach us again jefferson's forgotten lesson, that "the whole art of government consists in being honest." with a back door to every ordinance that touched the lives of the people, if indeed the whole thing was not the subject of open ridicule or the vehicle of official blackmail, it seemed as if we had provided a perfect municipal machinery for bringing the law into contempt with the young, and so for wrecking citizenship by the shortest cut. of free soup there is an end. it was never food for free men. the last spoonful was ladled out by yellow journalism with the certificate of the men who fought roosevelt and reform in the police board that it was good. it is not likely that it will ever plague us again. our experience has taught us a new reading of the old word that charity covers a multitude of sins. it does. uncovering some of them has kept us busy since our conscience awoke, and there are more left. the worst of them all, that awful parody on municipal charity, the police station lodging room, is gone, after twenty years of persistent attack upon the foul dens,--years during which they were arraigned, condemned, indicted by every authority having jurisdiction, all to no purpose. the stale beer dives went with them and with the bend, and the grip of the tramp on our throat has been loosened. we shall not easily throw it off altogether, for the tramp has a vote, too, for which tammany, with admirable ingenuity, has found a new use, since the ante-election inspection of lodging houses has made them less available for colonization purposes than they were. perhaps i should say a new way of very old use. it is simplicity itself. instead of keeping tramps in hired lodgings for weeks at a daily outlay, the new way is to send them all to the island on short commitments during the canvass, and vote them from there _en bloc_ at the city's expense. time and education must solve that, like so many other problems which the slum has thrust upon us. they are the forces upon which, when we have gone as far as our present supply of steam will carry us, we must always fall back; and this we may do with confidence so long as we keep stirring, if it is only marking time, as now. it is in the retrospect that one sees how far we have come, after all, and from that gathers courage for the rest of the way. twenty-nine years have passed since i slept in a police station lodging house, a lonely lad, and was robbed, beaten, and thrown out for protesting; and when the vagrant cur that had joined its homelessness to mine, and had sat all night at the door waiting for me to come out,--it had been clubbed away the night before,--snarled and showed its teeth at the doorman, raging and impotent i saw it beaten to death on the step. i little dreamed then that the friendless beast, dead, should prove the undoing of the monstrous wrong done by the maintenance of these evil holes to every helpless man and woman who was without shelter in new york; but it did. it was after an inspection of the lodging rooms, when i stood with theodore roosevelt, then president of the police board, in the one where i had slept that night, and told him of it, that he swore they should go. and go they did, as did so many another abuse in those two years of honest purpose and effort. i hated them. it may not have been a very high motive to furnish power for municipal reform; but we had tried every other way, and none of them worked. arbitration is good, but there are times when it becomes necessary to knock a man down and arbitrate sitting on him, and this was such a time. it was what we started out to do with the rear tenements, the worst of the slum barracks, and it would have been better had we kept on that track. i have always maintained that we made a false move when we stopped to discuss damages with the landlord, or to hear his side of it at all. his share in it was our grievance; it blocked the mortality records with its burden of human woe. the damage was all ours, the profit all his. if there are damages to collect, he should foot the bill, not we. vested rights are to be protected, but no man has a right to be protected in killing his neighbor. [illustration: police station lodging room on east side] however, they are down, the worst of them. the community has asserted its right to destroy tenements that destroy life, and for that cause. we bought the slum off in the mulberry bend at its own figure. on the rear tenements we set the price, and set it low. it was a long step. bottle alley is gone, and bandits' roost. bone alley, thieves' alley, and kerosene row,--they are all gone. hell's kitchen and poverty gap have acquired standards of decency; poverty gap has risen even to the height of neckties. the time is fresh in my recollection when a different kind of necktie was its pride; when the boy murderer--he was barely nineteen--who wore it on the gallows took leave of the captain of detectives with the cheerful invitation to "come over to the wake. they will have a high old time." and the event fully redeemed the promise. the whole gap turned out to do the dead bully honor. i have not heard from the gap, and hardly from hell's kitchen, in five years. the last news from the kitchen was when the thin wedge of a column of negroes, in their uptown migration, tried to squeeze in, and provoked a race war; but that in fairness should not be laid up against it. in certain local aspects it might be accounted a sacred duty; as much so as to get drunk and provoke a fight on the anniversary of the battle of the boyne. but on the whole the kitchen has grown orderly. the gang rarely beats a policeman nowadays, and it has not killed one in a long while. so, one after another, the outworks of the slum have been taken. it has been beaten in many battles; but its reserves are unimpaired. more tenements are being built every day on twenty-five-foot lots, and however watchfully such a house is planned, if it is to return to the builder the profit he seeks, it will have that within it which, the moment the grasp of official sanitary supervision is loosened, must summon up the ghost of the slum. the common type of tenement to-day is the double-decker, and the double-decker is hopeless. in it the crowding goes on at a constantly increasing rate. this is the sore spot, and as against it all the rest seems often enough unavailing. yet it cannot be. it is true that the home, about which all that is to work for permanent progress must cluster, is struggling against desperate odds in the tenement, and that the struggle has been reflected in the morals of the people, in the corruption of the young, to an alarming extent; but it must be that the higher standards now set up on every hand, in the cleaner streets, in the better schools, in the parks and the clubs, in the settlements, and in the thousand and one agencies for good that touch and help the lives of the poor at as many points, will tell at no distant day, and react upon the homes and upon their builders. to any one who knew the east side, for instance, ten years ago, the difference between that day and this in the appearance of the children whom he sees there must be striking. rags and dirt are now the exception rather than the rule. perhaps the statement is a trifle too strong as to the dirt; but dirt is not harmful except when coupled with rags; it can be washed off, and nowadays is washed off where such a thing would have been considered affectation in the days that were. soap and water have worked a visible cure already, that must go more than skin-deep. they are moral agents of the first value in the slum. and the day must come when rapid transit will cease to be a football between contending forces in a city of three million people, and the reason for the outrageous crowding will cease to exist with the scattering of the centres of production to the suburb. that day may be a long way off, measured by the impatience of the philanthropist, but it is bound to come. meanwhile, philanthropy is not sitting idle and waiting. it is building tenements on the humane plan that wipes out the lines of the twenty-five-foot lot, and lets in sunshine and air and hope. it is putting up hotels deserving of the name for the army that but just now had no other home than the cheap lodging houses which inspector byrnes fitly called "nurseries of crime." these also are standards from which there is no backing down, even if coming up to them is slow work: and they are here to stay, for they pay. that is the test. not charity, but justice,--that is the gospel which they preach. flushed with the success of many victories, we challenged the slum to a fight to the finish a year ago, and bade it come on. it came on. on our side fought the bravest and best. the man who marshaled the citizen forces for their candidate had been foremost in building homes, in erecting baths for the people, in directing the self-sacrificing labors of the oldest and worthiest of the agencies for improving the condition of the poor. with him battled men who had given lives of patient study and effort to the cause of helping their fellow men. shoulder to shoulder with them stood the thoughtful workingman from the east side tenement. the slum, too, marshaled its forces. tammany produced her notes. she pointed to the increased tax rate, showed what it had cost to build schools and parks and to clean house, and called it criminal recklessness. the issue was made sharp and clear. the war cry of the slum was characteristic: "to hell with reform!" we all remember the result. politics interfered, and turned victory into defeat. we were beaten. i shall never forget that election night. i walked home through the bowery in the midnight hour, and saw it gorging itself, like a starved wolf, upon the promise of the morrow. drunken men and women sat in every doorway, howling ribald songs and curses. hard faces i had not seen for years showed themselves about the dives. the mob made merry after its fashion. the old days were coming back. reform was dead, and decency with it. a year later, i passed that same way on the night of election. the scene was strangely changed. the street was unusually quiet for such a time. men stood in groups about the saloons, and talked in whispers, with serious faces. the name of roosevelt was heard on every hand. the dives were running, but there was no shouting, and violence was discouraged. when, on the following day, i met the proprietor of one of the oldest concerns in the bowery,--which, while doing a legitimate business, caters necessarily to its crowds, and therefore sides with them,--he told me with bitter reproach how he had been stricken in pocket. a gambler had just been in to see him, who had come on from the far west, in anticipation of a wide-open town, and had got all ready to open a house in the tenderloin. "he brought $ , to put in the business, and he came to take it away to baltimore. just now the cashier of ---- bank told me that two other gentlemen--gamblers? yes, that's what you call them--had drawn $ , which they would have invested here, and had gone after him. think of all that money gone to baltimore! that's what you've done!" i went over to police headquarters, thinking of the sad state of that man, and in the hallway i ran across two children, little tots, who were inquiring their way to "the commissioner." the older was a hunchback girl, who led her younger brother (he could not have been over five or six years old) by the hand. they explained their case to me. they came from allen street. some undesirable women tenants had moved into the tenement, and when complaint was made that sent the police there, the children's father, who was a poor jewish tailor, was blamed. the tenants took it out of the boy by punching his nose till it bled. whereupon the children went straight to mulberry street to see the commissioner and get justice. it was the first time in twenty years that i had known allen street to come to police headquarters for justice; and in the discovery that the new idea had reached down to the little children i read the doom of the slum, despite its loud vauntings. no, it was not true that reform was dead, with decency. it was not the slum that had won; it was we who had lost. we were not up to the mark,--not yet. but new york is a many times cleaner and better city to-day than it was ten years ago. then i was able to grasp easily the whole plan for wresting it from the neglect and indifference that had put us where we were. it was chiefly, almost wholly, remedial in its scope. now it is preventive, constructive, and no ten men could gather all the threads and hold them. we have made, are making headway, and no tammany has the power to stop us. she knows it, too, and is in such frantic haste to fill her pockets while she has time that she has abandoned her old ally, the tax rate, and the pretense of making bad government cheap government. she is at this moment engaged in raising taxes and assessments at one and the same time to an unheard-of figure, while salaries are being increased lavishly on every hand. we can afford to pay all she charges us for the lesson we are learning. if to that we add common sense, we shall discover the bearings of it all without trouble. yesterday i picked up a book,--a learned disquisition on government,--and read on the title-page, "affectionately dedicated to all who despise politics." that was not common sense. to win the battle with the slum, we must not begin by despising politics. we have been doing that too long. the politics of the slum is apt to be like the slum itself, dirty. then it must be cleaned. it is what the fight is about. politics is the weapon. we must learn to use it so as to cut straight and sure. that is common sense, and the golden rule as applied to tammany. some years ago, the united states government conducted an inquiry into the slums of great cities. to its staff of experts was attached a chemist, who gathered and isolated a lot of bacilli with fearsome latin names, in the tenements where he went. among those he labeled were the _staphylococcus pyogenes albus_, the _micrococcus fervidosus_, the _saccharomyces rosaceus_, and the _bacillus buccalis fortuitus_. i made a note of the names at the time, because of the dread with which they inspired me. but i searched the collection in vain for the real bacillus of the slum. it escaped science, to be identified by human sympathy and a conscience-stricken community with that of ordinary human selfishness. the antitoxin has been found, and is applied successfully. since justice has replaced charity on the prescription the patient is improving. and the improvement is not confined to him; it is general. conscience is not a local issue in our day. a few years ago, a united states senator sought reëlection on the platform that the decalogue and the golden rule were glittering generalities that had no place in politics, and lost. we have not quite reached the millennium yet, but to-day a man is governor in the empire state who was elected on the pledge that he would rule by the ten commandments. these are facts that mean much or little, according to the way one looks at them. the significant thing is that they are facts, and that, in spite of slipping and sliding, the world moves forward, not backward. the poor we shall have always with us, but the slum we need not have. these two do not rightfully belong together. their present partnership is at once poverty's worst hardship and our worst fault. ii the tenement house blight in a stanton street tenement, the other day, i stumbled upon a polish capmaker's home. there were other capmakers in the house, russian and polish, but they simply "lived" there. this one had a home. the fact proclaimed itself the moment the door was opened, in spite of the darkness. the rooms were in the rear, gloomy with the twilight of the tenement, although the day was sunny without, but neat, even cosy. it was early, but the day's chores were evidently done. the teakettle sang on the stove, at which a bright-looking girl of twelve, with a pale but cheery face, and sleeves brushed back to the elbows, was busy poking up the fire. a little boy stood by the window, flattening his nose against the pane and gazing wistfully up among the chimney pots where a piece of blue sky about as big as the kitchen could be made out. i remarked to the mother that they were nice rooms. "ah yes," she said, with a weary little smile that struggled bravely with hope long deferred, "but it is hard to make a home here. we would so like to live in the front, but we can't pay the rent." i knew the front with its unlovely view of the tenement street too well, and i said a good word for the air shaft--yard or court it could not be called, it was too small for that--which rather surprised myself. i had found few virtues enough in it before. the girl at the stove had left off poking the fire. she broke in the moment i finished, with eager enthusiasm: "why, they have the sun in there. when the door is opened the light comes right in your face." "does it never come here?" i asked, and wished i had not done so, as soon as the words were spoken. the child at the window was listening, with his whole hungry little soul in his eyes. yes, it did, she said. once every summer, for a little while, it came over the houses. she knew the month and the exact hour of the day when its rays shone into their home, and just the reach of its slant on the wall. they had lived there six years. in june the sun was due. a haunting fear that the baby would ask how long it was till june--it was february then--took possession of me, and i hastened to change the subject. warsaw was their old home. they kept a little store there, and were young and happy. oh, it was a fine city, with parks and squares, and bridges over the beautiful river,--and grass and flowers and birds and soldiers, put in the girl breathlessly. she remembered. but the children kept coming, and they went across the sea to give them a better chance. father made fifteen dollars a week, much money; but there were long seasons when there was no work. she, the mother, was never very well here,--she hadn't any strength; and the baby! she glanced at his grave white face, and took him in her arms. the picture of the two, and of the pale-faced girl longing back to the fields and the sunlight, in their prison of gloom and gray walls, haunts me yet. i have not had the courage to go back since. i recalled the report of an english army surgeon, which i read years ago, on the many more soldiers that died--were killed would be more correct--in barracks into which the sun never shone than in those that were open to the light. the capmaker's case is the case of the nineteenth century, of civilization, against the metropolis of america. the home, the family, are the rallying points of civilization. but long since the tenements of new york earned for it the ominous name of "the homeless city." in its , tenements its workers, more than half of the city's population, are housed. they have no other chance. there are, indeed, wives and mothers who, by sheer force of character, rise above their environment and make homes where they go. happily, there are yet many of them. but the fact remains that hitherto their struggle has been growing ever harder, and the issue more doubtful. the tenement itself, with its crowds, its lack of privacy, is the greatest destroyer of individuality, of character. as its numbers increase, so does "the element that becomes criminal for lack of individuality and the self-respect that comes with it." add the shiftless and the weak who are turned out by the same process, and you have its legitimate crop. in the average number of persons to each dwelling in new york was . ; in it was . . in , according to the police census, . . the census of will show the crowding to have gone on at an equal if not at a greater rate. that will mean that so many more tenements have been built of the modern type, with four families to the floor where once there were two. i shall not weary the reader with many statistics. they are to be found, by those who want them, in the census books and in the official records. i shall try to draw from them their human story. but, as an instance of the unchecked drift, let me quote here the case of the tenth ward, that east side district known as the most crowded in all the world. in , when it had not yet attained that bad eminence, it contained , persons, or . to the acre. in the census showed a population of , , which was to the acre. the police census of found , persons living in houses, which was . to the acre. lastly, the health department's census for the first half of gave a total of , persons living in tenements, with inhabited buildings yet to be heard from. this is the process of doubling up,--literally, since the cause and the vehicle of it all is the double-decker tenement,--which in the year had crowded a single block in that ward at the rate of persons per acre, and one in the eleventh ward at the rate of .[ ] it goes on not in the tenth ward or on the east side only, but throughout the city. when, in , it was proposed to lay out a small park in the twenty-second ward, up on the far west side, it was shown that five blocks in that section, between forty-ninth and sixty-second streets and ninth and eleventh avenues, had a population of more than each. the block between sixty-first and sixty-second streets, tenth and eleventh avenues, harbored , which meant . persons to the acre. [footnote : police census of : block bounded by canal, hester, eldridge, and forsyth streets: size Ã� , population , rate per acre . block bounded by stanton, houston, attorney, and ridge streets: size Ã� , population , rate per acre .] if we have here to do with forces that are beyond the control of the individual or the community, we shall do well at least to face the facts squarely and know the truth. it is no answer to the charge that new york's way of housing its workers is the worst in the world to say that they are better off than they were where they came from. it is not true, in most cases, as far as the home is concerned: a shanty is better than a flat in a cheap tenement, any day. even if it were true, it would still be beside the issue. in poland my capmaker counted for nothing. nothing was expected of him. here he ranks, after a few brief years, politically equal with the man who hires his labor. a citizen's duty is expected of him, and home and citizenship are convertible terms. the observation of the frenchman who had watched the experiment of herding two thousand human beings in eight tenement barracks in paris, that the result was the "exasperation of the tenant against society," is true the world over. we have done as badly in new york. social hatefulness is not a good soil for citizenship to grow in, where political equality rules. nor will the old lie about the tenants being wholly to blame cover the ground. it has long been overworked in defense of landlord usury. doubtless there are bad tenants. in the matter of renting houses, as in everything else, men have a trick of coming up to what is expected of them, good or bad; but as a class the tenants have been shown all along to be superior to their surroundings. "better than the houses they live in," said the first tenement house commission; and the second gave as its verdict that "they respond quickly to improved conditions." that is not an honest answer. the truth is that if we cannot check the indraught to the cities, we can, if we choose, make homes for those who come, and at a profit on the investment. nothing has been more clearly demonstrated in our day, and it is time that it should be said so that everybody can understand. it is not a case of transforming human nature in the tenant, but of reforming it in the landlord builder. it is a plain question of the per cent. he is willing to take. so that we may get the capmaker's view and that of his fellow tenants,--for, after all, that is the one that counts; the state and the community are not nearly so much interested in the profits of the landlord as in the welfare of the workers,--suppose we take a stroll through a tenement house neighborhood and see for ourselves. we were in stanton street. let us start there, then, going east. towering barracks on either side, five, six stories high. teeming crowds. push-cart men "moved on" by the policeman, who seems to exist only for the purpose. forsyth street: there is a church on the corner, polish and catholic, a combination that strikes one as queer here on the east side, where polish has come to be synonymous with jewish. i have cause to remember that corner. a man killed his wife in this house, and was hanged for it. just across the street, on the stoop of that brown stone tenement, the tragedy was reënacted the next year; only the murderer saved the county trouble and expense by taking himself off, also. that other stoop in the same row witnessed a suicide. why do i tell you these things? because they are true. the policeman here will bear me out. they belong to the ordinary setting of life in a crowd such as this. it is never so little worth living, and therefore held so cheap along with the fierce, unceasing battle that goes on to save it. you will go no further unless i leave it out? very well; i shall leave out the murder after we have passed the block yonder. the tragedy of that is of a kind that comes too close to the every-day life of tenement house people to be omitted. the house caught fire in the night, and five were burned to death,--father, mother, and three children. the others got out; why not they? they stayed, it seems, to make sure none was left; they were not willing to leave one behind, to save themselves. and then it was too late; the stairs were burning. there was no proper fire escape. that was where the murder came in; but it was not all chargeable to the landlord, nor even the greater part. more than thirty years ago, in , the state made it law that the stairs in every tenement four stories high should be fireproof, and forbade the storing of any inflammable material in such houses. i do not know when the law was repealed, or if it ever was. i only know that in the fire department, out of pity for the tenants and regard for the safety of its own men, forced through an amendment to the building law, requiring the stairs of the common type of five-story tenements to be built of fireproof material, and that to-day they are of wood, just as they always were. only last spring i looked up the superintendent of buildings and asked him what it meant. i showed him the law, which said that the stairs should be "built of slow-burning construction or fireproof material;" and he put his finger upon the clause that follows, "as the superintendent of buildings shall decide." the law gave him discretion, and that is how he used it. "hard wood burns slowly," said he. the fire of which i speak was a "cruller fire," if i remember rightly, which is to say that it broke out in the basement bakeshop, where they were boiling crullers (doughnuts) in fat, at four a. m., with a hundred tenants asleep in the house above them. the fat went into the fire, and the rest followed. i suppose that i had to do with a hundred such fires, as a police reporter, before, under the protest of the tenement house committee and the good government clubs, the boiling of fat in tenement bakeshops was forbidden. the chief of the fire department, in his testimony before the committee, said that "tenements are erected mainly with a view of returning a large income for the amount of capital invested. it is only after a fire in which great loss of life occurs that any interest whatever is taken in the safety of the occupants." the superintendent of buildings, after such a fire in march, , said that there were thousands of tenement fire-traps in the city. my reporter's notebook bears witness to the correctness of his statement, and it has many blank leaves that are waiting to be put to that use yet. the reckoning for eleven years showed that, of , fires in new york, . per cent. were in tenement houses, though they were only a little more than per cent. of all the buildings, and that occupants were killed, maimed, and rescued by the firemen. their rescue cost the lives of three of these brave men, and were injured in the effort. and when all that is said, not the half is told. a fire in the night in one of those human beehives, with its terror and woe, is one of the things that live in the recollection ever after as a terrible nightmare. yet the demonstration of the tenement house committee, that to build tenements fireproof from the ground up would cost little over ten per cent. more than is spent upon the firetrap, and would more than return the interest on the extra outlay in the saving of insurance and repairs, and in the better building every way, has found no echo in legislation or in the practice of builders. that was the fire chief's way to avoid "the great destruction of life;" but he warned the committee that it would "meet with strong opposition from the different interests, should legislation be requested." the interest of the man who pays the rent will not be suspected in this, so he must have meant the man who collects it. here is a block of tenements inhabited by poor jews. most of the jews who live over here are poor; and the poorer they are, the higher rent do they pay, and the more do they crowd to make it up between them. "the destruction of the poor is their poverty." it is only the old story in a new setting. the slum landlord's profits were always the highest. he spends nothing for repairs, and lays the blame on the tenant. the "district leader" saves him, in these days of tammany rule come back, unless he is on the wrong side of the political fence, in which case the sanitary code comes handy to chase him into camp. a big "order" on his house is a very effective way of making a tenement house landlord discern political truth on the eve of an important election. just before the last, when the election of theodore roosevelt was threatened, the sanitary force displayed such activity as it has not since, up to the raid on the elevated roads, in the examination of tenements belonging very largely, as it happened, to sympathizers with the gallant rough rider's cause; and those who knew did not marvel much at the large vote polled by the tammany candidate in the old city. the halls of these tenements are dark. under the law, there should be a light burning, but it is one of the rarest things to find one. the thing seems well-nigh impossible of accomplishment. two years ago, when the good government clubs set about backing up the board of health in its efforts to work out this reform, which comes close to being one of the most necessary of all,--such untold mischief is abroad in the darkness of these thoroughfares,--the sanitary police reported , tenement halls unlighted by night, even, and brought them, by repeated orders, down to less than in six months. i do not believe the light burns in of them all to-day. it is so easy to put it out when the policeman's back is turned, and save the gas. we had a curious instance at the time of the difficulties that sometimes beset reform. certain halls that were known to be dark were reported sufficiently lighted by the policeman of the district, and it was discovered that it was his standard that was vitiated. he himself lived in a tenement, and was used to its gloom. so an order was issued defining darkness to the sanitary police: if the sink in the hall could be made out, and the slops overflowing on the floor, and if a baby could be seen on the stairs, the hall was light; if, on the other hand, the baby's shrieks were the first warning that it was being trampled upon, the hall was dark. some days later, the old question arose about an eldridge street tenement. the policeman had reported the hall light enough. the president of the board of health, to settle it once for all, went over with me, to see for himself. the hall was very dark. he sent for the policeman. "did you see the sink in that hall?" he asked. the policeman said he did. "but it is pitch dark. how did you see it?" "i lit a match," said the policeman. four families live on these floors, with heaven knows how many children. it was here the police commissioners were requested, in sober earnest, some years ago, by a committee of very practical women philanthropists, to have the children tagged, so as to save the policemen wear and tear in taking them back and forth between the eldridge street police station and headquarters, when they got lost. if tagged, they could be assorted at once and taken to their homes. incidentally, the city would save the expense of many meals. it was shrewdly suspected that the little ones were lost on purpose in a good many cases, as a way of getting them fed at the public expense. that the children preferred the excitement of the police station, and the distinction of a trip in charge of a brass-buttoned guardian, to the ludlow street flat is easy enough to understand. a more unlovely existence than that in one of these tenements it would be hard to imagine. everywhere is the stench of the kerosene stove that is forever burning, serving for cooking, heating, and ironing alike, until the last atom of oxygen is burned out of the close air. oil is cheaper than coal. the air shaft is too busy carrying up smells from below to bring any air down, even if it is not hung full of washing in every story, as it ordinarily is. enterprising tenants turn it to use as a refrigerator as well. there is at least a draught of air, such as it is. when fire breaks out, this draught makes of the air shaft a flue through which the fire roars fiercely to the roof, so transforming what was meant for the good of the tenants into their greatest peril. the stuffy rooms seem as if they were made for dwarfs. most decidedly, there is not room to swing the proverbial cat in any one of them. in one i helped the children, last holiday, to set up a christmas tree, so that a glimpse of something that was not utterly sordid and mean might for once enter their lives. three weeks after, i found the tree standing yet in the corner. it was very cold, and there was no fire in the room. "we were going to burn it," said the little woman, whose husband was then in the insane asylum, "and then i couldn't. it looked so kind o' cheery-like there in the corner." my tree had borne the fruit i wished. it remained for the new york slum landlord to assess the exact value of a ray of sunlight,--upon the tenant, of course. here are two back-to-back rear tenements, with dark bedrooms on the south. the flat on the north gives upon a neighbor's yard, and a hole two feet square has been knocked in the wall, letting in air and sunlight; little enough of the latter, but what there is is carefully computed in the lease. six dollars for this flat, six and a half for the one with the hole in the wall. six dollars a year per ray. in half a dozen houses in this block have i found the same rate maintained. the modern tenement on the corner goes higher: for four front rooms, "where the sun comes right in your face," seventeen dollars; for the rear flat of three rooms, larger and better every other way, but always dark, like the capmaker's, eleven dollars. from the landlord's point of view, this last is probably a concession. but he is a landlord with a heart. his house is as good a one as can be built on a twenty-five-foot lot. the man who owns the corner building in orchard street, with the two adjoining tenements, has no heart. in the depth of last winter, i found a family of poor jews living in a coop under his stairs, an abandoned piece of hallway, in which their baby was born, and for which he made them pay eight dollars a month. it was the most outrageous case of landlord robbery i had ever come across, and it gave me sincere pleasure to assist the sanitary policeman in curtailing his profits by even this much. the hall is not now occupied. the jews under the stairs had two children. the shoemaker in the cellar next door has three. they were fighting and snarling like so many dogs over the coarse food on the table before them, when we looked in. the baby, it seems, was the cause of the row. he wanted it all. he was a very dirty and a very fierce baby, and the other two children were no match for him. the shoemaker grunted fretfully at his last, "ach, he is all de time hungry!" at the sight of the policeman, the young imp set up such a howl that we beat a hasty retreat. the cellar "flat" was undoubtedly in violation of law, but it was allowed to pass. in the main hall, on the ground floor, we counted seventeen children. the facts of life here suspend ordinary landlord prejudices to a certain extent. occasionally it is the tenant who suspends them. the policeman laughed as he told me of the case of a mother who coveted a flat into which she well knew her family would not be admitted; the landlord was particular. she knocked, with a troubled face, alone. yes, the flat was to let; had she any children? the woman heaved a sigh. "six, but they are all in greenwood." the landlord's heart was touched by such woe. he let her have the flat. by night he was amazed to find a flock of half a dozen robust youngsters domiciled under his roof. they had indeed been in greenwood; but they had come back from the cemetery to stay. and stay they did, the rent being paid. high rents, slack work, and low wages go hand in hand in the tenements as promoters of overcrowding. the rent is always one fourth of the family income, often more. the fierce competition for a bare living cuts down wages; and when loss of work is added, the only thing left is to take in lodgers to meet the landlord's claim. the jew usually takes them singly, the italian by families. the midnight visit of the sanitary policeman discloses a state of affairs against which he feels himself helpless. he has his standard: cubic feet of air space for each adult sleeper, for a child. that in itself is a concession to the practical necessities of the case. the original demand was for feet. but of , and odd tenants canvassed in new york, in the slumming investigation prosecuted by the general government in , , were found to have less than feet, and of these slept in unventilated rooms with no windows. no more such rooms have been added since; but there has come that which is worse. it was the boast of new york, till a few years ago, that at least that worst of tenement depravities, the one-room house, too familiar in the english slums, was practically unknown here. it is not so any longer. the evil began in the old houses in orchard and allen streets, a bad neighborhood, infested by fallen women and the thievish rascals who prey upon their misery,--a region where the whole plan of humanity, if plan there be in this disgusting mess, jars out of tune continually. the furnished-room house has become an institution here, speeded on by a conscienceless jew who bought up the old buildings as fast as they came into the market, and filled them with a class of tenants before whom charity recoils, helpless and hopeless. when the houses were filled, the crowds overflowed into the yard. in one case, i found, in midwinter, tenants living in sheds built of odd boards and roof tin, and paying a dollar a week for herding with the rats. one of them, a red-faced german, was a philosopher after his kind. he did not trouble himself to get up, when i looked in, but stretched himself in his bed,--it was high noon,--responding to my sniff of disgust that it was "sehr schoen! ein bischen kalt, aber was!" his neighbor, a white-haired old woman, begged, trembling, not to be put out. she would not know where to go. it was out of one of these houses that fritz meyer, the murderer, went to rob the poorbox in the redemptorist church, the night when he killed policeman smith. the policeman surprised him at his work. in the room he had occupied i came upon a brazen-looking woman with a black eye, who answered the question of the officer, "where did you get that shiner?" with a laugh. "i ran up against the fist of me man," she said. her "man," a big, sullen lout, sat by, dumb. the woman answered for him that he was a mechanic. "what does he work at?" snorted the policeman, restraining himself with an effort from kicking the fellow. she laughed scornfully. "at the junk business." it meant that he was a thief. young men, with blotched faces and cadaverous looks, were loafing in every room. they hung their heads in silence. the women turned their faces away at the sight of the uniform. they cling to these wretches, who exploit their starved affections for their own ease, with a grip of desperation. it is their last hold. women have to love something. it is their deepest degradation that they must love these. even the wretches themselves feel the shame of it, and repay them by beating and robbing them, as their daily occupation. a poor little baby in one of the rooms gave a shuddering human touch to it all. the old houses began it, as they began all the tenement mischief that has come upon new york. but the opportunity that was made by the tenant's need was not one to be neglected. in some of the newer tenements, with their smaller rooms, the lodger is by this time provided for in the plan, with a special entrance from the hall. "lodger" comes, by an easy transition, to stand for "family." only the other night i went with the sanitary police on their midnight inspection through a row of elizabeth street tenements which i had known since they were built, fifteen or sixteen years ago. that is the neighborhood in which the recent italian immigrants crowd. in the house which we selected for examination, in all respects the type of the rest, we found forty-three families where there should have been sixteen. upon each floor were four flats, and in each flat three rooms that measured respectively x , x , and x - / feet. in only one flat did we find a single family. in three there were two to each. in the other twelve each room had its own family living and sleeping there. they cooked, i suppose, at the one stove in the kitchen, which was the largest room. in one big bed we counted six persons, the parents and four children. two of them lay crosswise at the foot of the bed, or there would not have been room. a curtain was hung before the bed in each of the two smaller rooms, leaving a passageway from the hall to the main room. the rent for the front flats was twelve dollars; for that in the rear ten dollars. the social distinctions going with the advantage of location were rigidly observed, i suppose. the three steps across a tenement hall, from the front to "the back," are often a longer road than from ludlow street to fifth avenue. they were sweaters' tenements. but i shall keep that end of the story until i come to speak of the tenants. the houses i have in mind now. they were astor leasehold property, and i had seen them built upon the improved plan of , with air shafts and all that. there had not been water in the tenements for a month then, we were told by the one tenant who spoke english that could be understood. the cold snap had locked the pipes. fitly enough, the lessee was an undertaker, an italian himself, who combined with his business of housing his people above and below the ground that of the padrone, to let no profit slip. he had not taken the trouble to make many or recent repairs. the buildings had made a fair start; they promised well. but the promise had not been kept. in their premature decay they were distinctly as bad as the worst. i had the curiosity to seek out the agent, the middleman, and ask him why they were so. he shrugged his shoulders. with such tenants nothing could be done, he said. i have always held that italians are most manageable, and that, with all the surface indications to the contrary, they are really inclined to cleanliness, if cause can be shown, and i told him so. he changed the subject diplomatically. no doubt it was with him simply a question of the rent. they might crowd and carry on as they pleased, once that was paid; and they did. it used to be the joke of elizabeth street that when the midnight police came, the tenants would keep them waiting outside, pretending to search for the key, until the surplus population of men had time to climb down the fire escape. when the police were gone they came back. we surprised them all in bed. like most of the other tenements we have come across on our trip, these were double-deckers. that is the type of tenement that is responsible for the crowding that goes on unchecked. it is everywhere replacing the older barracks, as they rot or are torn down. this double-decker was thus described by the tenement house committee of : "it is the one hopeless form of tenement construction. it cannot be well ventilated, it cannot be well lighted; it is not safe in case of fire. it is built on a lot feet wide by or less in depth, with apartments for four families in each story. this necessitates the occupation of from to per cent. of the lot's depth. the stairway, made in the centre of the house, and the necessary walls and partitions reduce the width of the middle rooms (which serve as bedrooms for at least two people each) to feet each at the most, and a narrow light and air shaft, now legally required in the centre of each side wall, still further lessens the floor space of these middle rooms. direct light is only possible for the rooms at the front and rear. the middle rooms must borrow what light they can from dark hallways, the shallow shafts, and the rear rooms. their air must pass through other rooms or the tiny shafts, and cannot but be contaminated before it reaches them. a five-story house of this character contains apartments for eighteen or twenty families, a population frequently amounting to people, and sometimes increased by boarders or lodgers to or more." the committee, after looking in vain through the slums of the old world cities for something to compare the double-deckers with, declared that, in their setting, the separateness and sacredness of home life were interfered with, and evils bred, physical and moral, that "conduce to the corruption of the young." the statement needs no argument to convince. yet it is for these that the "interests" of which the fire chief spoke rush into battle at almost every session of the legislature, whenever a step, no matter how short and conservative, is to be taken toward their improvement. no winter has passed, since the awakening conscience of the people of new york city manifested itself in a desire to better the lot of the other half, that has not seen an assault made, in one shape or another, on the structure of tenement house law built up with such anxious solicitude. once a bill to exempt from police supervision, by withdrawing them from the tenement house class, the very worst of the houses, whose death rate threatened the community, was sneaked through the legislature all unknown, and had reached the executive before the alarm was sounded. the governor, put upon his guard, returned the bill, with the indorsement that he was unable to understand what could have prompted a measure that seemed to have reason and every argument against it, and none for it. but the motive is not so obscure, after all. it is the same old one of profit without conscience. it took from the health department the supervision of the light, ventilation, and plumbing of the tenements, which by right belonged there, and put it in charge of a compliant building department, "for the convenience of architects and their clients, and the saving of time and expense to them." for the convenience of the architect's client, the builder, the lot was encroached upon, until of one big block which the tenement house committee measured only per cent. was left uncovered for the air to struggle through; per cent. of it was covered with brick and mortar. rear tenements, to the number of nearly , have been condemned as "slaughter houses," with good reason, but this block was built practically solid. the average of space covered in tenement blocks was shown to be . per cent. the law allowed only . the "discretion" that pens tenants in a burning tenement with stairs of wood for the builder's "convenience" cut down the chance of life of their babies unmoved. sunlight and air mean just that, where three thousand human beings are packed into a single block. that was why the matter was given into the charge of the health officials, when politics was yet kept out of their work. of such kind are the interests that oppose betterment of the worker's hard lot in new york; that dictated the