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Speaker 1: Merry Christmas in the tenements from out of Mulberry Street

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by Jacob A. Reese. It was just a sprig of

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holly with scarlet berries showing against the green, stuck in

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by one of the office boys, probably behind the sign

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that pointed the way up to the editorial rooms. There

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was no reason why it should have made me start

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when I came suddenly upon it at the turn of

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the stairs. But it did. Perhaps it was because that

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dingy hall, given over to dust and drafts all the

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days of the year, was the last place in which

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I expected to meet any sign of Christmas. Perhaps it

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was because I myself had nearly forgotten the holiday. Whatever

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the cause, it gave me quite a turn. I stood

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and stared at it. It looked dry, almost withered. Probably

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it had come a long way. Not much holly grows

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about printing House Square, except in the colored supplements, and

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that is scarcely of a kind to stir tender memories.

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Withered and dry. This did, I thought, with a twinge

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of conscience, of secret little conclaves of my children, of

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private views of things hidden from Mama at the bottom

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of drawers of wild flights. When Papa appeared unbidden in

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the door which I had allowed for once to pass unheeded.

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Absorbed in the business of the office, I had hardly

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thought of Christmas coming on until now it was here,

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and this sprig of holly on the wall that had

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come to remind me come. Nobody knew how far did

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it grow yet in the beech wood clearings, as it

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did when I gathered it as a boy tracking through

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the snow. Christ's thorn. We called it in our Danish tongue.

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The red berries, to our simple faith, were the drops

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of blood that fell from the Saviour's brow as it

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drooped under its cruel crown upon the cross. Back to

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the long ago, wandered my thoughts to the moss green

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beach in which I cut my name and that of

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a little girl with yellow curls of blessed memory with

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the first jackknife I ever owned, to the story book

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with a little fir tree that pined because it was small,

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and because the hare jumped over it and would not

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be content, though the wind and the sun kissed it,

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and the dews wept over it and told it to

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rejoice in its young life. And that was so proud

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when in the second year the hare had to go

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round it, because then it knew it was getting big.

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Hans Christian Andersen's story that we loved above all the rest,

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for we knew the tree right well, and the hare,

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even the tracks that left in the snow, we had seen. Ah.

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Those were the Yule tide seasons, when the old dom

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Kirk shone with a thousand wax candles on Christmas Eve,

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when all business was laid aside to let the world

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make merry one whole week, when big red apples were

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roast on the stove and bigger doughnuts were baked within

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it for the long feast. Never such had been known

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since Christmas to day is but a name, a memory.

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A door slammed below and let in the noises of

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the street, the holly rustled in the draft. Some one

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going out said a Merry Christmas to you all in

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a big, hearty voice. I awoke from my reverie to

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find myself back in New York with a glad glow

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at the heart. It was not true. I had only forgotten.

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It was myself that had changed, not Christmas that was

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here with the old cheer, the old message of good will,

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the old royal road to the heart of mankind. How

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often had I seen its blessed charity, that never corrupts,

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makes light in the hovels of darkness and despair. How

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often watched its spirit of self sacrifice and devotion, and

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those who had, besides themselves nothing to give, And as

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often the sight made whole my faith in human nature.

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No Christmas was not of the past, its spirit not dead.

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The lad who fixed the sprig of holly on the

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stairs knew it. My reporter's note book bore witness to it,

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witness of my contrition for the wrong I did. The

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gentle spirit of the holiday. Here let the book tell

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the story of one Christmas in the tenements of the poor.

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It is evening in Grand Street. The shops east and

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west are pouring forth their swarms of workers. Street and

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sidewalk are filled with an eager throng of young men

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and women, chatting gaily and elbowing the jam of holiday

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shoppers that linger about the big stores. The street cars

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labor along, loaded down to the steps with passengers carrying

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bundles of every size and odd shape. Along the curb,

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a string of peddlers hawk penny toys and push carts

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with noisy clamor fearless for once of being moved on

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by the police. Christmas brings a two weeks respite from persecution,

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even to the friendless street faker. From the window of

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one brilliantly lighted store, a bevy of mature dolls in

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dishabille stretch forth, their arms appealingly to a troop of

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factory hands passing by. The young men chaff the girls,

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who shriek with laughter and run. The policeman on the

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corner stops beating his hands together to keep warm, and

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makes a mock attempt to catch them, whereat their shrieks

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rise shriller than ever them stockings a yearn'll be the

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death of Santa Claus. He shouts after them as they dodge,

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and they, looking back, snap saucily. Mind your business, freshy,

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But their laughter belies their words. They gin it to

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ye straight that time grins. The grocer's clerk come out

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to snatch a look at the crowds, and the two

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swap holiday greetings. At the corner where two opposing tides

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of travel form an eddy, the line of push carts

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bouches down the darker side street in its gloom, their

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torches turn with a fitful glare that wakes black shadows

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among the trusses of the railroad structure. Overhead, a woman

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with worn shawl drawn tightly about head and shoulders, bargains

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with a peddler for a monkey on a stick and

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two cents worth of flitter gold. Five ill clad youngsters

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flatten their noses against the frozen pane of the toy

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shop in ecstasy at something there, which proves to be

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a milk wagon with driver horses and cans that can

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be unloaded. It is something their minds can grasp. One

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comes forth with a penny gold fish of pasteboard, clutched

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tightly in his hand, and casting cautious glances right and left,

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speeds across the way to the door of a tenement,

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where a little girl stands waiting. It's yer Christmas Kate,

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he says, and thrusts it into her eager fist. The

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black doorway swallows them up across the narrow yard. In

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the basement of the rear house, the lights of a

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Christmas tree show against the grimy window pane. The hare

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would never have gone around it, it is so very small.

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The two children are busily engaged fixing the gold fish

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upon one of its branches. Three little candles that burn

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there shed light upon a scene of utmost desolation. The

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room is black with smoke and dirt. In the middle

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of the floor oozes an oil stove that serves at

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once to take the raw edge off the cold and

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to cook the meals by half. The window panes are

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broken and the holes stuffed with rags. The sleeve of

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an old coat hangs out of one and beats drearily

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upon the sash when the wind sweeps across the fence

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and rattles the rotten shutters. The family wash clammy and

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gray hangs on a clothes line stretched across the room.

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Under it, at a table set with cracked and empty plates,

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a discouraged woman sits eyeing the children's show gloomily. It

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is evident that she has been drinking. The peaked faces

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of the little ones wear a famished look. There are three.

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The third an infant put to bed in what was

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once a baby carriage. The two from the street are

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pulling it around to get the tree in range. The

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baby sees it and crows with delight. The boy shakes

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a branch, and the goldfish leaps and sparkles in the candlelight.

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See Sister he pipes, See Santa Claus, and they clap

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their hands in glee. The woman at the table wakes

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out of her stupor, gazes around her, and bursts into

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a fit of maudlin weeping. The door falls too. Five

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flights up. Another opens upon a bare attic room which

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a patient little woman is setting to rights. There are

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only three chairs, a box, and a bedstead in the room,

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but they take a deal of careful arranging. The bed

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hides the broken plaster and the wall through which the

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wind came in. Each chair leg stands over a rat

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hole at once to hide it and to keep the

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rats out. One is left. The box is for that.

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The plaster of the ceiling is held up with pasteboard patches.

