JIST DOGS!
Jist dogs! Of all the positions held during my four years in the
underbrush none appealed to me so much as that of license inspector for
the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It was
ideal for my purpose—learning conditions in the tenements as actually
existing, meeting the tenement-dwellers in their homes and as fellow
human beings.
If the job were an easy one I would be more chary about making such a
statement for fear all those persons living or being in Greenwich
Village, who refer to themselves as “we villagers,” would descend on the
manager of the A. S. P. C. A. as boll-weevils take possession of a field
of young and luxuriant cotton.
To prevent such a disaster I state definitely—a license inspector for
the A. S. P. C. A. earns every penny of his or her salary. It is a
house-to-house, rain-or-shine, freeze-or-sunstroke job. It means going
up and down stairs from eight-thirty in the morning to five in the
afternoon. Wherever a dog is kept there must the inspector go.
My duties as a social service worker for Bellevue Hospital took me all
over New York City—East Side and West Side, from the Bronx to the
Battery. As inspector for the A. S. P. C. A. my district extended from
the north side of East Fourteenth Street to the south side of East
Seventy-ninth, from Madison Avenue to East River.
It included some of the oldest, most dilapidated, and slimiest of filthy
tenements to be found in the greater city, and some of the newest, best
planned, and best kept of the model tenements. It also included many
homes of well-to-do persons and many palaces of multimillionaires. It
was a fair slice of the greatest jungle of civilization.
If there is a nationality on the globe not represented in that district,
I never heard of it. It is a district in which anybody from anywhere may
be met any day. Reading my diary it would seem that I met somebody from
everywhere almost every day. That is, with one exception—I never met a
Protestant minister of the Gospel.
Every profession, every trade in every walk of life, but never a
Protestant minister of the Gospel.
The work was quite simple. On entering a tenement I would hunt up the
janitor.
“How are you, janitor?” I would greet, and the rougher and more
dishevelled the woman the more courteously sympathetic I would make my
tone. “I’m your inspector and have come to go through your house.”
Invariably on this announcement an expression of concern, sometimes
amounting to consternation, would flash into her face. Then, always
hastily, I would add: “I’m calling on all the dogs in your house. How
many are there?”
“Oh, dogs!” she would exclaim, and the troubled expression would be
wiped off by a look of relief, sometimes by a smile.
Often, instead of replying to my question, she would protest her regret
that I was not some other variety of inspector—one who would make the
Guineas up-stairs stop throwing garbage out their windows, or maybe
reprove the drunken Irishwoman for cursing her. Once I let her begin on
her personal woes and it meant a half-hour hold-up for me.
The woes of a tenement janitor are many and various—like setting traps
on the stairs whereby she may fall and break her neck, or pelting her
with rotten eggs. This last was a favorite method during the war of
dealing with janitors suspected of German sympathies. However high the
cost of living might soar, an ample quantity of unfresh eggs could
always be found among Italian tenants to chase a German janitor to her
lair.
Jist dogs! Once past the janitor and provided with the number and
location of all the dogs in her house I made my way, knocking at the
doors behind which was supposed to be a dog.
“How do you do? I’m your inspector,” I would greet the person opening
the door. “I’m calling on your dog.”
As with the janitor this statement of my business produced a reaction
pleasing enough to put the person, usually the woman head of the family,
in a good humor. Almost invariably she invited me in to rest or wait
while she rummaged through various boxes and tin cans, searching for her
dog’s license.
It was when I accepted her invitation that I got real information.
Chatting about the family pet led naturally to intimate details of her
family life, her neighbors, their jobs and wages.
Some day, perhaps, a dog-loving writer will make a book about the
exploits of dog heroes. Once he or she begins this work they will find
many trails leading into the tenement homes of Greater New York. I found
several real heroes among the dogs in my district.
One handsome collie had saved his mistress and a six months’ old baby
from being burned alive. The woman, having been unable to sleep for some
time, was given a narcotic and fell asleep in the middle of the
forenoon. An hour or so later she awoke: the dog was dragging her from
her bed by the hair of her head. He had literally torn her night-dress
into rags trying to arouse her. The room was stifling with smoke and her
bed in flames.
The fire was supposed to have been started by a smoker in an upper story
of the apartment-house throwing the butt of his cigarette out the window
and onto an awning over the woman’s window. From the awning the curtain
caught, and from that her bed.
