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.