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I know the story of that attic. It is one

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of cruel desertion. The woman's husband is even now living

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in plenty with a creature for whom he forsook her,

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not a dozen blocks away, while she keeps the home

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together for the childer. She sought justice, but the lawyer

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demanded a retainer, so she gave it up and went

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back to her little ones. For this room, that barely

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keeps the winter out. She pays four dollars a month

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and is behind with the rent. There is scarce bread

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in the house, but the spirit of Christmas has found her.

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Attic against a broken wall is tacked a hemlock branch

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the leavings of the corner grocer's fitting block. Pink string

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from the packing counter hangs on it, infestoons. A tallow

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dip on the box furnishes the illumination. The children sit

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up in bed and watch it with shining eyes. We're

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having Christmas, they say. The lights of the bowery glow

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like a myriad twinkling stars, upon the ceaseless flood of

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humanity that surges ever through the great highway of the homeless.

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They shine upon long rows of lodging houses, in which

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hundreds of young men, cast helpless upon the reef of

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the strange city, are learning their first lessons of utter loneliness.

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For what desolation is there like that of the careless

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crowd when all the world rejoices. They shine upon the

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tempter setting his snares there, and upon the missionary and

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the salvation army lasts disputing his catch with him, Upon

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the police detective going his rounds with coldly observant eye,

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intent upon the outcome of the contest, upon the wreck

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that has past hope, and upon the youth pausing on

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the verge of the pit in which the other has

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long ceased to struggle. Sights and sounds of Christmas there

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are in plenty in the bowery. Juniper and tamarack and

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fir stand in groves along the busy thoroughfare, and garlands

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of green and bower mission and dive Impartially. Once a year,

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the old Street recalls its youth with an effort. It

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is true that it is largely a commercial effort, that

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the evergreen, with an instinct that is not of its

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native hills, haunts saloon corners by preference. But the smell

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of the pine woods is in the air, and Christmas

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is not too critical. One is grateful for the effort.

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It varies with the opportunity at beef Steak John's. It

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is content with artistically embalming crullers and mince pies in

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green cabbage under the window lamp. Over yonder, where the

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mild post of the old Lane still stands in its

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unhonored old age, become the vehicle of publishing the latest

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sure cure to the world. A florist whose undenominational zeal

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for the holiday and trade out strips alike distinction of

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creed and property has transformed the sidewalk and the ugly

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railroad structure into a veritable bower, spanning it with a

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canopy of green under which dwell with him in neighborly

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good will, the young Men's Christian Association and the gentile

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tailor next door. In the next block, a Turkey shoot

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is in progress. Crowds are trying their luck at breaking

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the glass balls that dance upon tiny jets of water

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in front of a marine view with the moon rising

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yellow and big out of a silver sea. A man

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of war with lights burning aloft labors under a rocky coast.

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Groggy sailormen on shore leave make unsteady attempts upon the

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dancing balls. One mistakes the moon for the target, but

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is discovered in season. Don't shoot that, says the man

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who loads the guns. There's a lamp behind it. Three

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scared birds in the window recess try vainly to snatch

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a moment's sleep between shots and the trains that go

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roaring overhead on the elevated road. Roused by the sharp

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crack of the rifles, they blink at the lights in

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the street and peck moodily at a crust in their

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bed of shavings. The Dime Museum gong clatters out its

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noisy warning that the lecture is about to begin. From

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the concert hall, where men sit drinking beer in clouds

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of smoke, comes the thin voice of a short skirted singer, warbling,

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do they think of me at home? The young fellow,

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who sits near the door abstractedly making figures in the

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wet track of the schooners, buries something there with a sudden,

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restless turn, and calls for another beer. Out in the streets,

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a band strikes up. A host with banners advances, chanting

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in unfamiliar hymn. In the ranks marches a cripple on crutches.

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Newsboys follow, gaping under the illuminated clock of the Cooper Institute.

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The procession halts, and the leader, turning his face to

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the sky, offers a prayer. The passing crowds stop to listen.

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A few bare their heads. The devoted group, the flapping

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banners and the changing torchlight on upturned faces make a strange,

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weird picture. Then the drum beat, and the band flies

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into its barracks across the street. A few of the

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listeners follow, among them the lad from the concert hall,

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who SLINKs shamefacedly in when he thinks no one is looking. Down.

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00:14:31,039 --> 00:14:33,919
At the foot of the bowery is the panhandler's beat,

237
00:14:34,320 --> 00:14:37,919
where the saloons elbow one another at every step, crowding

238
00:14:37,919 --> 00:14:41,120
out all other business than that of keeping lodgers to

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00:14:41,200 --> 00:14:45,720
support them within call of it. Across the square stands

240
00:14:45,720 --> 00:14:48,240
a church which, in the memory of men yet living,

241
00:14:48,639 --> 00:14:51,600
was built to shelter the fashionable Baptist audiences of a

242
00:14:51,679 --> 00:14:55,039
day when Madison Square was out in the fields and

243
00:14:55,159 --> 00:15:00,360
Harlem had a foreign sound. The fashionable audiences are gone

244
00:15:00,440 --> 00:15:04,840
long since to day. The church, fallen into premature decay,

245
00:15:05,159 --> 00:15:08,519
but still handsome in its strong and noble lines, stands

246
00:15:08,559 --> 00:15:11,480
as a missionary outpost in the land of the enemy.

247
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Its builders would have said, doing a greater work than

248
00:15:14,799 --> 00:15:18,440
they planned to. Night is the Christmas festival of its

249
00:15:18,480 --> 00:15:22,360
English speaking Sunday School, and the pews are filled. The

250
00:15:22,399 --> 00:15:26,000
banners of United Italy, of modern Hellas of France and

251
00:15:26,080 --> 00:15:29,240
Germany and England hang side by side with the Chinese

252
00:15:29,320 --> 00:15:33,480
dragon and the starry flag, signs of the cosmopolitan character

253
00:15:33,559 --> 00:15:38,399
of the congregation. Greek and Roman Catholics, Jews and Josh

254
00:15:38,399 --> 00:15:43,720
worshippers go. There few Protestants and no Baptists. It is

255
00:15:43,799 --> 00:15:46,840
easy to pick out the children in their seats by nationality,

256
00:15:47,159 --> 00:15:49,600
and as easy to read the story of poverty and

257
00:15:49,639 --> 00:15:53,519
suffering that stands written in more than one mother's haggard face,

258
00:15:53,960 --> 00:15:57,399
now beaming with pleasure at the little one's glee. A

259
00:15:57,440 --> 00:16:00,639
gaily decorated Christmas tree has taken the place of the pulpit.

260
00:16:01,240 --> 00:16:04,120
At its foot is stacked a mountain of bundles Santa

261
00:16:04,159 --> 00:16:07,919
Clauses gifts to the school. A self conscious young man

262
00:16:07,960 --> 00:16:12,200
with soap locks has been allowed to retire amid tumultuous applause,

263
00:16:12,440 --> 00:16:16,000
after blowing Nearer my God to THEE on his horn

264
00:16:16,200 --> 00:16:20,759
until his cheeks swelled almost to bursting. A trumpet, ever

265
00:16:20,879 --> 00:16:24,120
takes the fourth ward by storm. A class of little

266
00:16:24,120 --> 00:16:27,720
girls is climbing upon the platform. Each wears a capital

267
00:16:27,799 --> 00:16:30,399
letter on her breast and has a piece to speak

268
00:16:30,600 --> 00:16:33,879
that begins with the letter. Together they speak its lesson.