In the next apartment a woman had put her six months’ old baby to sleep
and had gone up-stairs to visit a neighbor. A bit of the flaming awning
was blown through the window and lighting in the baby’s cradle set its
pillow on fire.
This was not a question of self-preservation on the part of the dog. He
was in the streets taking his morning run when his mistress took the
narcotic. Knowing he would return shortly she left the outer door of her
apartment ajar. The dog, had he been actuated by an instinct for
self-preservation, might easily have fled from the flaming room and
aroused the house by his barks. Instead he risked his own life to drag
his mistress from the jaws of death.
Another dog hero lived on Avenue A: To him fate was not so kind as to
the collie. When scarcely more than a pup he saved the life of a child.
It is true the child was unknown to him, and his saving it was treated
as a casual happening. Out walking at his master’s heels on a Sunday
afternoon, he chanced to be passing at the instant that a two-year-old
child, having climbed on top of the one plank wall separating the island
of Manhattan from the waters of East River, fell in.
“Right in after it went Buster, quicker’n a wink,” the master, a little
old cripple, told me when I paid my first call on this hero. “I’d taught
’im to jump in the river after sticks. I guess when he heard that baby’s
splash he thought it was a stick. He was right there when she comes up,
an’ got his teeth tangled in her skirts somehow. The way he paddled with
those front paws of his’n. He kept his grip till they could get a boat
to ’im and take the baby. Then Buster swum back to shore. He was that
far gone I had to help ’im land.”
While listening to the old man I was seated in his shop in the rear of
one of the oldest and most dilapidated tenements in my district. Besides
being the janitor of the tenement he was a mender of pots, pans, and all
things of metal. The corners of his shop were heaped with a
miscellaneous collection of metal articles, useful and ornamental, most
of them of brass, copper, or wrought iron.
“I mends ’em and brushes ’em up a bit when work is slack,” he explained,
while tinkering an old brass kettle, mending a leak near the gracefully
curved spout. "It’s surprisin’ the price some people will pay for that
old junk when I rubs it up a bit.
“Don’t need to have no clock down here,” the old man went on, enjoying
my interest in his dog. “Ten o’clock, twelve, three, and six, sharp,
Buster comes for me. Them’s the times my wife takes her medicine—she’s
bedrid, been like that twenty years. I used to try teasin’ Buster, made
like I didn’t hear ’im bark. He caught on. Now he just puts his head in
that door and barks onct and back he trots. He knows that’s his job, I
guess.”
“His job?” I questioned, not understanding the tinker’s reference.
Having finished mending the kettle he put it to one side and took up a
grinning black face—part of an old wrought-iron fire-dog.
“Takin’ care of my wife. She can’t move nothin’ but her hands, an’ not
them real well.” He was rummaging through a box of old metal parts,
trying to find a screw to fit the hole at the base of the grinning face.
“I props ’er up in bed mornin’s and gives ’er ’er breakfast. Buster does
the rest—gets the comb and brush for ’er; when she finishes with ’em he
puts ’em back on the table.”
Having found a screw to his liking he held it between his teeth while he
scraped the hole with a bit of wire.
“Italian woman and her daughter—they been livin’ on our top floor near
thirty year—is the onliest ones Buster will let cross that door-sill
whilst I’m out. The postman—” He chuckled, as he fitted the screw in the
hole. “Buster hears ’is whistle and meets ’im at the door and takes the
letters. Julie, my wife, says he knows when there’s a letter from Jack.”
Having fitted the screw to the grinning face he began the work of
fastening it to the lower part of the fire-dog.
“Jack’s our grandson. He’s somewhere in France.” Unconsciously he heaved
a sigh that sounded almost like a sob. “Soon as Buster gives a letter
from him to Julie, without her tellin’ ’m nothin’ he trots down here for
me. He knows I wants the news quick as the letter comes. Buster knows.”
Coming in contact with so many dogs, day after day, winding back and
forth in and out of the dirty halls and crooked stairways of the
tenements, memories of Buster and the lame tinker were rubbed from my
mind. Among the bunch of complaints handed me one morning at the office
was a pencil scrawl about a dog that was terrorizing the neighbors
around an address on Avenue A.