appointment by tammany of a commission composed of builders to revise its code of building laws, and that sneer at the "laughable results of the late tenement house committee." those results made for the health and happiness and safety of a million and a half of souls, and were accounted, on every humane ground, the longest step forward that had yet been taken by this community. for the old absentee landlord, who did not know what mischief was afoot, we have got the speculative builder, who does know, but does not care so long as he gets his pound of flesh. half of the just laws that have been passed for the relief of the people he has paralyzed with his treacherous discretion clause, carefully nursed in the school of practical politics to which he gives faithful adherence. the thing has been the curse of our city from the day when the earliest struggle toward better things began. among the first manifestations of that was the prohibition of soap factories below grand street by the act of , which created a board of health with police powers. the act was passed in february, to take effect in july; but long before that time the same legislature had amended it by giving the authorities discretion in the matter. and the biggest soap factory of them all is down there to this day, and is even now stirring up a rumpus among the latest immigrants, the syrians, who have settled about it. no doubt it is all a question of political education; but are not a hundred years enough to settle this much, that compromise is out of place where the lives of the people are at stake, and that it is time our years of "discretion" were numbered? and, please god, the time is at hand. here, set in its frame of swarming tenements, is a wide open space, some time, when enough official red tape has been unwound, to be a park, with flowers and grass and birds to gladden the hearts of those to whom such things have been as tales that are told, all these dreary years, and with a playground in which the children of yonder big school may roam at will, undismayed by landlord or policeman. not all the forces of reaction can put back the barracks that were torn down as one of the "laughable results" of that very tenement house committee's work, or restore to the undertaker his profits from bone alley of horrid memory. it was the tenant's turn to laugh, that time. down half a dozen blocks, among even denser swarms, is another such plot, where football and a skating pond are being planned by the children's friends. we shall hear the story of these yet, and rejoice that the day of reckoning is coming for the builder without a soul. till then let him deck the fronts of his tenements with bravery of plate glass and brass to hide the darkness within. he has done his worst. we can go no further. yonder lies the river. a full mile we have come, through unbroken ranks of tenements with their mighty, pent-up multitudes. here they seem, with a common impulse, to overflow into the street. from corner to corner it is crowded with girls and children dragging babies nearly as big as themselves, with desperate endeavor to lose nothing of the show. there is a funeral in the block. unnumbered sewing-machines cease for once their tireless rivalry with the flour mill in the next block, that is forever grinding in a vain effort to catch up. heads are poked from windows. on the stoops hooded and shawled figures have front seats. the crowd is hardly restrained by the policeman and the undertaker in holiday mourning, who clear a path by force to the plumed hearse. the eager haste, the frantic rush to see,--what does it not tell of these starved lives, of the quality of their aims and ambitions? the mill clatters loudly: there is one mouth less to fill. in the midst of it all, with clamor of urgent gong, the patrol wagon rounds the corner, carrying two policemen precariously perched upon a struggling "drunk," a woman. the crowd scatters, following the new sensation. the tragedies of death and life in the slum have met together. many a mile i might lead you along these rivers, east and west, through the island of manhattan, and find little else than we have seen. the great crowd is yet below fourteenth street, but the northward march knows no slackening of pace. as the tide sets uptown, it reproduces faithfully the scenes of the older wards, though with less of their human interest than here where the old houses, in all their ugliness, have yet some imprint of the individuality of their tenants. only on feast days does little italy, in harlem, recall the bend when it put on holiday attire. anything more desolate and disheartening than the unending rows of tenements, all alike and all equally repellent, of the uptown streets, it is hard to imagine. hell's kitchen in its ancient wickedness was picturesque, at least, with its rocks and its goats and shanties. since the negroes took possession it is only dull, except when, as happened last summer, the remnant of the irish settlers make a stand against the intruders. vain hope! perpetual eviction is their destiny. negro, italian, and jew, biting the dust with many a bruised head under the hibernian's stalwart fist, resistlessly drive him before them, nevertheless, out of house and home. the landlord pockets the gate money. the old robbery still goes on. where the negro pitches his tent, he pays more rent than his white neighbor next door, and is a better tenant. and he is good game forever. he never buys the tenement, as the jew or the italian is likely to do, when he has scraped up money enough to reënact, after his own fashion, the trick taught him by his oppressor. the black column has reached the hundredth street on the east side, and the sixties on the west,[ ] and there for the present it halts. jammed between africa, italy, and bohemia, the irishman has abandoned the east side uptown. only west of central park does he yet face his foe, undaunted in defeat as in victory. the local street nomenclature, in which the directory has no hand,--nigger row, mixed ale flats, etc.,--indicates the hostile camps with unerring accuracy. [footnote : there is an advanced outpost of blacks as far up as one hundred and forty-fifth street, but the main body lingers yet among the sixties.] uptown or downtown, as the tenements grow taller, the thing that is rarest to find is the home of the olden days, even as it was in the shanty on the rocks. "no home, no family, no morality, no manhood, no patriotism!" said the old frenchman. seventy-seven per cent. of their young prisoners, say the managers of the state reformatory, have no moral sense, or next to none. "weakness, not wickedness, ails them," adds the prison chaplain; no manhood, that is to say. years ago, roaming through the british museum, i came upon an exhibit that riveted my attention as nothing else had. it was a huge stone arm, torn from the shoulder of some rock image, with doubled fist and every rigid muscle instinct with angry menace. where it came from or what was its story i do not know. i did not ask. it was its message to us i was trying to read. i had been spending weary days and nights in the slums of london, where hatred grew, a noxious crop, upon the wreck of the home. lying there, mute and menacing, the great fist seemed to me like a shadow thrown from the gray dawn of the race into our busy day with a purpose, a grim, unheeded warning. what was it? in the slum the question haunts me yet. they perished, the empires those rock-hewers built, and the governments reared upon their ruins are long since dead and forgotten. they were born to die, for they were not built upon human happiness, but upon human terror and greed. we built ours upon the bed rock, and its cornerstone is the home. with this bitter mockery of it that makes the slum, can it be that the warning is indeed for us? iii the tenement: curing its blight i stood at seven dials and heard the policeman's account of what it used to be. seven dials is no more like the slum of old than is the five points to-day. the conscience of london wrought upon the one as the conscience of new york upon the other. a mission house, a children's refuge, two big schools, and, hard by, a public bath and a wash house stand as the record of the battle with the slum, which, with these forces in the field, has but one ending. the policeman's story rambled among the days when things were different. then it was dangerous for an officer to go alone there at night. around the corner there came from one of the side streets a procession with banners, parading in honor and aid of some church charity. we watched it pass. in it marched young men and boys with swords and battle-axes, and upon its outskirts skipped a host of young roughs--so one would have called them but for the evidence of their honest employment--who rattled collection boxes, reaping a harvest of pennies from far and near. i looked at the battle-axes and the collection boxes, and thought of forty years ago. where were the seven dials of that day, and the men who gave it its bad name? i asked the policeman. "they were druv into decency, sor," he said, and answered from his own experience the question ever asked by faint-hearted philanthropists. "my father, he done duty here afore me in ' . the worst dive was where that church stands. it was always full of thieves,"--whose sons, i added mentally, have become collectors for the church. the one fact was a whole chapter on the slum. london's way with the tenant we adopted at last in new york with the slum landlord. he was "druv into decency." we had to. moral suasion had been stretched to the limit. the point had been reached where one knock-down blow outweighed a bushel of arguments. it was all very well to build model tenements as object lessons to show that the thing could be done; it had become necessary to enforce the lesson by demonstrating that the community had power to destroy houses which were a menace to its life. the rear tenements were chosen for this purpose. they were the worst as they were the first of new york's tenements. the double-deckers of which i have spoken had, with all their evils, at least this to their credit, that their death rate was not nearly as high as that of the old houses. that was not because of any virtue inherent in the double-deckers, but because the earlier tenements were old, and built in a day that knew nothing of sanitary restrictions, and cared less. hence the showing that the big tenements had much the lowest mortality. the death rate does not sound the depths of tenement house evils, but it makes a record that is needed when it comes to attacking property rights. the mortality of the rear tenements had long been a scandal. they are built in the back yard, generally back to back with the rear buildings on abutting lots. if there is an open space between them, it is never more than a slit a foot or so wide, and gets to be the receptacle of garbage and filth of every kind; so that any opening made in these walls for purposes of ventilation becomes a source of greater danger than if there were none. the last count that was made, in , showed that among the , tenements in new york there were still rear houses left. where they are the death rate rises, for reasons that are apparent. the sun cannot reach them. they are damp and dark, and the tenants, who are always the poorest and most crowded, live "as in a cage open only toward the front," said the tenement house committee. a canvass made of the mortality records by dr. roger s. tracy, the registrar of records, showed that while in the first ward (the oldest), for instance, the death rate in houses standing singly on the lot was . per of the living, where there were rear houses it rose to . . the infant death rate is a still better test: that rose from . in the single tenements of the same ward to . where there were rear houses. one in every five babies had to die, that is to say; the house killed it. no wonder the committee styled the rear tenements "slaughter houses," and called upon the legislature to root them out, and with them every old, ramshackle, disease-breeding tenement in the city. a law which is in substance a copy of the english act for destroying slum property was passed in the spring of . it provides for the seizure of buildings that are dangerous to the public health or unfit for human habitation, and their destruction upon proper proof, with compensation to the owner on a sliding scale down to the point of entire unfitness, when he is entitled only to the value of the material in his house. up to that time, the only way to get rid of such a house had been to declare it a nuisance under the sanitary code; but as the city could not very well pay for the removal of a nuisance, to order it down seemed too much like robbery; so the owner was allowed to keep it. it takes time and a good many lives to grow a sentiment such as this law expressed. the anglo-saxon respect for vested rights is strong in us, also. i remember going through a ragged school in london, once, and finding the eyes of the children in the infant class red and sore. suspecting some contagion, i made inquiries, and was told that a collar factory next door was the cause of the trouble. the fumes from it poisoned the children's eyes. "and you allow it to stay, and let this thing go on?" i asked, in wonder. the superintendent shrugged his shoulders. "it is their factory," he said. i was on the point of saying something that might not have been polite, seeing that i was a guest, when i remembered that, in the newspaper which i carried in my pocket, i had just been reading a plea of some honorable m. p. for a much-needed reform in the system of counsel fees, then being agitated in the house of commons. the reply of the solicitor general had made me laugh. he was inclined to agree with the honorable member, but still preferred to follow precedent by referring the matter to the inns of court. quite incidentally, he mentioned that the matter had been hanging fire in the house two hundred years. it seemed very english to me then; but when we afterward came to tackle our rear tenements, and in the first batch there was a row which i knew to have been picked out by the sanitary inspector, twenty-five years before, as fit only to be destroyed, i recognized that we were kin, after all. [illustration: the mott street barracks] that was gotham court. it was first on the list, and the mott street barracks came next, when, as executive officer of the good government clubs, i helped the board of health put the law to the test the following year. the health department kept a list of old houses, with a population of tenants, in which there had been deaths in a little over five years ( - ). from among them we picked our lot, and the department drove the tenants out. the owners went to law, one and all; but, to their surprise and dismay, the courts held with the health officers. the moral effect was instant and overwhelming. rather than keep up the fight, with no rent coming in, the landlords surrendered at discretion. in consideration of this, compensation was allowed them at the rate of about a thousand dollars a house, although they were really entitled only to the value of the old material. the buildings all came under the head of "wholly unfit." gotham court, with its sixteen buildings, in which, thirty-five years ago, a health inspector counted cases of sickness, including "all kinds of infectious disease," was bought for $ , , and mullen's court, adjoining, for $ . they had been under civilized management since, but nothing decent could be made out of them. to show the character of all, let two serve; in each case it is the official record, upon which seizure was made, that is quoted:-- no. catherine street: "the floor in the apartments and the wooden steps leading to the second-floor apartment are broken, loose, saturated with filth. the roof and eaves gutters leak, rendering the apartments wet. the two apartments on the first floor consist of one room each, in which the tenants are compelled to cook, eat, and sleep. the back walls are defective; the house wet and damp, and unfit for human habitation. it robs the surrounding houses of light." "the sunlight never enters" was the constant refrain. no. sullivan street: "occupied by the lowest whites and negroes, living together. the houses are decayed from cellar to garret, and filthy beyond description,--the filthiest, in fact, we have ever seen. the beams, the floors, the plaster on the walls, where there is any plaster, are rotten and alive with vermin. they are a menace to the public health, and cannot be repaired. their annual death rate in five years was . ." the sunlight enters where these stood, at all events, and into other yards that once were plague spots. of rear tenements seized that year, have been torn down, of them voluntarily by the owners; were remodeled and allowed to stand, chiefly as workshops; other houses were standing empty, and yielding no rent, in march, . the worst of them all, the mott street barracks, are yet in the courts; but all the judges and juries in the land have no power to put them back. it is a case of "they can't put you in jail for that"--"yes, but i am in jail." they are gone, torn down under the referee's decision that they ought to go, before the appellate division called a halt. in i counted tenants in these tenements, front and rear, all italians, and the infant death rate of the barracks that year was per . there were forty babies, and one in three of them had to die. the general infant death rate for the whole tenement house population that year was . . in the four years following, during which the population and the death rate of the houses were both reduced with an effort, fifty-one funerals went out of the barracks. with entire fitness, a cemetery corporation held the mortgage upon the property. the referee allowed it the price of opening one grave, in the settlement, gave one dollar to the lessee and one hundred and ten dollars to the landlord, who refused to collect, and took his case to the court of appeals, where it is to be argued this summer. the only interest that attaches to it, since the real question has been decided by the wrecker ahead of time, is the raising of the constitutional point, perchance, and the issue of that is not doubtful. the law has been repeatedly upheld, and in massachusetts, where similar action has been taken since, the constitutionality of it has in no case been attacked, so far as i know. i have said before that i do not believe in paying the slum landlord for taking his hand off our throats, when we have got the grip on him in turn. mr. roger foster, who as a member of the tenement house committee drew the law, and as counsel for the health department fought the landlords successfully in the courts, holds to the opposite view. i am bound to say that instances turned up in which it did seem a hardship to deprive the owners of even such property. i remember especially a tenement in roosevelt street, which was the patrimony and whole estate of two children. with the rear house taken away, the income from the front would not be enough to cover the interest on the mortgage. it was one of those things that occasionally make standing upon abstract principle so very uncomfortable. i confess i never had the courage to ask what was done in their case. i know that the tenement went, and i hope--well, never mind what i hope. it has nothing to do with the case. the house is down, and the main issue decided upon its merits. in the tenements (counting the front houses in; they cannot be separated from the rear tenements in the death registry) there were in five years deaths, a rate of . at a time when the general city death rate was . . it was the last and heaviest blow aimed at the abnormal mortality of a city that ought, by reason of many advantages, to be one of the healthiest in the world. with clean streets, pure milk, medical school inspection, antitoxin treatment of deadly diseases, and better sanitary methods generally; with the sunlight let into its slums, and its worst plague spots cleaned out, the death rate of new york came down from . per inhabitants in to . in . inasmuch as a round half million was added to its population within the ten years, it requires little figuring to show that the number whose lives were literally saved by reform would people a city of no mean proportions. the extraordinary spell of hot weather, two years ago, brought out the full meaning of this. while many were killed by sunstroke, the population as a whole was shown to have acquired, in better hygienic surroundings, a much greater power of resistance. it yielded slowly to the heat. where two days had been sufficient, in former years, to send the death rate up, it now took five; and the infant mortality remained low throughout the dreadful trial. perhaps the substitution of beer for whiskey as a summer drink had something to do with it; but colonel waring's broom and unpolitical sanitation had more. since it spared him so many voters, the politician ought to have been grateful for this; but he was not. death rates are not as good political arguments as tax rates, we found out. in the midst of it all, a policeman whom i knew went to his tammany captain to ask if good government clubs were political clubs within the meaning of the law, which prohibits policemen from joining such. the answer he received set me to thinking: "yes, the meanest, worst kind of political clubs, they are." yet they had done nothing worse than to save the babies, the captain's with the rest. the landlord read the signs better. he learned his lesson quickly. all over the city, he made haste to set his house to rights, lest it be seized or brought to the bar in other ways. the good government clubs did not rest content with their first victory. they made war upon the dark hall in the double-decker, and upon the cruller bakery. they opened small parks, exposed the abuses of the civil courts, the "poor man's courts," urged on the building of new schools, compelled the cleaning of the tombs prison and hastened the demolition of the wicked old pile, and took a hand in evolving a sensible and humane system of dealing with the young vagrants who were going to waste on free soup. the proposition to establish a farm colony for their reclamation was met with the challenge at albany that "we have had enough reform in new york city," and, as the event proved, for the time being we had really gone as far as we could. but even that was a good long way. some things had been nailed that could never again be undone; and hand in hand with the effort to destroy had gone another to build up, that promised to set us far enough ahead to appeal at last successfully to the self-interest of the builder, if not to his humanity; or, failing that, to compel him to decency. if that promise has not been kept, the end is not yet. i believe it will be kept. the movement for reform, in the matter of housing the people, had proceeded upon a clearly outlined plan that apportioned to each of several forces its own share of the work. at a meeting held under the auspices of the association for improving the condition of the poor, early in the days of the movement, the field had been gone over thoroughly. to the good government clubs fell the task, as already set forth, of compelling the enforcement of the existing tenement house laws. d. o. mills, the philanthropic banker, declared his purpose to build hotels which should prove that a bed and lodging as good as any could be furnished to the great army of homeless men at a price that would compete with the cheap lodging houses, and yet yield a profit to the owner. on behalf of a number of well-known capitalists, who had been identified with the cause of tenement house reform for years, robert fulton cutting, the president of the association for improving the condition of the poor, offered to build homes for the working people that should be worthy of the name, on a large scale. a company was formed, and chose for its president dr. elgin r. l. gould, author of the government report on the housing of the working people, the standard work on the subject. a million dollars were raised by public subscription, and operations were begun at once. two ideas were kept in mind as fundamental: one, that charity that will not pay will not stay; the other, that nothing can be done with the twenty-five-foot lot. it is the primal curse of our housing system, and any effort toward better things must reckon with it first. nineteen lots on sixty-eighth and sixty-ninth streets, west of tenth avenue, were purchased of mrs. alfred corning clark, who took one tenth of the capital stock of the city and suburban homes company; and upon these was erected the first block of tenements. this is the neighborhood toward which the population has been setting with ever increasing congestion. already in the twenty-second ward contained nearly , souls. between forty-ninth and sixty-second streets, west of ninth avenue, there are at least five blocks with more than tenants in each, and the conditions of the notorious tenth ward are certain to be reproduced here, if indeed they are not exceeded. in the fifteenth assembly district, some distance below, but on the same line, the first sociological canvass of the federation of churches had found the churches, schools, and other educational agencies marshaling a frontage of feet on the street, while the saloon fronts stretched themselves over nearly a mile; so that, said the compiler of these pregnant facts, "saloon social ideals are minting themselves in the minds of the people at the ratio of seven saloon thoughts to one educational thought." it would not have been easy to find a spot better fitted for the experiment of restoring to the home its rights. [illustration: alfred corning clark buildings _model tenements of city and suburban homes co._] the alfred corning clark buildings, as they were called in recognition of the support of this public-spirited woman, have been occupied a year. when i went through them, the other day, i found all but five of the apartments they contain occupied, and a very large waiting list of applicants for whom there was no room. the doctor alone, of all the tenants, had moved away, disappointed. he had settled on the estate, hoping to build up a practice among so many; but he could not make a living. the plan of the buildings, for which ernest flagg, a young and energetic architect, with a very practical interest in the welfare of the other half, has the credit, seems to me to realize the ideal of making homes under a common roof. the tenants appeared to take the same view of it. they were a notably contented lot. their only objection was to the use of the common tubs in the basement laundry,--a sign that, to my mind, was rather favorable than otherwise, though it argued ill for the scheme of public wash houses on the glasgow plan that has seemed so promising. they were selected tenants as to trustworthiness and desirability on that score, but they were all of the tenement house class. the rents are a little lower than for much poorer quarters in the surrounding tenements. the houses are built around central courts, with light and air in abundance, with fireproof stairs and steam-heated halls. there is not a dark passage anywhere. within, there is entire privacy for the tenant; the partitions are deadened, so that sound is not transmitted from one apartment to another. without, the houses have none of the discouraging barrack look. the architecture is distinctly pleasing. the few and simple rules laid down by the management have been readily complied with, as making for the benefit of all. a woman collects the rents, which are paid weekly in advance. the promise that the property will earn the five per cent. to which the company limits its dividends seems certain to be kept. there is nothing in sight to prevent it, everything to warrant the prediction. the capital stock has since been increased to $ , , , and the erection has been begun of a new block of buildings in east sixty-fourth street, within hail of battle row, of anciently warlike memory. james e. ware & son, the architects who, in the competition of , won the prize for the improved tenements that marked the first departure from the boxlike barracks of old, drew the plans, embodying all the good features of the clark buildings with attractions of their own. a suburban colony is being developed by the company, in addition. it is not the least promising feature of its work that a very large proportion of its shareholders are workingmen, who have invested their savings in the enterprise, thus bearing witness to their faith and interest in it. of the entire number of shareholders at the time of the first annual report, forty-five per cent, held less than ten shares each. the success of these and previous efforts at the building of model tenements has had the desired effect of encouraging other attempts in the same direction. they represent the best that can be done in fighting the slum within the city. homewood, the city and suburban homes company's settlement in the country, stands for the way out that must eventually win the fight. that is the track that must be followed, and will be when we have found in rapid transit the key to the solution of our present perplexities. "in the country" hardly describes the site of the colony. it is within the greater city, on long island, hardly an hour's journey by trolley from the city hall, and only a short walk from the bay. here the company has built a hundred cottages, and has room for two or three hundred more. of the hundred houses, seventy-two had been sold when i was there last winter. they are handsome and substantial little houses, the lower story of brick, the upper of timber and stucco, each cottage standing in its own garden. the purchaser pays for the property in monthly payments extending over twenty years. a plan of life insurance, which protects the family and the company alike in the event of the death of the bread-winner, is included in the arrangement. the price of the cottages which so far have found owners has averaged about $ , and the monthly installment, including the insurance premium, a trifle over $ . it follows that the poorest have not moved to homewood. its settlers include men with an income of $ or $ a year,--policemen, pilots, letter carriers, clerks, and teachers. this is as it should be. they represent the graduating class, as it were, from the city crowds. it is the province of the philanthropic tenement to prepare the next lot for moving up and out. any attempt to hasten the process by taking a short cut could result only in failure and disappointment. the graduating class is large enough, however, to guarantee that it will not be exhausted by one homewood. before the houses were contracted for, without advertising or effort of any kind to make the thing known, more than eight hundred wage earners had asked to have their names put on the books as applicants for suburban homes. others had built model tenements and made them pay, but it was left to mr. d. o. mills to break ground in the field which lord rowton had filled with such signal success in london. the two mills houses, in bleecker and rivington streets, are as wide a departure as could well be imagined from the conventional type of lodging houses in new york. they are large and beautiful structures, which, for the price of a cot in one of the bowery barracks, furnish their lodgers with as good a bed in a private room as the boarder in the waldorf-astoria enjoys. indeed, it is said to be the very same in make and quality. there are baths without stint, smoking and writing rooms and games, and a free library; a laundry for those who can pay for having their washing done, and a separate one for such as prefer to do it themselves. there is a restaurant in the basement, in which a regular dinner of good quality is served at fifteen cents. the night's lodging is twenty cents. the dearest bowery lodging houses charge twenty-five cents. the bedrooms are necessarily small, but they are clean and comfortable, well lighted and heated. the larger house, no. , in bleecker street, has room for guests; no. , in rivington street, for . though this represents more than twelve per cent, of the capacity of all the cheap lodging houses in the city, both have been filled since they were opened, and crowds have often been turned away. the bowery "hotels" have felt the competition. their owners deny it, but the fact is apparent in efforts at improvements with which they were not justly chargeable before. only the lowest, the ten-cent houses, are exempt from this statement. these attract a class of custom for which the mills houses do not compete. the latter are intended for the large number of decent mechanics, laborers, and men of small means, hunting for work, who are always afloat in a large city, and who neither seek nor wish charity. the plan and purpose of the builder cannot be better put than in his own words at the opening of the first house. "no patron of the mills hotel," he said, "will receive more than he pays for, unless it be my hearty goodwill and good wishes. it is true that i have devoted thought, labor, and capital to a very earnest effort to help him, but only by enabling him to help himself. in doing the work on so large a scale, and in securing the utmost economies in purchases and in administration, i hope to give him a larger equivalent for his money than has hitherto been possible. he can, without scruple, permit me to offer him this advantage; but he will think better of himself, and will be a more self-reliant, manly man and a better citizen, if he knows that he is honestly paying for what he gets." mr. mills's faith that the business of housing the homeless crowds in decency and comfort could be made to pay just as well as that of housing families in model tenements has been justified. besides providing a fund sufficient for deterioration and replacement, the two houses have made a clear three per cent. profit on the investment of $ , , which they represent. beyond this, they have borne, and will bear increasingly, their own hand in settling with the saloon, which had no rival in the cheerlessness of the cheap lodging house or the boarding house back bedroom. every philanthropic effort to fight it on that ground has drawn renewed courage and hope from mr. mills's work and success. while i am writing, subscriptions are being made to the capital stock of a woman's hotel company, that will endeavor to do for the self-supporting single women of our own city what mr. mills has done for the men. it is proposed to erect, at a cost of $ , , a hotel capable of sheltering over guests, at a price coming within reach of women earning wages as clerks, stenographers, nurses, etc. the number of women whose needs an establishment of the kind would meet is said to exceed , . the young women's christian association alone receives every year requests enough for quarters to fill a score of such hotels, and can only refer the applicants to boarding houses. experience in other cities shows that a woman's hotel or club can be managed and made profitable, and there seems to be little doubt that new york will be the next to furnish proof of it. it was the dream of a. t. stewart, the merchant prince, to do this service for his city, just as he planned garden city for a home colony for his clerks. it came out differently. the long island town became a cathedral city, and the home of wealth and fashion; his woman's hoarding house a great public hotel, far out of the reach of those he sought to benefit. it may be that the success of the banker's philanthropy will yet realize the dream of the merchant before the end of the century that saw his wealth, his great business, his very name, vanish as if they had never been, and even his bones denied, by ghoulish thieves, a rest in the grave. i like to think of it as a kind of justice to his memory, more eloquent than marble and brass in the empty crypt. mills house no. stands upon the site of mr. stewart's old home, where he dreamed his barren dream of benevolence to his kind. of all these movements the home is the keynote. that is the cheerful sign that shows light ahead. to the home it comes down in the end,--good government, bad government, and all the rest. as the homes of a community are, so is the community. new york has still the worst housing system in the world. eight fifteenths of its people live in tenements, not counting the better class of flats, though legally they come under the definition. the blight of the twenty-five-foot lot remains, with the double-decker. but we can now destroy what is not fit to stand; we have done it, and our republic yet survives. the slum landlord would have had us believe that it must perish with his rookeries. we knew that to build decently improved a neighborhood, made the tenants better and happier, and reduced the mortality. model tenement house building is now proving daily that such houses can be built safer and better every way for less money than the double-decker, by crossing the lot line. the dark hall is not a problem in the tenement built around a central court, for there is no common hall. the plan of the double-decker is shown to be wasteful of space and wall and capital. the model tenement pays, does not deteriorate, and keeps its tenants. after the lapse of ten years, i was the other day in mr. a. t. white's riverside buildings in brooklyn, which are still the best i know of, and found them, if anything, better houses than the day they were built. the stone steps of the stairways were worn: that was all the evidence of deterioration i saw. these, and mr. white's other block of buildings on hicks street, which was built more than twenty years ago,--occupied, all of them, by distinctly poor tenants,--have paid their owner over five per cent. right along. practically, every such enterprise has the same story to tell. dr. gould found that only six per cent. of all the great model housing operations had failed to pay. all the rest were successful. that was the showing of europe. it is the same here. only the twenty-five-foot lot is in the way in new york. [illustration: evening in one of the courts in mills house no. ] it will continue to be in the way. a man who has one lot will build on it: it is his right. the state, which taxes his lot, has no right to confiscate it by forbidding him to make it yield him an income, on the plea that he might build something which would be a nuisance. but it can so order the building that it shall not be a nuisance: that is not only its right, but its duty. the best which can be made out of a twenty-five-foot lot is not good, but even that has not been made out of it yet. i have seen plans drawn by two young women architects in this city, the misses gannon and hands, and approved by the building department, which let in an amount of light and air not dreamed of in the conventional type of double-decker, while providing detached stairs in a central court. it was not pretended that it was an ideal plan,--far from it; but it indicated clearly the track to be followed in dealing with the twenty-five-foot lot, seeing that we cannot get rid of it. the demand for light and air space must be sharpened and rigidly held to, and "discretion" to cut it down on any pretext must be denied, to the end of discouraging at least the building of double-deckers by the speculative landlord who has more than one lot, but prefers to build in the old way, in order that he may more quickly sell his houses, one by one. with much evidence to the contrary in the big blocks of tenements that are going up on every hand, i think still we are tending in the right direction. i come oftener, nowadays, upon three tenements built on four lots, or two on three lots, than i used to. indeed, there was a time when such a thing would have been considered wicked waste, or evidence of unsound mind in the builder. houses are built now, as they were then, for profit. the business element must be there, or the business will fail. philanthropy and five per cent. belong together in this field; but there is no more reason for allowing usurious interest to a man who makes a living by providing houses for the poor than for allowing it to a lender of money on security. in fact, there is less; for the former draws his profits from a source with which the welfare of the commonwealth is indissolubly bound up. the tenement house committee found that the double-deckers yield the landlord an average of ten per cent., attack the home, and are a peril to the community. model tenements pay a safe five per cent., restore the home, and thereby strengthen the community. it comes down, then, as i said, to a simple question of the per cent. the builder will take. it should help his choice to know, as he cannot now help knowing, that the usurious profit is the price of good citizenship and human happiness, which suffer in the proportion in which the home is injured. the problem of rent should be solved by the same formula, but not so readily. in the case of the builder the state can add force to persuasion, and so urge him along the path of righteousness. the only way to reach the rent collector would be for the municipality to enter the field as a competing landlord. doubtless relief could be afforded that way. the tenement house committee found that the slum landlord charged the highest rents, sometimes as high as twenty-five per cent. he made no repairs. model tenement house rents are lower, if anything, than those of the double-decker, with more space and better accommodations. such a competition would have to be on a very large scale, however, to avail, and i am glad that new york has shown no disposition to undertake it yet. i would rather we, as a community, learned first a little more of the art of governing ourselves without scandal. present relief from the burden that taxes the worker one fourth of his earnings for a roof over his head must be sought in the movement toward the suburbs that will follow the bridging of our rivers, and real rapid transit. on the island rents will always remain high, on account of the great land values. but i have often thought that if the city may not own new tenements, it might with advantage manage the old to the extent of licensing them to contain so many tenants on the basis of the air space, and no more. the suggestion was made when the tenement house question first came up for discussion, thirty years ago, but it was rejected then. the same thing is now proposed for rooms and workshops, as the means of getting the best of the sweating nuisance. why not license the whole tenement, and with the money collected in the way of fees pay for the supervision of them by night and day? the squad of sanitary policemen now comprises for the greater city some ninety men. forty-one thousand tenements in the borough of manhattan alone, at three dollars each for the license, would pay the salaries of the entire body, and leave a margin. seeing that their services are going exclusively to the tenements, it would not seem to be an unfair charge upon the landlords. the home is the key to good citizenship. unhappily for the great cities, there exists in them all a class that has lost the key or thrown it away. for this class, new york, until three years ago, had never made any provision. the police station lodging rooms, of which i have spoken, were not to be dignified by the term. these vile dens, in which the homeless of our great city were herded, without pretense of bed, of bath, of food, on rude planks, were the most pernicious parody on municipal charity, i verily believe, that any civilized community had ever devised. to escape physical and moral contagion in these crowds seemed humanly impossible. of the innocently homeless lad they made a tramp by the shortest cut. to the old tramp they were indeed ideal provision, for they enabled him to spend for drink every cent he could beg or steal. with the stale beer dive, the free lunch counter, and the police lodging room at hand, his cup of happiness was full. there came an evil day, when the stale beer dive shut its doors and the free lunch disappeared for a season. the beer pump, which drained the kegs dry and robbed the stale beer collector of his ware, drove the dives out of business; the raines law forbade the free lunch. just at this time theodore roosevelt shut the police lodging rooms, and the tramp was literally left out in the cold, cursing reform and its fruits. it was the climax of a campaign a generation old, during which no one had ever been found to say a word in defense of these lodging rooms; yet nothing had availed to close them. the city took lodgers on an old barge in the east river, that winter, and kept a register of them. we learned something from that. of nearly , lodgers, one half were under thirty years old and in good health,--fat, in fact. the doctors reported them "well nourished." among whom i watched taking their compulsory bath, one night, only two were skinny; the others were stout, well-fed men, abundantly able to do a man's work. they all insisted that they were willing, too; but the moment inquiries began with a view of setting such to work as really wanted it, and sending the rest to the island as vagrants, their number fell off most remarkably. from between and who had crowded the barge and the pier sheds, the attendance fell on march , the day the investigation began, to , on the second day to , and on the third day to ; by march it had been cut down to . the problem of the honestly homeless, who were without means to pay for a bed even in a ten-cent lodging house, and who had a claim upon the city by virtue of residence in it, had dwindled to surprisingly small proportions. of lodgers, were shown to have been here less than sixty days, and less than a year. the old mistake, that there is always a given amount of absolutely homeless destitution in a city, and that it is to be measured by the number of those who apply for free lodging, had been reduced to a demonstration. the truth is that the opportunity furnished by the triple alliance of stale beer, free lunch, and free lodging at the police station was the open door to permanent and hopeless vagrancy. a city lodging house was established, with decent beds, baths, and breakfast, and a system of investigation of the lodger's claim that is yet to be developed to useful proportions. the link that is missing is a farm school, for the training of young vagrants to habits of industry and steady work, as the alternative of the workhouse. efforts to forge this link have failed so far, but in the good time that is coming, when we shall have learned the lesson that the unkindest thing that can be done to a young tramp is to let him go on tramping, and when magistrates shall blush to discharge him on the plea that "it is no crime to be poor in this country," they will succeed, and the tramp also we shall then have "druv into decency." when i look back now to the time, ten or fifteen years ago, when, night after night, with every police station filled, i found the old tenements in the "bend" jammed with a reeking mass of human wrecks that huddled in hall and yard, and slept, crouching in shivering files, all the way up the stairs to the attic, it does seem as if we had come a good way, and as if all the turmoil and the bruises and the fighting had been worth while. iv the tenant we have considered the problem of the tenement. now about the tenant. how much of a problem is he? and how are we to go about solving his problem? the government "slum inquiry," of which i have spoken before, gave us some facts about him. in new york it found . per cent. of the population of the slum to be foreign-born, whereas for the whole city the percentage of foreigners was only . . while the proportion of illiteracy in all was only as . to , in the slum it was . per cent. that, with nearly twice as many saloons to a given number, there should be three times as many arrests in the slum as in the city at large need not be attributed to nationality, except indirectly in its possible responsibility for the saloons. i say "possible" advisedly. anybody, i should think, whose misfortune it is to live in the slum might be expected to find in the saloon a refuge. i shall not quarrel with the other view of it. i am merely stating a personal impression. the fact that concerns us here is the great proportion of the foreign-born. though the inquiry covered only a small section of a tenement district, the result may be accepted as typical. we shall not, then, have to do with an american element in