269
00:16:34,639 --> 00:16:38,799
There is momentary consternation. One is missing. As the discovery

270
00:16:38,840 --> 00:16:41,759
is made, a child pushes past the door keeper, hot

271
00:16:41,759 --> 00:16:46,679
and breathless. Aye am in boundless love, she says, and

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00:16:46,720 --> 00:16:50,919
makes for the platform, where her arrival restores confidence and

273
00:16:51,120 --> 00:16:56,000
the language in the audience. The befrocked visitor from uptown

274
00:16:56,320 --> 00:16:59,399
sits cheek by jowl with the pig tailed Chinaman and

275
00:16:59,440 --> 00:17:03,519
the dark Italian. Up in the gallery farthest from the

276
00:17:03,519 --> 00:17:06,240
preacher's desk and the tree sits a Jewish mother with

277
00:17:06,319 --> 00:17:10,880
three boys, almost in rags. A dingy and threadbare shawl

278
00:17:11,119 --> 00:17:15,240
partly hides her poor calico rap and patched apron. The

279
00:17:15,279 --> 00:17:18,559
woman shrinks in the pew, fearful of being seen. Her

280
00:17:18,599 --> 00:17:21,759
boys stand upon the benches and applaud with the rest.

281
00:17:22,400 --> 00:17:26,480
She endeavors vainly to restrain them. Tick tick goes the

282
00:17:26,559 --> 00:17:29,759
old clock over the door through which wealth and fashion

283
00:17:29,799 --> 00:17:35,839
went out long years ago, and poverty came in. Tick tick.

284
00:17:36,319 --> 00:17:41,400
The world moves with us, without without and with She

285
00:17:41,599 --> 00:17:45,480
is the yesterday, They the tomorrow, What shall the harvest be?

286
00:17:46,799 --> 00:17:49,680
Loudly ticked the old clock, in time with the doxology.

287
00:17:50,079 --> 00:17:52,799
The other day, when they cleared the tenants out of

288
00:17:52,880 --> 00:17:56,240
Gotham Court down here in Cherry Street, and shut the

289
00:17:56,279 --> 00:18:00,720
iron doors of single and double Alley against them. Never

290
00:18:00,759 --> 00:18:03,599
did the world move faster or surer toward a better

291
00:18:03,720 --> 00:18:06,119
day than when the wretched slum was seized by the

292
00:18:06,160 --> 00:18:09,720
health officers as a nuisance, unfit longer to disgrace a

293
00:18:09,839 --> 00:18:14,119
Christian city. The snow lies deep in the deserted passageways,

294
00:18:14,440 --> 00:18:17,200
and the vacant floors are given over to evil smells,

295
00:18:17,480 --> 00:18:20,720
and to the rats that forage, and squads burrowing in

296
00:18:20,799 --> 00:18:26,559
the neglected sewers. The Wall of Wrath still towers above

297
00:18:26,559 --> 00:18:29,960
the buildings in the adjoining Alderman's Court, but its wrath,

298
00:18:30,119 --> 00:18:34,880
at last is wasted. It was built by a vengeful Quaker,

299
00:18:35,160 --> 00:18:37,519
whom the Aldermen had knocked down in a quarrel over

300
00:18:37,519 --> 00:18:40,480
the boundary line, and transmitted its legacy of hate to

301
00:18:40,559 --> 00:18:44,119
generations yet unborn. For where it stood it shut out

302
00:18:44,200 --> 00:18:48,359
sunlight and air from the tenements of Alderman's Court. And

303
00:18:48,480 --> 00:18:51,640
at last it is to go Gotham Court and all

304
00:18:52,079 --> 00:18:54,720
and to the going the Wall of Wrath has contributed

305
00:18:54,759 --> 00:18:57,799
its share, thus in the end, atoning for some of

306
00:18:57,839 --> 00:19:02,359
the harm it wrought. Tick old clock, the world moves.

307
00:19:03,079 --> 00:19:06,000
Never yet did Christmas seem less dark on Cherry Street

308
00:19:06,559 --> 00:19:10,039
than since the lights were put out in Gothamcourt Forever.

309
00:19:11,920 --> 00:19:16,680
In the Bend, the philanthropist undertaker, who buries for what

310
00:19:16,759 --> 00:19:19,440
he can catch on the plate, hails the Yule tide

311
00:19:19,480 --> 00:19:22,920
season with a pyramid of green made of two coffins

312
00:19:22,960 --> 00:19:26,720
set on end. It has been a good day, he says, cheerfully,

313
00:19:27,000 --> 00:19:30,519
putting up the shutters, and his mind is easy. But

314
00:19:30,599 --> 00:19:33,519
the good days of the Bend are over too. The

315
00:19:33,559 --> 00:19:37,599
Bend itself is all but gone. Where the old pigstye stood,

316
00:19:37,880 --> 00:19:40,240
Children dance and sing to the strumming of a cracked

317
00:19:40,240 --> 00:19:43,839
piano organ propelled on wheels by an Italian and his wife.

318
00:19:44,640 --> 00:19:46,599
The park that has come to take the place of

319
00:19:46,680 --> 00:19:50,519
the slum will curtail the Undertaker's profits, as it has

320
00:19:50,599 --> 00:19:54,400
lessened the work of the police. Murder was the fashion

321
00:19:54,440 --> 00:19:57,799
of the day that has passed. Scarce a knife has

322
00:19:57,839 --> 00:20:01,079
been drawn since the sunlight shone in to that evil spot,

323
00:20:01,400 --> 00:20:03,720
and grass and green shrubs took the place of the

324
00:20:03,799 --> 00:20:07,720
old rookeries. The Christmas Gospel of peace and good will

325
00:20:08,119 --> 00:20:11,559
moves in where the slum moves out. It never had

326
00:20:11,599 --> 00:20:16,599
a chance before the children follow the organ, stepping in

327
00:20:16,640 --> 00:20:20,039
the slush to the music, bare headed and with torn shoes,

328
00:20:20,079 --> 00:20:23,200
but happy. Across the five points and through the bay

329
00:20:23,680 --> 00:20:27,599
known to the directory as Baxter Street to the divide,

330
00:20:27,839 --> 00:20:31,640
still Chatham Street to its denizens, though the Aldermen have

331
00:20:31,720 --> 00:20:35,960
rechristened it park Row. There other delegations of Greek and

332
00:20:36,000 --> 00:20:39,519
Italian children meet and escort the music on its homeward trip.

333
00:20:40,240 --> 00:20:42,599
In one of the crooked streets near the river, its

334
00:20:42,680 --> 00:20:46,079
journey comes to an end. A battered door opens to

335
00:20:46,200 --> 00:20:49,680
let it in. A tallow dip burns sleepily on the

336
00:20:49,720 --> 00:20:53,279
creaking stairs. The water runs with a loud clatter in

337
00:20:53,319 --> 00:20:57,000
the sink. It is to keep it from freezing. There

338
00:20:57,039 --> 00:21:00,279
is not a whole window pane in the hall. Time

339
00:21:00,480 --> 00:21:04,279
was when this was a fine house, harboring wealth and refinement.

