tenements, the dusty window panes of which the last glow in the winter
sky is tinging faintly with red, a dance is in progress. The guests,
most of them fresh from the hillsides of Mount Lebanon, squat about
the room. A reed-pipe and a tambourine furnish the music. One has the
centre of the floor. With a beer jug filled to the brim on his head,
he skips and sways, bending, twisting, kneeling, gesturing, and
keeping time, while the men clap their hands. He lies down and turns
over, but not a drop is spilled. Another succeeds him, stepping
proudly, gracefully, furling and unfurling a handkerchief like a
banner. As he sits down, and the beer goes around, one in the corner,
who looks like a shepherd fresh from his pasture, strikes up a song--a
far-off, lonesome, plaintive lay. "'Far as the hills,'" says the
guide; "a song of the old days and the old people, now seldom heard."
All together croon the refrain. The host delivers himself of an epic
about his love across the seas, with the most agonizing expression,
and in a shockingly bad voice. He is the worst singer I ever heard;
but his companions greet his effort with approving shouts of "Yi! yi!"
They look so fierce, and yet are so childishly happy, that at the
thought of their exile and of the dark tenement the question arises,
"Why all this joy?" The guide answers it with a look of surprise.
"They sing," he says, "because they are glad they are free. Did you
not know?"
The bells in old Trinity chime the midnight hour. From dark hallways
men and women pour forth and hasten to the Maronite church. In the
loft of the dingy old warehouse wax candles burn before an altar of
brass. The priest, in a white robe with a huge gold cross worked on
the back, chants the ritual. The people respond. The women kneel in
the aisles, shrouding their heads in their shawls; a surpliced acolyte
swings his censer; the heavy perfume of burning incense fills the
hall.
The band at the anarchists' ball is tuning up for the last dance.
Young and old float to the happy strains, forgetting injustice,
oppression, hatred. Children slide upon the waxed floor, weaving
fearlessly in and out between the couples--between fierce, bearded men
and short-haired women with crimson-bordered kerchiefs. A
Punch-and-Judy show in the corner evokes shouts of laughter.
Outside the snow is falling. It sifts silently into each nook and
corner, softens all the hard and ugly lines, and throws the spotless
mantle of charity over the blemishes, the shortcomings. Christmas
morning will dawn pure and white.
ABE'S GAME OF JACKS
Time hung heavily on Abe Seelig's hands, alone, or as good as alone,
in the flat on the "stoop" of the Allen Street tenement. His mother
had gone to the butcher's. Chajim, the father,--"Chajim" is the
Yiddish of "Herman,"--was long at the shop. To Abe was committed the
care of his two young brothers, Isaac and Jacob. Abraham was nine, and
past time for fooling. Play is "fooling" in the sweaters' tenements,
and the muddling of ideas makes trouble, later on, to which the police
returns have the index.
"Don't let 'em on the stairs," the mother had said, on going, with a
warning nod toward the bed where Jake and Ikey slept. He didn't intend
to. Besides, they were fast asleep. Abe cast about him for fun of some
kind, and bethought himself of a game of jacks. That he had no
jackstones was of small moment to him. East Side tenements, where
pennies are infrequent, have resources. One penny was Abe's hoard.
With that, and an accidental match, he began the game.
It went on well enough, albeit slightly lopsided by reason of the
penny being so much the weightier, until the match, in one unlucky
throw, fell close to a chair by the bed, and, in falling, caught fire.
Something hung down from the chair, and while Abe gazed, open-mouthed,
at the match, at the chair, and at the bed right alongside, with his
sleeping brothers on it, the little blaze caught it. The flame climbed
up, up, up, and a great smoke curled under the ceiling. The children
still slept, locked in each other's arms, and Abe--Abe ran.
He ran, frightened half out of his senses, out of the room, out of the
house, into the street, to the nearest friendly place he knew, a
grocery store five doors away, where his mother traded; but she was
not there. Abe merely saw that she was not there, then he hid himself,
trembling.
In all the block, where three thousand tenants live, no one knew what
cruel thing was happening on the stoop of No. 19.
A train passed on the elevated road, slowing up for the station near
by. The engineer saw one wild whirl of fire within the room, and
opening the throttle of his whistle wide, let out a screech so long
and so loud that in ten seconds the street was black with men and
women rushing out to see what dreadful thing had happened.