discussing this tenant, for even of the "natives" in the census, by far the largest share is made up of the children of the immigrant. indeed, in new york only . per cent. of the slum population canvassed were shown to be of native parentage. the parents of . per cent. had come over the sea, to better themselves, it may be assumed. let us see what they brought us, and what we have given them in return. the italians were in the majority where this census taker went. they were from the south of italy, avowedly the worst of the italian immigration which in the eight years from to gave us more than half a million of king humbert's subjects. the exact number, as registered by the emigration bureau, was , . in , , came over, , of them with new york as their destination. the official year ends with june. in the six months from july to december , the immigrants were sorted out upon a more intelligent plan than previously. the process as applied to the , italians who were landed during that term yielded this result: from northern italy, ; from southern italy, , . of these latter a number came from sicily, the island of the absentee landlord, where peasants die of hunger. i make no apology for quoting here the statement of an italian officer, on duty in the island, to a staff correspondent of the "tribuna" of rome, a paper not to be suspected of disloyalty to united italy. i take it from the "evening post:"-- "in the month of july i stopped on a march by a threshing floor where they were measuring grain. when the shares had been divided, the one who had cultivated the land received a single _tumolo_ (less than a half bushel). the peasant, leaning on his spade, looked at his share as if stunned. his wife and their five children were standing by. from the painful toil of a year this was what was left to him with which to feed his family. the tears rolled silently down his cheeks." these things occasionally help one to understand. over against this picture there arises in my memory one from the barge office, where i had gone to see an italian steamer come in. a family sat apart, ordered to wait by the inspecting officer; in the group an old man, worn and wrinkled, who viewed the turmoil with the calmness of one having no share in it. the younger members formed a sort of bulwark around him. "your father is too old," said the official. two young women and a boy of sixteen rose to their feet at once. "are not we young enough to work for him?" they said. the boy showed his strong arms. it is charged against this italian immigrant that he is dirty, and the charge is true. he lives in the darkest of slums, and pays rent that ought to hire a decent flat. to wash, water is needed; and we have a law which orders tenement landlords to put it on every floor, so that their tenants may have the chance. and it is not yet half a dozen years since one of the biggest tenement house landlords in the city, the wealthiest church corporation in the land, attacked the constitutionality of this statute rather than pay a couple of hundred dollars for putting water into two old buildings, as the board of health had ordered, and came near upsetting the whole structure of tenement house law upon which our safety depends. he is ignorant, it is said, and that charge is also true. i doubt if one of the family in the barge office could read or write his own name. yet would you fear especial danger to our institutions, to our citizenship, from these four? he lives cheaply, crowds, and underbids even the jew in the sweatshop. i can myself testify to the truth of these statements. only this spring i was the umpire in a quarrel between the jewish tailors and the factory inspector whom they arraigned before the governor on charges of inefficiency. the burden of their grievance was that the italians were underbidding them in their own market, which of course the factory inspector could not prevent. yet, even so, the evidence is not that the italian always gets the best of it. i came across a family once working on "knee-pants." "twelve pants, ten cents," said the tailor, when there was work. "ve work for dem sheenies," he explained. "ven dey has work, ve gets some; ven dey hasn't, ve don't." he was an unusually gifted tailor as to english, but apparently not as to business capacity. in the astor tenements, in elizabeth street, where we found forty-three families living in rooms intended for sixteen, i saw women finishing "pants" at thirty cents a day. some of the garments were of good grade, and some of poor; some of them were soldiers' trousers, made for the government; but whether they received five, seven, eight, or ten cents a pair, it came to thirty cents a day, except in a single instance, in which two women, sewing from five in the morning till eleven at night, were able, being practiced hands, to finish forty-five "pants" at three and a half cents a pair, and so made together over a dollar and a half. they were content, even happy. i suppose it seemed wealth to them, coming from a land where a parisian investigator of repute found three lire (not quite sixty cents) _per month_ a girl's wages. i remember one of those flats, poor and dingy, yet with signs of the instinctive groping toward orderly arrangement which i have observed so many times, and take to be evidence that in better surroundings much might be made of these people. clothes were hung to dry on a line strung the whole length of the room. upon couches by the wall some men were snoring. they were the boarders. the "man" was out shoveling snow with the midnight shift. by a lamp with brown paper shade, over at the window, sat two women sewing. one had a baby on her lap. two sweet little cherubs, nearly naked, slept on a pile of unfinished "pants," and smiled in their sleep. a girl of six or seven dozed in a child's rocker between the two workers, with her head hanging down on one side; the mother propped it up with her elbow as she sewed. they were all there, and happy in being together even in such a place. on a corner shelf burned a night lamp before a print of the mother of god, flanked by two green bottles, which, seen at a certain angle, made quite a festive show. complaint is made that the italian promotes child labor. his children work at home on "pants" and flowers at an hour when they ought to have been long in bed. their sore eyes betray the little flower-makers when they come tardily to school. doubtless there are such cases, and quite too many of them; yet, in the very block which i have spoken of, the investigation conducted for the tenement house committee by the university department of sociology of columbia college, under professor franklin h. giddings, discovered of children of school age only at work or at home, and in the next block only out of . that was the showing of the foreign population all the way through. of russian jewish children only were missing from school, and of little bohemians only . the overcrowding of the schools and their long waiting lists occasionally furnished the explanation why they were not there. professor giddings reported, after considering all the evidence: "the foreign-born population of the city is not, to any great extent, forcing children of legal school age into money-earning occupations. on the contrary, this population shows a strong desire to have its children acquire the common rudiments of education. if the city does not provide liberally and wisely for the satisfaction of this desire, the blame for the civic and moral dangers that will threaten our community, because of ignorance, vice, and poverty, must rest on the whole public, not on our foreign-born residents." it is satisfactory to know that the warning has been heeded, and that soon there will be schools enough to hold all the children who come. now, since september , , the new factory law reaches also the italian flowermaker in his home, and that source of waste will be stopped. he is clannish, this italian; he gambles and uses a knife, though rarely on anybody not of his own people; he "takes what he can get," wherever anything is free, as who would not, coming to the feast like a starved wolf? there was nothing free where he came from. even the salt was taxed past a poor man's getting any of it. lastly, he buys fraudulent naturalization papers, and uses them. i shall plead guilty for him to every one of these counts. they are all proven. gambling is his besetting sin. he is sober, industrious, frugal, enduring beyond belief, but he will gamble on sunday and quarrel over his cards, and when he sticks his partner in the heat of the quarrel, the partner is not apt to tell. he prefers to bide his time. yet there has lately been evidence once or twice in the surrender of an assassin by his countrymen that the old vendetta is being shelved, and a new idea of law and justice is breaking through. as to the last charge: our italian is not dull. with his intense admiration for the land where a dollar a day waits upon the man with a shovel, he can see no reason why he should not accept the whole "american plan" with ready enthusiasm. it is a good plan. to him it sums itself up in the statement: a dollar a day for the shovel; two dollars for the shovel with a citizen behind it. and he takes the papers and the two dollars. he came here for a chance to live. of politics, social ethics, he knows nothing. government in his old home existed only for his oppression. why should he not attach himself with his whole loyal soul to the plan of government in his new home that offers to boost him into the place of his wildest ambition, a "job on the streets,"--that is, in the street-cleaning department,--and asks no other return than that he shall vote as directed? vote! not only he, but his cousins and brothers and uncles will vote as they are told, to get pietro the job he covets. if it pleases the other man, what is it to him for whom he votes? he is after the job. here, ready-made to the hand of the politician, is such material as he never saw before. for pietro's loyalty is great. as a police detective, one of his own people, once put it to me: "he got a kind of an idea, or an old rule: an eye for an eye; do to another as you'd be done by; if he don't squeal on you, you stick by him, no matter what the consequences." this "kind of an idea" is all he has to draw upon for an answer to the question if the thing is right. but the question does not arise. why should it? was he not told by the agitators whom the police jailed at home that in a republic all men are made happy by means of the vote? and is there not proof of it? it has made him happy, has it not? and the man who bought his vote seems to like it. well, then? very early pietro discovered that it was every man for himself, in the chase of the happiness which this powerful vote had in keeping. he was robbed by the padrone--that is, the boss--when he came over, fleeced on his steamship fare, made to pay for getting a job, and charged three prices for board and lodging and extras while working in the railroad gang. the boss had a monopoly, and pietro was told that it was maintained by his "divvying" with some railroad official. rumor said, a very high-up official, and that the railroad was in politics in the city; that is to say, dealt in votes. when the job gave out, the boss packed him into the tenement he had bought with his profits on the contract; and if pietro had a family, told him to take in lodgers and crowd his flat, as the elizabeth street tenements were crowded, so as to make out the rent, and to never mind the law. the padrone was a politician, and had a pull. he was bigger than the law, and it was the votes he traded in that did it all. now it was pietro's turn. with his vote he could buy what to him seemed wealth. in the muddle of ideas, that was the one which stood out. when citizen papers were offered him for $ . , he bought them quickly, and got his job on the street. it was the custom of the country. if there was any doubt about it, the proof was furnished when pietro was arrested through the envy and plotting of the opposition boss last fall. distinguished counsel, employed by the machine, pleaded his case in court. pietro felt himself to be quite a personage, and he was told that he was safe from harm, though a good deal of dust might be kicked up; because, when it came down to that, both the bosses were doing the same kind of business. i quote from the report of the state superintendent of elections of january, : "in nearly every case of illegal registration, the defendant was represented by eminent counsel who were identified with the democratic organization, among them being three assistants to the corporation counsel. my deputies arrested rosario calecione and giuseppe marrone, both of whom appeared to vote at the fifth election district of the sixth assembly district; marrone being the democratic captain of the district, and, it was charged, himself engaged in the business of securing fraudulent naturalization papers. in both of these cases farriello had procured the naturalization papers for the men for a consideration. they were subsequently indicted. marrone and calecione were bailed by the democratic leader of the sixth assembly district." the business, says the state superintendent, is carried on "to an enormous extent." it appears, then, that pietro has already "got on to" the american plan as the slum presented it to him, and has in good earnest become a problem. i guessed as much from the statement of a tammany politician to me, a year ago, that every italian voter in his district got his "old two" on election day. he ought to know, for he held the purse. suppose, now, we speak our minds as frankly, for once, and put the blame where it belongs. will it be on pietro? and upon this showing, who ought to be excluded, when it comes to that? the slum census taker did not cross the bowery. had he done so, he would have come upon the refugee jew, the other economic marplot of whom complaint is made with reason. if his nemesis has overtaken him in the italian, certainly he challenged that fate. he did cut wages by his coming. he was starving, and he came in shoals. in fourteen years more than , jewish immigrants have landed in new york.[ ] they had to have work and food, and they got both as they could. in the strife they developed qualities that were anything but pleasing. they herded like cattle. they had been so herded by christian rulers, a despised and persecuted race, through the centuries. their very coming was to escape from their last inhuman captivity in a christian state. they lied, they were greedy, they were charged with bad faith. they brought nothing,--neither money nor artisan skill,--nothing but their consuming energy, to our land, and their one gift was their greatest offense. one might have pointed out that they had been trained to lie, for their safety; had been forbidden to work at trades, to own land; had been taught for a thousand years, with the scourge and the stake, that only gold could buy them freedom from torture. but what was the use? the charges were true. the jew was--he still is--a problem of our slum. [footnote : according to the register of the united hebrew charities, between october , , and march , , the number was , .] and yet, if ever there was material for citizenship, this jew is such material. alone of all our immigrants he comes to us without a past. he has no country to renounce, no ties to forget. within him there burns a passionate longing for a home to call his, a country which will own him, that waits only for the spark of such another love to spring into flame which nothing can quench. waiting for it, all his energies are turned into his business. he is not always choice in method; he often offends. but he succeeds. he is the yeast of any slum, if given time. if it will not let him go, it must rise with him. the charity managers in london said it, when we looked through their slums some years ago: "the jews have renovated whitechapel." i, for one, am a firm believer in this jew, and in his boy. ignorant they are, but with a thirst for knowledge that surmounts any barrier. the boy takes all the prizes in the school. his comrades sneer that he will not fight. neither will he when there is nothing to be gained by it. but i believe that, should the time come when the country needs fighting men, the son of the despised immigrant jew will resurrect on american soil, the first that bade him welcome, the old maccabee type, and set an example for all the rest of us to follow. for fifteen years he has been in the public eye as the vehicle and promoter of sweating, and much severe condemnation has been visited upon him with good cause. he had to do something, and he took to the clothes-maker's trade as that which was most quickly learned. the increasing crowds, the tenement, and his grinding poverty made the soil, wherein the evil thing grew rank. yet the real sweater is the manufacturer, not the workman. it is just a question of expense to the manufacturer. by letting out his work on contract, he can save the expense of running his factory and delay longer making his choice of styles. the jew is the victim of the mischief quite as much as he has helped it on. back of the manufacturer there is still another sweater,--the public. only by its sufferance of the bargain counter and of sweatshop-made goods has the nuisance existed as long as it has. i am glad to believe that its time is passing away. the law has driven the sweatshops out of the tenements, and so deprived them of one of their chief props: there was no rent at all to pay there. child labor, which only four years ago the reinhard committee characterized as "one of the most extensive evils now existing in the city of new york, a constant and grave menace to the welfare of its people," has been practically banished from the tailoring trade. what organization among the workers had failed to effect is apparently going to be accomplished by direct pressure of an outraged public opinion. already manufacturers are returning to their own factories, and making capital of the fact among their customers. the new law, which greatly extends the factory inspector's power over sweatshops, is an expression of this enlightened sentiment. it will put new york a long stride ahead, and quite up to massachusetts. the inspector's tag has proved, where the law was violated, an effective weapon. it suspends all operation of the shop and removal of the goods until the orders of the inspector have been obeyed. but the tag which shall finally put an end to sweating, and restore decent conditions, is not the factory inspector's, i am persuaded, but a trades union label, which shall deserve public confidence and receive it. we have much to learn yet, all of us. i think i can see the end of this trouble, however, when the italian's triumph in the sweatshop shall have proved but a barren victory, to his own gain. in all i have said so far, in these papers, i have not gone beyond the limits of the old city,--of manhattan island, in fact. i want now to glance for a moment at the several attempts made at colonizing refugee jews in this part of the country. brownsville was one of the earliest. its projector was a manufacturer, and its motive profit. the result was the familiar one,--as nasty a little slum as ever the east side had to show. we have it on our hands now in the greater city,--it came in with brooklyn,--and it is not a gain. down in southern new jersey several colonies were started, likewise by speculators, in the persecution of the early eighties, and these also failed. the soil was sandy and poor, and, thrown upon their own resources in a strange and unfriendly neighborhood, with unfamiliar and unremunerative toil, the colonists grew discouraged and gave up in despair. the colonies were approaching final collapse, when the managers of the baron de hirsch fund in new york, who had started and maintained a successful colony at woodbine, in the same neighborhood, took them under the arms and inaugurated a new plan. they persuaded several large clothing contractors in this city to move their plants down to the villages, where they would be assured of steady hands, not so easily affected by strikes. for strikes in sweatshops are often enough the alternative of starvation. upon the land there would be no starvation. the managers of the fund built factories, bought the old mortgages on the farms, and put up houses for the families which the contractors brought down with them. this effort at transplanting the crowd from the ghetto to the soil has now been going on for a year. at latest account, eight contractors and two hundred and fifty families had been moved out. the colonies had taken on a new lease of life and apparent prosperity. while it is yet too early to pass sober judgment, there seems to be good ground for hoping that a real way out has been found that shall restore the jew, at least in a measure, to the soil from which he was barred so long. the experiment is of exceeding interest. the hopes of its projectors that a purely farming community might be established have not been realized. perhaps it was too much to expect. by bringing to the farmers their missing market, and work to the surplus population, the mixed settlement plan bids fair to prove a step in the desired direction. some , acres are now held by jewish colonists in new jersey. in the new england states, in the last eight years, abandoned farms have been occupied and are cultivated by refugees from russia. as a dairy farmer and a poultry raiser, the jew has more of an immediate commercial grip on the situation and works with more courage. at woodbine, sixty-five boys and girls are being trained in an agricultural school that has won the whole settlement the friendly regard of the neighborhood. of its pupils, eleven came out of tailor shops, and ten had been office boys, messengers, or newsboys. to these, and to the trade schools now successfully operated by the de hirsch fund, we are to look in the next generation for the answer to the old taunt that the jew is a trader, and not fit to be either farmer or craftsman, and for the solution of the problem which he now presents in the slum. i have spoken at length of the jew and the italian, because they are our present problem. yesterday it was the irishman and the bohemian. to-morrow it may be the greek, who already undersells the italian from his pushcart in the fourth ward, and the syrian, who can give greek, italian, and jew points at a trade. from dalmatia a new immigration has begun to come, and there are signs of its working further east in the balkan states, where there is no telling what is in store for us. how to absorb them all safely is the question. doubtless the irishman, having absorbed us politically, would be glad to free us from all concern on that score by doing a like favor for them. but we should not get the best of the slum that way; it would get the best of us, instead. would i shut out the newcomers? sometimes, looking at it from the point of view of the barge office and the sweatshop, i think i would. then there comes up the recollection of a picture of the city of prague that hangs in a bohemian friend's parlor, here in new york. i stood looking at it one day, and noticed in the foreground cannon that pointed in over the city. i spoke of it, unthinking, and said to my host that they should be trained, if against an enemy, the other way. the man's eye flashed fire. "ha!" he cried, "here, yes!" when i think of that, i do not want to shut the door. again, there occurs to me an experience the police had last summer in mulberry street. they were looking for a murderer, and came upon a nest of italian thugs who lived by blackmailing their countrymen. they were curious about them, and sent their names to naples with a request for information. there came back such a record as none of the detectives had ever seen or heard of before. all of them were notorious criminals, who had been charged with every conceivable crime, from burglary to kidnapping and "maiming," and some not to be conceived of by the american mind. five of them together had been sixty-three times in jail, and one no less than twenty-one times. yet, though they were all "under special surveillance," they had come here without let or hindrance within a year. when i recall that, i want to shut the door quick. i sent the exhibit to washington at the time. but then, again, when i think of mrs. michelangelo in her poor mourning for one child run over and killed, wiping her tears away and going bravely to work to keep the home together for the other five until the oldest shall be old enough to take her father's place; and when, as now, there strays into my hand the letter from my good friend, the "woman doctor" in the slum, when her father had died, in which she wrote: "the little scamps of the street have been positively pathetic; they have made such shy, boyish attempts at friendliness. one little chap offered to let me hold his top while it was spinning, in token of affection,"--when i read that, i have not the heart to shut anybody out. except, of course, the unfit, the criminal and the pauper, cast off by their own, and the man brought over here merely to put money into the pockets of the steamship agent, the padrone, and the mine owner. we have laws to bar these out. suppose we begin by being honest with ourselves and the immigrant, and enforcing our own laws. in spite of a healthy effort at the port of new york,--i can only speak for that,--under the present administration, that has not yet been done. when the door has been shut and locked against the man who left his country for his country's good, whether by its "assistance" or not, and when trafficking in the immigrant for private profit has been stopped, then, perhaps, we shall be better able to decide what degree of ignorance in him constitutes unfitness for citizenship and cause for shutting him out. perchance then, also, we shall hear less of the cant about his being a peril to the republic. doubtless ignorance is a peril, but the selfishness that trades upon ignorance is a much greater. he came to us without a country, ready to adopt such a standard of patriotism as he found, at its face value, and we gave him the rear tenement and slum politics. if he accepted the standard, whose fault was it? his being in such a hurry to vote that he could not wait till the law made him a citizen was no worse, to my mind, than the treachery of the "upper class" native, who refuses to go to the polls for fear he may rub up against him there. this last let us settle with first, and see what remains of our problem. we can approach it honestly, then, at all events. when the country was in the throes of the silver campaign, the newspapers told the story of an old laborer who went to the sub-treasury and demanded to see the "boss." he undid the strings of an old leathern purse with fumbling fingers, and counted out more than two hundred dollars in gold eagles, the hoard of a lifetime of toil and self-denial. they were for the government, he said. he had not the head to understand all the talk that was going, but he gathered from what he heard that the government was in trouble, and that somehow it was about not having gold enough. so he had brought what he had. he owed it all to the country, and now that she needed it he had come to give it back. the man was an irishman. very likely he was enrolled in tammany and voted her ticket. i remember a tenement at the bottom of a back alley over on the east side, where i once went visiting with the pastor of a mission chapel. up in the attic there was a family of father and daughter in two rooms that had been made out of one by dividing off the deep dormer window. it was midwinter, and they had no fire. he was a peddler, but the snow had stalled his pushcart and robbed them of their only other source of income, a lodger who hired cot room in the attic for a few cents a night. the daughter was not able to work. but she said, cheerfully, that they were "getting along." when it came out that she had not tasted solid food for many days, was starving, in fact,--indeed, she died within a year, of the slow starvation of the tenements that parades in the mortality returns under a variety of scientific names which all mean the same thing,--she met her pastor's gentle chiding with the excuse, "oh, your church has many poorer than i. i don't want to take your money." these were germans, ordinarily held to be close-fisted; but i found that in their dire distress they had taken in a poor old man who was past working, and had kept him all winter, sharing with him what they had. he was none of theirs; they hardly even knew him, as it appeared. it was enough that he was "poorer than they," and lonely and hungry and cold. it was over here that the children of dr. elsing's sunday school gave out of the depth of their poverty fifty-four dollars in pennies to be hung on the christmas tree as their offering to the persecuted armenians. one of their teachers told me of a bohemian family that let the holiday dinner she brought them stand and wait, while they sent out to bid to the feast four little ragamuffins of the neighborhood who else would have gone hungry. i remember well a teacher in one of the children's aid society's schools, herself a tenement child, who, with breaking heart, but brave face, played and sang the children's christmas carols with them rather than spoil their pleasure, while her only sister lay dying at home. i might keep on and fill many pages with instances of that kind, which simply go to prove that our poor human nature is at least as robust on avenue a as up on fifth avenue, if it has half a chance, and often enough to restore one's faith in it, with no chance at all; and i might set over against it the product of sordid and mean environment which one has never far to seek. good and evil go together in the tenements as in the fine houses, and the evil sticks out sometimes merely because it lies nearer the surface. the point is that the good does outweigh the bad, and that the virtues that turn the balance are after all those that make for good citizenship anywhere, while the faults are oftenest the accidents of ignorance and lack of training, which it is the business of society to correct. i recall my discouragement when i looked over the examination papers of a batch of candidates for police appointment,--young men largely the product of our public schools in this city and elsewhere,--and read in them that five of the original new england states were "england, ireland, scotland, belfast, and cork;" that the fire department ruled new york in the absence of the mayor,--i have sometimes wished it did, and that he would stay away awhile; and that lincoln was murdered by ballington booth. but we shall agree, no doubt, that the indictment of these papers was not of the men who wrote them, but of the school that stuffed its pupils with useless trash, and did not teach them to think. neither have i forgotten that it was one of these very men who, having failed, and afterward got a job as a bridge policeman, on his first pay day went straight from his post, half frozen as he was, to the settlement worker who had befriended him and his sick father, and gave him five dollars for "some one who was poorer than they." poorer than they! what worker among the poor has not heard it? it is the charity of the tenement that covers a multitude of sins. there were thirteen in this policeman's family, and his wages were the biggest item of income in the house. jealousy, envy, and meanness wear no fine clothes and masquerade under no smooth speeches in the slums. often enough it is the very nakedness of the virtues that makes us stumble in our judgment. i have in mind the "difficult case" that confronted some philanthropic friends of mine in a rear tenement on twelfth street, in the person of an aged widow, quite seventy i should think, who worked uncomplainingly for a sweater all day and far into the night, pinching and saving and stinting herself, with black bread and chicory coffee as her only fare, in order that she might carry her pitiful earnings to her big, lazy lout of a son in brooklyn. he never worked. my friends' difficulty was a very real one, for absolutely every attempt to relieve the widow was wrecked upon her mother heart. it all went over the river. yet one would not have had her different. sometimes it is only the unfamiliar setting that shocks. when an east side midnight burglar, discovered and pursued, killed a tenant who blocked his way of escape, a few weeks ago, his "girl" gave him up to the police. but it was not because he had taken human life. "he was good to me," she explained to the captain whom she told where to find him, "but since he robbed the church i had no use for him." he had stolen, it seems, the communion service in a staten island church. the thoughtless laughed. but in her ignorant way she was only trying to apply the standards of morality as they had been taught her. stunted, bemuddled, as they were, i think i should prefer to take my chances with her rather than with the woman of wealth and luxury who, some years ago, gave a christmas party to her lap-dog, as on the whole the sounder of the two, and by far the more hopeful. [illustration: bone alley] all of which is merely saying that the country is all right, and the people are to be trusted with the old faith in spite of the slum. and it is true, if we remember to put it that way,--in spite of the slum. there is nothing in the slum to warrant that faith save human nature as yet uncorrupted. how long it is to remain so is altogether a question of the sacrifices we are willing to make in our fight with the slum. as yet, we are told by the officials having to do with the enforcement of the health ordinances, which come closer to the life of the individual than any other kind, that the poor in the tenements are "more amenable to the law than the better class." it is of the first importance, then, that we should have laws deserving of their respect, and that these laws should be enforced, lest they conclude that the whole thing is a sham. respect for law is a very powerful bar against the slum. but what, for instance, must the poor jew understand, who is permitted to buy a live hen at the market, yet neither to kill nor keep it in his tenement, and who on his feast day finds a whole squad of policemen detailed to follow him around and see that he does not do any of the things with his fowl for which he must have bought it? or the day laborer, who drinks his beer in a "raines law hotel," where brick sandwiches, consisting of two pieces of bread with a brick between, are set out on the counter, in derision of the state law which forbids the serving of drinks without "meals"? (the stanton street saloon keeper who did that was solemnly acquitted by a jury.) or the boy, who may buy fireworks on the fourth of july, but not set them off? these are only ridiculous instances of an abuse that pervades our community life to an extent that constitutes one of the gravest perils. insincerity of that kind is not lost on our fellow citizen by adoption, who is only anxious to fall in with the ways of the country; and especially is it not lost on his boy. we shall see how it affects him. he is the one for whom we are waging the battle with the slum. he is the to-morrow that sits to-day drinking in the lesson of the prosperity of the big boss who declared with pride upon the witness stand that he rules new york, that judges pay him tribute, and that only when _he_ says so a thing "goes;" and that it is all for what he can get out of it, "just the same as everybody else." he sees corporations to-day pay blackmail and rob the people in return, quite according to the schedule of hester street. only there it is the police who charge the peddler twenty cents, while here it is the politicians taking toll of the franchises, twenty per cent. wall street is not ordinarily reckoned in the slum, because of certain physical advantages; but, upon the evidence of the day, i think we shall have to conclude that the advantage ends there. the boy who is learning such lessons,--how is it with him? the president of the society for the prevention of cruelty to children says that children's crime is increasing, and he ought to know. the managers of the children's aid society, after forty-six years of wrestling with the slum for the boy, in which they have lately seemed to get the upper hand, say in this year's report that on the east side children are growing up in certain districts "entirely neglected," and that the number of such children "increases beyond the power of philanthropic and religious bodies to cope properly with their needs." in the tompkins square lodging house the evening classes are thinning out, and the keeper wails: "those with whom we have dealt of late have not been inclined to accept this privilege; how to make night school attractive to shiftless, indifferent street boys is a difficult problem to solve." perhaps it is only that he has lost the key. across the square, the boys' club of st. mark's place, that began with a handful, counts five thousand members to-day, and is seeking a place to build a house of its own. the school census man announces that no boy in that old stronghold of the "bread or blood" brigade need henceforth loiter in the street because there is not room in the public school, and the brigade has disbanded for want of recruits. the shop is being shut against the boy, and the bars let down at the playground. but from tompkins square, nevertheless, came jacob beresheim, whose story i shall tell you presently. v the genesis of the gang jacob beresheim was fifteen when he was charged with murder. it is now more than three years ago, but the touch of his hand is cold upon mine, with mortal fear, as i write. every few minutes, during our long talk on the night of his arrest and confession, he would spring to his feet, and, clutching my arm as a drowning man catches at a rope, demand with shaking voice, "will they give me the chair?" the assurance that boys were not executed quieted him only for the moment. then the dread and the horror were upon him again. of his crime the less said the better. it was the climax of a career of depravity that differed from other such chiefly in the opportunities afforded by an environment which led up to and helped shape it. my business is with that environment. the man is dead, the boy in jail. but unless i am to be my brother's jail keeper, merely, the iron bars do not square the account of jacob with society. society exists for the purpose of securing justice to its members, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. when it fails in this, the item is carried on the ledger with interest and compound interest toward a day of reckoning that comes surely with the paymaster. we have heard the chink of his coin on the counter, these days, in the unblushing revelations before the mazet committee of degraded citizenship, of the murder of the civic conscience, and in the applause that hailed them. and we have begun to understand that these are the interest on jacob's account, older, much older than himself. he is just an item carried on the ledger. but with that knowledge the account is at last in a way of getting squared. let us see how it stands. we shall take jacob as a type of the street boy on the east side, where he belonged. what does not apply to him in the review applies to his class. but there was very little of it indeed that he missed or that missed him. he was born in a tenement in that section where the tenement house committee found , persons living out of sight and reach of a green spot of any kind, and where sometimes the buildings, front, middle, and rear, took up ninety-three per cent. of all the space on the block. such a home as he had was there, and of the things that belonged to it he was the heir. the sunlight was not among them. it "never entered" there. darkness and discouragement did, and dirt. later on, when he took to the dirt as his natural weapon in his battles with society, it was said of him that it was the only friend that stuck to him, and it was true. very early the tenement gave him up to the street. the thing he took with him as the one legacy of home was the instinct for the crowd, which meant that the tenement had wrought its worst mischief upon him: it had smothered that in him around which character is built. the more readily did he fall in with the street and its ways. character implies depth, a soil, and growth. the street is all surface: nothing grows there; it hides only a sewer. it taught him gambling as its first lesson, and stealing as the next. the two are never far apart. from shooting craps behind the "cop's" back to filching from the grocer's stock or plundering a defenseless peddler is only a step. there is in both the spice of law-breaking that appeals to the shallow ambition of the street as heroic. occasionally the raids have a comic tinge. a german grocer wandered into police headquarters the other day, with an appeal for protection against the boys. "vat means dot 'cheese it'?" he asked, rubbing his bald head in helpless bewilderment. "efery dime dey says 'cheese it,' somedings vas gone." to the lawlessness of the street the home opposes no obstacle, as we have seen. until very recently the school did not. it might have more to offer even now. there are, at least, schools where there were none then, and so much is gained; also, they are getting better, but too many of them, in my unprofessional judgment, need yet to be made over, until they are fit to turn out whole, sound boys, instead of queer manikins stuffed with information for which they have no use, and which is none of their business anyhow. it seemed to me sometimes, when watching the process of cramming the school course with the sum of human knowledge and conceit, as if it all meant that we distrusted nature's way of growing a man from a boy, and had set out to show her a shorter cut. a common result was the kind of mental befogment that had abraham lincoln murdered by ballington booth, and a superficiality, a hopeless slurring of tasks, that hitched perfectly with the spirit of the street, and left nothing to be explained in the verdict of the reformatory, "no moral sense." there was no moral sense to be got out of the thing, for there was little sense of any kind in it. the boy was not given a chance to be honest with himself by thinking a thing through; he came naturally to accept as his mental horizon the headlines in his penny paper and the literature of the dare-devil-dan-the-death-dealing-monster-of-dakota order, which comprise the ordinary æsthetic equipment of the slum. the mystery of his further development into the tough need not perplex anybody. but jacob beresheim had not even the benefit of such schooling as there was to be had. he did not go to school, and nobody cared. there was indeed a law directing that every child should go, and a corps of truant officers to catch him if he did not; but the law had been a dead letter for a quarter of a century. there was no census to tell what children ought to be in school, and no place but a jail to put those in who shirked. jacob was allowed to drift. from the time he was twelve till he was fifteen, he told me, he might have gone to school three weeks,--no more. church and sunday school missed him. i was going to say that they passed by on the other side, remembering the migration of the churches uptown, as the wealthy moved out of, and the poor into, the region south of fourteenth street. but that would hardly be fair. they moved after their congregations; but they left nothing behind. in the twenty years that followed the war, while enough to people a large city moved in downtown, the number of churches there was reduced from to . fourteen protestant churches moved out. only two roman catholic churches and a synagogue moved in. i am not aware that there has been any large increase of churches in the district since, but we have seen that the crowding has not slackened pace. jacob had no trouble in escaping the sunday school as he had escaped the public school. his tribe will have none until the responsibility incurred in the severance of church and state sits less lightly on a christian community, and the church, from a mob, shall have become an army, with von moltke's plan of campaign, "march apart, fight together." the christian church is not alone in its failure. the jew's boy is breaking away from safe moorings rather faster than his brother of the new dispensation. the church looks on, but it has no cause for congratulation. he is getting nothing in place of that which he lost, and the result is bad. there is no occasion for profound theories about it. the facts are plain enough. the new freedom has something to do with it, but neglect to look after the young has quite as much. apart from its religious aspect, seen from the angle of the community's interest wholly, the matter is of the gravest import. what the boy's play has to do with building character in him froebel has told us. through it, he showed us, the child "first perceives moral relations," and he made that the basis of the kindergarten and all common-sense education. that prop was knocked out. new york never had a children's playground till within the last year. truly it seemed, as abram s. hewitt said, as if in the early plan of our city the children had not been thought of at all. such moral relations as jacob was able to make out ran parallel with the gutter always, and counter to law and order as represented by the policeman and the landlord. the landlord had his windows to mind, and the policeman his lamps and the city ordinances which prohibit even kite-flying below fourteenth street where the crowds are. the ball had no chance at all. it is not two years since a boy was shot down by a policeman for the heinous offense of playing football in the street on thanksgiving day. but a boy who cannot kick a ball around has no chance of growing up a decent and orderly citizen. he must have his childhood, so that he may be fitted to give to the community his manhood. the average boy is just like a little steam engine with steam always up. the play is his safety valve. with the landlord in the yard and the policeman on the street sitting on his safety valve and holding it down, he is bound to explode. when he does, when he throws mud and stones and shows us the side of him which the gutter developed, we are shocked and marvel much what our boys are coming to, as if we had any right to expect better treatment of them. i doubt if jacob, in the whole course of his wizened little life, had ever a hand in an honest game that was not haunted by the dread of the avenging policeman. that he was not "doing anything" was no defense. the mere claim was proof that he was up to mischief of some sort. besides, the policeman was usually right. play in such a setting becomes a direct incentive to mischief in a healthy boy. jacob was a healthy enough little animal. such fun as he had he got out of law-breaking in a small way. in this he was merely following the ruling fashion. laws were apparently made for no other purpose that he could see. such a view as he enjoyed of their makers and executors at election seasons inspired him with seasonable enthusiasm, but hardly with awe. a slogan, now, like that raised by tammany's late candidate for district attorney,--"to hell with reform!"