340
00:21:04,839 --> 00:21:08,880
It has neither now. In the old parlor downstairs, a

341
00:21:08,960 --> 00:21:11,759
knot of hard faced men and women sit on benches

342
00:21:11,960 --> 00:21:15,559
about a deal table, playing cards. They have a jug

343
00:21:15,640 --> 00:21:18,720
between them from which they drink. By turns on the

344
00:21:18,759 --> 00:21:21,559
stump of a mantel shelf. A lamp burns before a

345
00:21:21,640 --> 00:21:24,880
rude print of the Mother of God. No one pays

346
00:21:24,960 --> 00:21:27,279
any heed to the hand organ man and his wife.

347
00:21:27,640 --> 00:21:30,519
As they climb to their attic. There is a colony

348
00:21:30,599 --> 00:21:36,720
of them up there. Three families in four rooms. Come in, Antonio,

349
00:21:37,319 --> 00:21:40,160
says the tenant of the double flat, the one with

350
00:21:40,279 --> 00:21:46,200
two rooms, Come and keep Christmas. Antonio enters cap in hand.

351
00:21:46,880 --> 00:21:49,240
In the corner by the dormer window, a crib has

352
00:21:49,240 --> 00:21:52,880
been fitted up in commemoration of the Nativity. A soap

353
00:21:52,960 --> 00:21:56,839
box and two hemlock branches are the elements. Six tallow

354
00:21:56,920 --> 00:22:01,000
candles and a night light illuminate a singular collection of rarities,

355
00:22:01,359 --> 00:22:05,559
set out with much ceremonial show. A doll wrapped tightly

356
00:22:05,559 --> 00:22:09,599
in swaddling clothes represents the child. Over it stands a

357
00:22:09,640 --> 00:22:14,279
ferocious looking beast, easily recognized as a survival of the

358
00:22:14,359 --> 00:22:18,960
last political campaign, the Tammany tiger, threatening to swallow it

359
00:22:19,039 --> 00:22:21,480
at a gulp if one as much as takes one's

360
00:22:21,480 --> 00:22:26,079
eyes off of it. A miniature Santa claus, a pasteboard monkey,

361
00:22:26,440 --> 00:22:28,960
and several other articles of bric a brac of the

362
00:22:29,079 --> 00:22:33,480
kind the tenement affords complete the outfit. The background is

363
00:22:33,519 --> 00:22:36,720
a picture of Saint Donardo, their village saint, with the

364
00:22:36,759 --> 00:22:41,599
madonna whom they worship. Most, but the incongruity harbors no

365
00:22:41,640 --> 00:22:45,599
suggestion of disrespect. The children view the strange show with

366
00:22:45,720 --> 00:22:50,400
genuine reverence, bowing and crossing themselves before it. There are five,

367
00:22:50,839 --> 00:22:54,160
The oldest a girl of seventeen, who works for a sweater,

368
00:22:54,680 --> 00:22:57,720
making three dollars a week. It is all the money

369
00:22:57,759 --> 00:23:00,160
that comes in for the father has been safe and

370
00:23:00,279 --> 00:23:03,039
unable to work eight months, and the mother has her

371
00:23:03,079 --> 00:23:06,960
hands full. The youngest is a baby in arms. Three

372
00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:09,319
of the children go to a charity school where they

373
00:23:09,359 --> 00:23:12,559
are fed a great help. Now the holidays have come

374
00:23:12,640 --> 00:23:16,079
to make work slack for sister. The rent is six

375
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:19,680
dollars two weeks pay out of the four. The mention

376
00:23:19,759 --> 00:23:22,039
of a possible chance of light work for the man

377
00:23:22,319 --> 00:23:24,880
brings the daughter with her sewing from the adjoining room.

378
00:23:25,200 --> 00:23:30,359
Eager to hear that would be Christmas. Indeed Pietro, She

379
00:23:30,480 --> 00:23:33,839
runs to the neighbors to communicate the joyful tidings. Pietro

380
00:23:34,000 --> 00:23:36,920
comes with his new born baby, which he is tending

381
00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:39,680
while his wife lies ill to look at the maestro,

382
00:23:40,039 --> 00:23:43,160
so powerful and good. He also has been out of

383
00:23:43,200 --> 00:23:45,759
work for months, with a family of mouths to fill

384
00:23:46,000 --> 00:23:49,519
and nothing coming in. His children are all small yet,

385
00:23:49,839 --> 00:23:54,599
but they speak English. What I say, holding a silver

386
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:58,039
dime up before the oldest, a smart little champ of seven,

387
00:23:58,680 --> 00:24:02,680
What would you do if I gave you this? Get change?

388
00:24:03,039 --> 00:24:06,279
He replies promptly when he is told that it is

389
00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:10,119
his own to buy toys, with his eyes open wide,

390
00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:15,400
with wondering incredulity. By degrees, he understands the father does not.

391
00:24:16,119 --> 00:24:19,440
He looks questioningly from one to the other. When told.

392
00:24:19,759 --> 00:24:25,319
His respect increases visibly for the rich gentleman. They were

393
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:29,000
villagers of the same community in southern Italy, these people

394
00:24:29,079 --> 00:24:32,200
and others in the tenements thereabouts, and they moved their

395
00:24:32,240 --> 00:24:36,319
patron saint with them. They cluster about his worship here,

396
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:39,160
But the worship is more than an empty form. He

397
00:24:39,279 --> 00:24:42,920
typifies to them the old neighborliness of home, the spirit

398
00:24:42,960 --> 00:24:46,400
of mutual help, of charity, and of the common cause

399
00:24:46,440 --> 00:24:50,880
against the common enemy. The community life survives through their

400
00:24:50,920 --> 00:24:55,119
saint in the far city to an unsuspected extent. The

401
00:24:55,200 --> 00:24:58,480
sick are cared for, the dreaded hospital is fenced out.

402
00:24:59,039 --> 00:25:02,599
There are no etis evictions. The saint has paid the

403
00:25:02,599 --> 00:25:06,200
rent of this attic through two hard months, and here

404
00:25:06,279 --> 00:25:10,240
at his shrine the Calabrian village gathers in the persons

405
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:13,799
of these three to do him honor on Christmas Eve,

406
00:25:15,160 --> 00:25:18,799
where the old Africa has been made into a modern Italy.

407
00:25:19,119 --> 00:25:23,480
Since King Humbert's cohorts struck the uptown trail, three hundred

408
00:25:23,519 --> 00:25:26,720
of the little foreigners are having an uproarious time over

409
00:25:26,759 --> 00:25:30,920
their Christmas tree in the Children's Aid Society's school, and

410
00:25:31,039 --> 00:25:33,640
well they may, for the like has not been seen

411
00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:37,599
in Sullivan Street in this generation. Christmas trees are rather

412
00:25:37,759 --> 00:25:40,880
rarer over here than on the east side, where the

413
00:25:40,920 --> 00:25:44,240
German leavens the lump with his loyalty to home traditions.

414
00:25:45,079 --> 00:25:48,559
This is loaded with silver and gold and toys without end,

415
00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:52,359
until there is little left of the original green. Santa

416
00:25:52,359 --> 00:25:55,440
Claus's sleigh must have been upset in a snow drift

417
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:58,960
over here and righted by throwing the cargo overboard, for

418
00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:01,079
there is at least a way dagon load of things.