No need of asking. From the door of the Seelig flat, burned through,
fierce flames reached across the hall, barring the way. The tenement
was shut in.
Promptly it poured itself forth upon fire-escape ladders, front and
rear, with shrieks and wailing. In the street the crowd became a
deadly crush. Police and firemen battered their way through, ran down
and over men, women, and children, with a desperate effort.
The firemen from Hook and Ladder Six, around the corner, had heard the
shrieks, and, knowing what they portended, ran with haste. But they
were too late with their extinguishers; could not even approach the
burning flat. They could only throw up their ladders to those above.
For the rest they must needs wait until the engines came.
One tore up the street, coupled on a hose, and ran it into the house.
Then died out the fire in the flat as speedily as it had come. The
burning room was pumped full of water, and the firemen entered.
Just within the room they came upon little Jacob, still alive, but
half roasted. He had struggled from the bed nearly to the door. On the
bed lay the body of Isaac, the youngest, burned to a crisp.
They carried Jacob to the police station. As they brought him out, a
frantic woman burst through the throng and threw herself upon him. It
was the children's mother come back. When they took her to the
blackened corpse of little Ike, she went stark mad. A dozen neighbors
held her down, shrieking, while others went in search of the father.
In the street the excitement grew until it became almost
uncontrollable when the dead boy was carried out.
In the midst of it little Abe returned, pale, silent, and frightened,
to stand by his raving mother.
A LITTLE PICTURE
The fire-bells rang on the Bowery in the small hours of the morning.
One of the old dwelling-houses that remain from the day when the
"Bouwerie" was yet remembered as an avenue of beer-gardens and
pleasure resorts was burning. Down in the street stormed the firemen,
coupling hose and dragging it to the front. Upstairs in the peak of
the roof, in the broken skylight, hung a man, old, feeble, and gasping
for breath, struggling vainly to get out. He had piled chairs upon
tables, and climbed up where he could grasp the edge, but his strength
had given out when one more effort would have freed him. He felt
himself sinking back. Over him was the sky, reddened now by the fire
that raged below. Through the hole the pent-up smoke in the building
found vent and rushed in a black and stifling cloud.
"Air, air!" gasped the old man. "O God, water!"
There was a swishing sound, a splash, and the copious spray of a
stream sent over the house from the street fell upon his upturned
face. It beat back the smoke. Strength and hope returned. He took
another grip on the rafter just as he would have let go.
"Oh, that I might be reached yet and saved from this awful death!" he
prayed. "Help, O God, help!"
An answering cry came over the adjoining roof. He had been heard, and
the firemen, who did not dream that any one was in the burning
building, had him in a minute. He had been asleep in the store when
the fire aroused him and drove him, blinded and bewildered, to the
attic, where he was trapped.
Safe in the street, the old man fell upon his knees.
"I prayed for water, and it came; I prayed for freedom, and was saved.
The God of my fathers be praised!" he said, and bowed his head in
thanksgiving.
A DREAM OF THE WOODS
Something came over Police Headquarters in the middle of the summer
night. It was like the sighing of the north wind in the branches of
the tall firs and in the reeds along lonely river-banks where the
otter dips from the brink for its prey. The doorman, who yawned in the
hall, and to whom reed-grown river banks have been strangers so long
that he has forgotten they ever were, shivered and thought of
pneumonia.
The Sergeant behind the desk shouted for some one to close the door;
it was getting as cold as January. The little messenger boy on the
lowest step of the oaken stairs nodded and dreamed in his sleep of
Uncas and Chingachgook and the great woods. The cunning old beaver was
there in his hut, and he heard the crack of Deerslayer's rifle.
He knew all the time he was dreaming, sitting on the steps of Police
Headquarters, and yet it was all as real to him as if he were there,
with the Mingoes creeping up to him in ambush all about and reaching
for his scalp.
While he slept, a light step had passed, and the moccasin of the
woods left its trail in his dream. In with the gust through the
Mulberry Street door had come a strange pair, an old woman and a
bright-eyed child, led by a policeman, and had passed up to Matron
Travers's quarters on the top floor.
Strangely different, they were yet alike, both children of the woods.
The woman was a squaw typical in looks and bearing, with the straight,
black hair, dark skin, and stolid look of her race. She climbed the
steps wearily, holding the child by the hand. The little one skipped
eagerly, two steps at a time. There was the faintest tinge of brown in
her plump cheeks, and a roguish smile in the corner of her eyes that
made it a hardship not to take her up in one's lap and hug her at
sight. In her frock of red-and-white calico she was a fresh and
charming picture, with all the grace of movement and the sweet shyness
of a young fawn.
