nod so slight that only a lover's eye could see it. He seized her
disengaged hand. The conductor stuck his head into the car.
"Fourteenth Street!"
A squad of stout, florid men with butchers' aprons started for the
door. The girl arose hastily.
"Mamma!" she called, "steh' auf! Es ist Fourteenth Street."
The little woman woke up, gathered the umbrellas in her arms, and
bustled after the marketmen, her daughter leading the way. He sat as
one dreaming.
"Ach!" he sighed, and ran his hand through his dark hair, "so rasch!"
And he went out after them.
LITTLE WILL'S MESSAGE
"It is that or starve, Captain. I can't get a job. God knows I've
tried, but without a recommend, it's no use. I ain't no good at
beggin'. And--and--there's the childer."
There was a desperate note in the man's voice that made the Captain
turn and look sharply at him. A swarthy, strongly built man in a rough
coat, and with that in his dark face which told that he had lived
longer than his years, stood at the door of the Detective Office. His
hand that gripped the door handle shook so that the knob rattled in
his grasp, but not with fear. He was no stranger to that place. Black
Bill's face had looked out from the Rogues' Gallery longer than most
of those now there could remember. The Captain looked him over in
silence.
"You had better not, Bill," he said. "You know what will come of it.
When you go up again it will be the last time. And up you go, sure."
The man started to say something, but choked it down and went out
without a word. The Captain got up and rang his bell.
"Bill, who was here just now, is off again," he said to the officer
who came to the door. "He says it is steal or starve, and he can't get
a job. I guess he is right. Who wants a thief in his pay? And how can
I recommend him? And still I think he would keep straight if he had
the chance. Tell Murphy to look after him and see what he is up to."
The Captain went out, tugging viciously at his gloves. He was in very
bad humor. The policeman at the Mulberry Street door got hardly a nod
for his cheery "Merry Christmas" as he passed.
"Wonder what's crossed him," he said, looking down the street after
him.
The green lamps were lighted and shone upon the hurrying six o'clock
crowds from the Broadway shops. In the great business buildings the
iron shutters were pulled down and the lights put out, and in a little
while the reporters' boys that carried slips from Headquarters to the
newspaper offices across the street were the only tenants of the
block. A stray policeman stopped now and then on the corner and tapped
the lamp-post reflectively with his club as he looked down the
deserted street and wondered, as his glance rested upon the Chief's
darkened windows, how it felt to have six thousand dollars a year and
every night off. In the Detective Office the Sergeant who had come in
at roll-call stretched himself behind the desk and thought of home.
The lights of a Christmas tree in the abutting Mott Street tenement
shone through his window, and the laughter of children mingled with
the tap of the toy drum. He pulled down the sash in order to hear
better. As he did so, a strong draught swept his desk. The outer door
slammed. Two detectives came in bringing a prisoner between them. A
woman accompanied them.
The Sergeant pulled the blotter toward him mechanically and dipped his
pen.
"What's the charge?" he asked.
"Picking pockets in Fourteenth Street. This lady is the complainant,
Mrs. ----"
The name was that of a well-known police magistrate. The Sergeant
looked up and bowed. His glance took in the prisoner, and a look of
recognition came into his face.
"What, Bill! So soon?" he said.
The prisoner was sullenly silent. He answered the questions put to him
briefly, and was searched. The stolen pocket-book, a small paper
package, and a crumpled letter were laid upon the desk. The Sergeant
saw only the pocket-book.
"Looks bad," he said with wrinkled brow.
"We caught him at it," explained the officer. "Guess Bill has lost
heart. He didn't seem to care. Didn't even try to get away."
The prisoner was taken to a cell. Silence fell once more upon the
office. The Sergeant made a few red lines in the blotter and resumed
his reveries. He was not in a mood for work. He hitched his chair
nearer the window and looked across the yard. But the lights there
were put out, the children's laughter had died away. Out of sorts at
he hardly knew what, he leaned back in his chair, with his hands under
the back of his head. Here it was Christmas Eve, and he at the desk
instead of being out with the old woman buying things for the
children. He thought with a sudden pang of conscience of the sled he
had promised to get for Johnnie and had forgotten. That was hard luck.