419
00:26:01,240 --> 00:26:04,279
They can find no room on the tree. The appearance

420
00:26:04,319 --> 00:26:07,680
of teacher with a double armful of curly headed dolls

421
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:11,319
in red, yellow and green, mother hoverds, doubtful how to

422
00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:14,599
dispose of them, provokes a shout of approval, which is

423
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:18,680
presently quieted by the principal's bell, school is in for

424
00:26:18,759 --> 00:26:22,920
the preliminary exercises. Afterward there are to be the tree

425
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:26,160
and ice cream for the good children. In their anxiety

426
00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:29,319
to prove their title clear, they sit so straight with

427
00:26:29,519 --> 00:26:33,400
arms folded, that the whole row bends over backwards. The

428
00:26:33,519 --> 00:26:37,640
lesson is brief. The answers to the point, what do

429
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:42,000
we receive at Christmas? The teacher wants to know. The

430
00:26:42,039 --> 00:26:46,240
whole school responds with a shout dolls and toys to

431
00:26:46,319 --> 00:26:49,920
the question, why do we receive them at Christmas? The

432
00:26:50,039 --> 00:26:53,720
answer is not so prompt, But one youngster from Thompson

433
00:26:53,799 --> 00:26:58,079
Street holds up his hand. He knows, because we always

434
00:26:58,079 --> 00:27:01,799
get him, he says. The class is convinced it is

435
00:27:01,839 --> 00:27:05,240
a fact. The baby wails because it cannot get the

436
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:08,680
whole tree at once. The little mother, herself, a child

437
00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:11,680
of less than a dozen winters, who has it in charge,

438
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:15,200
coos over it and soothes its grief with the aid

439
00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:18,640
of a surreptitious sponge cake evolved from the depths of

440
00:27:18,759 --> 00:27:23,200
teacher's pocket. Babies are encouraged in these schools, though not

441
00:27:23,359 --> 00:27:27,359
originally included in their plan, as often the one condition

442
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:31,079
upon which the older children can be reached. Some one

443
00:27:31,119 --> 00:27:33,759
has to mind the baby. With all the hands out

444
00:27:33,799 --> 00:27:39,319
at work, the school sings Sante Luccia and children of

445
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:44,559
the Heavenly King, and baby is lulled to sleep. Who

446
00:27:44,799 --> 00:27:48,160
is this king? Asked the teacher. Suddenly, at the end

447
00:27:48,200 --> 00:27:52,680
of a verse momentary stupefaction, the little minds are on

448
00:27:52,799 --> 00:27:55,480
ice cream. Just then the lad nearest the door has

449
00:27:55,519 --> 00:27:58,559
telegraphed that it is being carried up in pails. A

450
00:27:58,599 --> 00:28:01,640
little fellow on the back seat saves the day. Up

451
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:06,720
goes his brown fist. Well veto who is he? Mc kinley,

452
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:10,519
shouts the lad, who remembers the election just passed, And

453
00:28:10,599 --> 00:28:14,960
the school adjourns for ice cream. It is a sight

454
00:28:15,079 --> 00:28:17,799
to see them eat it. In a score of such

455
00:28:17,839 --> 00:28:21,119
schools from the Hook to Harlem, the sight is enjoyed

456
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:23,759
in Christmas week by the men and women who, out

457
00:28:23,759 --> 00:28:27,200
of their own pockets, reimburse Santa Claus for his outlay,

458
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:30,799
and counted a joy as well they may, for their

459
00:28:30,799 --> 00:28:35,240
beneficence sometimes makes the one bright spot in lives that

460
00:28:35,319 --> 00:28:38,839
have suffered, of all wrongs, the most cruel, that of

461
00:28:38,960 --> 00:28:44,440
being despoiled of their childhood. Sometimes they are little Bohemians,

462
00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:48,880
sometimes the children of refugee Jews, and again Italians are

463
00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:51,640
the descendants of the Irish stock of Hell's kitchen and

464
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:56,599
poverty row. Always the poorest, the shabbiest, the hungriest, the

465
00:28:56,680 --> 00:29:00,400
children Santa Claus loves best to find if any one

466
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:03,720
will show him the way. Having so much on hand,

467
00:29:04,039 --> 00:29:07,079
he has no time, you see, to look them up himself.

468
00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:11,039
That must be done for him, and it is done

469
00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:14,720
to the teacher in this Sullivan Street school. Came one

470
00:29:14,759 --> 00:29:18,839
little girl this last Christmas with anxious inquiry if it

471
00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:23,440
was true that he came around with toys. I hanged

472
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:27,000
my stocking last time, she said, And he didn't come

473
00:29:27,039 --> 00:29:30,720
at all in the front house, indeed he left a

474
00:29:30,759 --> 00:29:34,039
drum and a doll, but no message from him reached

475
00:29:34,039 --> 00:29:37,640
the rear house in the alley. Maybe he couldn't find it,

476
00:29:37,960 --> 00:29:41,319
she said, soberly. Did the teacher think he would come

477
00:29:41,480 --> 00:29:44,160
if she wrote to him? She had learned to write.

478
00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:49,559
Together they composed a note to Santa Claus speaking for

479
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:53,079
a doll and a bell, the bell to play go

480
00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:56,319
to school with when she was kept home minding the baby,

481
00:29:57,079 --> 00:29:59,359
lest he should by any chance miss the alley in

482
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:02,440
spite of direct actions, Little Rosa was invited to hang

483
00:30:02,519 --> 00:30:06,200
her stocking and her sisters with the janitor's children's in

484
00:30:06,279 --> 00:30:10,000
the school, and lo on Christmas morning there was a

485
00:30:10,039 --> 00:30:13,319
gorgeous doll and a bell that was the whole curriculum

486
00:30:13,359 --> 00:30:16,440
in itself, as good as a year's schooling any day.

487
00:30:17,440 --> 00:30:20,640
Faith in Santa Claus is established in that Thompson Street

488
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:24,759
alley for this generation at least, and Santa Claus got

489
00:30:24,799 --> 00:30:27,519
by hook or by crook into an eighth Ward alley,

490
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:30,519
is as good as the whole Supreme Court bench with

491
00:30:30,599 --> 00:30:33,519
the Court of Appeals thrown in for backing the Board

492
00:30:33,559 --> 00:30:39,240
of Health against the slum. But the ice cream, they

493
00:30:39,279 --> 00:30:41,720
eat it off the seats, half of them kneeling or

494
00:30:41,759 --> 00:30:44,559
squatting on the floor. They blow on it and put

495
00:30:44,599 --> 00:30:47,720
it in their pockets to carry home to baby. Two

496
00:30:47,759 --> 00:30:51,240
little shavers discovered to be feeding each other, each watching

497
00:30:51,279 --> 00:30:54,079
the smack develop on the other's lips as the acme

498
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:58,119
of his own bliss are cousins. That is why of

499
00:30:58,279 --> 00:31:02,519
cake there is a double supply. It is a dozen

500
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:06,480
years since fighting Mary, the wildest child in the seventh

501
00:31:06,519 --> 00:31:09,640
Avenue School, taught them a lesson there which they have

502
00:31:09,799 --> 00:31:15,440
never forgotten she was perfectly untamable, fighting everybody in school,

503
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:19,519
the despair of her teacher till on Thanksgiving were reluctantly

504
00:31:19,559 --> 00:31:22,680
included in the general amnesty and mince pie. She was

505
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:26,000
caught cramming the pie into her pocket after eyeing it

506
00:31:26,039 --> 00:31:29,039
with a look of pure ecstasy, but refusing to touch

507
00:31:29,079 --> 00:31:34,920
it for mother was her explanation, delivered with a defiant look,

508
00:31:35,160 --> 00:31:39,240
before which the class quailed. It is recorded, but not

509
00:31:39,359 --> 00:31:42,720
in the Minutes, that the board of managers wept over

510
00:31:42,799 --> 00:31:47,400
fighting Mary, who all unconscious of having caused such an

511
00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:51,240
astonishing break, was at that moment engaged in maintaining her

512
00:31:51,279 --> 00:31:54,680
prestige and reputation by fighting the gang in the next block.