The policeman had found them sitting on a big trunk in the Grand
Central Station, waiting patiently for something or somebody that
didn't come. When he had let them sit until he thought the child ought
to be in bed, he took them into the police station in the depot, and
there an effort was made to find out who and what they were. It was
not an easy matter. Neither could speak English. They knew a few
words of French, however, and between that and a note the old woman
had in her pocket the general outline of the trouble was gathered.
They were of the Canaghwaga tribe of Iroquois, domiciled in the St.
Regis reservation across the Canadian border, and had come down to
sell a trunkful of beads, and things worked with beads. Some one was
to meet them, but had failed to come, and these two, to whom the
trackless wilderness was as an open book, were lost in the city of ten
thousand homes.
The matron made them understand by signs that two of the nine white
beds in the nursery were for them, and they turned right in, humbly
and silently thankful. The little girl had carried up with her, hugged
very close under her arm, a doll that was a real ethnological study.
It was a faithful rendering of the Indian pappoose, whittled out of a
chunk of wood, with two staring glass beads for eyes, and strapped to
a board the way Indian babies are, under a coverlet of very gaudy
blue. It was a marvellous doll baby, and its nurse was mighty proud of
it. She didn't let it go when she went to bed. It slept with her, and
got up to play with her as soon as the first ray of daylight peeped in
over the tall roofs.
The morning brought visitors, who admired the doll, chirruped to the
little girl, and tried to talk with her grandmother, for that they
made her out to be. To most questions she simply answered by shaking
her head and holding out her credentials. There were two letters: one
to the conductor of the train from Montreal, asking him to see that
they got through all right; the other, a memorandum, for her own
benefit apparently, recounting the number of hearts, crosses, and
other treasures she had in her trunk. It was from those she had left
behind at the reservation.
"Little Angus," it ran, "sends what is over to sell for him. Sarah
sends the hearts. As soon as you can, will you try and sell some
hearts?" Then there was "love to mother," and lastly an account of
what the mason had said about the chimney of the cabin. They had sent
for him to fix it. It was very dangerous the way it was, ran the
message, and if mother would get the bricks, he would fix it right
away.
The old squaw looked on with an anxious expression while the note was
being read, as if she expected some sense to come out of it that would
find her folks; but none of that kind could be made out of it, so they
sat and waited until General Parker should come in.
General Ely S. Parker was the "big Indian" of Mulberry Street in a
very real sense. Though he was a clerk in the Police Department and
never went on the war-path any more, he was the head of the ancient
Indian Confederacy, chief of the Six Nations, once so powerful for
mischief, and now a mere name that frightens no one. Donegahawa--one
cannot help wishing that the picturesque old chief had kept his name
of the council lodge--was not born to sit writing at an office desk.
In youth he tracked the bear and the panther in the Northern woods.
The scattered remnants of the tribes East and West owned his rightful
authority as chief. The Canaghwagas were one of these. So these lost
ones had come straight to the official and actual head of their people
when they were stranded in the great city. They knew it when they
heard the magic name of Donegahawa, and sat silently waiting and
wondering till he should come. The child looked up admiringly at the
gold-laced cap of Inspector Williams, when he took her on his knee,
and the stern face of the big policeman relaxed and grew tender as a
woman's as he took her face between his hands and kissed it.
When the general came in he spoke to them at once in their own tongue,
and very sweet and musical it was. Then their troubles were soon over.
The sachem, when he had heard their woes, said two words between puffs
of his pipe that cleared all the shadows away. They sounded to the
paleface ear like "Huh Hoo--ochsjawai," or something equally
barbarous, but they meant that there were not so many Indians in town
but that theirs could be found, and in that the sachem was right. The
number of redskins in Thompson Street--they all live over there--is
about seven.
The old squaw, when she was told that her friend would be found, got
up promptly, and, bowing first to Inspector Williams and the other
officials in the room, and next to the general, said very sweetly,
"Njeawa," and Lightfoot--that was the child's name, it appeared--said
it after her; which meant, the general explained, that they were very
much obliged. Then they went out in charge of a policeman to begin
their search, little Lightfoot hugging her doll and looking back over
her shoulder at the many gold-laced policemen who had captured her
little heart. And they kissed their hands after her.