--was something he could grasp. of what reform meant he had only the vaguest notion, but the thing had the right ring to it. roosevelt preaching enforcement of law was from the first a "lobster" to him, not to be taken seriously. it is not among the least of the merits of the man that by his sturdy personality, as well as by his unyielding persistence, he won the boy over to the passive admission that there might be something in it. it had not been his experience. there was the law which sternly commanded him to go to school, and which he laughed at every day. then there was the law to prevent child labor. it cost twenty-five cents for a false age certificate to break that, and jacob, if he thought of it at all, probably thought of perjury as rather an expensive thing. a quarter was a good deal to pay for the right to lock a child up in a factory, when he ought to have been at play. the excise law was everybody's game. the sign that hung in every saloon, saying that nothing was sold there to minors, never yet barred out his "growler" when he had the price. there was another such sign in the tobacco shop, forbidding the sale of cigarettes to boys of his age. jacob calculated that when he had the money he smoked as many as fifteen in a day, and he laughed when he told me. he laughed, too, when he remembered how the boys of the east side took to carrying balls of cord in their pockets, on the wave of the lexow reform, on purpose to measure the distance from the school door to the nearest saloon. they had been told that it should be two hundred feet, according to law. there were schools that had as many as a dozen within the tabooed limits. it was in the papers how, when the highest courts said that the law was good, the saloon keepers attacked the schools as a nuisance and detrimental to property. in a general way jacob sided with the saloon keeper; not because he had any opinion about it, but because it seemed natural. such opinions as he ordinarily had he got from that quarter. when, later on, he came to be tried, his counsel said to me, "he is an amazing liar." no, hardly amazing. it would have been amazing if he had been anything else. lying and mockery were all around him, and he adjusted himself to the things that were. he lied in self-defense. jacob's story ends here, as far as he is personally concerned. the story of the gang begins. so trained for the responsibility of citizenship, robbed of home and of childhood, with every prop knocked from under him, all the elements that make for strength and character trodden out in the making of the boy, all the high ambition of youth caricatured by the slum and become base passions,--so equipped he comes to the business of life. as a "kid" he hunted with the pack in the street. as a young man he trains with the gang, because it furnishes the means of gratifying his inordinate vanity, that is the slum's counterfeit of self-esteem. upon the jacobs of other days there was a last hold,--the father's authority. changed conditions have loosened that also. there is a time in every young man's life when he knows more than his father. it is like the measles or the mumps, and he gets over it, with a little judicious firmness in the hand that guides. it is the misfortune of the slum boy of to-day that it is really so, and that he knows it. his father is an italian or a jew, and cannot even speak the language to which the boy is born. he has to depend on him in much, in the new order of things. the old man is "slow," he is "dutch." he maybe an irishman with some advantages; he is still a "foreigner." he loses his grip on the boy. ethical standards of which he has no conception clash. watch the meeting of two currents in river or bay, and see the line of drift that tells of the struggle. so in the city's life strive the currents of the old and the new, and in the churning the boy goes adrift. the last hold upon him is gone. that is why the gang appears in the second generation, the first born upon the soil,--a fighting gang if the irishman is there with his ready fist, a thievish gang if it is the east side jew,--and disappears in the third. the second boy's father is not "slow." he has had experience. he was clubbed into decency in his own day, and the night stick wore off the glamour of the thing. his grip on the boy is good, and it holds. it depends now upon chance what is to become of the lad. but the slum has stacked the cards against him. there arises in the lawless crowd a leader, who rules with his stronger fists or his readier wit. around him the gang crystallizes, and what he is it becomes. he may be a thief, like david meyer, a report of whose doings i have before me. he was just a bully, and, being the biggest in his gang, made the others steal for him and surrender the "swag," or take a licking. but that was unusual. ordinarily the risk and the "swag" are distributed on more democratic principles. or he may be of the temper of mike of poverty gap, who was hanged for murder at nineteen. while he sat in his cell at police headquarters, he told with grim humor of the raids of his gang on saturday nights when they stocked up at "the club." they used to "hook" a butcher's cart or other light wagon, wherever found, and drive like mad up and down the avenue, stopping at saloon or grocery to throw in what they wanted. his job was to sit at the tail of the cart with a six-shooter and pop at any chance pursuer. he chuckled at the recollection of how men fell over one another to get out of his way. "it was great to see them run," he said. mike was a tough, but with a better chance he might have been a hero. the thought came to him, too, when it was all over and the end in sight. he put it all in one sober, retrospective sigh, that had in it no craven shirking of the responsibility that was properly his: "i never had no bringing up." there was a meeting some time after his death to boom a scheme for "getting the boys off the street," and i happened to speak of mike's case. in the audience was a gentleman of means and position, and his daughter, who manifested great interest and joined heartily in the proposed movement. a week later, i was thunderstruck at reading of the arrest of my sympathetic friend's son for train-wrecking up the state. the fellow was of the same age as mike. it appeared that he was supposed to be attending school, but had been reading dime novels instead, until he arrived at the point where he "had to kill some one before the end of the month." to that end he organized a gang of admiring but less resourceful comrades. after all, the plane of fellowship of poverty gap and madison avenue lies nearer than we often suppose. i set the incident down in justice to the memory of my friend mike. if this one went astray with so much to pull him the right way, and but the single strand broken, what then of the other? mike's was the day of irish heroics. since their scene was shifted from the east side there has come over there an epidemic of child crime of meaner sort, but following the same principle of gang organization. it is difficult to ascertain the exact extent of it, because of the well-meant but, i am inclined to think, mistaken effort on the part of the children's societies to suppress the record of it for the sake of the boy. enough testimony comes from the police and the courts, however, to make it clear that thieving is largely on the increase among the east side boys. and it is amazing at what an early age it begins. when, in the fight for a truant school, i had occasion to gather statistics upon this subject, to meet the sneer of the educational authorities that the "crimes" of street boys compassed at worst the theft of a top or a marble. i found among prisoners, of whom i had kept the run for ten months, two boys, of four and eight years respectively, arrested for breaking into a grocery, not to get candy or prunes, but to rob the till. the little one was useful to "crawl through a small hole." there were "burglars" of six and seven years, and five in a bunch, the whole gang apparently, at the age of eight. "wild" boys began to appear in court at that age. at eleven, i had seven thieves, two of whom had a record on the police blotter, and an "habitual liar;" at twelve, i had four burglars, three ordinary thieves, two arrested for drunkenness, three for assault, and three incendiaries; at thirteen, five burglars, one with a "record," as many thieves, one "drunk," five charged with assault and one with forgery; at fourteen, eleven thieves and house-breakers, six highway robbers,--the gang on its unlucky day, perhaps,--and ten arrested for fighting, not counting one who had assaulted a policeman, in a state of drunken frenzy. one of the gangs made a specialty of stealing baby carriages, when left unattended in front of stores. they "drapped the kids in the hallway" and "sneaked" the carriages. and so on. the recital was not a pleasant one, but it was effective. we got our truant school, and one way that led to the jail was blocked. it may be that the leader is neither thief nor thug, but ambitious. in that case the gang is headed for politics by the shortest route. likewise, sometimes, when he is both. in either case it carries the situation by assault. when the gang wants a thing, the easiest way seems to it always to take it. there was an explosion in a fifth street tenement, one night last january, that threw twenty families into a wild panic, and injured two of the tenants badly. there was much mystery about it, until it came out that the housekeeper had had a "run in" with the gang in the block. it wanted club-room in the house, and she would not let it in. beaten, it avenged itself in characteristic fashion by leaving a package of gunpowder on the stairs, where she would be sure to find it when she went the rounds with her candle to close up. that was a gang of that kind, headed straight for albany. and what is more, it will get there, unless things change greatly. the gunpowder was just a "bluff" to frighten the housekeeper, an installment of the kind of politics it meant to play when it got its chance. there was "nothing against this gang" except a probable row with the saloon keeper, since it applied elsewhere for house-room. not every gang has a police record of theft and "slugging" beyond the early encounters of the street. "our honored leader" is not always the captain of a band of cutthroats. he is the honorary president of the "social club" that bears his name, and he counts for something in the ward. but the ethical standards do not differ. "do others, or they will do you," felicitously adapted from holy writ for the use of the slum, and the classic war-cry, "to the victors the spoils," made over locally to read, "i am not in politics for my health," still interpret the creed of the political as of the "slugging" gang. they drew their inspiration from the same source. of what gang politics means every large city in our country has had its experience. new york is no exception. history on the subject is being made yet, in the sight of us all. our business with the gang, however, is in the making of it. take now the showing of the reformatory,[ ] to which i have before made reference, and see what light it throws upon the matter: per cent. of prisoners with no moral sense, or next to none, yet more than that proportion possessed of "natural mental capacity," which is to say that they had the means of absorbing it from their environment, if there had been any to absorb. bad homes sent half of all prisoners there; bad company per cent. the reformatory repeats the prison chaplain's verdict, "weakness, not wickedness," in its own way: "malevolence does not characterize the criminal, but aversion to continuous labor." if "the street" had been written across it in capital letters, it could not have been made plainer. twelve per cent. only of the prisoners came from good homes, and one in a hundred had kept good company; evidently he was not of the mentally capable. they will tell you at the prison that, under its discipline, per cent. are set upon their feet and make a fresh start. with due allowance for a friendly critic, there is still room for the three fourths labeled normal. the children's aid society will give you even better news of the boys rescued from the slum before it had branded them for its own. scarce five per cent. are lost, though they leave such a black mark that they make trouble for all the good boys that are sent out from new york. better than these was the kindergarten record in san francisco. new york has no monopoly of the slum. of nine thousand children from the slummiest quarters of that city who had gone through the golden gate association's kindergartens, just one was said to have got into jail. the merchants who looked coldly on the experiment before brought their gold to pay for keeping it up. they were hard-headed men of business, and the demonstration that schools were better than jails any day appealed to them as eminently sane and practical. [footnote : year-book of elmira state reformatory, . the statistics deal with prisoners received there in twenty-three years. the social stratum whence they came is sufficiently indicated by the statement that . per cent. were illiterates, and . per cent. were able to read and write with difficulty; . per cent. had an ordinary common school education; . per cent. came out of high schools or colleges.] and well it might. the gang is a distemper of the slum that writes upon the generation it plagues the recipe for its own corrective. it is not the night stick, though in the acute stage that is not to be dispensed with. neither is it the jail. to put the gang behind iron bars affords passing relief, but it is like treating a symptom without getting at the root of the disease. prophylactic treatment is clearly indicated. the boy who flings mud and stones is entering his protest in his own way against the purblind policy that gave him jails for schools and the gutter for a playground, that gave him dummies for laws and the tenement for a home. he is demanding his rights, of which he has been cheated,--the right to his childhood, the right to know the true dignity of labor that makes a self-respecting manhood. the gang, rightly understood, is our ally, not our enemy. like any ailment of the body, it is a friend come to tell us of something that has gone amiss. the thing for us to do is to find out what it is, and set it right. that is the story of the gang. that we have read and grasped its lesson at last, an item in my morning paper, which i read at the breakfast table to-day, bears witness. it tells that the league for political education has set about providing a playground for the children up on the west side, near the model tenements which i described. just so! with a decent home and a chance for the boy to grow into a healthy man, his political education can proceed without much further hindrance. now let the league for political education trade off the policeman's club for a boys' club, and it may consider its course fairly organized. i spoke of the instinct for the crowd in the tenement house boy as evidence that the slum had got its grip on him. and it is true of him. the experience that the helpless poor will not leave their slum when a chance of better things is offered is wearily familiar to most of us. i recall the indignant amazement of my good friend, the president of the baron de hirsch fund, when, of a hundred of the neediest families chosen to be the pioneers in the experiment of transplanting the crowds of the ghetto to the country, where homes and work were waiting for them, only seven wanted to go. they preferred the excitement of the street. one has to have resources to face the loneliness of the woods and the fields. we have seen what resources the slum has at its command. in the boy it laid hold of the instinct for organization, the desire to fall in and march in line that belongs to all boys, and is not here, as abroad, cloyed with military service in the young years,--and anyhow is stronger in the american boy than in his european brother,--and perverted it to its own use. that is the simple secret of the success of the club, the brigade, in winning back the boy. it is fighting the street with its own weapon. the gang is the club run wild. how readily it owns the kinship was never better shown than by the experience of the college settlement girls, when they first went to make friends in the east side tenements. i have told it before, but it will bear telling again, for it holds the key to the whole business. they gathered in the drift, all the little embryo gangs that were tuning up in the district, and made them into clubs,--young heroes, knights of the round table, and such like; all except one, the oldest, that had begun to make a name for itself with the police. that one held aloof, observing coldly what went on, to make sure it was "straight." they let it be, keeping the while an anxious eye upon it; until one day there came a delegation with the proposition, "if you will let us in, we will change and have your kind of a gang." needless to say it was let in. and within a year, when, through a false rumor that the concern was moving away, there was a run on the settlement's penny provident bank, the converted gang proved itself its stanchest friend by doing actually what john halifax did, in miss mulock's story: it brought all the pennies it could raise in the neighborhood by hook or by crook and deposited them as fast as the regular patrons--the gang had not yet risen to the dignity of a bank account--drew them out, until the run ceased. the cry "get the boys off the street" that has been raised in our cities, as the real gravity of the situation has been made clear, has led to the adoption of curfew ordinances in many places. any attempt to fit such a scheme to metropolitan life would probably result simply in adding one more dead-letter law, more dangerous than all the rest, to those we have. besides, the curfew rings at nine o'clock. the dangerous hours, when the gang is made, are from seven to nine, between supper and bedtime. this is the gap the club fills out. the boys take to the street because the home has nothing to keep them there. to lock them up in the house would only make them hate it more. the club follows the line of least resistance. it has only to keep also on the line of common sense. it must be a real club, not a reformatory. its proper function is to head off the jail. the gang must not run it. but rather that than have it help train up a band of wretched young cads. the signs are not hard to make out. when a boy has had his head swelled by his importance as a member of the junior street-cleaning band to the point of reproving his mother for throwing a banana peel in the street, the thing to be done is to take him out and spank him, if it _is_ reverting to "the savagery" of the street. better a savage than a cad. the boys have the making of both in them. their vanity furnishes abundant material for the cad, but only when unduly pampered. left to itself, the gang can be trusted not to develop that kink. it comes down in the end to the personal influence that is always most potent in dealing with these problems. we had a gang start up once when my boys were of that age, out in the village on long island where we lived. it had its headquarters in our barn, where it planned divers raids that aimed at killing the cat and other like outrages; the central fact being that the boys had an air rifle, with which it was necessary to murder something. my wife discovered the conspiracy, and, with woman's wit, defeated it by joining the gang. she "gave in wood" to the election bonfires, and pulled the safety valve upon all the other plots by entering into the true spirit of them,--which was adventure rather than mischief,--and so keeping them within safe lines. she was elected an honorary member, and became the counselor of the gang in all their little scrapes. i can yet see her dear brow wrinkled in the study of some knotty gang problem, which we discussed when the boys had been long asleep. they did not dream of it, and the village never knew what small tragedies it escaped, nor who it was that so skillfully averted them. it is always the women who do those things. they are the law and the gospel to the boy, both in one. it is the mother heart, i suppose, and there is nothing better in all the world. i am reminded of the conversion of "the kid" by one who was in a very real sense the mother of a social settlement uptown, in the latitude of battle row. the kid was driftwood. he had been cast off by a drunken father and mother, and was living on what he could scrape out of ash barrels, and an occasional dime for kindling-wood which he sold from a wheel-barrow, when the gang found and adopted him. my friend adopted the gang in her turn, and civilized it by slow stages. easter sunday came, when she was to redeem her promise to take the boys to witness the services in a neighboring church, where the liturgy was especially impressive. it found the larger part of the gang at her door,--a minority, it was announced, were out stealing potatoes, hence were excusable,--in a state of high indignation. "the kid's been cussin' awful," explained the leader. the kid showed in the turbulent distance, red-eyed and raging. "but why?" asked my friend, in amazement. "'cause he can't go to church!" it appeared that the gang had shut him out, with a sense of what was due to the occasion, because of his rags. restored to grace, and choking down reminiscent sobs, the kid sat through the easter service, surrounded by the twenty-seven "proper" members of the gang. civilization had achieved a victory, and no doubt my friend remembered it in her prayers with thanksgiving. the manner was of less account. battle row has its own ways, even in its acceptance of means of grace. i walked home from the office to-night. the street wore its normal aspect of mingled dullness and the kind of expectancy that is always waiting to turn any excitement, from a fallen horse to a fire, to instant account. the early june heat had driven the multitudes from the tenements into the street for a breath of air. the boys of the block were holding a meeting at the hydrant. in some way they had turned the water on, and were splashing in it with bare feet, reveling in the sense that they were doing something that "went against" their enemy, the policeman. upon the quiet of the evening broke a bugle note and the tramp of many feet keeping time. a military band came around the corner, stepping briskly to the tune of "the stars and stripes forever." their white duck trousers glimmered in the twilight, as the hundred legs moved as one. stoops and hydrant were deserted with a rush. the gang fell in with joyous shouts. the young fellow linked arms with his sweetheart and fell in too. the tired mother hurried with the baby carriage to catch up. the butcher came, hot and wiping his hands on his apron, to the door to see them pass. "yes," said my companion, guessing my thoughts,--we had been speaking of the boys,--"but look at the other side. there is the military spirit. do you not fear danger from it in this country?" no, my anxious friend, i do not. let them march; and if with a gun, better still. often enough it is the choice of the gun on the shoulder, or, by and by, the stripes on the back in the lockstep gang. vi letting in the light i had been out of town and my way had not fallen through the mulberry bend in weeks until that morning when i came suddenly upon the park that had been made there in my absence. sod had been laid, and men were going over the lawn cutting the grass after the rain. the sun shone upon flowers and the tender leaves of young shrubs, and the smell of new-mown hay was in the air. crowds of little italian children shouted with delight over the "garden," while their elders sat around upon the benches with a look of contentment such as i had not seen before in that place. i stood and looked at it all, and a lump came in my throat as i thought of what it had been, and of all the weary years of battling for this. it had been such a hard fight, and now at last it was won. to me the whole battle with the slum had summed itself up in the struggle with this dark spot. the whir of the lawn mower was as sweet a song in my ear as that which the skylark sang when i was a boy, in danish fields, and which gray hairs do not make the man forget. in my delight i walked upon the grass. it seemed as if i should never be satisfied till i had felt the sod under my feet,--sod in the mulberry bend! i did not see the gray-coated policeman hastening my way, nor the wide-eyed youngsters awaiting with shuddering delight the catastrophe that was coming, until i felt his cane laid smartly across my back and heard his angry command:-- "hey! come off the grass! d' ye think it is made to walk on?" so that was what i got for it. it is the way of the world. but it was all right. the park was there, that was the thing. and i had my revenge. i had just had a hand in marking five blocks of tenements for destruction to let in more light, and in driving the slum from two other strongholds. where they were, parks are being made to-day in which the sign "keep off the grass!" will never be seen. the children may walk in them from morning till night, and i too, if i want to, with no policeman to drive us off. i tried to tell the policeman something about it. but he was of the old dispensation. all the answer i got was a gruff:-- "g'wan now! i don't want none o' yer guff!" it was all "guff" to the politicians, i suppose, from the day the trouble began about the mulberry bend, but toward the end they woke up nobly. when the park was finally dedicated to the people's use, they took charge of the celebration with immense unction, and invited themselves to sit in the high seats and glory in the achievement which they had done little but hamper and delay from the first. they had not reckoned with colonel waring, however. when they had had their say, the colonel arose and, curtly reminding them that they had really had no hand in the business, proposed three cheers for the citizen effort that had struck the slum this staggering blow. there was rather a feeble response on the platform, but rousing cheers from the crowd, with whom the colonel was a prime favorite, and no wonder. two years later he laid down his life in the fight which he so valiantly and successfully waged. it is the simple truth that he was killed by politics. the services which he had rendered the city would have entitled him in any reputable business to be retained in the employment that was his life and his pride. had he been so retained he would not have gone to cuba, and would in all human probability be now alive. but tammany is not "in politics for her health" and had no use for him, though no more grievous charge could be laid at his door, even in the heat of the campaign, than that he was a "foreigner," being from rhode island. spoils politics never craved a heavier sacrifice of any community. it was colonel waring's broom that first let light into the slum. that which had come to be considered an impossible task he did by the simple formula of "putting a man instead of a voter behind every broom." the words are his own. the man, from a political dummy who loathed his job and himself in it with cause, became a self-respecting citizen, and the streets that had been dirty were swept. the ash barrels which had befouled the sidewalks disappeared, almost without any one knowing it till they were gone. the trucks that obstructed the children's only playground, the street, went with the dirt despite the opposition of the truckman who had traded off his vote to tammany in the past for stall room at the curbstone. they did not go without a struggle. when appeal to the alderman proved useless, the truckman resorted to strategy. he took a wheel off, or kept a perishing nag, that could not walk, hitched to the truck over night to make it appear that it was there for business. but subterfuge availed as little as resistance. in the mulberry bend he made his last stand. the old houses had been torn down, leaving a three-acre lot full of dirt mounds and cellar holes. into this the truckmen of the sixth ward hauled their carts, and defied the street cleaners. they were no longer in their way, and they were on the park department's domain, where no colonel waring was in control. but while their owners were triumphing, the children playing among the trucks set one of them rolling down into a cellar, and three or four of the little ones were crushed. that was the end. the trucks disappeared. even tammany has not ventured to put them back, so great was the relief of their going. they were not only a hindrance to the sweeper and the skulking places of all manner of mischief at night, but i have repeatedly seen the firemen baffled in their efforts to reach a burning house, where they stood four and six deep in the wide "slips" at the river. colonel waring did more for the cause of labor than all the walking delegates of the town together, by investing a despised but highly important task with a dignity which won the hearty plaudits of a grateful city. when he uniformed his men and announced that he was going to parade with them so that we might all see what they were like, the town laughed and poked fun at the "white wings;" but no one went to see them who did not come away converted to an enthusiastic belief in the man and his work. public sentiment, that had been half reluctantly suspending judgment, expecting every day to see the colonel "knuckle down to politics" like his predecessors, turned in an hour, and after that there was little trouble. the tenement house children organized street cleaning bands to help along the work, and colonel waring enlisted them as regular auxiliaries and made them useful. they had no better friend. when the unhappy plight of the persecuted pushcart men, all immigrant jews, who were blackmailed, robbed, and driven from pillar to post as a nuisance, though licensed to trade in the street, appealed vainly for a remedy, colonel waring found a way out in a great morning market in hester street that should be turned over to the children for a playground in the afternoon. though he proved that it would pay interest on the investment in market fees, and many times in the children's happiness, it was never built. it would have been a most fitting monument to the man's memory. his broom saved more lives in the crowded tenements than a squad of doctors. it did more: it swept the cobwebs out of our civic brain and conscience, and set up a standard of a citizen's duty which, however we may for the moment forget, will be ours until we have dragged other things than our pavements out of the mud. even the colonel's broom would have been powerless to do that for "the bend." that was hopeless and had to go. there was no question of children or playground involved. the worst of all the gangs, the whyós, had its headquarters in the darkest of its dark alleys; but it was left to the police. we had not begun to understand that the gangs meant something to us beyond murder and vengeance, in those days. no one suspected that they had any such roots in the soil that they could be killed by merely destroying the slum. the cholera was rapping on our door and, with the bend there, we felt about it as a man with stolen goods in his house must feel when the policeman comes up the street. back in the seventies we began discussing what ought to be done. by the first tenement house commission had summoned up courage to propose that a street be cut through the bad block. in the following year a bill was brought in to destroy it bodily, and then began the long fight that resulted in the defeat of the slum a dozen years later. it was a bitter fight, in which every position of the enemy had to be carried by assault. the enemy was the deadly official inertia that was the outcome of political corruption born of the slum plus the indifference of the mass of our citizens, who probably had never seen the bend. if i made it my own concern to the exclusion of all else, it was only because i knew it. i had been part of it. homeless and alone, i had sought its shelter, not for long,--that was not to be endured,--but long enough to taste of its poison, and i hated it. i knew that the blow must be struck there, to kill. looking back now over those years, i can see that it was all as it should be. we were learning the alphabet of our lesson then. we could have learned it in no other way so thoroughly. before we had been at it more than two or three years, it was no longer a question of the bend merely. the small parks law that gave us a million dollars a year to force light and air into the slum, to its destruction, grew out of it. the whole sentiment which in its day, groping blindly and angrily, had wiped out the disgrace of the five points, just around the corner, crystallized and took shape in its fight. it waited merely for the issue of that, to attack the slum in its other strongholds; and no sooner was the bend gone than the rest surrendered, unconditionally. but it was not so easy campaigning at the start. in plans were filed for the demolition of the block. it took four years to get a report of what it would cost to tear it down. about once in two months during all that time the authorities had to be prodded into a spasm of activity, or we would probably have been yet where we were then. once when i appealed to the corporation counsel to give a good reason for the delay, i got the truth out of him without evasion. "well, i tell you," he said blandly, "no one here is taking any interest in that business. that is good enough reason for you, isn't it?" it was. that tammany reason became the slogan of an assault upon official incompetence and treachery that hurried things up considerably. the property was condemned at a total cost to the city of a million and a half, in round numbers, including the assessment of half a million for park benefit which the property owners were quick enough, with the aid of the politicians, to get saddled on the city at large. in the city took possession and became the landlord of the old barracks. for a whole year it complacently collected the rents and did nothing. when it was shamed out of that rut, too, and the tenements were at last torn down, the square lay as the wreckers had left it for another year, until it became such a plague spot that, as a last resort, with a citizen's privilege, i arraigned the municipality before the board of health for maintaining a nuisance upon its premises. i can see the shocked look of the official now, as he studied the complaint. "but, my dear sir," he coughed diplomatically, "isn't it rather unusual? i never heard of such a thing." "neither did i," i replied, "but then there never was such a thing before." that night, while they were debating the "unusual thing," happened the accident to the children of which i spoke, emphasizing the charge that the nuisance was "dangerous to life," and there was an end. in the morning the bend was taken in hand, and the following spring the mulberry bend park was opened. a million dollars a year had been lost while we were learning our lesson. the small parks fund was not cumulative, and when it came to paying for the bend a special bill had to be passed to authorize it, the award being "more than one million in one year." the wise financiers who framed and hung in the comptroller's office a check for three cents that had been under-paid on a school site, for the taxpayer to bow before in awe and admiration at such business methods, could find no way to make the appropriation for two years apply, though the new year was coming in a week or two. but the gilder tenement house commission had been sitting, the committee of seventy had been at work, and a law was on the statute books authorizing the expenditure of three million dollars for two open spaces in the parkless district on the east side, where jacob beresheim was born. it had shown that while the proportion of park area inside the limits of the old city was equal to one thirteenth of all, below fourteenth street, where one third of the people lived, it was barely one fortieth. it took a citizen's committee appointed by the mayor just three weeks to seize the two sites which are now being laid out in playgrounds chiefly, and it took the good government clubs with their allies at albany less than two months to get warrant of law for the tearing down of the houses ahead of final condemnation lest any mischance befall through delay or otherwise,--a precaution which subsequent events proved to be eminently wise. the slow legal proceedings are going on yet. [illustration: mulberry bend park] the playground part of it was a provision of the gilder law that showed what apt scholars we had been. i was a member of that committee, and i fed fat my grudge against the slum tenement, knowing that i might not again have such a chance. bone alley went. i shall not soon get the picture of it, as i saw it last, out of my mind. i had wandered to the top floor of one of the ramshackle tenements in the heart of the block, to a door that stood ajar, and pushed it open. on the floor lay three women rag-pickers with their burdens, asleep, overcome by the heat and the beer, the stale stench of which filled the place. swarms of flies covered them. the room--no! let it go. thank god, we shall not again hear of bone alley. where it stood workmen are to-day building a gymnasium with baths for the people, and a playground and park which may even be turned into a skating-pond in winter if the architect keeps his promise. a skating-pond for the children of the eleventh ward! no wonder the politician is in a hurry to take the credit for what is going forward over there. it is that or nothing with him now. it will be all up with tammany, once the boys find out that these were the things she withheld from them all the years, for her own gain. half a dozen blocks away the city's first public bath house is at last going up, after many delays, and godliness will have a chance to move in with cleanliness. the two are neighbors everywhere, but in the slum the last must come first. glasgow has half a dozen public baths. rome, two thousand years ago, washed its people most sedulously, and in heathen japan to-day, i am told, there are baths, as we have saloons, on every corner. christian new york never had a bath house. in a tenement population of , the gilder committee found only who had access to bath-rooms in the houses where they lived. the church federation canvass of the fifteenth assembly district counted three bath-tubs to families. nor was that because they so elected. the people's baths took in , half dimes last year for as many baths, and forty per cent. of their customers were italians. the free river baths admitted , , customers during the summer. the "great unwashed" were not so from choice, it would appear. bone alley brought thirty-seven dollars under the auctioneer's hammer. thieves' alley, in the other park down at rutgers square, where the police clubbed the jewish cloakmakers a few years ago for the offense of gathering to assert their right to "being men, live the life of men," as some one who knew summed up the labor movement, brought only seven dollars, and the old helvetia house, where boss tweed and his gang met at night to plan their plundering raids on the city's treasury, was knocked down for five. kerosene row would not have brought enough to buy kindling wood with which to start one of the numerous fires that gave it its bad name. it was in thieves' alley that the owner in the days long gone by hung out the sign: "no jews need apply." last week i watched the opening of the first municipal playground upon the site of the old alley, and in the thousands that thronged street and tenements from curb to roof with thunder of applause, there were not twoscore who could have found lodging with the old jew-baiter. he had to go with his alley before the better day could bring light and hope to the tenth ward. in all this the question of rehousing the population, that had to be so carefully considered abroad in the destruction of slums, gave no trouble. the speculative builder had seen to that. in the five wards, the seventh, tenth, eleventh, thirteenth, and seventeenth, in which the unhoused ones would look for room, if they wanted to stay near their old home, there were, according to the tenement census at the time when the old houses were torn down, vacant apartments, with room for more than , persons at our average of four and a half to the family. even including the mulberry bend, the whole number of the dispossessed was not , . on manhattan island there were at this time more than , vacant apartments, so that the question could not arise in any serious shape, much as it plagued the dreams of some well-meaning people. as a matter of fact the unhoused were scattered much more widely than had been anticipated, which was one of the very purposes sought to be attained. many of them had remained in their old slum more from force of habit and association than because of necessity. "everything takes ten years," said abram s. hewitt when, exactly ten years after he had as mayor championed the small parks act, he took his seat as chairman of the advisory committee on small parks. the ten years had wrought a great change. it was no longer the slum of to-day, but that of to-morrow that challenged attention. the committee took the point of view of the children from the first. it had a large map prepared showing where in the city there was room to play and where there was none. then it called in the police and asked them to point out where there was trouble with the boys; and in every instance the policeman put his finger upon a treeless slum. "they have no other playground than the street," was the explanation given in each case. "they smash lamps and break windows. the storekeepers kick and there is trouble. that is how it begins." "many complaints are received daily of boys annoying pedestrians, storekeepers, and tenants by their continually playing baseball in some parts of almost every street. the damage is not slight. arrests are frequent, much more frequent than when they had open lots to play in." this last was the report of an uptown captain. he remembered the days when there were open lots there. "but these lots are now built upon," he said, "and for every new house there are more boys and less chance for them to play." the committee put a red daub on the map to indicate trouble. then it asked those police captains who had not spoken to show them where their precincts were, and why they had no trouble. every one of them put his finger on a green spot that marked a park. "my people are quiet and orderly," said the captain of the tompkins square precinct. the police took the square from a mob by storm twice in my recollection, and the commander of the precinct then was hit on the head with a hammer by "his people" and laid out for dead. "the hook gang is gone," said he of corlears hook. the professional pursuit of that gang was to rob and murder inoffensive citizens by night and throw them into the river, and it achieved a bad eminence at its calling. "the whole neighborhood has taken a change, and decidedly for the better," said the captain of mulberry street, and the committee rose and said that it had heard enough. the map was hung on the wall, and in it were stuck pins to mark the site of present and projected schools as showing where the census had found the children crowding. the moment that was done the committee sent the map and a copy of chapter of the laws of to the mayor, and reported that its task was finished. this is the law and all there is of it:-- "the people of the state of new york, represented in senate and assembly, do enact as follows:-- "section . hereafter no schoolhouse shall be constructed in the city of new york without an open-air playground attached to or used in connection with the same. "section . this act shall take effect immediately." where the map was daubed with red the school pins crowded one another. on the lower east side, where child crime was growing fast, and no less than three storm centres were marked down by the police, nine new schools were going up or planned, and in the uptown precinct whence came the wail about the ball players there were seven. the playground had proved its case. where it was expedient it was to be a school playground. it seemed a happy combination, for the new law had been a stumbling-block to the school commissioners, who were in a quandary over the needful size of an "open-air playground." the success of the roof-garden idea suggested a way out. but schools are closed at the time of the year when playgrounds are most needed for city children. to get the garden on the roof of the schoolhouse recognized as the public playground seemed a long step toward turning it into a general neighborhood evening resort that should be always open, and so toward bringing school and people, and especially the school and the boy, together in a bond of mutual sympathy highly desirable for both. that was the burden of the committee's report. it made thirteen recommendations besides, as to the location of parks and detached playgrounds, only one of which has been adopted. but that is of less account--as also was the information imparted to me as secretary of the committee by our peppery tammany mayor, that we had "as much authority as a committee of bootblacks in his office"--than the fact that the field has at last been studied and its needs have been made known. the rest will follow, with or without the politician's authority. the one recommendation that has been carried out was that of a riverside park in the region uptown on the west side where the federation of churches and christian workers found "saloon social ideals minting themselves upon the minds of the people at the rate of seven saloon thoughts to one educational thought." there is an outdoor gymnasium to-day on the chosen site,--while the legal proceedings to take possession are unraveling their red tape,--and a recreation pier hard by. in the evening the young men of the neighborhood may be seen trooping riverward with their girls to hear the music. the gang that "laid out" two policemen, to my knowledge, has gone out of business. the best laid plans are sometimes upset by surprising snags. we had planned for two municipal playgrounds on the east side where the need is greatest, and our plans were eagerly accepted by the city authorities. but they were never put into practice. a negligent attorney killed one, a lazy clerk the other. and both served under the reform government. the first of the two playgrounds was to have been in rivington street, adjoining the new public bath, where the boys, for want of something better to do, were fighting daily battles with stones, to the great damage of windows and the worse aggravation of the householders. four hundred children in that neighborhood petitioned the committee for a place of their own where there were no windows to break, and we found one. it was only after the proceedings had been started that we discovered that they had been taken under the wrong law and the money spent in advertising had been wasted. it was then too late. the daily assaults upon the windows were resumed. the other case was an attempt to establish a model school park in a block where more than four thousand children attended day and night school. the public school and the pro-cathedral, which divided the children between them, were to be allowed to stand, at opposite ends of the block. the surrounding tenements were to be torn down to make room for a park and playground which should embody the ideal of what such a place ought to be, in the opinion of the committee. the roof garden was not in the original plan except as an alternative of the street-level playground, where land came too high. the plentiful supply of light and air, the safety from fire to be obtained by putting the school in a park, beside the fact that it could thus be "built beautiful," were considerations of weight. plans were made, and there was great rejoicing in essex street, until it came out that this scheme had gone the way of the other. the clerk who should have filed the plans in the register's office left that duty to some one else, and it took just twenty-one days to make the journey, a distance of five hundred feet or less. the greater new york had come then with tammany, and the thing was not heard of again. when i traced the failure down to the clerk in question, and told him that he had killed the park, he yawned and said:-- "yes, and i think it is just as well it is dead. we haven't any money for those things. it is very nice to have small parks, and very nice to have a horse and wagon, if you can afford it. but we can't. why, there isn't money enough to run the city government." so the labor of weary weeks and months in the children's behalf was all undone by a third-rate clerk in an executive office; but he saved the one thing he had in mind: the city government is "run" to date, and his pay is secure. neither stupidity, spite, nor the false cry that "reform extravagance" has wrecked the city's treasury will be able much longer, however, to cheat the child out of his rights. the playground is here to wrestle with the gang for the boy, and it will win. it came so quietly that we hardly knew of it till we heard the shouts. it took us seven years to make up our minds to build a play pier,--recreation pier is its municipal title,--and it took just about seven weeks to build it when we got so far; but then we learned more in one day than we had dreamed of in the seven years. half the east side swarmed over it with shrieks