When the door of the flat was opened to me I found myself confronted by
the lame tinker, with Buster at his heels. Behind them in the duskiness
of the room I made out the helpless figure of the wife, propped up in
bed and combing her hair.
“This can’t possibly refer to Buster,” I told them, as I handed the
scrawl to the old man.
“Crooks,” he assured me, and having read the letter he passed it on to
his wife.
“This is the only house in this block that hasn’t been broke in,” she
piped, her voice thinned by weakness and much suffering. “It’s Buster.
Crooks can’t git by my dog.”
“It’s a wonder they don’t poison him,” I told them, recalling the number
of dogs whose deaths their owners attributed to poison.
The old tinker glared up at me, a shrewd twinkle in his old eyes. Then
smiling he waved one hand toward his wife.
“It’s her,” he said, with a chuckle of appreciation. “When he was a pup
she trained ’im. He won’t touch nothin’ ’thout it goes through her
hands, not even from me. When I goes to the butcher’s and buys ’im a
bone, he won’t touch it until she tells ’im to.”
“Tell the lady ’bout the pile of boiled sponges youse picked up in the
yard,” the sick woman reminded him.
“Sure! I muster picked up a hundred, fust and last, in the yard between
this house and my shop. You see Buster sleeps in my shop nights.”
“Will a sponge boiled in oil really kill a dog?” I asked, for I had
heard so often since beginning to work in the tenements that such was
the case.
The old man’s face ceased to twinkle; Julie cast down her eyes and
picked at her bed.
“It does worse’n kill ’em,” she told me in a piping whisper. “It make’s
’em pine away and they suffer so, howlin’, squirmin’ with pain, until
you’re glad to see ’em die.”
“You see it’s the sponge swellin’ inside ’em,” the tinker supplemented.
“When you boils a sponge it natu’ly shrivels up to a hard knot. The dog
gnaws it to get the oil,—swallows it. There ain’t nothin’ to be done
unless you take all ’is insides out. We lost four that way before we got
Buster.”
Though I received four other pencilled scrawls written by the same hand
I paid no attention to them. The matter faded from my mind. When I
covered my district I turned about, and again beginning on the north
side of East Fourteenth Street, worked my way up-town. When I reached
the tinker’s address I crossed the little back yard and stopped in the
door of his shop.
He was busy mending a leak in an agate saucepan.
“You see I’m back again,” I announced cheerfully. “No use asking if you
have renewed Buster’s license.”
“Yes. I got it out,” he replied, and though he paused in his work long
enough to glance up at me he did not smile.
Such a different tinker! Something must have gone wrong. I glanced about
the little shop. The place had been stripped. Except for the saucepan, a
couple of pots, and his tools, all on the work-bench at his side, there
was no evidence of his trade. The heaps of old brass, copper, and
wrought iron that had filled all the corners were gone.
“You’ve had a clearing out,” I said, letting him see me looking about
the shop.
“Thieves,” he replied, in the same colorless tone. “Broke in and carried
off everything. These are new.” He motioned to the few tools beside him.
“Where was Buster?”
“I had him killed.”
I could not believe my ears. And the tragedy of the man’s eyes!
“You had Buster killed! What had he done?”
“He hadn’t done nothin’ but what he had oughter do—what I’d taught ’im
to do.” His tone reminded me of a dense fog so saturated with grayness.
“He bit a postman.”
Pushing aside the two pots I took my seat on his work-bench.
“How did he happen to bite the postman?” I asked, thinking it might do
him good to talk his trouble out. “I thought Buster and the postman
understood each other?”
“He was a new postman, one of them fresh guys. Buster barked at ’im, and
Julie called to ’im—warned ’im that the dog would bite. ’Stead of ’im
doin’ what he was told he tried to step into the room.” He straightened
up and his eyes flashed with pride. “Buster pounced on ’im, ’most tore
his shirt offen ’im. I wish to God he’d a tore his liver out, so I do.”
“If he didn’t draw blood why did you have him killed?” I demanded
sternly, for in spite of my sympathy with the old man it appeared to me
that the dog hadn’t had a square deal.
“The postmaster wrote me a letter,” he answered, as he fumbled in an old
leather wallet.
It was on the official paper of the Post-Office Department of the United
States, and was signed by the postmaster of New York City. Coldly
official, it informed the old tinker that unless he got rid of the dog
he would have to get his mail at the general delivery window of the
general post-office.