Mulberry Street awoke from its dream of youth, of the fields and the
deep woods, to the knowledge that it was a bad day. The old doorman,
who had stood at the gate patiently answering questions for twenty
years, told the first man who came looking for a lost child, with
sudden resentment, that he ought to be locked up for losing her, and,
pushing him out in the rain, slammed the door after him.
'TWAS 'LIZA'S DOINGS
Joe drove his old gray mare along the stony road in deep thought. They
had been across the ferry to Newtown with a load of Christmas truck.
It had been a hard pull uphill for them both, for Joe had found it
necessary not a few times to get down and give old 'Liza a lift to
help her over the roughest spots; and now, going home, with the
twilight coming on and no other job a-waiting, he let her have her own
way. It was slow, but steady, and it suited Joe; for his head was full
of busy thoughts, and there were few enough of them that were
pleasant.
Business had been bad at the big stores, never worse, and what
trucking there was there were too many about. Storekeepers who never
used to look at a dollar, so long as they knew they could trust the
man who did their hauling, were counting the nickels these days. As
for chance jobs like this one, that was all over with the holidays,
and there had been little enough of it, too.
There would be less, a good deal, with the hard winter at the door,
and with 'Liza to keep and the many mouths to fill. Still, he
wouldn't have minded it so much but for mother fretting and worrying
herself sick at home, and all along o' Jim, the eldest boy, who had
gone away mad and never come back. Many were the dollars he had paid
the doctor and the druggist to fix her up, but it was no use. She was
worrying herself into a decline, it was clear to be seen.
Joe heaved a heavy sigh as he thought of the strapping lad who had
brought such sorrow to his mother. So strong and so handy on the
wagon. Old 'Liza loved him like a brother and minded him even better
than she did himself. If he only had him now, they could face the
winter and the bad times, and pull through. But things never had gone
right since he left. He didn't know, Joe thought humbly as he jogged
along over the rough road, but he had been a little hard on the lad.
Boys wanted a chance once in a while. All work and no play was not for
them. Likely he had forgotten he was a boy once himself. But Jim was
such a big lad, 'most like a man. He took after his mother more than
the rest. She had been proud, too, when she was a girl. He wished he
hadn't been hasty that time they had words about those boxes at the
store. Anyway, it turned out that it wasn't Jim's fault. But he was
gone that night, and try as they might to find him, they never had
word of him since. And Joe sighed again more heavily than before.
Old 'Liza shied at something in the road, and Joe took a firmer hold
on the reins. It turned his thoughts to the horse. She was getting
old, too, and not as handy as she was. He noticed that she was getting
winded with a heavy load. It was well on to ten years she had been
their capital and the breadwinner of the house. Sometimes he thought
that she missed Jim. If she was to leave them now, he wouldn't know
what to do, for he couldn't raise the money to buy another horse
nohow, as things were. Poor old 'Liza! He stroked her gray coat
musingly with the point of his whip as he thought of their old
friendship. The horse pointed one ear back toward her master and
neighed gently, as if to assure him that she was all right.
Suddenly she stumbled. Joe pulled her up in time, and throwing the
reins over her back, got down to see what it was. An old horseshoe,
and in the dust beside it a new silver quarter. He picked both up and
put the shoe in the wagon.
"They say it is luck," he mused, "finding horse-iron and money. Maybe
it's my Christmas. Get up, 'Liza!" And he drove off to the ferry.
The glare of a thousand gas lamps had chased the sunset out of the
western sky, when Joe drove home through the city's streets. Between
their straight, mile-long rows surged the busy life of the coming
holiday. In front of every grocery store was a grove of fragrant
Christmas trees waiting to be fitted into little green stands with
fairy fences. Within, customers were bargaining, chatting, and
bantering the busy clerks. Pedlers offering tinsel and colored candles
waylaid them on the door-step. The rack under the butcher's awning
fairly groaned with its weight of plucked geese, of turkeys, stout and
skinny, of poultry of every kind. The saloon-keeper even had wreathed
his door-posts in ground-ivy and hemlock, and hung a sprig of holly in
the window, as if with a spurious promise of peace on earth and
good-will toward men who entered there. It tempted not Joe. He drove
past it to the corner, where he turned up a street darker and lonelier
than the rest, toward a stretch of rocky, vacant lots fenced in by an
old stone wall. 'Liza turned in at the rude gate without being told,
and pulled up at the house.