of delight, and carried the mayor and the city government, who had come to see the show, fairly off their feet. and now "we are seven," or will be when the one in brooklyn has been built,--great, handsome structures, seven hundred feet long, some of them, with music every night for mother and the babies, and for papa, who can smoke his pipe there in peace. the moon shines upon the quiet river, and the steamers go by with their lights. the street is far away with its noise. the young people go sparking in all honor, as it is their right to do. the councilman who spoke the other day of "pernicious influences" lying in wait for them there made the mistake of his life, unless he has made up his mind to go out of politics. the play piers have taken a hold of the people which no crabbed old bachelor can loosen with trumped-up charges. their civilizing influence upon the children is already felt in a reported demand for more soap in the neighborhood where they are, and even the grocer smiles approval. the play pier is the kindergarten in the educational campaign against the gang. it gives the little ones a chance. often enough it is a chance for life. the street as a playground is a heavy contributor to the undertaker's bank account. i kept the police slips of a single day in may two years ago, when four little ones were killed and three crushed under the wheels of trucks in tenement streets. that was unusual, but no day has passed in my recollection that has not had its record of accidents which bring grief as deep and lasting to the humblest home as if it were the pet of some mansion on fifth avenue that was slain. the kindergarten teaching bore fruit. to-day there are half a dozen full-blown playgrounds downtown and uptown where the children swarm. private initiative set the pace, but the idea has been engrafted upon the municipal plan. the city helped get at least one of them under way. the outdoor recreation league was organized last year by public-spirited citizens, including many amateur athletes and enthusiastic women, with the object of "obtaining recognition of the necessity for recreation and physical exercise as fundamental to the moral and physical welfare of the people." together with the social reform club and the federation of churches and christian workers it maintained a playground on the uptown west side last summer. the ball came into play there for the first time as a recognized factor in civic progress. the day might well be kept for all time among those that mark human emancipation, for it was social reform and christian work in one, of the kind that tells. only the year before, the athletic clubs had vainly craved the privilege of establishing a gymnasium in the east river park, where the children wistfully eyed the sacred grass, and cowered under the withering gaze of the policeman. a friend whose house stands opposite the park found them one day swarming over her stoop in such shoals that she could not enter, and asked them why they did not play tag under the trees instead. the instant shout came back: "'cause the cop won't let us." now a splendid gymnasium has been opened on the site of the people's park that is to come at fifty-third street and eleventh avenue. it is called hudsonbank. a board fence more than a thousand feet long surrounds it. the director pointed out to me with pride, last week, that not a board had been stolen from it in a year, while other fences within twenty feet of it were ripped to pieces. and he was right. the neighborhood is one that has been anything but distinguished for its respect for private property in the past, and where boards have a market value among the irish settlers. better testimony could not have been borne to the spirit in which the gift was accepted by the children. poverty gap, that was fairly transformed by one brief season's experience with its "holy terror park,"[ ] a dreary sand lot upon the site of the old tenements in which the alley gang once murdered the one good boy of the block for the offense of supporting his aged parents by his work as a baker's apprentice,--poverty gap is to have its permanent playground, and mulberry bend and corlears hook are down on the league's books; which is equivalent to saying that they, too, will shortly know the climbing pole and the vaulting buck. for years the city's only playground that had any claim upon the name--and that was only a little asphalted strip behind a public school in first street--was an old graveyard. we struggled vainly to get possession of another, long abandoned. the dead were of more account than the living. but now at last it is their turn. the other day i watched the children at their play in the new hester street gymnasium. the dusty square was jammed with a mighty multitude. it was not an ideal spot, for it had not rained in weeks, and powdered sand and cinders had taken wing and floated like a pall over the perspiring crowd. but it was heaven to them. a hundred men and boys stood in line, waiting their turn upon the bridge ladder and the traveling rings that hung full of struggling and squirming humanity, groping madly for the next grip. no failure, no rebuff discouraged them. seven boys and girls rode with looks of deep concern--it is their way--upon each end of the see-saw, and two squeezed into each of the forty swings that had room for one, while a hundred counted time and saw that none had too much. it is an article of faith with these children that nothing that is "going" for their benefit is to be missed. sometimes the result provokes a smile, as when a band of young jews, starting up a club, called themselves the christian heroes. it was meant partly as a compliment, i suppose, to the ladies that gave them club-room; but at the same time, if there was anything in a name, they were bound to have it. it is rather to cry over than to laugh at, if one but understands it. the sight of these little ones swarming over a sand heap until scarcely an inch of it was in sight, and gazing in rapt admiration at the poor show of a dozen geraniums and english ivy plants in pots on the window-sill of the overseer's cottage, was pathetic in the extreme. they stood for ten minutes at a time resting their eyes upon them. in the crowd were aged women and bearded men with the inevitable sabbath silk hat, who it seemed could never get enough of it. they moved slowly, when crowded out, looking back many times at the enchanted spot, as long as it was in sight. [footnote : the name was bestowed before the fact, not after.] perhaps there was in it, on the part of the children at least, just a little bit of the comforting sense of proprietorship. they had contributed of their scant pennies more than a hundred dollars toward the opening of the playground, and they felt that it was their very own. all the better. two policemen watched the passing show, grinning. but their clubs hung idly from their belts. the words of a little woman whom i met last year in chicago kept echoing in my ear. she was the "happiest woman alive," for she had striven long for a playground for her poor children, and had got it. "the police like it," she said. "they say that it will do more good than all the sunday schools in chicago. the mothers say, 'this is good business.' the carpenters that put up the swings and things worked with a will; everybody was glad. the police lieutenant has had a tree called after him. the boys that did that used to be terrors. now they take care of the trees. they plead for a low limb that is in the way, that no one may cut it off." the twilight deepens and the gates of the playground are closed. the crowds disperse slowly. in the roof garden on the hebrew institute across east broadway lights are twinkling and the band is tuning up. little groups are settling down to a quiet game of checkers or love-making. paterfamilias leans back against the parapet where palms wave luxuriously in the summer breeze. the newspaper drops from his hand; he closes his eyes and is in dreamland, where strikes come not. mother knits contentedly in her seat, with a smile on her face that was not born of the ludlow street tenement. over yonder a knot of black-browed men talk with serious mien. they might be met any night in the anarchist café, half a dozen doors away, holding forth against empires. here wealth does not excite their wrath, nor power their plotting. in the roof garden anarchy is harmless, even though a policeman typifies its government. they laugh pleasantly to one another as he passes, and he gives them a match to light their cigars. it is thursday, and smoking is permitted. on friday it is discouraged because it offends the orthodox, to whom the lighting of a fire, even the holding of a candle, is anathema on the sabbath eve. the band plays on. one after another, tired heads droop upon babes slumbering peacefully at the breast. ludlow street, the tenement, are forgotten; eleven o'clock is not yet. down along the silver gleam of the river a mighty city slumbers. the great bridge has hung out its string of shining pearls from shore to shore. "sweet land of liberty!" overhead the dark sky, the stars that twinkled their message to the shepherds on judæan hills, that lighted their sons through ages of slavery, and the flag of freedom borne upon the breeze,--down there the tenement, the--ah, well! let us forget, as do these. now if you ask me: "and what of it all? what does it avail?" let me take you once more back to the mulberry bend, and to the policeman's verdict add the police reporter's story of what has taken place there. in fifteen years i never knew a week to pass without a murder there, rarely a sunday. it was the wickedest, as it was the foulest, spot in all the city. in the slum the two are interchangeable terms for reasons that are clear enough to me. but i shall not speculate about it, only state the facts. the old houses fairly reeked with outrage and violence. when they were torn down, i counted seventeen deeds of blood in that place which i myself remembered, and those i had forgotten probably numbered seven times seventeen. the district attorney connected more than a score of murders of his own recollection with bottle alley, the whyó gang's headquarters. two years have passed since it was made into a park, and scarce a knife has been drawn, or a shot fired, in all that neighborhood. only twice have i been called as a police reporter to the spot. it is not that the murder has moved to another neighborhood, for there has been no increase of violence in little italy or wherever else the crowd went that moved out. it is that the light has come in and made crime hideous. it is being let in wherever the slum has bred murder and robbery, bred the gang, in the past. wait, now, another ten years, and let us see what a story there will be to tell. avail? why, here is tammany actually applauding comptroller coler's words in plymouth church last night: "whenever the city builds a schoolhouse upon the site of a dive and creates a park, a distinct and permanent mental, moral, and physical improvement has been made, and public opinion will sustain such a policy, even if a dive-keeper is driven out of business and somebody's ground rent is reduced." and tammany's press agent sends forth this pæan: "in the light of such events how absurd it is for the enemies of the organization to contend that tammany is not the greatest moral force in the community." tammany a moral force! the park and the playground have availed, then, to bring back the day of miracles. vii justice for the boy sometimes, when i see my little boy hugging himself with delight at the near prospect of the kindergarten, i go back in memory forty years and more to the day when i was dragged, a howling captive, to school, as a punishment for being bad at home. i remember, as though it were yesterday, my progress up the street in the vengeful grasp of an exasperated servant, and my reception by the aged monster--most fitly named madame bruin--who kept the school. she asked no questions, but led me straightway to the cellar, where she plunged me into an empty barrel and put the lid on over me. applying her horn goggles to the bunghole, to my abject terror, she informed me, in a sepulchral voice, that that was the way bad boys were dealt with in school. when i ceased howling from sheer fright, she took me out and conducted me to the yard, where a big hog had a corner to itself. she bade me observe that one of its ears had been slit half its length. it was because the hog was lazy, and little boys who were that way minded were in danger of similar treatment; in token whereof she clipped a pair of tailor's shears suggestively close to my ear. it was my first lesson in school. i hated it from that hour. the barrel and the hog were never part of the curriculum in any american boy's school, i suppose; they seem too freakish to be credited to any but the demoniac ingenuity of my home ogre. but they stood for a comprehension of the office of school and teacher which was not patented by any day or land. it is not so long since the notion yet prevailed that the schools were principally to lock children up in for the convenience of their parents, that we should have entirely forgotten it. only the other day a clergyman from up the state came into my office to tell of a fine reform school they had in his town. they were very proud of it. "and how about the schools for the good boys in your town?" i asked, when i had heard him out. "are they anything to be proud of?" he stared. he guessed they were all right, he said, after some hesitation. but it was clear that he did not know. it is not necessary to go back forty years to find us in the metropolis upon the clergyman's platform, if not upon madame bruin's. ten will do. they will bring us to the day when roof playgrounds were contemptuously left out of the estimates for an east side school, as "frills" that had nothing to do with education; when the board of health found but a single public school in more than sixscore that was so ventilated as to keep the children from being poisoned by foul air; when the authority of the talmud had to be invoked by the superintendent of school buildings to convince the president of the board of education, who happened to be a jew, that seventy-five or eighty pupils were far too many for one class-room; when a man who had been dead a year was appointed a school trustee of the third ward, under the mouldy old law surviving from the day when new york was a big village, and filled the office as well as if he had been alive, because there were no schools in his ward; when manual training and the kindergarten were yet the fads of yesterday, looked at askance; when fifty thousand children roamed the streets for whom there was no room in the schools, and the only defense of the school commissioners was that they "didn't know" there were so many; and when we mixed truants and thieves in a jail with entire unconcern. indeed, the jail filled the title rôle in the educational cast of that day. its inmates were well lodged and cared for, while the sanitary authorities twice condemned the essex market school across the way as wholly unfit for children to be in, but failed to catch the ear of the politician who ran things unhindered. when (in ) i denounced the "system" of enforcing--or not enforcing--the compulsory education law as a device to make thieves out of our children by turning over their training to the street, he protested angrily; but the experts of the tenement house committee found the charge fully borne out by the facts. they were certainly plain enough in the sight of us all, had we chosen to see. when at last we saw, we gave the politician a vacation for a season. to say that he was to blame for all the mischief would not be fair. we were to blame for leaving him in possession. he was only a link in the chain which our indifference had forged; but he was always and everywhere an obstruction to betterment,--sometimes, illogically, in spite of himself. successive tammany mayors had taken a stand for the public schools, when it was clear that reform could not be delayed much longer; but they were helpless against a system of selfishness and stupidity of which they were the creatures, though they posed as its masters. they had to go with it as unfit, and upon the wave that swept out the last of the rubbish came reform. the committee of seventy took hold, the good government clubs, the tenement house committee, and the women of new york. five years we strove with the powers of darkness, and look now at the change. the new york school system is not yet the ideal one,--it may never be; but the jail, at least, has been cast out of the firm. we have a compulsory education law under which it will be possible, when a seat has been provided for every child, to punish the parent for the boy's truancy, unless he surrenders him as unmanageable; and we can count the months now till every child shall find the latchstring out on the school door. we have had to put our hands deep into our pockets to get to that point, but we are nearly there now. since the expenditure of twenty-two and a half millions of dollars for new schools in the old city has been authorized by law, and two thirds of the money has been spent. fifty-odd new buildings have been put up, or are going up while i am writing, every one of them with its playground, which will by and by be free to all the neighborhood. the idea is at last working through that the schools belong to the people, and are primarily for the children and their parents; not mere vehicles of ward patronage, or for keeping an army of teachers in office and pay. the silly old régime is dead. the ward trustee is gone with his friend the alderman, loudly proclaiming the collapse of our liberties in the day that saw the schools taken from "the people's" control. they were "the people." experts manage our children's education, which was supposed in the old plan to be the only thing that did not require any training. to superintend a brickyard demanded some knowledge, but anybody could run the public schools. it cost us an election to take that step. one of the tammany district leaders, who knew what he was talking about, said to me after it was all over: "i knew we would win. your bringing those foreigners here did the business. our people believe in home rule. we kept account of the teachers you brought from out of town, and who spent the money they made here out of town, and it got to be the talk among the tenement people in my ward that their daughters would have no more show to get to be teachers. that did the business. we figured the school vote in the city at forty-two thousand, and i knew we could not lose." the "foreigners" were teachers from massachusetts and other states, who had achieved a national reputation at their work. there lies upon my table a copy of the minutes of the board of education of january , , in which is underscored a report on a primary school in the bronx. "it is a wooden shanty," is the inspector's account, "heated by stoves, and is a regular tinder box; cellar wet, and under one class-room only. this building was erected in order, i believe, to determine whether or not there was a school population in the neighborhood to warrant the purchase of property to erect a school on." that was the way then of taking a school census, and the result was the utter failure of the compulsory education law to compel anything. to-day we have a biennial census, ordained by law, which, when at last it gets into the hands of some one who can count, will tell us how many jacob beresheims are drifting upon the shoals of the street. and we have a truant school to keep them safe in. to it, says the law, no thief shall be committed. it is not yet five years since the burglar and the truant--who, having been refused admission to the school because there was not room for him, inconsequently was locked up for contracting idle ways--were herded in the juvenile asylum, and classified there in squads of those who were four feet, four feet seven, and over four feet seven! i am afraid i scandalized some good people, during the fight for decency in this matter, by insisting that it ought to be considered a good mark for jacob that he despised such schools as were provided for him. but it was true. except for the risk of the burglar, the jail was preferable by far. a woman has now had charge of the truant school for fourteen months, and she tells me that of quite twenty-five hundred boys scarce sixty were rightly called incorrigible, and even these a little longer and tighter grip would probably win over. for such, a farm school is yet to be provided. the rest responded promptly to an appeal to their pride. she "made it a personal matter" with each of them, and the truant vanished; the boy was restored. the burglar, too, made it a personal matter in the old contact, and the result was two burglars for one. in common with nearly all those who have paid attention to this matter, mrs. alger believes that the truant school strikes at the root of the problem of juvenile crime. after thirty years of close acquaintance with the child population of london, mr. andrew drew, chairman of the industrial committee of the school board, declared his conviction that "truancy is to be credited with nearly the whole of our juvenile criminality." but for years there seemed to be no way of convincing the new york school board that the two had anything to do with each other. as executive officer of the good government clubs, i fought that fight to a finish. we got the school, and in mrs. alger, at the time a truant officer, a person singularly well qualified to take charge of it. she has recently been removed, that her place might be given to a man. it is the old scheme come back,--a voter behind the broom,--and the old slough waiting to overwhelm us again. but it will not get the chance. i have my own idea of how this truancy question is going to be solved. yesterday i went with superintendent snyder through some of the new schools he is building, upon what he calls the letter h plan, in the crowded districts. it is the plan of the hôtel de cluny in paris, and to my mind as nearly perfect as it is possible to make a schoolhouse. there is not a dark corner in the whole structure, from the splendid gymnasium under the red-tiled roof to the indoor playground on the ground floor, which, when thrown in one with the two open-air playgrounds that lie embraced in the arms of the h, will give the children nearly an acre of asphalted floor space from street to street, to romp on. seven such schools are going up to-day, each a beautiful palace, and within the year sixteen thousand children will be housed in them. when i think of the old allen street school, where the gas had to be kept burning even on the brightest days, recitations suspended every half hour, and the children made to practice calisthenics so that they should not catch cold while the windows were opened to let in fresh air; of the dark playground downstairs, with the rats keeping up such a racket that one could hardly hear himself speak at times, or of the other east side playground where the boys "weren't allowed to speak above a whisper," so as not to disturb those studying overhead, i fancy that i can make out both the cause and the cure of the boy's desperation. "we try to make our schools pleasant enough to hold the children," wrote the superintendent of schools in indianapolis to me once, and added that they had no truant problem worth bothering about. with the kindergarten and manual training firmly engrafted upon the school course, as they are at last, and with it reaching out to enlist also the boy's play through playground and vacation schools, i shall be willing to turn the boy, who will not come in, over to the reformatory. they will not need to build a new wing to the jail for his safe-keeping. [illustration: letter h plan of public school no. _showing front on west th street_] all ways lead to rome. the reform in school-building dates back, as does every other reform in new york, to the mulberry bend. it began there. the first school that departed from the soulless old tradition, to set beautiful pictures before the child's mind as well as dry figures on the slate, was built there. at the time i wanted it to stand in the park, hoping so to hasten the laying out of that; but although the small parks law expressly permitted the erection on park property of buildings for "the instruction of the people," the officials upon whom i pressed my scheme could not be made to understand that as including schools. perhaps they were right. i catechised thirty-one fourth ward girls in a sewing school, about that time, twenty-six of whom had attended the public schools of the district more than a year. one wore a badge earned for excellence in her studies. in those days every street corner was placarded with big posters of napoleon on a white horse riding through fire and smoke. there was one right across the street. yet only one of the thirty-one knew who napoleon was. she "thought she had heard of the gentleman before." it came out that the one impression she retained of what she had heard was that "the gentleman" had two wives. they knew of washington that he was the first president of the united states, and cut down a cherry-tree. they were sitting and sewing at the time almost on the identical spot where he lived and held office. to the question who ruled before washington the answer came promptly: no one; he was the first. they agreed reluctantly, upon further consideration, that there was probably "a king of america" before his day, and the irish damsels turned up their noses at the idea. the people of canada, they thought, were copper-colored. the same winter i was indignantly bidden to depart from a school in the fourth ward by a trustee who had heard that i had written a book about the slum and spoken of "his people" in it. those early steps in the reform path stumbled sadly at times over obstacles that showed how dense was the ignorance and how rank were the prejudices we had to fight. when i wrote that the allen street school was overrun by rats, which was a fact any one might observe for himself by spending five minutes in the building, i was called sharply to account by the mayor in the board of estimate and apportionment. there were no rats, he said. the allen street school was the worst of them all, and i determined that the time had come to make a demonstration. i procured a rat trap, and was waiting for an idle hour to go over and catch one of the rats, so that i might have it stuffed and sent to the board over which the mayor presided, as a convincing exhibit; but before i got so far reform swept the whole conspiracy of ignorance and jobbery out of the city hall. that was well enough as far as it went; but that the broom was needed elsewhere we learned later, when the good government clubs fought for the inspection of the schools and of the children by trained oculists. the evidence was that the pupils were made both near-sighted and stupid by the want of proper arrangement of their seats and of themselves in the class-room. the fact was not denied, and the scheme was strongly indorsed by the board of health and by some of the ablest and best known oculists in the city; but it was wrecked upon an opposition in which we heard the ignorant and selfish cry that it would "interfere with private practice," and so curtail the profits of the practitioner. the proposal to inspect the classes daily for evidence of contagious disease--which, carried out, has proved a most effective means of preventing the spread of epidemics, and one of the greatest blessings--had been opposed, happily unsuccessfully, with the same arguments.[ ] it is very well to prate about the rapacity of politicians, but these things came often enough to show what they meant by the claim that they were "closer to the people" than we who were trying to help them; and they were all the more exasperating because they came rarely from below,--the tenement people, when they were not deliberately misled, were ready and eager to fall in with any plan for bettering things, notably where it concerned the schools,--but usually from those who knew better, and from whom we had a right to expect support and backing. [footnote : i set down reluctantly this censure of an honored profession, to individual members of which i have been wont, in a long succession of troubled years, to go for advice and help in public matters, and never in vain. the statement of the chief sanitary officer of the health department, reaffirmed at the time i am writing, is, however, positive to the effect that to this opposition, and this only, was due the failure of that much-needed reform which had for years been with me a pet measure.] speaking of that reminds me of a mishap i had in the hester street school,--the one with the "frills" which the board of education cut off. i happened to pass it after school hours, and went in to see what sort of a playground the roof would have made. i met no one on the way, and, finding the scuttle open, climbed out and up the slant of the roof to the peak, where i sat musing over our lost chance, when the janitor came to close up. he must have thought i was a crazy man, and my explanation did not make it any better. he haled me down, and but for the fortunate chance that the policeman on the beat knew me, i should have been taken to the lockup as a dangerous lunatic,--all for dreaming of a playground on the roof of a schoolhouse. janitor and board of commissioners to the contrary notwithstanding, the dream became real. there stands another school in hester street to-day within easy call, that has a playground measuring more than twelve thousand square feet on the roof, one of half that size down on the ground, and an asphalted indoor playground as big as the one on the roof. together they measure a trifle less than thirty thousand feet. to the indignant amazement of my captor, the janitor, his school was thrown open to the children in the last summer vacation, and in the winter they put a boys' club in to worry him. what further indignities there are in store for him, in this day of "frills," there is no telling. a resolution is on record which states, under date of may , , that "it is the sense of the board of superintendents that the schoolhouses may well be used in the cause of education as neighborhood centres, providing reading-rooms, branch offices of public libraries, etc." and to cut off all chance of relapse into the old doubt whether "such things are educational," that laid so many of our hopes on the dusty shelf of the circumlocution office, the state legislature has expressly declared that the commonwealth will take the chance, which boards of education shunned, of a little amusement creeping in. the schools may be used for "purposes of recreation." to the janitor it must seem that the end of all things is at hand. [illustration: playground on roof of new east broadway schoolhouse _area , square feet_] in the crowded districts, the school playgrounds were thrown open to the children during the long vacation last year, with kindergarten teachers to amuse them, and half a score of vacation schools tempted more than four thousand children from the street into the cool shade of the class-rooms. they wrought in wood and iron, they sang and they played and studied nature,--out of a barrel, to be sure, that came twice a week from long island filled with "specimens;" but toward the end we took a hint from chicago, and let the children gather their own specimens on excursions around the bay and suburbs of the city. that was a tremendous success. the mere hint that money might be lacking to pay for the excursions this summer set the st. andrew's brotherhood men on long island to devising schemes for inviting the schoolchildren out on trolley and shore trips. with the christian endeavor, the epworth league, and kindred societies looking about for something to try their young strength and enthusiasm on, we may be here standing upon the threshold of something which shall bring us nearer to a universal brotherhood than all the consecrations and badges that have yet been invented. the mere contact with nature, even out of a barrel, brought something to those starved child lives that struck a new note. sometimes it rang with a sharp and jarring sound. the boys in the hester street school could not be made to take an interest in the lesson on wheat until the teacher came to the effect of drought and a bad year on the farmer's pocket. then they understood. they knew the process. strikes cut into the earnings of hester street, small enough at the best of times, at frequent intervals, and the boys need not be told what a bad year means. no other kind ever occurs there. they learned the lesson on wheat in no time, after that. oftener it was a gentler note that piped timidly in the strange place. a barrel of wild roses came one day, instead of the expected "specimens," and these were given to the children. they took them greedily. "i wondered," said the teacher, "if it was more love of the flower, or of getting something for nothing, no matter what." but even if it were largely the latter, there was still the rose. nothing like it had come that way before, and without a doubt it taught its own lesson. the italian child might have jumped for it more eagerly, but its beauty was not wasted in jew-town, either. the baby kissed it, and it lay upon more than one wan cheek, and whispered who knows what thought of hope and courage that were nearly gone. even in hester street the wild rose from the hedge was not wasted. the result of it all was wholesome and good, because it was common sense. the way to fight the slum in the children's lives is with sunlight and flowers and play, which their child hearts crave, if their eyes have never seen them. the teachers reported that the boys were easier to manage, more quiet, and played more fairly than before. the police reports showed that fewer were arrested or run over in the streets than in other years. a worse enemy was attacked than the trolley car or the truck. in the kindergarten at the hull house in chicago there hangs a picture of a harvest scene, with the man wiping his brow, and a woman resting at his feet. the teacher told me that a little girl with an old face picked it out among all the rest, and considered it long and gravely. "well," she said, when her inspection was finished, "he knocked her down, didn't he?" a two hours' argument for kindergartens or vacation schools could not have put it stronger or better. the awakening of the civic conscience is nowhere more plainly traced than in our public schools. the last five years have set us fifty years ahead, and there is now no doubling on the track we have struck. we have fifty kindergartens to-day where five years ago we had one, and their method has invaded the whole system of teaching. cooking, the only kind of temperance preaching that counts for anything in a school course, is taught in the girls' classes. five years ago a minister of justice declared in the belgian chamber that the nation was reverting to a new form of barbarism, which he described by the term "alcoholic barbarism," and pointed out as its first cause the "insufficiency of the food procurable by the working classes." he referred to the quality, not the quantity. the united states experts, who lately made a study of the living habits of the poor in new york, spoke of it as a common observation that "a not inconsiderable amount of the prevalent intemperance can be traced to poor food and unattractive home tables." the toasting-fork in jacob's sister's hand beats preaching in the campaign against the saloon, just as the boys' club beats the police club in fighting the gang. the cram and the jam are being crowded out as common-sense teaching steps in and takes their place, and the "three h's," the head, the heart, and the hand,--a whole boy,--are taking the place too long monopolized by the "three r's." there was need of it. it had seemed sometimes as if, in our anxiety lest he should not get enough, we were in danger of stuffing the boy to the point of making a hopeless dunce of him. it is a higher function of the school to teach principles than to impart facts merely. teaching the boy municipal politics and a thousand things to make a good citizen of him, instead of so filling him with love of his country and pride in its traditions that he is bound to take the right stand when the time comes, is as though one were to attempt to put all the law of the state into its constitution to make it more binding. the result would be hopeless congestion and general uselessness. it comes down to the teacher in the end, and there are of them in the old city alone, , for the greater city;[ ] the great mass faithful and zealous, but yoked to the traditions of a day that is past. half the machine teaching, the wooden output of our public schools in the past, i believe was due to the practical isolation of the teachers between the tyranny of politics and the distrust of those who had good cause to fear the politician and his work. there was never a more saddening sight than that of the teachers standing together in an almost solid body to resist reform of the school system as an attack upon them. there was no pretense on their part that the schools did not need reform. they knew better. they fought for their places. throughout the fight no word came from them of the children's rights. they imagined that theirs were in danger, and they had no thought for anything else. we gathered then the ripe fruit of politics, and it will be a long while, i suppose, before we get the taste out of our mouths. but the grip of politics on our schools has been loosened, if not shaken off altogether, and the teacher's slavery is at an end, if she herself so wills it. once hardly thought worthy of a day laborer's hire, she will receive a policeman's pay for faithful service[ ] in the school year now begun, with his privilege of a half-pay pension on retirement. within three weeks after the passage of the salary bill forty-two teachers in the boroughs of manhattan and bronx had applied for retirement. the training schools are hard at work filling up the gaps. the windows of the schoolhouse have been thrown open, and life let in there too with the sunlight. the day may be not far distant when ours shall be schools "for discovering aptitude," in professor felix adler's wise plan. the problem is a vast one, even in its bulk; every year seats must be found on the school benches for twenty thousand additional children. however deep we have gone down into our pockets to pay for new schools, there are to-day in the greater city nearly thirty thousand children in half-day or part-time classes, waiting their chance. but that it can and will be solved the experience of the last five years fully warrants. [footnote : the exact number for april, , was ; number of pupils registered, , ; average daily attendance, , .] [footnote : the teacher's pay, under the new act, is from $ to $ . the policeman's pay is $ .] in the solution the women of new york will have had no mean share. in the struggle for school reform they struck the telling blows, and the credit for the victory was justly theirs. the public education association, originally a woman's auxiliary to good government club e, has since worked as energetically with the school authorities as it before worked against them. it has opened many windows for little souls by hanging schoolrooms with beautiful casts and pictures, and forged at the same time new and strong links in the chain that bound the boy all too feebly to the school. at a time when the demand of the boys of the east side for club room, which was in itself one of the healthiest signs of the day, had reached an exceedingly dangerous pass, the public education association broke ground that will prove the most fertile field of all. the raines law saloon, quick to discern in the new demand the gap that would divorce it by and by from the man, attempted to bridge it by inviting the boy in under its roof. occasionally the girl went along. a typical instance of how the scheme worked was brought to my attention at the time by the manager of the college settlement. the back room of the saloon was given to the club free of charge, with the understanding that the boy members should "treat." as a means of raising the needed funds, the club hit upon the plan of fining members ten cents when they "got funny." to defeat this device of the devil some way must be found; but club room was scarce among the tenements. the good government clubs proposed to the board of education that it open the empty class-rooms at night for the children's use. it was my privilege to plead their cause before the school board, and to obtain from it the necessary permission, after some hesitation and doubt as to whether "it was educational." the public education association promptly assumed the responsibility for "the property," and the hester street school was opened. there are now two schools that are given over to evening clubs. the property has not been molested, but the boys who have met under miss winifred buck's management have learned many a lesson of self-control and practical wisdom that has proved "educational" in the highest degree. her plan is simplicity itself. through their play--the meeting usually begins with a romp--in quarters where there is not too much elbow-room, the boys learn the first lesson of respecting one another's rights. the subsequent business meeting puts them upon the fundamentals of civilized society, as it were. out of the debate of the question, do we want boys who swear, steal, gamble, and smoke cigarettes? grow convictions as to why these vices are wrong that put "the gang" in its proper light. punishment comes to appear, when administered by the boys themselves, a natural consequence of law-breaking, in defense of society; and the boy is won. he can thenceforward be trusted to work out his own salvation. if he does it occasionally with excessive unction, remember how recent is his conversion. "_resolved_, that wisdom is better than wealth," was rejected as a topic for discussion by one of the clubs, because "everybody knows it is." this was in the tenth ward. if temptation had come that way in the shape of a pushcart with pineapples--we are all human! anyway, they had learned the right. with the women to lead, the school has even turned the tables on the jail and invaded it bodily. for now nearly two years the public education association has kept school in the tombs, for the boys locked up there awaiting trial. of thirty-one pupils on this school register, the other day, twelve were charged with burglary, four with highway robbery, and three with murder. that was the gang run to earth at last. better late than never. the windows of their prison overlooked the spot where the gallows used to stand that cut short many a career such as they pursued. they were soberly attentive to their studies, which were of a severely practical turn. their teacher, mr. david willard, who was a resident of the university settlement in its old delancey street home,--the fact that the forces for good one finds at work in the slum usually lead back to the settlements shows best that they have so far escaped the peril of stiffening into mere institutions,--has his own sound view of how to head off the hangman. daily and nightly he gathers about him in the house on chrystie street, where he makes his home, three hundred boys and girls, whom he meets as their friend, on equal terms. the club is the means of getting them there, and so it is in its right place. once a week another teacher comes to the tombs school, and tells the boys of our city's history, its famous buildings and great men; trying so to arouse their interest as a first step toward a citizen's pride. this one also is sent by a club of women, the city history club, which in three years has done strange things among the children. it sprang from the proposition of mr. robert abbe that the man and the citizen has his birth in the boy, and that to love a thing one must know it first. the half-dozen classes that were started for the study of our city's history have swelled into nearly a hundred, with quite eighteen hundred pupils. the pregnant fact was noted early by the teachers, that the immigrant boy easily outstrips in interest for his adopted home the native, who perchance turns up his nose at him, and later very likely complains of the "unscrupulousness" of the jew who forged ahead of him in business as well. "everything takes ten years." looking back from the closing year of the century, one is almost tempted to turn mr. hewitt's phrase about, and say that everything has been packed into ten years. the tenth winter of the free lectures, which the city provides to fill up in a measure those gaps which the earlier years left, has just passed. when the first course showed an attendance of , upon lectures, we were all encouraged; but the last season saw lectures delivered upon every topic of human interest, from the care of our bodies and natural science to literature, astronomy, and music, and a multitude of , persons, chiefly workingmen and their wives, the parents of the schoolboy, heard them. forty-eight schools and halls were employed for the purpose. the people's institute adds to this programme a forum for the discussion of social topics, nineteenth-century history, and "present problems" on a wholly non-partisan, unsectarian basis. the institute was launched upon its educational mission within six weeks after the disastrous greater new york election in . it has since drawn to the platform of the cooper institute audiences, chiefly of workingmen more or less connected with the labor movement, that have filled its great hall. the spirit that animates its work is shown in its review of the field upon the threshold of its third year. speaking of the social issues that are hastening toward a settlement, it says: "society is about to be organized, gradually, wisely, on the lines of the recognition of the brotherhood of man. the people's institute holds to-day, as no other institution in this city, the confidence of all classes of the working people; also of the best minds among the well-to-do classes. it can throw all its influence upon the side of removing misunderstandings, promoting mutual confidence.... this is its great work." a great undertaking, truly, but one in which no one may rashly say it shall not succeed. as an installment, it organized last spring, for study, discussion, and social intercourse, the first of a chain of people's clubs, full of a strong and stirring life, which within three months had a membership of three hundred and fifty, and a list of two hundred and fifty applicants. while the institute's plan has met with this cordial reception downtown, uptown, among the leisure classes, its acceptance has been nothing like so ready. selfish wealth has turned a cold shoulder to the brotherhood of man, as so often in the past. still the proffered hand is not withdrawn. in a hundred ways it is held out with tender of help and sympathy and friendship, these days, where distrust and indifference were once the rule. the people's university extension society, leaving the platform to its allies, invades the home, the nursery, the kindergarten, the club, wherever it can, with help and counsel. down on the lower east side, the educational alliance conducts from the hebrew institute an energetic campaign among the jewish immigrants that reaches fully six thousand souls, two thirds of them children, every day in the week. sixty-two clubs alone hold meetings in the building on saturday and sunday. under the same roof the baron hirsch fund has taught sixteen thousand children of refugee jews in nine years. it passes them on to the public schools within six months of their landing, the best material they receive from anywhere. so the boy is being got ready for dealing, in the years that are to come, with the other but not more difficult problems of setting his house to rights, and ridding it of the political gang which now misrepresents him and us. and justice to jacob is being evolved. not yet without obstruction and dragging of feet. the excellent home library plan that proved so wholesome in the poor quarters of boston has failed in new york, except in a few notable instances, through the difficulty of securing the visitors upon whom the plan depends for its success. the same want has kept the boys' club from reaching the development that would apply the real test to it as a barrier against