| Show THE OTHER HALF the december sun shone dear clear and cold upon the city it phone upon rich and poor alike it 11 shone into the homes of the wealthy on the avenues and in the uptown streets and into courts and alley abey hedged in by towering tenements down town it abone upon throngs of busy holiday shoppers that went out and in at the big stores carry ing bundles big and small all alike filled with christmas cheer and kindly messages from santa saitta claus it shone so gaily and altogether cheerily there that wraps and over coats were unbuttoned for the north wind to toy with my it a nice day sal I 1 one young lady in a fur shoulder cope cape to a friend pausing to kiss and compare lists or of ier christmas gifts most bt too hot was the reply and the friends passed on there was warmth within and without life was very pleasant under the christmas sun up on the avenue ON MERRY HILL down in i cherry street the ray my of the sun climbed over a row of small tenements with an effort that seemed to exhaust all the life that was in them and fell into a dirty X ac r 1 block half choked with trucks with ash barrels and rubbish of all aai sorts among which the debt was whirled in clouds upon fitful 0 shivering blasts that searched every vj nook and cranny of the big barracks they fell upon a little girl barefooted and in wags who struggled out of an alley with a broken pitcher in her grimy flat fist against the wind that set down the narrow slit alit like the draught through a big factory chimney just at the mouth of the alley it took her with a sudden whirl a cyclone of dust and drift drifting hig 1 JP 1 v ashes tossed her fairly off her bec feet tore from her grip the threadbare v shawl she clutched at her throat and set her down at the saloon door breathless and halt half smothered she had bad just time to dodge through the storm doors before another whirlwind swept whistling down the street my but it cold she said odd as she shook the dust out of her and set the pitcher down on the bar gamme a pint she fy said laying down a few pennies that had been wrapped in a corner of the shawl beside it and mamma says make it good and full alpus allus the way with youse kids want a barrel when pays fer a pint aint growled the bartender there r ere run along and dont ye hung hang around that stove no more we aint a steam beatin the block fer lothin 11 the little girl clutched her shawl kin and the pitcher and slipped out into the street where the wind lay in ambush and promptly bore down on her in pillars of whirling dust as soon as she adf appeared eared but the sun that pitied her bare feet and little frozen hands played a trick on old boreas it showed her a way between the pillars and only just her skirt was by one and whirled over her head as she dodged into her alley it peeped after her half way down its dark depths where it F seemed colder even than in the bleak street but there it had to leave her it A did not see her dive through the opening into a hall ball where no sun ray had bad ever entered it could not have found its way in there had it tried and u up the narrow squeaking stairs the garl I 1 with the pitcher was climbing up p one flight of stairs over a knot of children half babies pitching pennies on the landing over wash tubs tub and bedsteads that eng encumbered the next housecleaning bouse house cleaning going on in that flat ai that is to say the surplus of bedbugs bed bugs was being burned out with petroleum and a feather up still another past a half open door through which came the noise of brawling and curses she shuddered as she heard them thern followed 4 by a blow and a womans comans scream quickened and her step a little until she stood panting before a door on the fourth landing that opened readily as she pushed it with her bare feet A room almost devoid of stick or rag one mi might lit dignify with the name of fur furniture 31 t ure two chairs one with a broken back the other on three legs beside a rickety table that stood upright only by leaning against the wall on the unwashed noor floor a heap of straw covered with a dirty bed tick ciok for a bed a foul smelling slop pail in th e middle of the room a crancy stove and back of it a door or gap opening upon darkness there was something in there but what it was could only be surmised from a heaby snore that rose and fell regularly it was the bedroom of the apartment windowless airless and sunless but rented at a price jay gould would denounce as robbery that you liza said a voice that discovered a woman bending over the stove run bun in n get the childer dinners ready the december sun glancing down the wall of the opposite tenement with a hopeless effort to cheer the back yard might have peeped through the one window of the room in mrs flat had bed that window not been coated with the dust of ages and discovered that dinner party pally iu in action it might have found a hundred like it in the alley four kempt children copies each in his bis or her way of liza and their mother mrs mcgroarty who did washing for a living A meat bone a cut from the butchers at 4 cents a pound green pickles stale bread and beer beer for the four a sup all round the baby included why not it was the one relish the sear searching chingo ray would have f bounk on there potatoes were there too potatoes and meat I 1 say not the poor in these tenements are starving in new york only those starve who cannot get work and have not the courage to beg fifty thousand always out of a job say those who pretend to know A round half million asking and getting charity in eight years say the statisticians of the charity organization anyone can see for 11 himself that no one need starve in new york from across the yard the sunray sun ray as it crept up the wall fell slantingly through the attic window whence issued the sound of ham mer blows A man with a hard face stood in its light driving nails into the lid of a soft soap box that was partly filled blied with straw something else was there as he shifted the lid that at fit the glimpse of ou sunshine that fell across it it was a dead child a little baby in a white slip bedded in straw in a soap box for a coffin the man was hammering down the lid to take it to the potters field in the corner knelt the mother dry eyed delirious from starvation that had killed her child five hungry frightened children cowered in the corner hardly daring to whisper as they looked from the father to the mother in terror there was a knock on the door that was drowned once twice in the noise of the hammer on the little coffin then it was opened gently and a young youn 9 woman came in with a basket A little silver cross shone upon her breast she went to the poor moab mother er and putting her hand band soothingly on her head bead knelt by her with gentle and loving words the half crazed woman listened with averted face then suddenly burst into tears and hid her throbbing head in the others lap the man stopped hammering and stared fixedly upon the two the children gathered around with devouring looks as the visitor took from her basket bread meat and tea just then with a parting wistful look into the bare attic room the sunray sun ray slipped away lingered for a moment about the coping outside and fled over the housetops As it sped on its winter day journey did it shine into any cabin in an irish bog more desolate than these cherry street homes an army of a hundred thousand whose one bright and