“I tried to get ’em to leave my mail in the store next door, or with a
friend in the next block.” He shook his head. “It was get rid of Buster
or go to the general post-office.” He paused, but seeing that he had
more to say I waited. “If it hadn’t been for Jack’s bein’ somewheres in
France, I’d a gone to the general office. Jack’s all we’ve got, an’ it
didn’t seem right we should risk not hearin’ from ’im, or”—he paused and
swallowed hard—“or the government in case anything happened to ’im.”
Killing so faithful and intelligent a dog without a more serious attempt
to placate the “fresh guy” seemed a dreadful act. But knowing the
helplessness of the ignorant poor in New York City, I realized the
injustice of finding fault with the old tinker.
Halting in the door of the shop on my way out I glanced back at its
empty corners.
“I suppose the persons who wrote me those complaints against Buster did
all this,” I remarked. “It didn’t take them long to find out that Buster
was gone.”
“They sandbagged the woman on our top floor the night after Buster was
killed.”
Amazed I turned and stared at the old tinker.
“You don’t mean the old Italian mother, who was working and saving to
get money to return to Italy and die in her old home?” I finally
questioned.
The tinker nodded. He was scraping the bottom of a pot preparatory to
applying solder.
“They most worked theyselves to death, her and her daughter. Done
piece-work nights and Sundays,” he told me, glancing up from his task of
blowing on the charcoal in his little bucket with his little bellows.
“The mother was goin’ back, had drawed their savin’ out the bank that
day, an’ was goin’ down the next mornin’ to pay for her passage and get
the balance of her money changed. She stopped in on her way up to say a
few words to Julie—she always done that evenin’s comin’ in from work.
’Bout half an hour later her daughter found her in the hall outside
their door. She’d been knocked senseless and her clothes ’most tore off
looking for her money.”
There was a short silence and the old man began to tinker with the pot.
“Where is she now?” I asked.
“On the Island.” The solder being melted he applied it to the hole in
the bottom of the pot. “They kept her in Bellevue till they seen there
wasn’t no chance of curin’ her. You see, it’s her brain,” he explained
as he wiped his hands on his bedticking apron. “Some of it oozed out
where the sand-bag broke her skull. It stands to reason she never can
have right good sense again, and one side of her’s paralyzed worse than
Julie’s.”
Tommaso was a brindle and white mongrel. Though he had never rescued a
woman, a baby, or any other human, so far as I learned, from a violent
death, I number him first among the dog heroes of my district. His
master and mistress, Mr. and Mrs. Pasquali Dominic, were both natives of
Italy. Meeting for the first time in New York they were married at the
City Hall August 9, 1898. Twenty years, one week, and five days after
this happy event I paid my first call on Tommaso.
Crouched in one corner of the family’s basement
kitchen-living-room-bedroom, he was trying not to watch too greedily the
spoonfuls of thin porridge and the hunks of Italian bread being taken in
alternate swallows by the five youngest of Mr. and Mrs. Dominic’s
eighteen children. Being a gentleman as well as a hero he rose on my
entrance.
“Go way, Tommaso. Come in, lady; he don’t bite,” Mrs. Dominic greeted
me.
On my accepting an invitation to take a seat Tommaso returned to his
corner, and did his best to show me respectful attention while keeping
watch for his hoped-for share of the food—the licking of each child’s
bowl, with a morsel of its bread.
“He a good dog,” Mrs. Dominic assured me. “He take nothin’ ’less I tell
’im. Lucretia, why you scrape your bowl? Give it to Tommaso. Good
Tommaso.”
Like a gentleman Tommaso accepted the offered bowl as though unconscious
that the lickings had been scraped out, and without remarking on the
total absence of his share of Lucretia’s bread. In spite of the too
evident joints of his back-bone and the prominence of his ribs he
refused to give way to the cravings of his appetite.
Day after day he sat among those children, watched them take food which
might have been his had he been a hero of lesser caliber—made a snatch
and fled to the fastnesses of crooked stairs and dark hallways
surrounding him.
Ah, Tommaso! I know what appetite suppression means. I know how it feels
to watch other persons eat food of which you stand in need. I served as
waitress in a fashionable hotel on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. Jist
dogs—both of us, Tommaso!