A plain little one-story frame with a lean-to for a kitchen, and an
adjoining stable-shed, overshadowed all by two great chestnuts of the
days when there were country lanes where now are paved streets, and on
Manhattan Island there was farm by farm. A light gleamed in the
window looking toward the street. As 'Liza's hoofs were heard on the
drive, a young girl with a shawl over her head ran out from some
shelter where she had been watching, and took the reins from Joe.
"You're late," she said, stroking the mare's steaming flank. 'Liza
reached around and rubbed her head against the girl's shoulder,
nibbling playfully at the fringe of her shawl.
"Yes; we've come far, and it's been a hard pull. 'Liza is tired. Give
her a good feed, and I'll bed her down. How's mother?"
"Sprier than she was," replied the girl, bending over the shaft to
unbuckle the horse; "seems as if she'd kinder cheered up for
Christmas." And she led 'Liza to the stable while her father backed
the wagon into the shed.
It was warm and very comfortable in the little kitchen, where he
joined the family after "washing up." The fire burned brightly in the
range, on which a good-sized roast sizzled cheerily in its pot,
sending up clouds of savory steam. The sand on the white-pine floor
was swept in tongues, old-country fashion. Joe and his wife were both
born across the sea, and liked to keep Christmas eve as they had kept
it when they were children. Two little boys and a younger girl than
the one who had met him at the gate received him with shouts of glee,
and pulled him straight from the door to look at a hemlock branch
stuck in the tub of sand in the corner. It was their Christmas tree,
and they were to light it with candles, red and yellow and green,
which mamma got them at the grocer's where the big Santa Claus stood
on the shelf. They pranced about like so many little colts, and clung
to Joe by turns, shouting all at once, each one anxious to tell the
great news first and loudest.
Joe took them on his knee, all three, and when they had shouted until
they had to stop for breath, he pulled from under his coat a paper
bundle, at which the children's eyes bulged. He undid the wrapping
slowly.
"Who do you think has come home with me?" he said, and he held up
before them the veritable Santa Claus himself, done in plaster and all
snow-covered. He had bought it at the corner toy-store with his lucky
quarter. "I met him on the road over on Long Island, where 'Liza and I
was to-day, and I gave him a ride to town. They say it's luck falling
in with Santa Claus, partickler when there's a horseshoe along. I put
hisn up in the barn, in 'Liza's stall. Maybe our luck will turn yet,
eh! old woman?" And he put his arm around his wife, who was setting
out the dinner with Jennie, and gave her a good hug, while the
children danced off with their Santa Claus.
She was a comely little woman, and she tried hard to be cheerful. She
gave him a brave look and a smile, but there were tears in her eyes,
and Joe saw them, though he let on that he didn't. He patted her
tenderly on the back and smoothed his Jennie's yellow braids, while he
swallowed the lump in his throat and got it down and out of the way.
He needed no doctor to tell him that Santa Claus would not come again
and find her cooking their Christmas dinner, unless she mended soon
and swiftly.
It may be it was the thought of that which made him keep hold of her
hand in his lap as they sat down together, and he read from the good
book the "tidings of great joy which shall be to all people," and said
the simple grace of a plain and ignorant, but reverent, man. He held
it tight, as though he needed its support, when he came to the
petition for "those dear to us and far away from home," for his glance
strayed to the empty place beside the mother's chair, and his voice
would tremble in spite of himself. He met his wife's eyes there, but,
strangely, he saw no faltering in them. They rested upon Jim's vacant
seat with a new look of trust that almost frightened him. It was as if
the Christmas peace, the tidings of great joy, had sunk into her heart
with rest and hope which presently throbbed through his, with new
light and promise, and echoed in the children's happy voices.
So they ate their dinner together, and sang and talked until it was
time to go to bed. Joe went out to make all snug about 'Liza for the
night and to give her an extra feed. He stopped in the door, coming
back, to shake the snow out of his clothes. It was coming on with bad
weather and a northerly storm, he reported. The snow was falling thick
already and drifting badly. He saw to the kitchen fire and put the
children to bed. Long before the clock in the neighboring church tower
struck twelve, and its doors were opened for the throngs come to
worship at the midnight mass, the lights in the cottage were out, and
all within it fast asleep.