513
00:31:55,640 --> 00:31:59,000
The minutes contain merely a formal resolution to the effect

514
00:31:59,279 --> 00:32:03,960
that occasions mince pie shall carry double rations thenceforth, and

515
00:32:04,079 --> 00:32:07,559
the rule has been kept not only in Seventh Avenue

516
00:32:07,799 --> 00:32:11,759
but in every industrial school since. Fighting Mary won the

517
00:32:11,759 --> 00:32:15,240
biggest fight of her troubled life that day, without striking

518
00:32:15,279 --> 00:32:20,200
a blow. It was in the Seventh Avenue School last

519
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:23,960
Christmas that I offered the truant class a four bladed

520
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:28,599
penknife as a prize for whittling out the truest Maltese cross.

521
00:32:29,079 --> 00:32:31,440
It was a class of black sheep, and it was

522
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:34,519
the blackest sheep of the flock that won the prize.

523
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:40,359
That awful savaree, said the principal in despair. I thought

524
00:32:40,359 --> 00:32:43,720
of fighting Mary and bade her take heart. I regret

525
00:32:43,759 --> 00:32:46,519
to say that within a week the hapless savaree was

526
00:32:46,599 --> 00:32:49,880
blacklisted for banking up the school door with snow so

527
00:32:49,920 --> 00:32:52,640
that not even the janitor could get out and at

528
00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:57,799
him within hail of the Sullivan Street school camp's a

529
00:32:57,839 --> 00:33:01,519
scattered little band the Christmas customs of which I had

530
00:33:01,599 --> 00:33:05,759
been trying for years to surprise. They are Indians, a

531
00:33:05,839 --> 00:33:09,720
handful of Mohawk and Iroquois, whom some ill wind has

532
00:33:09,799 --> 00:33:13,440
blown down from their Canadian reservation and left in these

533
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:16,359
West Side tenements to eke out such a living as

534
00:33:16,359 --> 00:33:20,279
they can, weaving mats and baskets and threading glass pearls

535
00:33:20,279 --> 00:33:24,240
on slippers and pincushions, until one after another they have

536
00:33:24,359 --> 00:33:28,160
died off and gone to happier hunting grounds than Thompson Street.

537
00:33:29,559 --> 00:33:31,759
There were as many families as one could count on

538
00:33:31,799 --> 00:33:34,599
the fingers of both hands when I first came upon

539
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:38,400
them at the death of Old Taminund the basket maker.

540
00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:42,440
Last Christmas there were seven I had about made up

541
00:33:42,440 --> 00:33:45,119
my mind that the only real Americans in New York

542
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:49,039
did not keep the holiday at all, when when Christmas Eve,

543
00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:52,720
they showed me how. Just as dark was setting in

544
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:56,519
old Missus Benoit came from her Hudson Street attic, where

545
00:33:56,559 --> 00:33:59,480
she was known among the neighbors as old and poor

546
00:33:59,559 --> 00:34:02,920
as she as Missus ben Wit, and believed to be

547
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:06,240
the relic of a warrior of the name of Benjamin Waugh,

548
00:34:06,880 --> 00:34:10,039
to the office of the charity organization Society with a

549
00:34:10,039 --> 00:34:12,039
bundle for a friend who had helped her over a

550
00:34:12,119 --> 00:34:15,960
rough spot the rent. I suppose. The bundle was done

551
00:34:16,039 --> 00:34:19,320
up elaborately with blue cheese cloth, and contained a lot

552
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:21,719
of little garments which she had made out of the

553
00:34:21,800 --> 00:34:24,760
remnants of blankets and cloth of her own from a

554
00:34:24,840 --> 00:34:30,360
younger and better day for those, she said in her French,

555
00:34:30,400 --> 00:34:35,840
buttois who are poorer than myself, and hobbled away. I

556
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:38,480
found out a few days later, when I took her

557
00:34:38,519 --> 00:34:41,480
picture weaving mats in her attic room, that she had

558
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:44,480
scarcely food in the house that Christmas Day, and not

559
00:34:44,639 --> 00:34:48,599
the car fare to take her to church. Walking was bad,

560
00:34:48,880 --> 00:34:51,639
and her old limbs were stiff. She sat by the

561
00:34:51,719 --> 00:34:54,480
window through the winter evening and watched the sun go

562
00:34:54,599 --> 00:34:59,639
down behind the western hills, comforted by her pipe. Missus Benoit,

563
00:35:00,079 --> 00:35:02,880
to give her her local name, is not really an Indian,

564
00:35:03,320 --> 00:35:05,840
but her husband was one, and she lived all her

565
00:35:05,880 --> 00:35:09,199
life with the tribe till she came here. She is

566
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:12,559
a philosopher in her own quaint way. It is no

567
00:35:12,679 --> 00:35:16,079
disgrace to be poor, she said to me, regarding her

568
00:35:16,079 --> 00:35:20,119
empty tobacco pouch. But it is sometimes a great inconvenience.

569
00:35:21,440 --> 00:35:24,400
Not even the recollection of the vote of censure that

570
00:35:24,599 --> 00:35:27,079
was passed upon me once by the ladies of the

571
00:35:27,159 --> 00:35:31,599
Charitable Ten for surreptitiously supplying an aged couple the special

572
00:35:31,639 --> 00:35:35,400
object of their charity with army plug could have deterred

573
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:39,519
me from taking the hint. Very likely, my old friend,

574
00:35:39,599 --> 00:35:43,119
miss Sherman in her Broome Street cellar. It is always

575
00:35:43,119 --> 00:35:46,440
the attic or the cellar would object to Missus Benoi's

576
00:35:46,440 --> 00:35:49,400
claim to being the only real American in my note book.

577
00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:54,199
She is from down East and says, stunned for stone.