And what would Katie say when--
He had got that far when his eye, roaming idly over the desk, rested
upon the little package taken from the thief's pocket. Something about
it seemed to move him with sudden interest. He sat up and reached for
it. He felt it carefully all over. Then he undid the package slowly
and drew forth a woolly sheep. It had a blue ribbon about its neck,
with a tiny bell hung on it.
The Sergeant set the sheep upon the desk and looked at it fixedly for
better than a minute. Having apparently studied out its mechanism, he
pulled its head and it baa-ed. He pulled it once more, and nodded.
Then he took up the crumpled letter and opened it.
This was what he read, scrawled in a child's uncertain hand:--
"Deer Sante Claas--Pease wont yer bring me a sjeep wat bas. Aggie had
won wonst. An Kate wants a dollie offul. In the reere 718 19th Street
by the gas house. Your friend Will."
The Sergeant read it over twice very carefully and glanced over the
page at the sheep, as if taking stock and wondering why Kate's dollie
was not there. Then he took the sheep and the letter and went over to
the Captain's door. A gruff "Come in!" answered his knock. The Captain
was pulling off his overcoat. He had just come in from his dinner.
"Captain," said the Sergeant, "we found this in the pocket of Black
Bill who is locked up for picking Mrs. ----'s pocket an hour ago. It
is a clear case. He didn't even try to give them the slip," and he set
the sheep upon the table and laid the letter beside it.
"Black Bill?" said the Captain, with something of a start; "the
dickens, you say!" And he took up the letter and read it. He was not a
very good penman, was little Will. The Captain had even a harder time
of it than the Sergeant had had making out his message.
Three times he went over it, spelling out the words, and each time
comparing it with the woolly exhibit that was part of the evidence,
before he seemed to understand. Then it was in a voice that would have
frightened little Will very much could he have heard it, and with a
black look under his bushy eyebrows, that he bade the Sergeant "Fetch
Bill up here!" One might almost have expected the little white lamb to
have taken to its heels with fright at having raised such a storm,
could it have run at all. But it showed no signs of fear. On the
contrary it baa-ed quite lustily when the Sergeant should have been
safely out of earshot. The hand of the Captain had accidentally rested
upon the woolly head in putting down the letter. But the Sergeant was
not out of earshot. He heard it and grinned.
An iron door in the basement clanged and there were steps in the
passageway. The doorman brought in Bill. He stood by the door,
sullenly submissive. The Captain raised his head. It was in the shade.
"So you are back, are you?" he said.
The thief nodded.
The Captain bent his brows upon him and said with sudden fierceness,
"You couldn't keep honest a month, could you?"
"They wouldn't let me. Who wants a thief in his pay? And the children
were starving."
It was said patiently enough, but it made the Captain wince all the
same. They were his own words. But he did not give in so easily.
"Starving?" he repeated harshly. "And that's why you got this, I
suppose," and he pushed the sheep from under the newspaper that had
fallen upon it by accident and covered it up.
The thief looked at it and flushed to the temples. He tried to speak
but could not. His face worked, and he seemed to be strangling. In the
middle of his fight to master himself he saw the child's crumpled
message on the desk. Taking a quick step across the room he snatched
it up, wildly, fiercely.
"Captain," he gasped, and broke down utterly. The hardened thief wept
like a woman.
The Captain rang his bell. He stood with his back to the prisoner when
the doorman came in. "Take him down," he commanded. And the iron door
clanged once more behind the prisoner.
Ten minutes later the reporters were discussing across the way the
nature of "the case" which the night promised to develop. They had
piped off the Captain and one of his trusted men leaving the building
together, bound east. Could they have followed them all the way, they
would have seen them get off the car at Nineteenth Street, and go
toward the gas house, carefully scanning the numbers of the houses as
they went. They found one at last before which they halted. The
Captain searched in his pocket and drew forth the baby's letter to
Santa Claus, and they examined the number under the gas lamp. Yes,
that was right. The door was open, and they went right through to the
rear.