the slum. there are fifteen clubs for every winifred buck that is in sight. from the city history club, the charity organization society, from everywhere, comes the same complaint. the hardest thing in the world to give is still one's self. but it is all the time getting to be easier. there are daily more women and men who, thinking of the boy, can say, and do, with my friend of the college settlement, when an opportunity to enter a larger field was offered her, "no, i am content to stay here, to be ready for johnnie when he wants me." justice for the boy, and for his father. an itinerant jewish glazier, crying his wares, was beckoned into a stable by the foreman, and bidden to replace a lot of broken panes, enough nearly to exhaust his stock. when, after working half the day, he asked for his pay, he was driven from the place with jeers and vile words. raging and impotent, he went back to his poor tenement cursing a world in which there was no justice for a poor man. if he had next been found ranting with anarchists against the social order, would you have blamed him? he found instead, in the legal aid society, a champion that pleaded his cause and compelled the stableman to pay him his wages. for a hundred thousand such--more shame to us--this society has meant all that freedom promised: justice to the poor man. it too has earned a place among the forces that are working out through the new education the brighter day, for it has taught the lesson which all the citizens of a free state need most to learn,--respect for law. viii reform by humane touch i have sketched in outline the gains achieved in the metropolis since its conscience awoke. now, in closing this account, i am reminded of the story of an old irishman who died here a couple of years ago. patrick mullen was an honest blacksmith. he made guns for a living. he made them so well that one with his name on it was worth a good deal more than the market price of guns. other makers went to him with offers of money for the use of his stamp; but they never went twice. when sometimes a gun of very superior make was brought to him to finish, he would stamp it p. mullen, never patrick mullen. only to that which he himself had wrought did he give his honest name without reserve. when he died, judges and bishops and other great men crowded to his modest home by the east river, and wrote letters to the newspapers telling how proud they had been to call him friend. yet he was, and remained to the end, plain patrick mullen, blacksmith and gunmaker. in his life he supplied the answer to the sigh of dreamers in all days: when will the millennium come? it will come when every man is a patrick mullen at his own trade; not merely a p. mullen, but a patrick mullen. the millennium of municipal politics, when there shall be no slum to fight, will come when every citizen does his whole duty as a citizen; not before. as long as he "despises politics," and deputizes another to do it for him, whether that other wears the stamp of a croker or of a platt,--it matters little which,--we shall have the slum, and be put periodically to the trouble and the shame of draining it in the public sight. a citizen's duty is one thing that cannot be farmed out safely; and the slum is not limited by the rookeries of mulberry or ludlow streets. it has long roots that feed on the selfishness and dullness of fifth avenue quite as greedily as on the squalor of the sixth ward. the two are not nearly so far apart as they look. i am not saying this because it is anything new, but because we have just had an illustration of its truth in municipal politics. waring and roosevelt were the patrick mullens of the reform administration which tammany has now replaced with her insolent platform, "to hell with reform." it was not an ideal administration, but it can be said of it, at least, that it was up to the times it served. it made compromises with spoils politics, and they were wretched failures. it took waring and roosevelt on the other plan, on which they insisted, of divorcing politics from the public business, and they let in more light than even my small parks over on the east side. for they showed us where we stood and what was the matter with us. we believed in waring when he demonstrated the success of his plan for cleaning the streets: not before. when roosevelt announced his programme of enforcing the excise law because it _was_ law, a howl arose that would have frightened a less resolute man from his purpose. but he went right on doing the duty he was sworn to do. and when, at the end of three months of clamor and abuse, we saw the spectacle of the saloon keepers formally resolving to help the police instead of hindering them; of the prison ward in bellevue hospital standing empty for three days at a time, an astonishing and unprecedented thing, which the warden could only attribute to the "prompt closing of the saloons at one a. m.;" and of the police force recovering its lost self-respect, we had found out more and greater things than whether the excise law was a good or a bad law. we understood what roosevelt meant when he insisted upon the "primary virtues" of honesty and courage in the conduct of public business. for the want of them in us, half the laws that touched our daily lives had become dead letters or vehicles of blackmail and oppression. it was worth something to have that lesson taught us in that way; to find out that simple, straightforward, honest dealing as between man and man is after all effective in politics as in gunmaking. perhaps we have not mastered the lesson yet. but we have not discharged the teacher, either. [illustration: a tammany-swept east side street, before waring (_see picture facing page _)] courage, indeed! there were times during that stormy spell when it seemed as if we had grown wholly and hopelessly flabby as a people. all the outcry against the programme of order did not come from the lawless and the disorderly, by any means. ordinarily decent, conservative citizens joined in counseling moderation and virtual compromise with the law-breakers--it was nothing else--to "avoid trouble." the old love of fair play had been whittled down by the jackknife of all-pervading expediency to an anæmic desire to "hold the scales even;" that is a favorite modern device of the devil for paralyzing action in men. you cannot hold the scales even in a moral issue. it inevitably results in the triumph of evil, which asks nothing better than the even chance to which it is not entitled. when the trouble in the police board had reached a point where it seemed impossible not to understand that roosevelt and his side were fighting a cold and treacherous conspiracy against the cause of good government, we had the spectacle of a christian endeavor society inviting the man who had hatched the plot, the bitter and relentless enemy whom the mayor had summoned to resign, and afterward did his best to remove as a fatal obstacle to reform,--inviting this man to come before it and speak of christian citizenship! it was a sight to make the bosses hug themselves with glee. for christian citizenship is their nightmare, and nothing is so cheering to them as evidence that those who profess it have no sense. apart from the moral bearings of it, what this question of enforcement of law means in the life of the poor was illustrated by testimony given before the police board very recently. a captain was on trial for allowing the policy swindle to go unchecked in his precinct. policy is a kind of penny lottery, with alleged daily drawings which never take place. the whole thing is a pestilent fraud, which is allowed to exist only because it pays heavy blackmail to the police and the politicians. expert witnesses testified that eight policy shops in the twenty-first ward, which they had visited, did a business averaging about thirty-two dollars a day each. the twenty-first is a poor irish tenement ward. the policy sharks were getting two hundred and fifty dollars or more a day of the hard-earned wages of those poor people, in sums of from one and two cents to a quarter, without making any return for it. the thing would seem incredible, were it not too sadly familiar. the saloon keeper got his share of what was left, and rewarded his customer by posing as the "friend of the poor man" whenever his business was under scrutiny; i have yet in my office the record of a single week during the hottest of the fight between roosevelt and the saloons, as showing of what kind that friendship is. it embraces the destruction of eight homes by the demon of drunkenness: the suicide of four wives, the murder of two others by drunken husbands, the killing of a policeman in the street, and the torture of an aged woman by her rascal son, who "used to be a good boy till he took to liquor, when he became a perfect devil." in that rôle he finally beat her to death for giving shelter to some evicted fellow tenants who else would have had to sleep in the street. nice friendly turn, wasn't it? and yet there was something to be said for the saloon keeper. he gave the man the refuge from his tenement which he needed. i say needed, purposely. there has been a good deal of talk lately about the saloon as a social necessity. about all there is to that is that the saloon is there, and the necessity too. man is a social animal, whether he lives in a tenement or in a palace. but the palace has resources; the tenement has not. it is a good place to get away from at all times. the saloon is cheery and bright, and never far away. the man craving human companionship finds it there. he finds, too, in the saloon keeper one who understands his wants much better than the reformer who talks civil service in the meetings. "civil service" to him and his kind means yet a contrivance for keeping them out of a job. the saloon keeper knows the boss, if he is not himself the boss or his lieutenant, and can steer him to the man who will spend all day at the city hall, if need be, to get a job for a friend, and all night pulling wires to keep him in it, if trouble is brewing. mr. beecher used to say, when pleading for bright hymn tunes, that he didn't want the devil to have the monopoly of all the good music in the world. the saloon has had the monopoly up to date of all the cheer in the tenements. if its owner has made it pan out to his own advantage and the boss's, we at least have no just cause of complaint. we let him have the field all to himself. as to this boss, of whom we hear so much, what manner of man is he? that depends on how you look at him. i have one in mind, a district boss, whom you would accept instantly as a type, if i were to mention his name, which i shall not do for a reason which i fear will shock you: he and i are friends. in his private capacity i have real regard for him. as a politician and a boss i have none at all. i am aware that this is taking low ground in a discussion of this kind, but perhaps the reader will better understand the relations of his "district" to him, if i let him into mine. there is no political bond between us, of either district or party; just the reverse. it is purely personal. he was once a police justice,--at that time he kept a saloon,--and i never knew one with more common sense, which happens to be the one quality especially needed in that office. up to the point where politics came in i could depend upon him entirely. at that point he let me know bluntly that he was in the habit of running his district to suit himself. the way he did it brought him under the just accusation of being guilty of every kind of rascality known to politics. when next our paths would cross each other, it would very likely be on some errand of mercy, to which his feet were always swift. i recall the distress of a dear and gentle lady at whose dinner table i once took his part. she could not believe that there was any good in him; what he did must be done for effect. some time after that she wrote asking me to look after an east side family that was in great trouble. it was during the severe cold spell of last winter, and there was need of haste. i went over at once; but although i had lost no time, i found my friend the boss ahead of me. it was a real pleasure to me to be able to report to my correspondent that he had seen to their comfort, and to add that it was unpolitical charity altogether. the family was that of a jewish widow with a lot of little children. he is a roman catholic. there were no men, consequently no voters, in the house, which was far outside of his district, too; and as for effect, he was rather shamefaced at my catching him at it. i do not believe that a soul has ever heard of the case from him to this day. [illustration: the same east side street when colonel waring wielded the broom (_see picture facing page _)] my friend is a tammany boss. during that same cold spell a politician of the other camp came into my office and gave me a hundred dollars to spend as i saw fit among the poor. his district was miles uptown, and he was most unwilling to disclose his identity, stipulating in the end that no one but i should know where the money came from. he was not seeking notoriety. the plight of the suffering had appealed to him, and he wanted to help where he could, that was all. now, i have not the least desire to glorify the boss in this. he is not glorious to me. he is simply human. often enough he is a coarse and brutal fellow, in his morals as in his politics. again, he may have some very engaging personal traits that bind his friends to him with the closest of ties. the poor man sees the friend, the charity, the power that is able and ready to help him in need; is it any wonder that he overlooks the source of this power, this plenty,--that he forgets the robbery in the robber who is "good to the poor"? anyhow, if anybody got robbed, it was "the rich." with the present ethical standards of the slum, it is easy to construct even a scheme of social justice out of it that is very comforting all round, even to the boss himself, though he is in need of no sympathy or excuse. "politics," he will tell me in his philosophic moods, "is a game for profit. the city foots the bills." patriotism means to him working for the ticket that shall bring more profit. "i regard," he says, lighting his cigar, "a repeater as a shade off a murderer, but you are obliged to admit that in my trade he is a necessary evil." i am not obliged to do anything of the kind, but i can understand his way of looking at it. he simply has no political conscience. he has gratitude, loyalty to a friend,--that is part of his stock in trade,--fighting blood, plenty of it, all the good qualities of the savage; nothing more. and a savage he is, politically, with no soul above the dross. he would not rob a neighbor for the world; but he will steal from the city--though he does not call it by that name--without a tremor, and count it a good mark. when i tell him that, he waves his hand toward wall street as representative of the business community, and toward the office of his neighbor, the padrone, as representative of the railroads, and says with a laugh, "don't they all do it?" the boss believes in himself. it is one of his strong points. and he has experience to back him. in the fall of we shook off boss rule in new york, and set up housekeeping for ourselves. we kept it up three years, and then went back to the old style. i should judge that we did it because we were tired of too much virtue. perhaps we were not built to hold such a lot at once. besides, it is much easier to be ruled than to rule. that fall, after the election, when i was concerned about what would become of my small parks, of the health department in which we took such just pride, and of a dozen other things, i received one unvarying reply to my anxious question, or rather two. if it was the health department, i was told: "go to platt. he is the only man who can do it. he is a sensible man, and will see that it is protected." if small parks, it was: "go to croker. he will not allow the work to be stopped." a playgrounds bill was to be presented in the legislature, and everybody advised: "go to platt. he won't have any objection: it is popular." and so on. my advisers were not politicians. they were business men, but recently honestly interested in reform. i was talking one day with a gentleman of very wide reputation as a philanthropist, about the unhappy lot of the old fire-engine horses,--which, after lives of toil that deserve a better fate, are sold for a song to drag out a weary existence hauling some huckster's cart around,--and wishing that they might be pensioned off to live out their years on a farm, with enough to eat and a chance to roll in the grass. he was much interested, and promptly gave me this advice: "i tell you what you do. you go and see croker. he likes horses." no wonder the boss believes in himself. he would be less than human if he did not. and he is very human. i had voted on the day of the greater new york election,--the tammany election, as we learned to call it afterward,--in my home out in the borough of queens, and went over to the depot to catch the train for the city. on the platform were half a dozen of my neighbors, all business men, all "friends of reform." some of them were just down from breakfast. one i remembered as introducing a resolution, in a meeting we had held, about the discourtesy of local politicians. he looked surprised when reminded that it was election day. "why, is it to-day?" he said. "they didn't send any carriage," said another regretfully. "i don't see what's the use," said the third; "the roads are just as bad as when we began talking about it." (we had been trying to mend them.) the fourth yawned and said: "i don't care. i have my business to attend to." and they took the train, which meant that they lost their votes. the tammany captain was busy hauling his voters by the cartload to the polling place. over there stood a reform candidate who had been defeated in the primary, and puffed out his chest. "the politicians are afraid of me," he said. they slapped him on the back, as they went by, and told him that he was a devil of a fellow. so tammany came back. the health department is wrecked. the police force is worse than before roosevelt took hold of it, and we are back in the mud out of which we pulled ourselves with such an effort. and we are swearing at it. but i am afraid we are swearing at the wrong fellow. the real tammany is not the conscienceless rascal that plunders our treasury and fattens on our substance. that one is a mere counterfeit. it is the voter who waits for a carriage to take him to the polls, the man who "doesn't see what's the use;" the business man who says "business is business," and has no time to waste on voting; the citizen who "will wait to see how the cat jumps, because he doesn't want to throw his vote away;" the cowardly american who "doesn't want to antagonize" anybody; the fool who "washes his hands of politics." these are the real tammany, the men after the boss's own heart. for every one whose vote he buys, there are two of these who give him theirs for nothing. we shall get rid of him when these withdraw their support, when they become citizens of the patrick mullen stamp, as faithful at the polling place as he was at the forge; not before. the true work of reform is at the top, not at the bottom. the man in the slum votes according to his light, and the boss holds the candle. but the boss is in no real sense a leader. he follows instead, always as far behind the moral sentiment of the community as he thinks is safe. he has heard it said that a community will not be any better than its citizens, and that it will be just as good as they are, and he applies the saying to himself. he is no worse a boss than the town deserves. i can conceive of his taking credit to himself as some kind of a moral instrument by which the virtue of the community may be graded, though that is most unlikely. he does not bother himself with the morals of anything. but right here is his achilles heel. the man has no conscience. he cannot tell the signs of it in others. it always comes upon him unawares. reform to him simply means the "outs" fighting to get in. the real thing he will always underestimate. such a man is not the power he seems. he is formidable only in proportion to the amount of shaking it takes to rouse the community's conscience. the boss is like the measles, a distemper of a self-governing people's infancy. when we shall have come of age politically, he will have no terrors for us. meanwhile, being charged with the business of governing, which we left to him because we were too busy making money, he follows the track laid out for him, and makes the business pan out all that is in it. he fights when we want to discharge him. of course he does. no man likes to give up a good job. he will fight or bargain, as he sees his way clear. he will give us small parks, play piers, new schools, anything we ask, to keep his place, while trying to find out "the price" of this conscience which he does not understand. even to the half of his kingdom he will give, to be "in" on the new deal. he has done it before, and there is no reason that he can see why it should not be done again. and he will appeal to the people whom he is plundering to trust him because they know him. odd as it sounds, this is where he has his real hold. i have shown why this is so. to the poor people of his district the boss is a real friend in need. he is one of them. he does not want to reform them; far from it. no doubt it is very ungrateful of them, but the poor people have no desire to be reformed. they do not think they need to be. they consider their moral standards quite as high as those of the rich, and resent being told that they are mistaken. the reformer comes to them from another world to tell them these things, and goes his way. the boss lives among them. he helped john to a job on the pipes in their hard winter, and got mike on the force. they know him as a good neighbor, and trust him to their harm. he drags their standard ever farther down. the question for those who are trying to help them is how to make them transfer their allegiance, and trust their real friends instead. it ought not to be a difficult question to answer. any teacher could do it. he knows, if he knows anything, that the way to get and keep the children's confidence is to trust them, and let them know that they are trusted. they will almost always come up to the demand thus made upon them. preaching to them does little good; preaching at them still less. men, whether rich or poor, are much like children. the good in them is just as good as it is said to be, and the bad, considering their enlarged opportunities for mischief, not so much worse than it is called. a vigorous optimism, a stout belief in one's fellow man, is better equipment in a campaign for civic virtue than stacks of tracts and arguments, economic and moral, are. there is good bottom, even in the slum, for that kind of an anchor to get a grip on. a year ago i went to see a boxing match there had been much talk about. the hall was jammed with a rough and noisy crowd, hotly intent upon its favorite. his opponent, who hailed, i think, from somewhere in delaware, was greeted with hostile demonstrations as a "foreigner." but as the battle wore on, and he was seen to be fair and manly, while the new yorker struck one foul blow after another, the attitude of the crowd changed rapidly from enthusiastic approval of the favorite to scorn and contempt; and in the last round, when he knocked the delawarean over with a foul blow, the audience rose in a body and yelled to have the fight given to the "foreigner," until my blood tingled with pride. for the decision would leave it practically without a cent. it had staked all it had on the new yorker. "he is a good man," i heard on all sides, while the once favorite sneaked away without a friend. "good" meant fair and manly to that crowd. i thought, as i went to the office the next morning, that it ought to be easy to appeal to such a people with measures that were fair and just, if we could only get on common ground. but the only hint i got from my reform paper was an editorial denunciation of the brutality of boxing, on the same page that had an enthusiastic review of the college football season. i do not suppose it did any harm, for the paper was probably not read by one of the men it had set out to reform. but suppose it had been, how much would it have appealed to them? exactly the qualities of robust manliness which football is supposed to encourage in college students had been evoked by the trial of strength and skill which they had witnessed. as to the brutality, they knew that fifty young men are maimed or killed at football to one who fairs ill in a boxing match. would it seem to them common sense, or cant and humbug? it comes down in the end to a question of common sense and common honesty. for how many failures of reform effort is insincerity not to blame! last spring i attended a meeting at albany that had been called by the governor to discuss the better enforcement of the labor laws. we talked the situation over, and mr. roosevelt received from those present their ready promise to aid him in every way in making effective the laws that represented so much toil and sacrifice, yet had until then been in too many instances barren of results. some time after, a workingman told me with scorn how, on our coming home, one of our party had stopped in at the factory inspector's office to urge him to "let up" on a friend, a cigar manufacturer, who was violating a law for which the labor organizations had fought long years as absolutely necessary to secure human conditions in the trade. how much stock might he and his fellows be supposed to take in a movement that had such champions? "you scratch my back and i'll scratch yours," is a kind of politics in which the reformer is no match for the boss. the boss will win on that line every time. a saving sense of humor might have avoided that and many other pitfalls. i am seriously of the opinion that a professional humorist ought to be attached to every reform movement, to keep it from making itself ridiculous by either too great solemnity or too much conceit. as it is, the enemy sometimes employs him with effect. failing the adoption of that plan, i would recommend a decree of banishment against photographers, press-clippings men, and the rest of the congratulatory staff. why should the fact that a citizen has done a citizen's duty deserve to be celebrated in print and picture, as if something extraordinary had happened? the smoke of battle had not cleared away after the victory of reform, in the fall of , before the citizens' committee and all the little sub-committees rushed pell-mell to the photographer's to get themselves on record as the men who did it. the spectacle might have inspired in the humorist the advice to get two sets made, while they were about it,--one to serve by and by as an exhibit of the men who didn't; and, as the event proved, he would have been right. but it is easy to find fault, and on that tack we get no farther. those men did a great work, and they did it well. the mile-posts they set up on the road to better things will guide another generation to the goal, however the present may go astray. good schools, better homes, and a chance for the boy are arguments that are not lost upon the people. they wear well. it may be that, like moses and his followers, we of the present day shall see the promised land only from afar and with the eye of faith, because of our sins; that to a younger and sturdier to-morrow it shall be given to blaze the path of civic righteousness that was our dream. i like to think that it is so, and that that is the meaning of the coming of men like roosevelt and waring at this time with their simple appeal to the reason of honest men. unless i greatly err in reading the signs of the times, it is indeed so, and the day of the boss and of the slum is drawing to an end. our faith has felt the new impulse; rather, i should say, it has given it. the social movements, and that which we call politics, are but a reflection of what the people honestly believe, a chart of their aims and aspirations. charity in our day no longer means alms, but justice. the social settlements are substituting vital touch for the machine charity that reaped a crop of hate and beggary. they are passenger bridges, it has been truly said, not mere "shoots" for the delivery of coal and groceries; bridges upon which men go over, not down, from the mansion to the tenement. we have learned that we cannot pass off checks for human sympathy in settlement of our brotherhood arrears. the church, which once stood by indifferent, or worse, is hastening to enter the life of the people. in the memory of men yet living, one church, moving uptown away from the crowd, left its old mulberry street home to be converted into tenements that justly earned the name of "dens of death" in the health department's records, while another became the foulest lodging house in an unclean city. it was a church corporation which in those bad days owned the worst underground dive downtown, and turned a deaf ear to all remonstrances. the church was "angling for souls." but souls in this world live in bodies endowed with reason. the results of that kind of fishing were empty pews and cold hearts, and the conscience-stricken cry that went up, "what shall we do to lay hold of this great multitude that has slipped from us?" [illustration: theodore roosevelt] ten years have passed, and to-day we see the churches of every denomination uniting in a systematic canvass of the city to get at the facts of the people's life of which they had ceased to be a part, pleading for parks, playgrounds, kindergartens, libraries, clubs, and better homes. there is a new and hearty sound to the word "brother" that is full of hope. the cry has been answered. the gap in the social body, between rich and poor, is no longer widening. we are certainly coming closer together. ten years ago, when the king's daughters lighted a christmas tree in gotham court, the children ran screaming from santa claus as from a "bogey man." last christmas the boys in the hebrew institute's schools nearly broke the bank laying in supplies to do him honor. i do not mean that the jews are deserting to join the christian church. they are doing that which is better,--they are embracing its spirit; and they and we are the better for it. god knows we waited long enough; and how close we were to each other all the while without knowing it! last christmas a clergyman, who lives out of town and has a houseful of children, asked me if i could not find for them a poor family in the city with children of about the same ages, whom they might visit and befriend. he worked every day in the office of a foreign mission in fifth avenue, and knew little of the life that moved about him in the city. i picked out a hungarian widow in an east side tenement, whose brave struggle to keep her little flock together had enlisted my sympathy and strong admiration. she was a cleaner in an office building; not until all the arrangements had been made did it occur to me to ask where. then it turned out that she was scrubbing floors in the missionary society's house, right at my friend's door. they had passed each other every day, each in need of the other, and each as far from the other as if oceans separated them instead of a doorstep four inches wide. * * * * * looking back over the years that lie behind with their work, and forward to those that are coming, i see only cause for hope. as i write these last lines in a far distant land, in the city of my birth, the children are playing under my window, and calling to one another with glad cries in my sweet mother tongue, even as we did in the long ago. life and the world are before them, bright with the promise of morning. so to me seem the skies at home. not lightly do i say it, for i have known the toil of rough-hewing it on the pioneer line that turns men's hair gray; but i have seen also the reward of the toil. new york is the youngest of the world's great cities, barely yet out of its knickerbockers. it may be that the dawning century will see it as the greatest of them all. the task that is set it, the problem it has to solve and which it may not shirk, is the problem of civilization, of human progress, of a people's fitness for self-government that is on trial among us. we shall solve it by the world-old formula of human sympathy, of humane touch. somewhere in these pages i have told of the woman in chicago who accounted herself the happiest woman alive because she had at last obtained a playground for her poor neighbors' children. "i have lived here for years," she said to me, "and struggled with principalities and powers, and have made up my mind that the most and the best i can do is to live right here with my people and smile with them,--keep smiling; weep when i must, but smile as long as i possibly can." and the tears shone in her gentle old eyes as she said it. when we have learned to smile and weep with the poor, we shall have mastered our problem. then the slum will have lost its grip and the boss his job. until then, while they are in possession, our business is to hold taut and take in slack right along; never letting go for a moment. electrotyped and printed by h. o. houghton and co. the riverside press cambridge, mass., u. s. a. [illustration: nibsy as santa claus.] nibsy's christmas by jacob august riis short story index reprint series books for libraries press freeport, new york first published reprinted standard book number: - - library of congress catalog card number: - manufactured by hallmark lithographers, inc. in the u.s.a. * * * * * _to her most gracious majesty louise queen of denmark the friend of the afflicted and the mother of the motherless in my childhood's home these leaves are inscribed with the profound respect and admiration of the author_ * * * * * 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 hard-wood 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 re-echoed 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. their warm breath made little round holes on the frosty pane, that came and went, affording passing 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 with the frost 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 clause'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! y'ere 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." and 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 doorsteps 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 backyard. 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 persecution, for suffering, reminder of lost kindred and liberty, of the slavery of eighteen hundred years, freedom from which was purchased only with gold. aye, gold! the gold that had power to buy freedom yet, to buy the good will, aye, 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 passage-way 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 cheap print 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 cradle 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 point. as nibsy entered, the man desisted from his efforts and sat up glaring at him. a villainous 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'----" "to thunder with yer rot and with 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 nibsy 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 blindman'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 sandbox 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 hook 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 fitted into its block by the grocer for a customer. "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. [illustration] 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 uptown 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, bare-footed 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 half-way 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 burned 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 bed-tick 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 millionaire 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 backyard, 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 hundred 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 house-tops. 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 blackhaired girls--mothers at thirteen; upon hosts of bow-legged children rolling in the dirt; upon pedlers' carts and ragpickers 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 bandits' roost, upon bottle alley, upon the hidden by-ways that lead to the tramp's burrows. shone upon the scene of annual infant slaughter. shone into the foul core of new york's slums that is at last to go to the realm of bad memories because civilized man may 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; they 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 pig-tail. 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 spluttered 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 gilt 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 set 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 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 poor-house 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, footsore, 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 who 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, dry 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 in 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. 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 the 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 house-tops 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 these 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 _rôle_ 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. . 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 in 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 pæan 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. generously made available by the internet archive/american libraries.) christmas stories [illustration] the macmillan company new york · boston · chicago · dallas atlanta · san francisco macmillan & co., limited london · bombay · calcutta melbourne the macmillan co. of canada, ltd. toronto christmas stories by jacob a. riis new york the macmillan company _all rights reserved_ printed in the united states of america copyright, , and , by the century co. copyright, , by the curtis publishing company. copyright, , , , and , by the macmillan company. set up and electrotyped. published october, . the ferris printing company new york contents page the kid hangs up his stocking is there a santa claus? the crogans' christmas in the snowshed the old town his christmas gift the snow babies' christmas jack's sermon merry christmas in the tenements what the christmas sun saw in the tenements nibsy's christmas the little dollar's christmas journey little will's message the burgomaster's christmas christmas stories 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 shop-keepers 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. look'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!" is there a santa claus? "dear mr. riis: "a little chap of six on the western frontier writes to us: "'will you please tell me if there is a santa claus? papa says not.' "won't you answer him?" that was the message that came to me from an editor last december just as i was going on a journey. why he sent it to me i don't know. perhaps it was because, when i was a little chap, my home was way up toward that white north where even the little boys ride in sleds behind reindeer, as they are the only horses they have. perhaps it was because when i was a young lad i knew hans christian andersen, who surely ought to know, and spoke his tongue. perhaps it was both. i will ask the editor when i see him. meanwhile, here was his letter, with christmas right at the door, and, as i said, i was going on a journey. i buttoned it up in my greatcoat along with a lot of other letters i didn't have time to read, and i thought as i went to the depot what a pity it was that my little friend's papa should have forgotten about santa claus. we big people do forget the strangest way, and then we haven't got a bit of a good time any more. no santa claus! if you had asked that car full of people i would have liked to hear the answers they would have given you. no santa claus! why, there was scarce a man in the lot who didn't carry a bundle that looked as if it had just tumbled out of his sleigh. i felt of one slyly, and it was a boy's sled--a "flexible flyer," i know, because he left one at our house the christmas before; and i distinctly heard the rattling of a pair of skates in that box in the next seat. they were all good-natured, every one, though the train was behind time--that is a sure sign of christmas. the brakeman wore a piece of mistletoe in his cap and a broad grin on his face, and he said "merry christmas" in a way to make a man feel good all the rest of the day. no santa claus, is there? you just ask him! and then the train rolled into the city under the big gray dome to which george washington gave his name, and by-and-by i went through a doorway which all american boys would rather see than go to school a whole week, though they love their teacher dearly. it is true that last winter my own little lad told the kind man whose house it is that he would rather ride up and down in the elevator at the hotel, but that was because he was so very little at the time and didn't know things rightly, and, besides, it was his first experience with an elevator. as i was saying, i went through the door into a beautiful white hall with lofty pillars, between which there were regular banks of holly with the red berries shining through, just as if it were out in the woods! and from behind one of them there came the merriest laugh you could ever think of. do you think, now, it was that letter in my pocket that gave that guilty little throb against my heart when i heard it, or what could it have been? i hadn't even time to ask myself the question, for there stood my host all framed in holly, and with the heartiest handclasp. "come in," he said, and drew me after. "the coffee is waiting." and he beamed upon the table with the veriest christmas face as he poured it out himself, one cup for his dear wife and one for me. the children--ah! you should have asked _them_ if there was a santa claus! and so we sat and talked, and i told my kind friends that my own dear old mother, whom i have not seen for years, was very, very sick in far-away denmark and longing for her boy, and a mist came into my hostess's gentle eyes and she said, "let us cable over and tell her how much we think of her," though she had never seen her. and it was no sooner said than done. in came a man with a writing-pad, and while we drank our coffee this message sped under the great stormy sea to the far-away country where the day was shading into evening already, though the sun was scarce two hours high in washington: the white house. _mrs. riis, ribe, denmark_: your son is breakfasting with us. we send you our love and sympathy. theodore and edith roosevelt. for, you see, the house with the holly in the hall was the white house, and my host was the president of the united states. i have to tell it to you, or you might easily fall into the same error i came near falling into. i had to pinch myself to make sure the president was not santa claus himself. i felt that he had in that moment given me the very greatest christmas gift any man ever received: my little mother's life. for really what ailed her was that she was very old, and i know that when she got the president's dispatch she must have become immediately ten years younger and got right out of bed. don't you know mothers are that way when any one makes much of their boys? i think santa claus must have brought them all in the beginning--the mothers, i mean. i would just give anything to see what happened in that old town that is full of blessed memories to me, when the telegraph ticked off that message. i will warrant the town hurried out, burgomaster, bishop, beadle and all, to do honor to my gentle old mother. no santa claus, eh? what was that, then, that spanned two oceans with a breath of love and cheer, i should like to know. tell me that! after the coffee we sat together in the president's office for a little while while he signed commissions, each and every one of which was just santa claus's gift to a grown-up boy who had been good in the year that was going; and before we parted the president had lifted with so many strokes of his pen clouds of sorrow and want that weighed heavily on homes i knew of to which santa claus had had hard work finding his way that christmas. it seemed to me as i went out of the door, where the big policeman touched his hat and wished me a merry christmas, that the sun never shone so brightly in may as it did then. i quite expected to see the crocuses and the jonquils, that make the white house garden so pretty, out in full bloom. they were not, i suppose, only because they are official flowers and have a proper respect for the calendar that runs congress and the executive departments, too. i stopped on the way down the avenue at uncle sam's paymaster's to see what he thought of it. and there he was, busy as could be, making ready for the coming of santa claus. no need of my asking any questions here. men stood in line with bank-notes in their hands asking for gold, new gold-pieces, they said, most every one. the paymaster, who had a sprig of christmas green fixed in his desk just like any other man, laughed and shook his head and said "santa claus?" and the men in the line laughed too and nodded and went away with their gold. one man who went out just ahead of me i saw stoop over a poor woman on the corner and thrust something into her hand, then walk hastily away. it was i who caught the light in the woman's eye and the blessing upon her poor wan lips, and the grass seemed greener in the treasury dooryard, and the sky bluer than it had been before, even on that bright day. perhaps--well, never mind! if any one says anything to you about principles and giving alms, you tell him that santa claus takes care of the principles at christmas, and not to be afraid. as for him, if you want to know, just ask the old woman on the treasury corner. and so, walking down that avenue of good-will, i came to my train again and went home. and when i had time to think it all over i remembered the letters in my pocket which i had not opened. i took them out and read them, and among them were two sent to me in trust for santa claus himself which i had to lay away with the editor's message until i got the dew rubbed off my spectacles. one was from a great banker, and it contained a check for a thousand dollars to help buy a home for some poor children of the east side tenements in new york, where the chimneys are so small and mean that scarce even a letter will go up through them, so that ever so many little ones over there never get on santa claus's books at all. the other letter was from a lonely old widow, almost as old as my dear mother in denmark, and it contained a two-dollar bill. for years, she wrote, she had saved and saved, hoping some time to have five dollars, and then she would go with me to the homes of the very poor and be santa claus herself. "and wherever you decided it was right to leave a trifle, that should be the place where it would be left," read the letter. but now she was so old that she could no longer think of such a trip and so she sent the money she had saved. and i thought of a family in one of those tenements where father and mother are both lying ill, with a boy, who ought to be in school, fighting all alone to keep the wolf from the door, and winning the fight. i guess he has been too busy to send any message up the chimney, if indeed there is one in his house; but you ask him, right now, whether he thinks there is a santa claus or not. no santa claus? yes, my little man, there is a santa claus, thank god! your father had just forgotten. the world would indeed be poor without one. it is true that he does not always wear a white beard and drive a reindeer team--not always, you know--but what does it matter? he is santa claus with the big, loving, christmas heart, for all that; santa claus with the kind thoughts for every one that make children and grown-up people beam with happiness all day long. and shall i tell you a secret which i did not learn at the post-office, but it is true all the same--of how you can always be sure your letters go to him straight by the chimney route? it is this: send along with them a friendly thought for the boy you don't like: for jack who punched you, or jim who was mean to you. the meaner he was the harder do you resolve to make it up: not to bear him a grudge. that is the stamp for the letter to santa. nobody can stop it, not even a cross-draught in the chimney, when it has that on. because--don't you know, santa claus is the spirit of christmas: and ever and ever so many years ago when the dear little baby was born after whom we call christmas, and was cradled in a manger out in the stable because there was not room in the inn, that spirit came into the world to soften the hearts of men and make them love one another. therefore, that is the mark of the spirit to this day. don't let anybody or anything rub it out. then the rest doesn't matter. let them tear santa's white beard off at the sunday-school festival and growl in his bearskin coat. these are only his disguises. the steps of the real santa claus you can trace all through the world as you have done here with me, and when you stand in the last of his tracks you will find the blessed babe of bethlehem smiling a welcome to you. for then you will be home. the crogans' christmas in the snowshed a storm was brewing in the mountains. the white glare of the earlier day had been supplanted by a dull gray, and the peaks that shut the winter landscape in were "smoking," sure harbinger of a blizzard already raging in the high sierras. the pines above the crogans' cabin stood like spectral sentinels in the failing light, their drooping branches heavy with the snow of many storms. mrs. tom crogan sat at the window looking listlessly into the darkening day. in the spring she had come with her husband from the little minnesota town that was their home, full of hope and the joy of life. the mountains were beautiful then with wild flowers and the sweet smell of fragrant firs, and as she rocked her baby to sleep in their deep shadows she sang to him the songs her mother had crooned over her cradle in her tuneful swedish tongue. life then had seemed very fair, and the snowshed hardly a shadow across it. for to her life there were two sides: one that looked out upon the mountains and the trees and the wild things that stirred in god's beautiful world; the other the blind side that turned toward the darkness man had made in his fight to conquer that world. tom crogan was a dispatcher at a signal station in the great snowsheds that stretched forty miles or more up the slopes of the sierras, plunging the road to the land of sunshine into hour-long gloom just when the jagged "saw-tooth" peaks, that give the range its name, came into sight. travelers knew them to their grief: a huge crawling thing of timber and stout planks--so it seemed as one caught fleeting glimpses of it in the brief escapes from its murky embrace--that followed the mountain up, hugging its side close as it rose farther and farther toward the summit. hideous always, in winter buried often out of sight by the smashing avalanches old boreas hurled at the pigmy folk who dared challenge him in his own realm; but within the shelter of the snowsheds they laughed at his bluster, secure from harm, for then it served its appointed purpose. the crogans' house fronted or backed--whichever way one chose to look at it--upon the shed. tom's office, where the telegraph ticker was always talking of men and things in the desert sands to the east, or in the orange groves over the divide, never saw the sunshine it told of. it burrowed in perpetual gloom. nine times a day trains full of travelers, who peered curiously at the signalmen with their lanterns and at tom as so many human moles burrowing in the mountain, came and went, and took the world of men with them, yawning as they departed at the prospect of more miles of night. at odd intervals long freight trains lingered, awaiting orders, and lent a more human touch. for the engineer had time to swap yarns with tom, and the brakemen looked in to chuck the baby under the chin and to predict, when their smudge faces frightened him, that he would grow up to be as fine a railroader as his father: his yell was as good as a whistle to "down brakes." even a wandering hobo once in a while showed his face from behind the truck on which he was stealing a ride 'cross country, and grimaced at mrs. tom, safe in the belief that she would not give him away. and she didn't. but now the winter had come with the heavy snows that seemed never to end. she could not venture out upon the mountain where the pines stood buried many feet deep. in truth there was no getting out. her life side was banked up, as it were, to stay so till spring came again. as she sat watching the great white waste that sloped upward toward the lowering sky she counted the months: two, three, four--five, probably, or six, to wait. for this was christmas, and the winter was but fairly under way. five months! the winters were hard enough on the plains, but the loneliness of these mountains! what glad visiting and holiday-making were going on now in her old home among kindred and friends! there it was truly a season of kindliness and good cheer; they had brought their old norse yule with them across the seas. she choked back a sob as she stirred the cradle with her foot. for tom's sake she would be brave. but no letter nor word had come from the east, and this their first christmas away from home! there was a man's step on the stairs from the office, and tom crogan put his head through the doorway. "got a bite for a hungry man?" he asked, blinking a bit at the white light from without. the baby woke up and gurgled. tom waved the towel at him, drying his face at the sink, and hugged his wife as she passed. "storm coming," he said, glancing out at the weather and listening to the soughing of the wind in the pines. "nothing else here," she replied, setting the table; "nothing this long while, and, oh, tom!"