578
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:57,719
In her youth, she was lady's maid to a general's wife,

579
00:35:58,199 --> 00:36:02,199
the recollection of which military career equally condones the cellar

580
00:36:02,480 --> 00:36:05,519
and prevents her holding any sort of communication with her

581
00:36:05,559 --> 00:36:08,880
common neighbors, who add to the offense of being foreigners

582
00:36:09,079 --> 00:36:13,679
the unpardonable one of being mostly men. Eight cats bear

583
00:36:13,760 --> 00:36:18,000
her steady company and keep alive her starved affections. I

584
00:36:18,119 --> 00:36:22,440
found them on last Christmas Eve, behind barricaded doors. For

585
00:36:22,519 --> 00:36:25,159
the cold that had locked the water pipes had brought

586
00:36:25,159 --> 00:36:28,239
the neighbors down to the cellar, where Missus Sherman's cunning

587
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:32,039
had kept them from freezing. Their tin pans and buckets

588
00:36:32,079 --> 00:36:36,119
were even then banging against her door. They're a miserable lot,

589
00:36:36,440 --> 00:36:40,079
said the old maid, fondling her cats defiantly. But let

590
00:36:40,119 --> 00:36:43,760
em it's Christmas, Ah, she added, as one of the

591
00:36:43,800 --> 00:36:46,360
eight stood up in her lap and rubbed its cheek

592
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:51,039
against hers. They're innocent. It isn't poor animals that does

593
00:36:51,079 --> 00:36:53,480
the harm. It's men and women that does it to

594
00:36:53,559 --> 00:36:57,079
each other. I don't know whether it was just philosophy

595
00:36:57,559 --> 00:37:00,639
like Missus ben Wahs, or a glimpse of her story.

596
00:37:01,440 --> 00:37:03,920
If she had one, she kept it for her cats

597
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:09,119
in a hundred places all over the city. When Christmas comes,

598
00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:13,639
as many open air fares spring suddenly into life. A

599
00:37:13,760 --> 00:37:18,320
kind of gentile feast of tabernacles possesses the tenement districts,

600
00:37:18,480 --> 00:37:22,880
especially green embowered booths stand in rows at the curb,

601
00:37:23,159 --> 00:37:25,119
and the voice of the tin trumpet is heard in

602
00:37:25,159 --> 00:37:28,440
the land. The common source of all the show is

603
00:37:28,519 --> 00:37:31,199
down by the North River, in the district known as

604
00:37:31,440 --> 00:37:35,760
the Farm. Down there, Santa Claus establishes headquarters early in

605
00:37:35,840 --> 00:37:40,079
December and until past New Year. The broad Quay looks

606
00:37:40,119 --> 00:37:42,760
more then like a clearing in a pine forest than

607
00:37:42,800 --> 00:37:46,960
a busy section of the metropolis. The steamers discharge their

608
00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:49,840
loads of fir trees at the piers until they stand

609
00:37:49,920 --> 00:37:53,880
stacked mountain high, with foothills of holly and ground ivy

610
00:37:54,119 --> 00:37:57,599
trailing off toward the land side. An army train of

611
00:37:57,639 --> 00:38:00,920
wagons is engaged in carting them away from early morning

612
00:38:00,920 --> 00:38:04,079
till late at night, But the green forest grows in

613
00:38:04,159 --> 00:38:06,760
spite of it all, until in places it shuts the

614
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:10,679
shipping out of sight altogether. The air is redolent with

615
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:14,519
the smell of balsam and pine after nightfall, when the

616
00:38:14,599 --> 00:38:17,480
lights are burning in the busy market and the homeward

617
00:38:17,519 --> 00:38:20,760
bound crowds with baskets and heavy burdens of Christmas greens

618
00:38:21,079 --> 00:38:24,599
jostle one another with good natured banter. Nobody is ever

619
00:38:24,719 --> 00:38:28,280
crossed down here in the holiday season. It is good

620
00:38:28,360 --> 00:38:30,559
to take a stroll through the farm if one has

621
00:38:30,599 --> 00:38:33,280
a spot in his heart. Faithful yet to the hills

622
00:38:33,519 --> 00:38:36,599
in the woods in spite of the latter day city.

623
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:39,000
But it is when the moonlight is upon the water

624
00:38:39,280 --> 00:38:42,400
and upon the dark, phantom forest, when the heavy breathing

625
00:38:42,440 --> 00:38:45,280
of some passing steamer is the only sound that breaks

626
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:47,960
the stillness of the night, and the watchman smokes his

627
00:38:48,119 --> 00:38:50,760
only pipe on the bulwark, that the farm has a

628
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:54,679
mood and an atmosphere all its own, full of poetry,

629
00:38:54,920 --> 00:38:58,079
which some day a painter's brush will catch and hold

630
00:38:59,800 --> 00:39:04,559
into the ugliest tenement street. Christmas brings something of picturesqueness

631
00:39:04,679 --> 00:39:07,880
as of cheer. Its message was ever to the poor

632
00:39:08,159 --> 00:39:10,960
and the heavy laden, and by them it is understood

633
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:14,239
with an instinctive yearning to do it honor. In the

634
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:17,880
stiff dignity of the brownstone streets uptown, there may be

635
00:39:18,039 --> 00:39:21,079
scarce a hint of it. In the homes of the poor.

636
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:24,519
It blossoms on stoop and fire escape looks out of

637
00:39:24,599 --> 00:39:27,679
the front window, and makes the unsightly barber pole to

638
00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:32,119
sprout over night like an Arran's rod. Poor, indeed, is

639
00:39:32,159 --> 00:39:34,480
the home that has not its sign of peace over

640
00:39:34,519 --> 00:39:37,239
the hearth. Be it but a single sprig of green.

641
00:39:38,400 --> 00:39:42,239
A little color creeps with it even into rabbinical Hester Street,

642
00:39:42,679 --> 00:39:45,519
and shows in the shop windows and in the children's faces.

643
00:39:46,639 --> 00:39:49,880
The very feather dusters in the peddler's stock take on

644
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:52,719
brighter hues for the occasion, and the big knives in

645
00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:55,960
the cutler's shop gleam with a lively anticipation of the

646
00:39:56,000 --> 00:40:00,920
impending goose with fixens. A concession perhaps to the commercial

647
00:40:01,239 --> 00:40:05,639
rather than the religious holiday business comes then, if ever,

648
00:40:06,679 --> 00:40:09,280
a crowd of ragamuffins camp out at a window where

649
00:40:09,320 --> 00:40:12,599
Santa Claus and his wife stand in state embodiment of

650
00:40:12,639 --> 00:40:15,039
the domestic ideal that has not yet gone out of

651
00:40:15,079 --> 00:40:18,800
fashion in these tenements, gazing hungrily at the announcement that

652
00:40:19,199 --> 00:40:22,400
a silver present will be given to every purchaser by

653
00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:28,239
a real Santa Claus m Levitsky. Across the way and

654
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:31,119
a hole in the wall, two cobblers are pegging away

655
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:34,159
under an oozy lamp that makes a yellow splurge on

656
00:40:34,199 --> 00:40:37,639
the inky blackness about them, revealing to the passer by

657
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:41,400
their bearded faces. But nothing of the environment save a

658
00:40:41,440 --> 00:40:45,320
single sprig of holly suspended from the lamp. From what

659
00:40:45,519 --> 00:40:48,760
forgotten break It came with a message of cheer, a

660
00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:52,440
thought of wife and children across the sea waiting their summons.