Up in the third story three little noses were flattened against the
window pane, and three childish mouths were breathing peep-holes
through which to keep a lookout for the expected Santa Claus. It was
cold, for there was no fire in the room, but in their fever of
excitement the children didn't mind that. They were bestowing all
their attention upon keeping the peep-holes open.
"Do you think he will come?" asked the oldest boy--there were two boys
and a girl--of Kate.
"Yes, he will. I know he will come. Papa said so," said the child in a
tone of conviction.
"I'se so hungry, and I want my sheep," said Baby Will.
"Wait and I'll tell you of the wolf," said his sister, and she took
him on her lap. She had barely started when there were steps on the
stairs and a tap on the door. Before the half-frightened children
could answer it was pushed open. Two men stood on the threshold. One
wore a big fur overcoat. The baby looked at him in wide-eyed wonder.
"Is you Santa Claus?" he asked.
"Yes, my little man, and are you Baby Will?" said a voice that was
singularly different from the harsh one Baby Will's father had heard
so recently in the Captain's office, and yet very like it.
"See. This is for you, I guess," and out of the big roomy pocket came
the woolly sheep and baa-ed right off as if it were his own pasture in
which he was at home. And well might any sheep be content nestling at
a baby heart so brimful of happiness as little Will's was then, child
of a thief though he was.
"Papa spoke for it, and he spoke for Kate, too, and I guess for
everybody," said the bogus Santa Claus, "and it is all right. My sled
will be here in a minute. Now we will just get to work and make ready
for him. All help!"
The Sergeant behind the desk in the Detective Office might have had a
fit had he been able to witness the goings-on in that rear tenement in
the next hour; and then again he might not. There is no telling about
those Sergeants. The way that poor flat laid itself out of a sudden
was fairly staggering. It was not only that a fire was made and that
the pantry filled up in the most extraordinary manner; but a real
Christmas tree sprang up, out of the floor, as it were, and was found
to be all besprinkled with gold and stars and cornucopias with
sugarplums. From the top of it, which was not higher than Santa Claus
could easily reach, because the ceiling was low, a marvellous doll,
with real hair and with eyes that could open and shut, looked down
with arms wide open to take Kate to its soft wax heart. Under the
branches of the tree browsed every animal that went into and came out
of Noah's Ark, and there were glorious games of Messenger Boy and
Three Bad Bears, and honey-cakes and candy apples, and a little
yellow-bird in a cage, and what not? It was glorious. And when the
tea-kettle began to sing, skilfully manipulated by Santa Claus's
assistant, who nominally was known in Mulberry Street as Detective
Sergeant Murphy, it was just too lovely for anything. The baby's eyes
grew wider and wider, and Kate's were shining with happiness, when in
the midst of it all she suddenly stopped and said:--
"But where is papa? Why don't he come?"
Santa Claus gave a little start at the sudden question, but pulled
himself together right away.
"Why, yes," he said, "he must have got lost. Now you are all right we
will just go and see if we can find him. Mrs. McCarthy here next door
will help you keep the kettle boiling and the lights burning till we
come back. Just let me hear that sheep baa once more. That's right! I
bet we'll find papa." And out they went.
An hour later, while Mr. ----, the Magistrate, and his good wife were
viewing with mock dismay the array of little stockings at their hearth
in their fine up-town house, and talking of the adventure of Mrs.
----with the pickpocket, there came a ring at the door-bell and the
Captain of the detectives was ushered in. What he told them I do not
know, but this I do know, that when he went away the honorable
Magistrate went with him, and his wife waved good-by to them from the
stoop with wet eyes as they drove away in a carriage hastily ordered
up from a livery stable. While they drove down town, the Magistrate's
wife went up to the nursery and hugged her sleeping little ones, one
after the other, and tear-drops fell upon their warm cheeks that had
wiped out the guilt of more than one sinner before, and the children
smiled in their sleep. They say among the simple-minded folk of
far-away Denmark that then they see angels in their dreams.