--she set down the plate and went over to him--"no word from home, and this is christmas eve. nothing even for the baby." he patted her back affectionately, and cheered her after the manner of a man. "trains all late, the snow is that deep, more particular in the east, they say. mail might not come through for a week. baby don't know the difference so long as he is warm. and coal we've got a-plenty." "then it will be new year's," she pursued her own thoughts drearily. tom was not a good comforter just then. he ate like a tired man, in silence. "special on the line," he said, as he stirred the sugar in his coffee. "when the road opens up she'll follow right on the overland." "some o' your rich folks, most like, going for a holiday on the coast," she commented without interest. tom nodded. she gave the stove lid an impatient twist. "little they know," she said bitterly, "or care either, how we live up here in the sheds. they'd oughter take their turn at it a while. there's the wrights with jim laid up since he broke his leg at the time o' the wreck, and can't seem to get no strength. and the coulsons with their old mother in this grippin' cold, an' all the sickness they've had, an' he laid off, though he wasn't to blame, an' you know it, tom. if it hadn't been for you what would 'a' come to the overland runnin' straight for that wrecked freight with full head o' steam----" tom looked up good-humoredly and pushed back his plate. "why, mary! what's come over you? i only done what i was there to do--and they took notice all right. don't you remember the company wrote and thanked me for bein' spry?" "thanked you!" contemptuously. "what good is that? here we be, an' like to stay till----you can come up if you want to." the invitation was extended, ungraciously enough, to a knot of men clustered about the steps. they trooped in, a gang of snow-shovelers fresh from their fight with the big drifts, and stood about the stove, the cold breath of outdoors in their looks and voices. their talk was of their work just finished. the road was clear, but for how long? and they flapped their frozen mittens toward the window through which the snow could be seen already beginning to fall in large, ominous flakes. the special was discussed with eager interest. no one knew who it was--an unusual thing. generally words came along the line giving the news, but there had been no warning of this one. "mebbe it's the president inspectin'," ventured one of the crew. "i tank it bane some o' dem wall street fellers on one big bust," threw in a husky swede. in the laugh that followed this sally the ticker was heard faintly clicking out a message in the office below. tom listened. "overland three hours late," he said, and added with a glance outside as he made ready to go: "like as not they'll be later'n that; they won't keep christmas on the coast this while." the snow-shovelers trailed out after tom with many a fog-horn salute of merry christmas to his wife and to the baby. the words, well meant, jarred harshly upon mrs. crogan. merry christmas! it sounded in her ear almost like a taunt. when they were gone she stood at the window, struggling with a sense of such bitter desolation as she had never known till then. the snow fell thick now, and was whirled across the hillside in fitful gusts. in the gathering darkness trees and rocks were losing shape and color; nothing was left but the white cold, the thought of which chilled her to the marrow. through the blast the howl of a lone wolf came over the ridge, and she remembered the story of donner lake, just beyond, and the party of immigrants who starved to death in the forties, shut in by such a winter as this. there were ugly tales on the mountain of things done there, which men told under their breath when the great storms thundered through the cañons and all were safe within. she had heard the crew of the rotary say that there was as much as ten feet of snow on some of the levels already, and the winter only well begun. without knowing it she fell to counting the months to spring again: two, three, four, five! with a convulsive shudder she caught up the child and fled to the darkest corner of the room. crouching there by the fire her grief and bitterness found vent in a flood of rebellious tears. down in his dark coop tom crogan, listening to a distant roar and the quickening rhythm of the rails, knew that the overland was coming. presently it shot out from behind the shoulder of the mountain. ordinarily it passed swiftly enough, but to-day it slowed up and came to a stop at the station. the conductor hurried into the office and held an anxious consultation with tom, who shook his head decisively. if the storm kept up there would be no getting out that night. the cut over at the lake that had just been cleared was filling up again sure with the wind blowing from the north. there was nothing to do but wait, anyhow until they knew for certain. the conductor agreed with bad grace, and the rotary was started up the road to reconnoiter. the train discharged its weary and worried passengers, who walked up and down the dark cavern to stretch their legs, glancing indifferently at the little office where the telegraph kept up its intermittent chatter. suddenly it clicked out a loud warning: "special on way. clear the track." tom rapped on his window and gave quick orders. the men hurried to carry them out. "not far she'll go," they grinned as they set the switch and made all safe. at the turn half a mile below the red eye of the locomotive gleamed already in the dusk. in a few minutes it pulled in with a shriek of its whistle that woke the echoes of the hills far and near, and stood panting in a cloud of steam. trackmen and signalmen craned their necks to see the mysterious stranger. even mrs. tom had dried her tears and came out to look at the despised bigbugs from the east, rebellion yet in her homesick heart. the news that the "big boss" might be on board had spread to the passenger train, and crowds flocked from the sleepers, curious to get a glimpse of the railroad magnate who had made such a stir in the land. his power was so great that common talk credited him with being stronger than congress and the courts combined. the newspapers recorded all his doings as it did the president's, but with this difference, that while everybody knew all about the man in the white house, few if any seemed to know anything real about the railroad man's private life. in the popular estimation he was a veritable sphinx. at his country home in the east he had bought up the land for five miles around--even the highways--to keep intruders out. here now was an unexpected chance, and the travelers crowded up to get a look at him. but they saw no luxurious private car with frock-coated officials and liveried servants. an every-day engine with three express cars in tow stood upon the track, and baggagemen in blue overalls yelled for hand-trucks, and hustled out boxes and crates consigned to "the agent at shawnee." yet it was not an every-day train nor an ordinary crew; for all of them, conductor, brakemen, engineer and fireman, wore holly in their caps and broad grins on their faces. the locomotive flew two white flags with the words "merry christmas" in red letters, and across the cars a strip of canvas was strung their whole length, with the legend "the christmas train" in capitals a foot long. even in the gloom of the snowshed it shone out, plain to read. tom in his office rubbed his eyes for another and better look when the conductor of the special, pushing his way through the wondering crowds, flung open the door. "here's yer docyments," he said, slapping down a paper, "and the orders are that ye're to see they gets 'em." tom crogan took up the paper as if dazed, and looked at the entries without in the least understanding what it all meant. he did not see the jam of railroad men and passengers who had crowded into the office on the heels of the conductor until they filled it to the doors. neither did he notice that his wife had come with them and was standing beside him looking as mystified as he. mechanically he read out the items in the way-bill, while the conductor checked them off with many a wink at the crowd. what nightmare was this? had some delirious santa claus invaded the office of the union pacific railroad, and turned it into a toy shop and dry-goods bazar combined, with a shake of his reindeer bells? or was it a huge, wretched, misbegotten joke? surely stranger bill of lading never went over the line, or over any railroad line before. this was what he read: "crate of fat turkeys, one for every family on the station (their names followed). "one ditto of red apples. "one ditto of oranges, to be similarly apportioned. "for tom crogan, one meerschaum pipe. "for james wright, lately injured in the service and not yet recovered, a box of books, and allowance of full pay during disability. ordered to report at sacramento until fully restored. "for john coulson, christmas gifts, including a warm flannel wrapper for his old mother; also notice of back pay allowed since suspension, with full restoration to place and pay. "for mrs. thomas crogan, not on the official payroll, but whom the company takes this opportunity to thank for assistance rendered her husband on a recent occasion, one dress pattern, with the wishes of the superintendent's office for a very merry christmas. "for master thomas crogan, not yet on the official payroll, being under age, a box of toys, including rubber ball and sheep, doll and noah's ark, with the compliments of the company for having chosen so able a railroad man for his father. "for master thomas crogan, as a token of regard from passengers on the overland of november , one rocking-horse, crated." "oh, tom!"--mrs. crogan caught her breath with a gasp--"and he not a year old!" tom looked up to find the room full of people laughing at him and at her, but there was hearty, happy good-will in the laugh, and mrs. tom was laughing back. the conductor got up to go, but checked himself abruptly. "if i didn't come near to forget," he said and reached for his pocket. "here, tom, this is for you from the superintendent. if it ain't a secret read it aloud." the message was brief: _thomas crogan, esq._, agent and dispatcher at shawnee station: the compliments of the season and of the superintendent's office to you. have a merry christmas, tom, up in your shed, for we want you down on the coast after new year's. frank alden, superintendent. tom looked up with a smile. he had got his bearings at last. there was no doubt about that signature. his eyes met his wife's, brimming with sudden joy. the dream of her life was made real. the railroad men raised a cheer in which there was a note of regret, for tom was a prime favorite with them all, and crowded up to shake hands. the passengers followed suit, ready to join in, yet mystified still. but now, when they heard from the conductor of the special how tom by quick action had saved the overland, the very train they were on, from running into a wrecked freight two months before, many of them remembered the story of it--how tom, being left alone when everybody else lost his head in the smashup, had sprinted down the track with torpedoes, while his wife set the switch and waved the signal lantern, and had just caught the limited around the curve, and how narrow had been the escape from a great disaster. and their quick sympathy went out to the young couple up in the lonely heights, who a few moments before had been less to them than the inert thing of iron and steel that was panting on the track outside like a huge monster after a hard run. when it was learned that both trains were stalled, perhaps for all night, the recollection that it was christmas eve gave sudden direction to their sympathies. since friends on the coast must wait they would have their christmas where they were, if it were in a snowshed. in less time than any one could have made a formal motion the trainful of excited passengers, just now so disgruntled, resolved itself into a committee of arrangements to which were added both the train crews. a young balsam from the mountainside made its appearance, no one knew exactly how, and in a trice it shone with a wealth of candles and toys at which the baby, struggling up to a sitting posture in his cradle, looked with wide-eyed wonder. the crogans' modest living-room was made festive with holly and evergreen and transformed into a joyous dining-room before mrs. tom could edge in a word of protest. all the memories of her cherished yule surged in upon her as the room filled with the smell of roast turkey and mince pie and what not of good cheer, borne in by a procession of white-clad waiters who formed a living chain between the dining-car and the station. when in the wake of them the veritable rocking-horse, hastily unpacked, was led in by a hysterical darky, and pranced and pawed its way across the floor, its reins jingling with silver bells, thomas crogan, junior, considered it, sitting bolt upright, one long minute, sighed and, overwhelmed by such magnificence, went calmly to sleep. it was too much for one christmas eve, and he not a year old. when as many as could crowd in were seated with tom crogan and his wife--the conductors and engineers of the two trains representing the road--the clergyman in the party arose to remind them all that they were far from home and friends, keeping christmas in the mountain wilderness. "but," he said, "though a continent separates us we meet with them all here to-night before the face of him who came as a helpless babe to the world of sin and selfishness, and brought peace and good-will to men." and he read to them how "it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from cæsar augustus, that all the world should be taxed," and the story of the child that is old, yet will be ever new while the world stands. in the reverent hush that had fallen upon the company a tenor voice rose clear and sweet in the old hymn: "it came upon the midnight clear that glorious song of old." when the lines were reached: "still through the cloven skies they come with peaceful wings unfurl'd," many of the passengers joined in and sang the verse to the end. the familiar words seemed to come with a comforting message to every one in the little cabin. in the excitement they had all forgotten the weather. unseen by every one the moon had come out and shone clear in an almost cloudless sky. the storm was over. a joyful toot of the rotary's whistle, as dinner neared its end, announced its return with the welcome news that the road was open once more. with many hearty handshakes, and wishes for happy years to come, the unexpected christmas party broke up. but there was yet a small ceremony left. it was performed by a committee of three of the overland passengers who had friends or kin on board the train tom crogan had saved. they had quietly circulated among the rest, and now, with the conductor shouting "all aboard!" they put an envelope into tom's hand, with the brief directions "for moving expenses," and jumped on their car as the engine blew its last warning whistle and the airbrakes wheezed their farewell. tom opened it and saw five crisp twenty-dollar bills tucked neatly inside. the limited pulled out on the stroke of midnight, with cheering passengers on every step and in every window. tom and his wife stood upon the step of the little station and waved their handkerchiefs as long as the bull's-eye on the last car was in sight. when it was gone and they were left with the snowshed and the special breathing sleepily on its siding she laid her head on his shoulder. a rush of repentant tears welled up and mingled with the happiness in her voice. "oh, tom!" she said. "did ye ever know the like of it? i am fair sorry to leave the old shed." the old town i do not know how the forty years i have been away have dealt with "jule-nissen," the christmas elf of my childhood. he was pretty old then, gray and bent, and there were signs that his time was nearly over. so it may be that they have laid him away. i shall find out when i go over there next time. when i was a boy we never sat down to our christmas eve dinner until a bowl of rice and milk had been taken up to the attic, where he lived with the marten and its young, and kept an eye upon the house--saw that everything ran smoothly. i never met him myself, but i know the house-cat must have done so. no doubt they were well acquainted; for when in the morning i went in for the bowl, there it was, quite dry and licked clean, and the cat purring in the corner. so, being there all night, he must have seen and likely talked with him. i suspect, as i said, that they have not treated my nisse fairly in these matter-of-fact days that have come upon us, not altogether for our own good, i fear. i am not even certain that they were quite serious about him then, though to my mind that was very unreasonable. but then there is nothing so unreasonable to a child as the cold reason of the grown-ups. however, if they have gone back on him, i know where to find him yet. only last christmas when i talked of him to the tenement-house mothers in my henry street neighborhood house,[ ]--all of them from the ever faithful isle,--i saw their eyes light up with the glad smile of recognition, and half a dozen called out excitedly, "the little people! the leprecawn ye mean, we know him well," and they were not more pleased than i to find that we had an old friend in common. for the nisse, or the leprecawn, call him whichever you like, was a friend indeed to those who loved kindness and peace. if there was a house in which contention ruled, either he would have nothing to do with it, like the stork that built its nest on the roof, or else he paid the tenants back in their own coin, playing all kinds of tricks upon them and making it very uncomfortable. i suppose it was this trait that gave people, when they began to reason so much about things, the notion that he was really the wraith, as it were, of their own disposition, which was not so at all. i remember the story told of one man who quarrelled with everybody, and in consequence had a very troublesome nisse in the house that provoked him to the point of moving away; which he did. but as the load of furniture was going down the street, with its owner hugging himself in glee at the thought that he had stolen a march on the nisse, the little fellow poked his head out of the load and nodded to him, "we are moving to-day." at which naturally he flew into a great rage. but then, that was just a story. [ ] the jacob a. riis neighborhood settlement, new york. the nisse was of the family, as you see, very much of it, and certainly not to be classed with the cattle. yet they were his special concern; he kept them quiet, and saw to it, when the stableman forgot, that they were properly bedded and cleaned and fed. he was very well known to the hands about the farm, and they said that he looked just like a little old man, all in gray and with a pointed red nightcap and long gray beard. he was always civilly treated, as he surely deserved to be, but christmas was his great holiday, when he became part of it, indeed, and was made much of. so, for that matter, was everything that lived under the husbandman's roof, or within reach of it. the farmer always set a lighted candle in his window on christmas eve, to guide the lonesome wanderer to a hospitable hearth. the very sparrows that burrowed in the straw thatch, and did it no good, were not forgotten. a sheaf of rye was set out in the snow for them, so that on that night at least they should have shelter and warmth unchallenged, and plenty to eat. at all other times we were permitted to raid their nests and help ourselves to a sparrow roast, which was by long odds the greatest treat we had. thirty or forty of them, dug out of any old thatch roof by the light of the stable lantern and stuffed into ane's long stocking, which we had borrowed for a game-bag, made a meal for the whole family, each sparrow a fat mouthful. ane was the cook, and i am very certain that her pot-roast of sparrow would pass muster at any fifth avenue restaurant as the finest dish of reed-birds that ever was. however, at christmas their sheaf was their sanctuary, and no one as much as squinted at them. only last winter when christmas found me stranded in a little michigan town, wandering disconsolate about the streets, i came across such a sheaf raised on a pole in a dooryard, and i knew at once that one of my people lived in that house and kept yule in the old way. so i felt as if i were not quite a stranger. all the animals knew perfectly well that the holiday had come, and kept it in their way. the watch-dog was unchained. in the midnight hour on the holy eve the cattle stood up in their stalls and bowed out of respect and reverence for him who was laid in a manger when there was no room in the inn, and in that hour speech was given them, and they talked together. claus, our neighbor's man, had seen and heard it, and every christmas eve i meant fully to go and be there when it happened; but always long before that i had been led away to bed, a very sleepy boy, with all my toys hugged tight, and when i woke up the daylight shone through the frosted window-panes, and they were blowing good morning from the church tower; it would be a whole year before another christmas. so i vowed, with a sigh at having neglected a really sacred observance, that i would be there sure on the next christmas eve. but it was always so, every year, and perhaps it was just as well, for claus said that it might go ill with the one who listened, if the cows found him out. blowing in the yule from the grim old tower that had stood eight hundred years against the blasts of the north sea was one of the customs of the old town that abide, however it fares with the nisse; that i know. at sun-up, while yet the people were at breakfast, the town band climbed the many steep ladders to the top of the tower, and up there, in fair weather or foul,--and sometimes it blew great guns from the wintry sea,--they played four old hymns, one to each corner of the compass, so that no one was forgotten. they always began with luther's sturdy challenge, "a mighty fortress is our god," while down below we listened devoutly. there was something both weird and beautiful about those far-away strains in the early morning light of the northern winter, something that was not of earth and that suggested to my child's imagination the angels' song on far judean hills. even now, after all these years, the memory of it does that. it could not have been because the music was so rare, for the band was made up of small storekeepers and artisans who thus turned an honest penny on festive occasions. incongruously enough, i think, the official town mourner who bade people to funerals was one of them. it was like the burghers' guard, the colonel of which--we thought him at least a general, because of the huge brass sword he trailed when he marched at the head of his men--was the town tailor, a very small but very martial man. but whether or no, it was beautiful. i have never heard music since that so moved me. when the last strain died away came the big bells with their deep voices that sang far out over field and heath, and our yule was fairly under way. a whole fortnight we kept it. real christmas was from little christmas eve, which was the night before the holy eve proper, till new year. then there was a week of supplementary festivities before things slipped back into their wonted groove. that was the time of parties and balls. the great ball of the year was on the day after christmas. second christmas day we called it, when all the quality attended at the club-house, where the amtmand and the burgomaster, the bishop and the rector of the latin school, did the honors and received the people. that was the grandest of the town functions. the school ball, late in autumn, was the jolliest, for then the boys invited each the girl he liked best, and the older people were guests and outsiders, so to speak. the latin school, still the "cathedral school," was as old as the domkirke itself, and when it took the stage it was easily first while it lasted. the yule ball, though it was a rather more formal affair, for all that was neither stiff nor tiresome; nothing was in the old town; there was too much genuine kindness for that. and that it was the recognized occasion when matches were made by enterprising mammas, or by the young themselves, and when engagements were declared and discussed as the great news of the day. we heard of all those things afterward and thought a great fuss was being made over nothing much. for when a young couple were declared engaged, that meant that there was no more fun to be out of them. they were given, after that, to go mooning about by themselves and to chasing us children away when we ran across them; until they happily returned to their senses, got married, and became reasonable human beings once more. when we had been sent to bed on the great night, father and mother went away in their sunday very best, and we knew they would not return until two o'clock in the morning, a fact which alone invested the occasion with unwonted gravity, for the old town kept early hours. at ten o'clock, when the watchman droned his sleepy lay, absurdly warning the people to be quick and bright, watch fire and light, our clock it has struck ten, it was ordinarily tucked in and asleep. but that night we lay awake a long time listening to the muffled sound of heavy wheels in the snow rolling unceasingly past, and trying to picture to ourselves the grandeur they conveyed. every carriage in the town was then in use and doing overtime. i think there were as many as four. when we were not dancing or playing games, we literally ate our way through the two holiday weeks. pastry by the mile did we eat, and general indigestion brooded over the town when it emerged into the white light of the new year. at any rate it ought to have done so. it is a prime article of faith with the danes to this day that for any one to go out of a friend's house, or of anybody's house, in the christmas season without partaking of its cheer, is to "bear away their yule," which no one must do on any account. every house was a bakery from the middle of december until christmas eve, and oh! the quantities of cakes we ate, and such cakes! we were sixteen normally, in our home, and mother mixed the dough for her cakes in a veritable horse-trough kept for that exclusive purpose. as much as a sack of flour went in, i guess, and gallons of molasses and whatever else went to the mixing. for weeks there had been long and anxious speculations as to "what father would do," and gloomy conferences between him and mother over the state of the family pocket-book, which was never plethoric; but at last the joyful message ran through the house from attic to kitchen that the appropriation had been made, "even for citron," which meant throwing all care to the winds. the thrill of it, when we children stood by and saw the generous avalanche going into the trough! what would not come out of it! the whole family turned to and helped make the cakes and cut the "pepper-nuts," which were little squares of spiced cake-dough we played cards for and stuffed our pockets with, gnawing them incessantly. talk about eating between meals: ours was a continuous performance for two solid weeks. the pepper-nuts were the real staple of christmas to us children. we paid forfeits with them in the game of scratch-nose (jackstraws), when the fellow fishing for his straw stirred the others and had his nose scratched with the little file in the bunch as extra penalty; in "under which tree lies my pig?" in which the pig was a pepper-nut, the fingers of the closed hands the trees; and in black peter. in this last the loser had his nose blackened with the snuff from the candle until advancing civilization substituted a burnt cork. christmas without pepper-nuts would have been a hollow mockery indeed. we rolled the dough in long strings like slender eels and then cut it, a little on the bias. they were good, those nuts, when baked brown. i wish i had some now. it all stood for the universal desire that in the joyous season everybody be made glad. i know that in the old town no one went hungry or cold during the holidays, if indeed any one ever did. every one gave of what he had, and no one was afraid of pauperizing anybody by his gifts, for they were given gladly and in love, and that makes all the difference--did then and does now. at christmas it is perfectly safe to let our scientific principles go and just remember the lord's command that we love one another. i subscribe to them all with perfect loyalty, and try to practise them till christmas week comes in with its holly and the smell of balsam and fir, and the memories of childhood in the old town; then--well, anyway, it is only a little while. new year and the long cold winter come soon enough. christmas eve was, of course, the great and blessed time. that was the one night in the year when in the gray old domkirke services were held by candle-light. a myriad wax candles twinkled in the gloom, but did not dispel it. it lingered under the great arches where the voice of the venerable minister, the responses of the congregation, and above it all the boyish treble of the choir billowed and strove, now dreamily with the memories of ages past, now sharply, tossed from angle to corner in the stone walls, and again in long thunderous echoes, sweeping all before it on the triumphant strains of the organ, like a victorious army with banners crowding through the halls of time. so it sounded to me, as sleep gently tugged at my eyelids. the air grew heavy with the smell of evergreens and of burning wax, and as the thunder of war drew farther and farther away, in the shadow of the great pillars stirred the phantoms of mailed knights whose names were hewn in the grave-stones there. we youngsters clung to the skirts of mother as we went out and the great doors fell to behind us. and yet those christmas eves, with mother's gentle eyes forever inseparable from them, and with the glad cries of merry christmas ringing all about, have left a touch of sweet peace in my heart which all the years have not effaced, nor ever will. at home the great dinner of the year was waiting for us; roast goose stuffed with apples and prunes, rice pudding with cinnamon and sugar on it, and a great staring butter eye in the middle. the pudding was to lay the ground-work with, and it was served in deep soup-plates. it was the dish the nisse came in on, and the cat. on new year's eve both these were left out; but to make up for it an almond was slipped into the "gröd," and whoever found it in his plate got a present. it was no device to make people "fletch," but it served the purpose admirably. at christmas we had doughnuts after the goose, big and stout and good. however i managed it, i don't know, but it is a tradition in the family, and i remember it well, that i once ate thirteen on top of the big dinner. evidently i was having a good time. dinner was, if not the chief end of man, at least an item in his make-up, and a big one.[ ] [ ] the reader who is not afraid of dyspepsia by suggestion may consider the following christmas bill of fare which obtained among the peasants east of the old town: on a large trencher a layer of pork and ribs, on top of that a nest of fat sausages, in which sat a roast duck. when it had had time to settle and all the kitchen work was done, father took his seat at the end of the long table, with all the household gathered about, the servants included and the baby without fail, and read the story of the child: "and it came to pass in those days," while mother hushed the baby. then we sang together "a child is born in bethlehem," which was the simplest of our hymns, and also the one we children loved best, for it told of how in heaven we were to walk to church on sky-blue carpets, star-bedeckt, which was a great comfort. children love beautiful things, and we had few of them. the great and precious treasure in our house was the rag carpet in the spare room which we were allowed to enter only on festive occasions such as christmas. it had an orange streak in it which i can see to this day. whenever i come across one that even remotely suggests it, it gives me yet a kind of solemn feeling. we had no piano,--that was a luxury in those days,--and father was not a singer, but he led on bravely with his tremulous bass and we all joined in, ane the cook and maria the housemaid furtively wiping their eyes with their aprons, for they were good and pious folk and this was their christmas service. so we sang the ten verses to end, with their refrain "hallelujah! hallelujah," that always seemed to me to open the very gates of yule. and it did, literally; for when the last hallelujah died away the door of the spare room was flung wide and there stood the christmas tree, all shining lights, and the baby was borne in, wide-eyed, to be the first, as was proper; for was not this the child's holiday? unconsciously we all gave way to those who were nearest him, who had most recently come from his presence and were therefore in closest touch with the spirit of the holiday. so, when we joined hands and danced around the tree, father held the baby, and we laughed and were happy as the little one crowed his joy and stretched his tiny arms toward the light. light and shadow, joy and sorrow, go hand in hand in the world. while we danced and made merry, there was one near for whom christmas was but grief and loss. out in the white fields he went from farm to farm, a solitary wanderer, the folklore had it, looking for plough or harrow on which to rest his weary limbs. it was the wandering jew, to whom this hope was given, that, if on that night of all in the year he could find some tool used in honest toil over which the sign of the cross had not been made, his wanderings would be at an end and the curse depart from him, to cleave thence-forward to the luckless farmer.[ ] he never found what he sought in my time. the thrifty husbandman had been over his field on the eve of the holiday with a watchful eye to his coming. when the bell in the distant church tower struck the midnight hour, belated travellers heard his sorrowful wail as he fled over the heath and vanished. [ ] an unromantic variation of this was the belief that the farmer who left his plough out on christmas would get a drubbing from his wife within a twelvemonth. i hope whoever held to that got what he richly deserved. when ansgarius preached the white christ to the vikings of the north, so runs the legend of the christmas tree, the lord sent his three messengers, faith, hope, and love, to help light the first tree. seeking one that should be high as hope, wide as love, and that bore the sign of the cross on every bough, they chose the balsam fir, which best of all the trees in the forest met the requirements. perhaps that is a good reason why there clings about the christmas tree in my old home that which has preserved it from being swept along in the flood of senseless luxury that has swamped so many things in our money-mad day. at least so it was then. every time i see a tree studded with electric lights, garlands of tinsel-gold festooning every branch, and hung with the hundred costly knicknacks the storekeepers invent year by year "to make trade," until the tree itself disappears entirely under its burden, i have a feeling what a fraud has been practised on the kindly spirit of yule. wax candles are the only real thing for a christmas tree, candles of _wax_ that mingle their perfume with that of the burning fir, not the by-product of some coal-oil or other abomination. what if the boughs do catch fire; they can be watched, and too many candles are tawdry, anyhow. also, red apples, oranges, and old-fashioned cornucopias made of colored paper, and made at home, look a hundred times better and fitter in the green; and so do drums and toy trumpets and waldhorns, and a rocking-horse reined up in front that need not have cost forty dollars, or anything like it. i am thinking of one, or rather two, a little piebald team with a wooden seat between, for which mother certainly did not give over seventy-five cents at the store, that as "belcher and mamie"--the names were bestowed on the beasts at sight by kate, aged three, who bossed the play-room--gave a generation of romping children more happiness than all the expensive railroads and trolley-cars and steam-engines that are considered indispensable to keeping christmas nowadays. and the noah's ark with noah and his wife and all the animals that went two by two--ah, well! i haven't set out to preach a sermon on extravagance that makes no one happier, but i wish--the legend makes me think of the holly that grew in our danish woods. we called it christ-thorn, for to us it was of that the crown of thorns was made with which the cruel soldiers mocked our saviour, and the red berries were the drops of blood that fell from his anguished brow. therefore the holly was a sacred tree, and to this day the woods in which i find it seem to me like the forest where the christmas roses bloomed in the night when the lord was born, different from all other woods, and better. mistletoe was rare in denmark. there was known to be but one oak in all the land on which it grew. but that did not discourage the young. we had our kissing games which gave the boys and girls their chance to choose sides, and in the christmas season they went on right merrily. there was rarely a night that did not bring the children together under some roof or other. they say that kissing goes by favor, but we had not arrived at that point yet, though we had our preferences. in the game of post office, for instance, he was a bold boy who would dare call out the girl he really liked, to get the letter that was supposed to be awaiting her. you could tell for a dead certainty who was his choice by watching whom he studiously avoided asking for. i have a very vivid recollection of having once really dared with sudden desperation, and of the defiant flushed face, framed in angry curls, that confronted me in the hall, the painful silence while we each stood looking the other way and heard our playmates tittering behind the closed door,--for well they knew,--and her indignant stride as she went back to her seat unkissed, with me trailing behind, feeling like a very sheepish boy, and no doubt looking the part. the old year went out with much such a racket as we make nowadays, but of quite a different kind. we did not blow the new year in, we "smashed" it in. when it was dark on new year's eve, we stole out with all the cracked and damaged crockery of the year that had been hoarded for the purpose and, hieing ourselves to some favorite neighbor's door, broke our pots against it. then we ran, but not very far or very fast, for it was part of the game that if one was caught at it, he was to be taken in and treated to hot doughnuts. the smashing was a mark of favor, and the citizen who had most pots broken against his door was the most popular man in town. when i was in the latin school, a cranky burgomaster, whose door had been freshly painted, gave orders to the watchmen to stop it and gave them an unhappy night, for they were hard put to it to find a way it was safe to look, with the streets full of the best citizens in town, and their wives and daughters, sneaking singly by with bulging coats on their way to salute a friend. that was when our mothers--those who were not out smashing in new year--came out strong, after the fashion of mothers. they baked more doughnuts than ever that night, and beckoned the watchman in to the treat; and there he sat, blissfully deaf while the street rang with the thunderous salvos of our raids; until it was discovered that the burgomaster himself was on patrol, when there was a sudden rush from kitchen doors and a great scurrying through streets that grew strangely silent. the town had its revenge, however. the burgomaster, returning home in the midnight hour, stumbled in his gate over a discarded christmas tree hung full of old boots and many black and sooty pots that went down around him with great smash in the upset, so that his family came running out in alarm to find him sprawling in the midst of the biggest celebration of all. his dignity suffered a shock which he never got over quite. but it killed the new year's fun, too. for he was really a good fellow, and then he was the burgomaster, and chief of police to boot. i suspect the fact was that the pot smashing had run its course. perhaps the supply of pots was giving out; we began to use tinware more about that time. that was the end of it, anyhow. we boys got square, too, with the watchmen. we knew their habit of stowing themselves away in the stage-coach that stood in the market-place when they had cried the hour at ten o'clock, and we caught them napping there one dark night when we were coming home from a party. the stage had doors that locked on the outside. we slammed them shut and ran the conveyance, with them in it wildly gesticulating from the windows, through the main street of the town, amid the cheers of the citizens whom the racket aroused from their slumbers. we were safe enough. the watchmen were not anxious to catch us, maddened as they were by our prank, and they were careful not to report us either. i chuckled at that exploit more than once when, in years long after, i went the rounds of the midnight streets with haroun-al-roosevelt, as they called new york's police commissioner, to find his patrolmen sleeping soundly on their posts when they should have been catching thieves. human nature, police human nature, anyhow, is not so different, after all, in the old world and in the new. with twelfth night our yule came to an end. in that night, if a girl would know her fate, she must go to bed walking backward and throw a shoe over her left shoulder, or hide it under her pillow, i forget which, perhaps both, and say aloud a verse that prayed the three holy kings to show her the man whose table i must set, whose bed i must spread, whose name i must bear, whose bride i must be. the man who appeared to her in her sleep was to be her husband. there was no escape from it, and consequently she did not try. he was her christmas gift, and she took him for better or for worse. let us hope that the nisse played her no scurvy trick, and that it was for better always. his christmas gift "the prisoner will stand," droned out the clerk in the court of general