wholesome memory only tradition of home is that ty stricken cabin the desolate bog are herded in such barracks today in new york potatoes they have yes and most moat at four cents even seven beer for a never without beer but Bu home thome the home that was a home even ina in a bog with the love of it that has made ireland immortal and a tower of strength in the midst of her suf fering faring what of that there are no homes in new yorks poor tenements IN THE BEND down the crooked path of the mulberry street bend the sunlight slanted into the heart of new yorks italy it shone upon bandannas ban dannas and yellow kerchiefs upon swarthy faces and corduroy breeches upon black haired girls mothers at 18 13 upon hosts of bowlegged children rolling in the dirt upon peddlers carts and add rag pickers staggering under burdens that threatened to crush them at every step shone upon unnumbered pasquales dwelling working idling and gambling there shone upon the filthiest and foulest of aven new w yorks tenements upon bandits roost upon bottle alley upon the hidden byways by ways that lead to the tramps burrows shone upon the scene of annual infant slaughter shone into the foul core of N new ow yorks slums that is shortly to go to the realms of bad memories because civilized man may not look upon it and live without blushing it glanced past the rag shop in the cellar whence welled up sten stenches clies to coloon the town into an apartment three flights up and held two women one young the other old and bent the young one had a baby at the breast she was rocking it tenderly in her arms singing in the soft italian tongue a lullaby while the old granny listened eagerly her elbows on her knees and a stumpy clay pipe blackened with age between her teeth her eyes were set on the wall on which the musty paper a pe r hung in shreds nt fit frame for or the wretched poverty stricken room but they saw neither poverty verty nor want her aged limbs co felt lt not the cold draught from without in which they shivered they looked far over the seas to sunny italy whose music was in her ears mia cara she mumbled between her ania imia ll 11 the song ended in a burst of passionate grief the old granny and the baby woke up at once they were not in sunny italy not under southern cloudless skies they were in the bend in mulberry street and the december wind rattled the door as if it would say in the language of their new home the land of the free less more work root boot hog or diel die IN CHINATOWN 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 BO roughly that ke he was glad to skip from it down a that gave out fumes of opium strong enough to scare beare even the north wind from its ita 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 groop of yellow almond eyed men were bending over a table playing bantan their very souls soula were in the game every faculty of the mind benton bent on the issue and the stake the one blouse that was tj t what went on was stretched on a mat in the corner one end ead of a clumsy pipe was in his mouth the other hold held over a little spirit lamp on the divan on which he lay something spluttered splutter ed 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 past the shrine of joss jon on the floor above over which in old english letters stood the motto of the trade dollar I 1 in god we trust from the coin in deli cate international compliment to the joss joas the almighty dollar to the household floors above where young white girls from the tenements of the bond bend and east side live in slavery worse it if not more galling than the galley with ball and chain the slavery of the pipe pour four eight sixteen teen twenty odd such homes in this tenement disgracing the very name of home and family for marriage and troth are not in the bargain and all about in mott street in pell and boyers streets are taller tenements even than this honeycombed with the like in one room between the half drawn curtains of which the sunbeam works its way in three girls are lying in as many bunks smoking all they are very young underage though each mud and every one would glibly swear in court to the satisfaction of the police that she to is 16 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 preparatory to filling the bowl of her pipe wah it As she does so the sunbeam dances across the bed kisses the red spot on her cheek that betrays the ahe secret her tyrant has known though to her it is yet that the P pipe has claimed its victim and soon boon will pass it on to the Pot potters tars field nell INel byl 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 came here nell turns half around with the toasting stick in her jand apud an ugly look in her wasted creatures rea tures a vile oath on her lips to hell bell with the old farm she ahe 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 IN POVERTY GAP it had traveled far toward the west searching many dark corners aud vainly seeding entry to others had gilt with equal impartiality the 8 spires pires of churches mud and the tin cor nices of tenements with their more than tenants had bad 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 Dece tuler day was far spent ent now its rays fell across the wo north rth river and lighted up the windows of the tenements in hells 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 on the tall tail end of the lot looked as if they were made of beaten gold but the glory did not cross the threshold within it was dark and dreary and conw the room at the foot of the stairs was the last tenant was waa beaten to death by her husband in his drunken fury the police found her lying dead on a bed of straw overrun overran by rate up stairs in the flat of one bare room a man in grimy overalls and with a dogskin cup cap was lying on his know knees blowing at the fire in an old stove that was propped up tip with bricks where the legs were missing and trying to help the fitful wind cook supper for him and mother and the children it burn up and the man took off his bis cap and tried to fan the embers into flame with it his matted hair fell over hit his eyes and he brushed it back disclosing an honest thoughtful forehead his wife who turned to help him had a motherly look that accounted for the brightness of the two little girls even in these surroundings john cunningham coal heaver so ran this tenants pedigree just begun in the slums english angush En ED gush glish farm laborer from home came over in the spring g no money and belogi belongings all gone find an odd job now and then on the docks 1 when work to is brisk makes 5 a wee week for a family of five when it id slack why they starve stranded in poverty gap this family for good and all another year and they will be down to the level of it and of the saloon next door that is its pivot and centre across the way in that row wretched rear tenements the alley gang clang hangs out all through them thein it has its runaways runaway a the sellous that bred it pay tribute to it and blackmail the broken baar stair rail marks the spot of one of its wanton murders young healey was the one lad in the block who minded his own business and worked hard for his aged and crippled Ra parents rents for that the gang disliked him at night they waylaid him and gave him the choice between chipping in with them for drinks or taking a beating the boy defied them ran to his own door and clutched the stair rail to gain the ball they caught |