The carriage stopped in Mulberry Street, in front of Police
Headquarters, and there was great scurrying among the reporters, for
now they were sure of their "case." But no "prominent citizen" came
out, made free by the Magistrate, who opened court in the Captain's
office. Only a rough-looking man with a flushed face, whom no one
knew, and who stopped on the corner and looked back as one in a dream
and then went east, the way the Captain and his man had gone on their
expedition personating no less exalted a personage than Santa Claus
himself.
That night there was Christmas, indeed, in the rear tenement "near
the gas house," for papa had come home just in time to share in its
cheer. And there was no one who did it with a better will, for the
Christmas evening that began so badly was the luckiest night in his
life. He had the promise of a job on the morrow in his pocket, along
with something to keep the wolf from the door in the holidays. His
hard days were over, and he was at last to have his chance to live an
honest life. And it was the baby's letter to Santa Claus and the baa
sheep that did it all, with the able assistance of the Captain and the
Sergeant. Don't let us forget the Sergeant.
LOST CHILDREN
I am not thinking now of theological dogmas or moral distinctions. I
am considering the matter from the plain every-day standpoint of the
police office. It is not my fault that the one thing that is lost more
persistently than any other in a large city is the very thing you
would imagine to be safest of all in the keeping of its owner. Nor do
I pretend to explain it. It is simply one of the contradictions of
metropolitan life. In twenty years' acquaintance with the police
office, I have seen money, diamonds, coffins, horses, and tubs of
butter brought there and pass into the keeping of the property clerk
as lost or strayed. I remember a whole front stoop, brownstone, with
steps and iron railing all complete, being put up at auction,
unclaimed. But these were mere representatives of a class which as a
whole kept its place and the peace. The children did neither. One
might have been tempted to apply the old inquiry about the pins to
them but for another contradictory circumstance: rather more of them
are found than lost.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children keeps the
account of the surplus. It has now on its books half a score Jane Does
and twice as many Richard Roes, of whom nothing more will ever be
known than that they were found, which is on the whole, perhaps,
best--for them certainly. The others, the lost, drift from the
tenements and back, a host of thousands year by year. The two I am
thinking of were of these, typical of the maelstrom.
Yette Lubinsky was three years old when she was lost from her Essex
Street home, in that neighborhood where once the police commissioners
thought seriously of having the children tagged with name and street
number, to save trotting them back and forth between police station
and Headquarters. She had gone from the tenement to the corner where
her father kept a stand, to beg a penny, and nothing more was known of
her. Weeks after, a neighbor identified one of her little frocks as
the match of one worn by a child she had seen dragged off by a
rough-looking man. But though Max Lubinsky, the pedler, and Yette's
mother camped on the steps of Police Headquarters early and late,
anxiously questioning every one who went in and out about their lost
child, no other word was heard of her. By and by it came to be an old
story, and the two were looked upon as among the fixtures of the
place. Mulberry Street has other such.
They were poor and friendless in a strange land, the very language of
which was jargon to them, as theirs was to us, timid in the crush, and
they were shouldered out. It was not inhumanity; at least, it was not
meant to be. It was the way of the city, with every one for himself;
and they accepted it, uncomplaining. So they kept their vigil on the
stone steps, in storm and fair weather, every night taking turns to
watch all who passed. When it was a policeman with a little child, as
it was many times between sunset and sunrise, the one on the watch
would start up the minute they turned the corner, and run to meet
them, eagerly scanning the little face, only to return, disappointed
but not cast down, to the step upon which the other slept, head upon
knees, waiting the summons to wake and watch.
Their mute sorrow appealed to me, then doing night duty in the
newspaper office across the way, and I tried to help them in their
search for the lost Yette. They accepted my help gratefully,
trustfully, but without loud demonstration. Together we searched the
police records, the hospitals, the morgue, and the long register of
the river's dead. She was not there. Having made sure of this, we
turned to the children's asylums. We had a description of Yette sent
to each and every one, with the minutest particulars concerning her
and her disappearance, but no word came back in response. A year
passed, and we were compelled at last to give over the search. It
seemed as if every means of finding out what had become of the child
had been exhausted, and all alike had failed.
During the long search, I had occasion to go more than once to the
Lubinskys' home. They lived up three flights, in one of the big
barracks that give to the lower end of Essex Street the appearance of
a deep black 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.