sessions. "filippo portoghese, you are convicted of assault with intent to kill. have you anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon you?" a sallow man with a hopeless look in his heavy eyes rose slowly in his seat and stood facing the judge. there was a pause in the hum and bustle of the court as men turned to watch the prisoner. he did not look like a man who would take a neighbor's life, and yet so nearly had he done so, of set purpose it had been abundantly proved, that his victim would carry the disfiguring scar of the bullet to the end of his life, and only by what seemed an almost miraculous chance had escaped death. the story as told by witnesses and substantially uncontradicted was this: portoghese and vito ammella, whom he shot, were neighbors under the same roof. ammella kept the grocery on the ground floor. portoghese lived upstairs in the tenement. he was a prosperous, peaceful man, with a family of bright children, with whom he romped and played happily when home from his barber shop. the black hand fixed its evil eye upon the family group and saw its chance. one day a letter came demanding a thousand dollars. portoghese put it aside with the comment that this was new york, not italy. other letters followed, threatening harm to his children. portoghese paid no attention, but his wife worried. one day the baby, little vito, was missing, and in hysterics she ran to her husband's shop crying that the black hand had stolen the child. the barber hurried home and sought high and low. at last he came upon the child sitting on ammella's doorstep; he had wandered away and brought up at the grocery; asked where he had been, the child pointed to the store. portoghese flew in and demanded to know what ammella was doing with his boy. the grocer was in a bad humor, and swore at him. there was an altercation, and ammella attacked the barber with a broom, beating him and driving him away from his door. black with anger, portoghese ran to his room and returned with a revolver. in the fight that followed he shot ammella through the head. he was arrested and thrown into jail. in the hospital the grocer hovered between life and death for many weeks. portoghese lay in the tombs awaiting trial for more than a year, believing still that he was the victim of a black hand conspiracy. when at last the trial came on, his savings were all gone, and of the once prosperous and happy man only a shadow was left. he sat in the court-room and listened in moody silence to the witnesses who told how he had unjustly suspected and nearly murdered his friend. he was speedily convicted, and the day of his sentence was fixed for christmas eve. it was certain that it would go hard with him. the italians were too prone to shoot and stab, said the newspapers, and the judges were showing no mercy. the witnesses had told the truth, but there were some things they did not know and that did not get into the evidence. the prisoner's wife was ill from grief and want; their savings of years gone to lawyer's fees, they were on the verge of starvation. the children were hungry. with the bells ringing in the glad holiday, they were facing bitter homelessness in the winter streets, for the rent was in arrears and the landlord would not wait. and "papa" away now for the second christmas, and maybe for many yet to come! ten, the lawyer and jury had said: this was new york, not italy. in the tombs the prisoner said it over to himself, bitterly. he had thought only of defending his own. so now he stood looking the judge and the jury in the face, yet hardly seeing them. he saw only the prison gates opening for him, and the gray walls shutting him out from his wife and little ones for--how many christmases was it? one, two, three--he fell to counting them over mentally and did not hear when his lawyer whispered and nudged him with his elbow. the clerk repeated his question, but he merely shook his head. what should he have to say? had he not said it to these men and they did not believe him? about little vito who was lost, and his wife who cried her eyes out because of the black hand letters. he---- there was a step behind him, and a voice he knew spoke. it was the voice of ammella, his neighbor, with whom he used to be friends before--before that day. "please, your honor, let this man go! it is christmas, and we should have no unkind thoughts. i have none against filippo here, and i ask you to let him go." it grew very still in the court-room as he spoke and paused for an answer. lawyers looked up from their briefs in astonishment. the jurymen in the box leaned forward and regarded the convicted man and his victim with rapt attention. such a plea had not been heard in that place before. portoghese stood mute; the voice sounded strange and far away to him. he felt a hand upon his shoulder that was the hand of a friend, and shifted his feet uncertainly, but made no response. the gray-haired judge regarded the two gravely but kindly. "your wish comes from a kind heart," he said. "but this man has been convicted. the law must be obeyed. there is nothing in it that allows us to let a guilty man go free." the jurymen whispered together and one of them arose. "your honor," he said, "a higher law than any made by man came into the world at christmas--that we love one another. these men would obey it. will you not let them? the jury pray as one man that you let mercy go before justice on this holy eve." a smile lit up judge o'sullivan's face. "filippo portoghese," he said, "you are a very fortunate man. the law bids me send you to prison for ten years, and but for a miraculous chance would have condemned you to death. but the man you maimed for life pleads for you, and the jury that convicted you begs that you go free. the court remembers what you have suffered and it knows the plight of your family, upon whom the heaviest burden of your punishment would fall. go, then, to your home. and to you, gentlemen, a happy holiday such as you have given him and his! this court stands adjourned." the voice of the crier was lost in a storm of applause. the jury rose to their feet and cheered judge, complainant, and defendant. portoghese, who had stood as one dazed, raised eyes that brimmed with tears to the bench and to his old neighbor. he understood at last. ammella threw his arm around him and kissed him on both cheeks, his disfigured face beaming with joy. one of the jurymen, a jew, put his hand impulsively in his pocket, emptied it into his hat, and passed the hat to his neighbor. all the others followed his example. the court officer dropped in half a dollar as he stuffed its contents into the happy italian's pocket. "for little vito," he said, and shook his hand. "ah!" said the foreman of the jury, looking after the reunited friends leaving the court-room arm in arm; "it is good to live in new york. a merry christmas to you, judge!" the snow babies' christmas "all aboard for coney island!" the gates of the bridge train slammed, the whistle shrieked, and the cars rolled out past rows of houses that grew smaller and lower to jim's wondering eyes, until they quite disappeared beneath the track. he felt himself launching forth above the world of men, and presently he saw, deep down below, the broad stream with ships and ferry-boats and craft going different ways, just like the tracks and traffic in a big, wide street; only so far away was it all that the pennant on the topmast of a vessel passing directly under the train seemed as if it did not belong to his world at all. jim followed the white foam in the wake of the sloop with fascinated stare, until a puffing tug bustled across its track and wiped it out. then he settled back in his seat with a sigh that had been pent up within him twenty long, wondering minutes since he limped down the subway at twenty-third street. it was his first journey abroad. jim had never been to the brooklyn bridge before. it is doubtful if he had ever heard of it. if he had, it was as of something so distant, so unreal, as to have been quite within the realm of fairyland, had his life experience included fairies. it had not. jim's frail craft had been launched in little italy, half a dozen miles or more up-town, and there it had been moored, its rovings being limited at the outset by babyhood and the tenement, and later on by the wreck that had made of him a castaway for life. a mysterious something had attacked one of jim's ankles, and, despite ointments and lotions prescribed by the wise women of the tenement, had eaten into the bone and stayed there. at nine the lad was a cripple with one leg shorter than the other by two or three inches, with a stepmother, a squalling baby to mind for his daily task, hard words and kicks for his wage; for jim was an unprofitable investment, promising no returns, but, rather, constant worry and outlay. the outlook was not the most cheering in the world. but, happily, jim was little concerned about things to come. he lived in the day that is, fighting his way as he could with a leg and a half and a nickname,--"gimpy" they called him for his limp,--and getting out of it what a fellow so handicapped could. after all, there were compensations. when the gang scattered before the cop, it did not occur to him to lay any of the blame to gimpy, though the little lad with the pinched face and sharp eyes had, in fact, done scouting duty most craftily. it was partly in acknowledgment of such services, partly as a concession to his sharper wits, that gimpy was tacitly allowed a seat in the councils of the cave gang, though in the far "kid" corner. he limped through their campaigns with them, learned to swim by "dropping off the dock" at the end of the street into the swirling tide, and once nearly lost his life when one of the bigger boys dared him to run through an election bonfire like his able-bodied comrades. gimpy started to do it at once, but stumbled and fell, and was all but burned to death before the other boys could pull him out. this act of bravado earned him full membership in the gang, despite his tender years; and, indeed, it is doubtful if in all that region there was a lad of his age as tough and loveless as gimpy. the one affection of his barren life was the baby that made it slavery by day. but, somehow, there was that in its chubby foot groping for him in its baby sleep, or in the little round head pillowed on his shoulder, that more than made up for it all. ill luck was surely gimpy's portion. it was not a month after he had returned to the haunts of the gang, a battle-scarred veteran now since his encounter with the bonfire, when "the society's" officers held up the huckster's wagon from which he was crying potatoes with his thin, shrill voice, which somehow seemed to convey the note of pain that was the prevailing strain of his life. they made gimpy a prisoner, limp, stick, and all. the inquiry that ensued as to his years and home setting, the while gimpy was undergoing the incredible experience of being washed and fed regularly three times a day, set in motion the train of events that was at present hurrying him toward coney island in midwinter, with a snow-storm draping the land in white far and near, as the train sped seaward. he gasped as he reviewed the hurrying event of the week: the visit of the doctor from sea breeze, who had scrutinized his ankle as if he expected to find some of the swag of the last raid hidden somewhere about it. gimpy never took his eyes off him during the examination. no word or cry escaped him when it hurt most, but his bright, furtive eyes never left the doctor or lost one of his movements. "just like a weasel caught in a trap," said the doctor, speaking of his charge afterward. but when it was over, he clapped gimpy on the shoulder and said it was all right. he was sure he could help. "have him at the subway to-morrow at twelve," was his parting direction; and gimpy had gone to bed to dream that he was being dragged down the stone stairs by three helmeted men, to be fed to a monster breathing fire and smoke at the foot of the stairs. now his wondering journey was disturbed by a cheery voice beside him. "well, bub, ever see that before?" and the doctor pointed to the gray ocean line dead ahead. gimpy had not seen it, but he knew well enough what it was. "it's the river," he said, "that i cross when i go to italy." "right!" and his companion held out a helping hand as the train pulled up at the end of the journey. "now let's see how we can navigate." and, indeed, there was need of seeing about it. right from the step of the train the snow lay deep, a pathless waste burying street and sidewalk out of sight, blocking the closed and barred gate of dreamland, of radiant summer memory, and stalling the myriad hobby-horses of shows that slept their long winter sleep. not a whinny came on the sharp salt breeze. the strident voice of the carpenter's saw and the rat-tat-tat of his hammer alone bore witness that there was life somewhere in the white desert. the doctor looked in dismay at gimpy's brace and high shoe, and shook his head. "he never can do it. hello, there!" an express wagon had come into view around the corner of the shed. "here's a job for you." and before he could have said jack robinson, gimpy felt himself hoisted bodily into the wagon and deposited there like any express package. from somewhere a longish something that proved to be a christmas-tree, very much wrapped and swathed about, came to keep him company. the doctor climbed up by the driver, and they were off. gimpy recalled with a dull sense of impending events in which for once he had no shaping hand, as he rubbed his ears where the bitter blast pinched, that to-morrow was christmas. a strange group was that which gathered about the supper-table at sea breeze that night. it would have been sufficiently odd to any one anywhere; but to gimpy, washed, in clean, comfortable raiment, with his bad foot set in a firm bandage, and for once no longer sore with the pain that had racked his frame from babyhood, it seemed so unreal that once or twice he pinched himself covertly to see if he were really awake. they came weakly stumping with sticks and crutches and on club feet, the lame and the halt, the children of sorrow and suffering from the city slums, and stood leaning on crutch or chair for support while they sang their simple grace; but neither in their clear childish voices nor yet in the faces that were turned toward gimpy in friendly scrutiny as the last comer, was there trace of pain. their cheeks were ruddy and their eyes bright with the health of outdoors, and when they sang about the "frog in the pond," in response to a spontaneous demand, laughter bubbled over around the table. gimpy, sizing his fellow-boarders up according to the standards of the gang, with the mental conclusion that he "could lick the bunch," felt a warm little hand worming its way into his, and, looking into a pair of trustful baby eyes, choked with a sudden reminiscent pang, but smiled back at his friend and felt suddenly at home. little ellen, with the pervading affections, had added him to her family of brothers. what honors were in store for him in that relation gimpy never guessed. ellen left no one out. when summer came again she enlarged the family further by adopting the president of the united states as her papa, when he came visiting to sea breeze; and by rights gimpy should have achieved a pull such as would have turned the boss of his ward green with envy. it appeared speedily that something unusual was on foot. there was a subdued excitement among the children which his experience diagnosed at first flush as the symptoms of a raid. but the fact that in all the waste of snow on the way over he had seen nothing rising to the apparent dignity of candy-shop or grocery-store made him dismiss the notion as untenable. presently unfamiliar doings developed. the children who could write scribbled notes on odd sheets of paper, which the nurses burned in the fireplace with solemn incantations. something in the locked dining-room was an object of pointed interest. things were going on there, and expeditions to penetrate the mystery were organized at brief intervals, and as often headed off by watchful nurses. when, finally, the children were gotten upstairs and undressed, from the headposts of each of thirty-six beds there swung a little stocking, limp and yawning with mute appeal. gimpy had "caught on" by this time: it was a wishing-bee, and old santa claus was supposed to fill the stockings with what each had most desired. the consultation over, baby george had let him into the game. baby george did not know enough to do his own wishing, and the thirty-five took it in hand while he was being put to bed. "let's wish for some little dresses for him," said big mariano, who was the baby's champion and court of last resort; "that's what he needs." and it was done. gimpy smiled a little disdainfully at the credulity of the "kids." the santa claus fake was out of date a long while in his tenement. but he voted for baby george's dresses, all the same, and even went to the length of recording his own wish for a good baseball bat. gimpy was coming on. going to bed in that queer place fairly "stumped" gimpy. "peelin'" had been the simplest of processes in little italy. here they pulled a fellow's clothes off only to put on another lot, heavier every way, with sweater and hood and flannel socks and mittens to boot, as if the boy were bound for a tussle with the storm outside rather than for his own warm bed. and so, in fact, he was. for no sooner had he been tucked under the blankets, warm and snug, than the nurses threw open all the windows, every one, and let the gale from without surge in and through as it listed; and so they left them. gimpy shivered as he felt the frosty breath of the ocean nipping his nose, and crept under the blanket for shelter. but presently he looked up and saw the other boys snoozing happily like so many little eskimos equipped for the north pole, and decided to keep them company. for a while he lay thinking of the strange things that had happened that day, since his descent into the subway. if the gang could see him now. but it seemed far away, with all his past life--farther than the river with the ships deep down below. out there upon the dark waters, in the storm, were they sailing now, and all the lights of the city swallowed up in gloom? presently he heard through it all the train roaring far off in the subway and many hurrying feet on the stairs. the iron gates clanked--and he fell asleep with the song of the sea for his lullaby. mother nature had gathered her child to her bosom, and the slum had lost in the battle for a life. the clock had not struck two when from the biggest boy's bed in the corner there came in a clear, strong alto the strains of "ring, ring, happy bells!" and from every room childish voices chimed in. the nurses hurried to stop the chorus with the message that it was yet five hours to daylight. they were up, trimming the tree in the dining-room; at the last moment the crushing announcement had been made that the candy had been forgotten, and a midnight expedition had set out for the city through the storm to procure it. a semblance of order was restored, but cat naps ruled after that, till, at day-break, a gleeful shout from ellen's bed proclaimed that santa claus had been there, in very truth, and had left a dolly in her stocking. it was the signal for such an uproar as had not been heard on that beach since port arthur fell for the last time upon its defenders three months before. from thirty-six stockings came forth a veritable army of tops, balls, wooden animals of unknown pedigree, oranges, music-boxes, and cunning little pocket-books, each with a shining silver quarter in, love-tokens of one in the great city whose heart must have been light with happy dreams in that hour. gimpy drew forth from his stocking a very able-bodied baseball bat and considered it with a stunned look. santa claus was a fake, but the bat--there was no denying that, and he _had_ wished for one the very last thing before he fell asleep! daylight struggled still with a heavy snow-squall when the signal was given for the carol "christmas time has come again," and the march down to breakfast. that march! on the third step the carol was forgotten and the band broke into one long cheer that was kept up till the door of the dining-room was reached. at the first glimpse within, baby george's wail rose loud and grievous: "my chair! my chair!" but it died in a shriek of joy as he saw what it was that had taken its place. there stood the christmas-tree, one mass of shining candles, and silver and gold, and angels with wings, and wondrous things of colored paper all over it from top to bottom. gimpy's eyes sparkled at the sight, skeptic though he was at nine; and in the depths of his soul he came over, then and there, to santa claus, to abide forever--only he did not know it yet. to make the children eat any breakfast, with three gay sleds waiting to take the girls out in the snow, was no easy matter; but it was done at last, and they swarmed forth for a holiday in the open. all days are spent in the open at sea breeze,--even the school is a tent,--and very cold weather only shortens the brief school hour; but this day was to be given over to play altogether. winter it was "for fair," but never was coasting enjoyed on new england hills as these sledding journeys on the sands where the surf beat in with crash of thunder. the sea itself had joined in making christmas for its little friends. the day before, a regiment of crabs had come ashore and surrendered to the cook at sea breeze. christmas morn found the children's "floor"--they called the stretch of clean, hard sand between high-water mark and the surf-line by that name--filled with gorgeous shells and pebbles, and strange fishes left there by the tide overnight. the fair-weather friends who turn their backs upon old ocean with the first rude blasts of autumn little know what wonderful surprises it keeps for those who stand by it in good and in evil report. when the very biggest turkey that ever strutted in barnyard was discovered steaming in the middle of the dinner-table and the report went round in whispers that ice-cream had been seen carried in pails, and when, in response to a pull at the bell, matron thomsen ushered in a squad of smiling mamas and papas to help eat the dinner, even gimpy gave in to the general joy, and avowed that christmas was "bully." perhaps his acceptance of the fact was made easier by a hasty survey of the group of papas and mamas, which assured him that his own were not among them. a fleeting glimpse of the baby, deserted and disconsolate, brought the old pucker to his brow for a passing moment; but just then big fred set off a snapper at his very ear, and thrusting a pea-green fool's-cap upon his head, pushed him into the roistering procession that hobbled round and round the table, cheering fit to burst. and the babies that had been brought down from their cribs, strapped, because their backs were crooked, in the frames that look so cruel and are so kind, lifted up their feeble voices as they watched the show with shining eyes. little baby helen, who could only smile and wave "by-by" with one fat hand, piped in with her tiny voice, "here i is!" it was all she knew, and she gave that with a right good will, which is as much as one can ask of anybody, even of a snow baby. if there were still lacking a last link to rivet gimpy's loyalty to his new home for good and all, he himself supplied it when the band gathered under the leafless trees--for sea breeze has a grove in summer, the only one on the island--and whiled away the afternoon making a "park" in the snow, with sea-shells for curbing and boundary stones. when it was all but completed, gimpy, with an inspiration that then and there installed him leader, gave it the finishing touch by drawing a policeman on the corner with a club, and a sign, "keep off the grass." together they gave it the air of reality and the true local color that made them feel, one and all, that now indeed they were at home. toward evening a snow-storm blew in from the sea, but instead of scurrying for shelter, the little eskimos joined the doctor in hauling wood for a big bonfire on the beach. there, while the surf beat upon the shore hardly a dozen steps away, and the storm whirled the snow-clouds in weird drifts over sea and land, they drew near the fire, and heard the doctor tell stories that seemed to come right out of the darkness and grow real while they listened. dr. wallace is a southerner and lived his childhood with br'er rabbit and mr. fox, and they saw them plainly gamboling in the firelight as the story went on. for the doctor knows boys and loves them, that is how. no one would have guessed that they were cripples, every one of that rugged band that sat down around the christmas supper-table, rosy-cheeked and jolly--cripples condemned, but for sea breeze, to lives of misery and pain, most of them to an early death and suffering to others. for their enemy was that foe of mankind, the white plague, that for thousands of years has taken tithe and toll of the ignorance and greed and selfishness of man, which sometimes we call with one name--the slum. gimpy never would have dreamed that the tenement held no worse threat for the baby he yearned for than himself, with his crippled foot, when he was there. these things you could not have told even the fathers and mothers; or if you had, no one there but the doctor and the nurses would have believed you. they knew only too well. but two things you could make out, with no trouble at all, by the lamplight: one, that they were one and all on the homeward stretch to health and vigor--gimpy himself was a different lad from the one who had crept shivering to bed the night before; and this other, that they were the sleepiest crew of youngsters ever got together. before they had finished the first verse of "america" as their good night, standing up like little men, half of them were down and asleep with their heads pillowed upon their arms. and so miss brass, the head nurse, gathered them in and off to bed. "and now, boys," she said as they were being tucked in, "your prayers." and of those who were awake each said his own: willie his "now i lay me," mariano his "ave," but little bent from the eastside tenement wailed that he didn't have any. bent was a newcomer like gimpy. "then," said six-year-old morris, resolutely,--he also was a jew,--"i learn him mine vat my fader tol' me." and getting into bent's crib, he crept under the blanket with his little comrade. gimpy saw them reverently pull their worsted caps down over their heads, and presently their tiny voices whispered together, in the jargon of the east side, their petition to the father of all, who looked lovingly down through the storm upon his children of many folds. the last prayer was said, and all was still. through the peaceful breathing of the boys all about him, gimpy, alone wakeful, heard the deep bass of the troubled sea. the storm had blown over. through the open windows shone the eternal stars, as on that night in the judean hills when shepherds herded their flocks and "the angels of the lord came down." he did not know. he was not thinking of angels; none had ever come to his slum. but a great peace came over him and filled his child-soul. it may be that the nurse saw it shining in his eyes and thought it fever. it may be that she, too, was thinking in that holy hour. she bent over him and laid a soothing hand upon his brow. "you must sleep now," she said. something that was not of the tenement, something vital, with which his old life had no concern, welled up in gimpy at the touch. he caught her hand and held it. "i will if you will sit here," he said. he could not help it. "why, jimmy?" she stroked back his shock of stubborn hair. something glistened on her eyelashes as she looked at the forlorn little face on the pillow. how should gimpy know that he was at that moment leading another struggling soul by the hand toward the light that never dies? "'cause," he gulped hard, but finished manfully--"'cause i love you." gimpy had learned the lesson of christmas, "and glory shone around." 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. 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 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. 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 "panhandlers' 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 door-keeper, 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 passsageways, 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 pig-sty 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-à-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 eyeing 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 brown-stone 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 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, scrub-women,--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, 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 aniseseed, 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. 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 millionaire 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 bandits' 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 glided 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 poor-house 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. 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 reëchoed 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 doorsteps 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, or 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 villainous 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 nisby--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. 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 their 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 doorstep 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 protégé 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. 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 th 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. the burgomaster's christmas the burgomaster was in a bad humor. the smoke from his long pipe, which ordinarily rose in leisurely meditative rings signaling official calm and fair weather, came to-day in short, angry puffs as he tossed his mail impatiently about on the desk. a reprimand from headquarters, where they knew about as much of a burgomaster's actual work as he of the prime minister's! less. those bureaucrats never came in touch with real things. he smiled a little grimly as he thought that that was what his own people had said of him when twenty years before he had come from the capital to the little provincial town with his mind firmly made up to many things which--well, a man grows older and wiser. life has its lessons for men, though it pass by the red tape in department bureaus. that never changes. his people and he, now--the stern wrinkle in the furrowed forehead relaxed, and he leaned back in his chair, blowing a long, contented ring, which brought a sigh of relief from the old clerk in the outer office. the skies were clearing. in truth, despite his habitual sternness of manner, there was no more beloved man in the town of hammel than the burgomaster. his kindness of heart was proverbial. the law had in him a faithful executor; the staff of office was no willow wand in his hand to bend to every wind that blew. to the evil-doer he was a hard master, but many were the stories that were whispered of how, having sent a thief to jail, he had taken care of his wife and children, who were not to blame. in fact, word had come from more than one distant town of how this or that ne'er-do-well, after squaring himself with the law in burgomaster brent's jurisdiction, had made a new start, helped somehow where he might have expected frowns and suspicion. but of this, hammel tongues were careful not to wag within that official's hearing. those things were his secret, if, indeed,--the matrons wagged their heads knowingly,--they were not his wife's, the burgomasterinde's; and so they were to stay. whether something of all this had come to smooth the burgomaster's brow or not, it was not for long. there was a tap on the door, and, in answer to his brisk "come in," there entered jens, the forester, with a swarthy, sullen-looking prisoner. jens saluted and stood, cap in hand. "black hans," he said briefly. "we took him last night in the meadow brake with a young roe." the burgomaster's face grew cold and stern. black hans was an old offender. as a magistrate the burgomaster had given him a chance twice, but he was a confirmed poacher, who would rather lie out in the woods through a cold winter's night on the chance of getting a deer, and of getting into jail, too, than work a day at good wages, clever blacksmith though he was. now he had been caught red-handed, and would be made to suffer for it. the burgomaster bent lowering brows upon the prisoner. "you couldn't keep from stealing the count's deer, not even at christmas," he said harshly. the poacher looked up. rough as he was, he was not a bad-looking fellow. the free, if lawless, life he led was in his face and bearing. "the deer is wild. they're for the man as can take 'em, if the count do claim 'em," he said doggedly, and halted, as with a sudden thought. something had entered with him and the forester, and was even then filling the room with a suggestion of good cheer to come. it was the smell of the yule goose roasting in the burgomaster's kitchen. black hans looked straight into the eye of his inquisitor. "i didn't have none--for me young ones," he added. it was not said defiantly, but as a mere statement of fact. an angry reply rose to the official's lip, but he checked himself. "take him to the lock-up," he ordered shortly, and the forester went out with his charge. the burgomaster heard the outer door close behind them, and turned wearily to his mail. the count had been greatly wrought up over the depredations of black hans and his kind, and would insist on an example being made of him. bad blood always came of these cases, for the game law was not well thought of in the land in these democratic days. there lingered yet resentfully the recollection of the days not so long since when to take "the king's deer" brought a man to the block, or to the treadmill for life. and the family of this fellow black hans, what was to become of them? the burgomaster's gaze wandered abstractedly over the envelop he was opening and rested on an unfamiliar stamp. he held it up and took a closer look. oh, yes; the new christmas stamp. he knew it well enough, with its design of the great sanatorium for tubercular children that had been built out of the proceeds of other years' sales. it was a pretty picture, and a worthy cause. in all denmark there was none that so laid hold of the popular fancy. it was the word "yule," with its magic, that did it. there was no other inscription on the stamp, and none was needed. as his glance dwelt upon it, a curious change came over the picture. it was no longer the great white house that he saw, with its many bright lights, but a wretched hut, with a crooked chimney, and rags stopping a broken pane in its only window. the dull glow of a tallow dip struggled through the grime that lay thick upon the unbroken panes. against one the face of a child was pressed, a poor, pinched face that spoke of cold and hunger and weary waiting for some one who was always late. something that was very much like real pain made the burgomaster wince as the words of black hans came back to him, "i didn't have none--for me young ones." he shook his head impatiently. why, then, did he not work for them, instead of laying it up against his betters? the sober little face at the window kept looking out into the night, straight past the burgomaster, as if he were not there. how many of them in that hut? seven, eight, nine, the burgomaster counted mentally; or was it ten ragged, underfed little ones, with the careworn mother who slaved from sunrise till night for them and her rascal husband? that child annie who limped so pitifully, the district physician had told him that very morning, had tuberculosis of the hip-joint, and it was killing her slowly. poor child! surely this was she at the window. her face looked pinched and small; yet she must be nearly eleven. eleven! the letter dropped unopened from the burgomaster's hand. that would have been the age of their own little girl had she lived. his pipe went out and grew cold; his thoughts were far away. they were travelling slowly back over a road he had shunned these many years, until he had almost lost the trail. his little gertrude, their only child, a happy, winsome elf had filled the house with sunshine and laughter until in one brief month her life had gone out like the flame of a candle and left them alone! since then they had been a lonesome couple. tenderly attached to each other, but both silent, reserved people, husband and wife had locked their grief in their own hearts and tried to live it down. had they? he could even then see his wife at her work in the room across the yard. as she bent over her knitting, he noticed a little stoop which he had not seen before; and surely her hair was turning gray at the temples. his had long been so. they were growing old in their childless home. with a sudden pang there came to him a realization of the selfishness of his grief, which had shut her out of it. christmas eve! what a happy time they used to have together in the old days around the tree! even now he could hear the glad voices of children from the grocer's across the street, where they were making ready for theirs. in their house there had not been one since--since their gertrude left them. there was jens, the forester, carrying in a christmas tree over there even now--jens who had caught black hans. what sort of christmas would they keep in his hut, with the father locked up, sure of a heavy fine, which meant a long time in jail, since he had no money to settle with? the childish face with the grave eyes was at the window again, keeping its dismal watch. eleven years! his mind went back, swiftly this time, over the freshly broken road to the days when the tree was lighted in their home on christmas eve. of all the nights in the year, it had been the loneliest since, with just the two of them alone at the table, growing old. a flood of tenderness swept over the burgomaster, and with it came a sudden resolve. it was not yet too late. he rose and slammed the desk down hard, leaving the rest of his mail unopened. three o'clock! almost time to light the candles, and this night he would light them himself. yes, he would. he tapped on the window and beckoned to jens, who was coming out of the grocery store. in the vestibule they held a brief whispered consultation that concluded with the warning, "and don't you tell my wife." the old clerk heard it and gave a start. what secret did the burgomaster have from the burgomasterinde which jens, the forester, might share? but he remembered the day, in time, and bestowed upon himself a knowing wink. he, too, had his secrets. jens was less quick-witted. he offered some objection apparently, but it was promptly overruled by the burgomaster, who pushed him out with a friendly but decisive nod and bade him be gone. "very little ones--two, mind. and don't let her see." whereupon the burgomaster put on his overcoat and went out, too. before the church bells rang in the holy eve, all the gossips in town were busy with the report that the burgomaster had been buying enough christmas toys and candles to stock an orphan asylum. what had come over the man? five dolls, counted the toy-shop woman, with eyes that grew wide in the telling--five! and they alone, the two of them, in the big house with never a christmas tree there that any one could remember! it must be that they were expecting company. nothing was further from the mind of the burgomasterinde as she went along with her preparations for the holiday. it had been a lonesome day with her, for all she had tried to fill it with housewifely tasks. christmas eve always was. now, as she sat with her knitting, her thoughts dwelt upon the days long gone when it had meant something to them; when a child's laughter had thrilled her mother heart. to her it was no unfamiliar road she was travelling. the memory of her child, which her husband had tried to shut out of his life lest it unman him for his work, she had cherished in her heart, and all life's burdens had been lightened and sweetened by it. her one grief was that this of all things she could not share with him. no one ever heard her speak gertrude's name, but there was sometimes a wistful look in her face which caused the burgomaster vague alarm, and once or twice had led to grave conferences with the family practitioner about mrs. brent's health. the old doctor, who was also the family friend, shook his head. the burgomasterinde was a well woman; his pills were not needed. once he had hinted that her loss--but the burgomaster had interrupted him hastily. she would get over that, if indeed she had not quite forgotten; to stir it up would do no good. and the doctor, who was wise in other ways than those of his books, dropped the subject. the burgomasterinde had seen black hans brought in in charge of jens, and understood what the trouble was. as he was led away to the jail, her woman's heart yearned for his children. she knew them well. the town gossips were right: the path to the poacher's hut her familiar feet had found oftener than her stern husband guessed. the want and neglect in that wretched home stirred her to pity; but more than that it was the little crippled girl who drew her with the memory of her own. she had overheard the doctor telling her husband that there was no help for her where she was, and all day her mind had been busy with half-formed plans to get her away to the great seashore hospital where such cripples were made whole, if there was any help for them. now, as she passed them in review, with the picture of black hans behind the bars for their background, a purpose grew up in her mind and took shape. they should not starve and be cold on christmas eve, if their father _was_ in jail. she would make christmas for them herself. and hard upon the heels of this resolve trod a thought that made her drop her knitting and gaze long and musingly across the yard to the window at which her husband sat buried in his mail. the burgomaster's face was turned from her. she could not see that he held in his hand the very letter with the christmas stamp that had stirred unwonted thoughts within him; but she knew the furrow that had grown in the years of lonely longing. she had watched it deepen, and he had not deceived her, but she had vainly sought a way out. all at once she knew the way. they would keep christmas again as of old, the two--nay, the three of them together. with a quick smile that had yet in it a shadow of fright, she went about carrying out her purpose. so it befell that when jens, the forester, was making off for the woods where the christmas trees grew, shaking his head at the burgomaster's queer commission, the voice of the burgomasterinde called him back to the kitchen door, and he received the second and the greater shock of the day. "get two wee ones," she wound up her directions, "and bring them here to the back door. don't tell my husband, and be sure he does not see." jens stared. "but the burgomaster--" he began. she stopped him. "no matter about the burgomaster," she said briskly. "only don't let him know. bring them here as soon as it is dark." and jens departed, shaking his head in hopeless bewilderment. the early winter twilight had fallen when he returned with two green bundles, one of which by dint of much strategy he smuggled into the front office without the burgomasterinde seeing him, while he delivered the other at the back door without the burgomaster being the wiser, this being made easier by the fact that the latter had not yet returned from his visit to the shops. when, a little while later he came home, tiptoeing in like a guilty santa claus on his early evening rounds, he shut himself in alone. profound quiet reigned in the official residence for a full hour after dark. in both wings of the house the shutters were closed tight. in one the burgomasterinde was presumably busy with her household duties; in the other the burgomaster was occupied with a task that would have made the old clerk doubt the evidence of his eyes had he himself not been at that moment engaged in the same identical business at his own home. two small christmas trees stood upon the table, from which law books and legal papers had been cleared with an unceremonious haste that had left them in an undignified heap on the floor. the burgomaster between them was fixing colored wax candles, cornucopias, and paper dolls in their branches. he eyed a bag of oranges ruefully. they were too heavy for the little trees, but then they would do to bank about the roots. to be sure, they had left these behind in the woods, but the fact was not apparent: each little tree was planted in a huge flower-pot, as jens had received his orders, just as if it had grown there. one brief moment the burgomaster paused in his absurd task. it was when he had put the last candle in place that something occurred to him which made him stand awhile in deep thought, gazing fixedly at the trees. then he went to his desk, and from a back drawer, seldom used, took out something that shone like silver in the light. perhaps it was that which made him screen his eyes with his hand when he saw it. it was a little silver star, such as many a christmas tree bore at its top that night to tell the children of the star of bethlehem. the burgomaster sat and looked at it while the furrow grew deeper in his forehead; then he put it back gently into its envelop and closed the desk. it was nearly time for dinner when he straightened up and heaved a sigh of contentment. the candles on one of the little trees were lighted, and all was ready. "if only," he said uncertainly--"if only she is not in now." could some good fairy have given him second sight to pierce the walls between his office and his wife's room, what he saw there would certainly have made him believe he had taken leave of his senses. jens had just gone out with one christmas tree, all hung with children's toys. on the table stood the other in its pot, a vision of beauty. the mistress of the house sat before it with a little box in her lap from which she took one cherished trinket after another, last of all a silvery angel with folded wings. a tear fell upon it as she set it in the tree, but she wiped this away and stood back, surveying her work with happy eyes. it _was_ beautiful. "i wonder where jonas is. i haven't heard his step for an hour." she listened at the door. all was quiet. "i will just carry it over and surprise him when he comes in." and she went out into the hall with her shining burden. at that precise moment the door of the office was opened, and the burgomaster came out, carrying his christmas tree. they met upon the landing. for a full minute they stood looking at each other in stunned silence. it was the burgomaster who broke it. "you were so lonely," he said huskily, "and i thought of our gertrude." she put down her tree, and went to him. "look, jonas," she said, with her head on his shoulder, and pointed where it stood. he saw through blurring tears the child's precious belongings from her last christmas,--their last christmas,--and he bent down and kissed her. "i know," he said simply; "it was black hans' little annie. see!" he drew her into his office, "i made one for her. jens shall take it over." she hid her face on his breast. "he just went with one from me," she sobbed, struggling between laughter and tears; and as he started, she hugged him close. "but we need this one. i tell you, jonas, what we will do: we will send it to black hans in the jail." and even so it came to pass. to jens's final and utter stupefaction, he was bidden to carry the fourth and last of the trees to the lock-up, where it cheered black hans that christmas eve. it was noticed both by the turnkey and by the poacher that it bore a bright silver star at the top, but neither could know that it was to be a star of hope indeed for little annie and her dark home. for so it had been settled between the burgomaster and his wife, as they pinned it on together and wished each other a right merry christmas, with many, many more to come, that happy night.