661
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:56,960
God knows. The shop is their house and home. It

662
00:40:57,119 --> 00:40:59,599
was once the hall of the tenement, but to save

663
00:40:59,639 --> 00:41:02,480
space enough has been walled in to make room for

664
00:41:02,519 --> 00:41:06,760
their bench and bed. The tenants go through the next house,

665
00:41:07,480 --> 00:41:10,119
no matter if they are cramped. By and by they

666
00:41:10,159 --> 00:41:13,559
will have room. By and by comes the spring, and

667
00:41:13,639 --> 00:41:16,800
with it the steamer does not the green branch speak

668
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:20,000
of spring and of hope. The policemen on the beat

669
00:41:20,239 --> 00:41:23,840
hears their hammers beat a joyous tattoo past midnight, far

670
00:41:23,960 --> 00:41:27,039
into Christmas morning. Who shall say its message has not

671
00:41:27,159 --> 00:41:33,000
reached even them in their slum, where the noisy trains

672
00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:36,760
speed over the iron highway, past the second story windows

673
00:41:36,800 --> 00:41:39,920
of Allen Street. A cellar door yawns darkly in the

674
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:42,320
shadow of one of the pillars that half block the

675
00:41:42,400 --> 00:41:46,760
narrow sidewalk. A dull gleam behind the cobweb shrouded window

676
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:50,079
pane supplants the sign over the door in Yiddish and

677
00:41:50,199 --> 00:41:55,960
English old brasses. Four crooked and moldy steps lead to

678
00:41:56,039 --> 00:41:59,920
utter darkness. With no friendly voice to guide the hapless customer.

679
00:42:00,719 --> 00:42:03,480
Fumbling along the dank wall, he is left to find

680
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:06,119
the door of the shop as best he can, not

681
00:42:06,239 --> 00:42:10,559
a likely place to encounter the fastidious from the avenue. Yet,

682
00:42:10,639 --> 00:42:13,360
ladies in furs and silk find this door in the

683
00:42:13,400 --> 00:42:16,440
grim old smith within it now and then an artist

684
00:42:16,480 --> 00:42:20,880
stumbles upon them and exults exceedingly in his find. Two

685
00:42:21,039 --> 00:42:24,559
holiday shoppers are even now haggling with the coppersmith over

686
00:42:24,599 --> 00:42:27,920
the price of a pair of curiously wrought brass candlesticks.

687
00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:31,280
The old man has turned from the forge at which

688
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:34,440
he was working, unmindful of his collars, roving among the

689
00:42:34,559 --> 00:42:38,920
dusky shelves. Standing there, erect and sturdy in his shiny

690
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:42,320
leather apron, hammer in hand, with a fire light upon

691
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:45,880
his venerable head, strong arms bared to the elbow, and

692
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:49,599
the square paper cap pushed back from a thoughtful, knotty brow,

693
00:42:50,119 --> 00:42:54,440
he stirs strange fancies. One half expects to see him

694
00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:58,000
fashioning a gorget or a sword on his anvil. But

695
00:42:58,119 --> 00:43:02,119
his is a more peaceful craft. Nothing more warlike is

696
00:43:02,119 --> 00:43:05,840
in sight than a row of brass shields designed for ornament,

697
00:43:06,039 --> 00:43:09,960
not for battle. Dark shadows chase one another by the

698
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:14,800
flickering light, among copper kettles of ruddy glow, old fashioned samovars,

699
00:43:15,079 --> 00:43:19,400
and massive and irons of tarnished brass. The bargaining goes

700
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:23,559
on overhead. The nineteenth century speeds by with rattle and roar.

701
00:43:24,119 --> 00:43:26,920
In here linger the shadows of the centuries long dead.

702
00:43:27,679 --> 00:43:30,840
The boy at the anvil listens open mouthed, clutching the

703
00:43:30,880 --> 00:43:37,719
bellows rope. In Liberty Hall, a Jewish wedding is in progress. Liberty,

704
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:42,239
how strange the word echoes through these sweaters tenements, where

705
00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:45,840
starvation is at home. Half the time it is as

706
00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:49,440
in all consuming passion with these people, whose spirit a

707
00:43:49,519 --> 00:43:53,400
thousand years of bondage have not availed to daunt. It

708
00:43:53,519 --> 00:43:56,400
breaks out in strikes, when to strike is to hunger

709
00:43:56,480 --> 00:43:59,960
and die. Not until I stood by a striking cloak

710
00:44:00,079 --> 00:44:03,280
maker whose last scent was gone, with not a crust

711
00:44:03,280 --> 00:44:06,280
in the house to feed seven hungry mouths. Yet who

712
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:09,239
had voted vehemently in the meeting that day to keep

713
00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:12,840
up the strike to the bitter end, bitter indeed, nor

714
00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:16,559
far distant, and heard him at sunset recite the prayers

715
00:44:16,599 --> 00:44:20,960
of his fathers. Blessed art thou, o Lord, our God,

716
00:44:21,320 --> 00:44:24,519
King of the world, that thou hast redeemed us, as

717
00:44:24,559 --> 00:44:28,599
thou didst redeem our fathers, hast delivered us from bondage

718
00:44:28,599 --> 00:44:34,199
to liberty, and from servile dependence to redemption. Not until

719
00:44:34,239 --> 00:44:37,559
then did I know what of sacrifice the word might mean,

720
00:44:38,199 --> 00:44:41,719
and how utterly we of another day had forgotten. But

721
00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:45,679
for once shop and tenement are left behind, whatever other

722
00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:48,559
days may have in store. This is their day of play,

723
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:54,480
when all may rejoice. The bridegroom, a cloak presser in

724
00:44:54,519 --> 00:44:57,559
a higher dress suit, sits alone and ill at ease

725
00:44:57,639 --> 00:45:00,239
at one end of the hall, sipping whiskey with a

726
00:45:00,280 --> 00:45:04,360
fine air of indifference, but glancing apprehensively toward the crowd

727
00:45:04,400 --> 00:45:07,360
of women. In the opposite corner that surrounds the bride,

728
00:45:07,719 --> 00:45:11,039
a pale little shop girl with a pleading, winsome face.

729
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:15,960
From somewhere unexpectedly appears a big man in an ill

730
00:45:16,039 --> 00:45:19,719
fitting coat and skull cap flanked on either side by

731
00:45:19,760 --> 00:45:24,599
a fiddler who scrapes away and away, accompanying the improvisitor

732
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:28,079
with a plaintive minor key. As he halts before the

733
00:45:28,119 --> 00:45:31,840
bride and intones his ley with many a shrug of

734
00:45:31,880 --> 00:45:36,639
stooping shoulders and queer excited gesture. He drones in the harsh,

735
00:45:36,679 --> 00:45:40,400
guttural Yiddish of Hester Street, his story of life's joys

736
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:43,840
and sorrows, it struggles and victories in the land of promise.

737
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:49,079
The women listen, nodding and swaying their bodies sympathetically. He

738
00:45:49,119 --> 00:45:52,159
works himself into a frenzy in which the fiddlers vainly

739
00:45:52,159 --> 00:45:54,760
try to keep up with him. He turns and digs

740
00:45:54,760 --> 00:45:57,639
the laggard angrily in the side, without losing the meter.

741
00:45:58,119 --> 00:46:02,480
The climax comes, the bursts into hysterical sobs, while the

742
00:46:02,519 --> 00:46:06,360
women wipe their eyes. A plate heretofore concealed under his

743
00:46:06,440 --> 00:46:10,400
coat is whisked out. He has conquered the inevitable collection

744
00:46:10,679 --> 00:46:15,639
is taken up. The tuneful procession moves upon the bridegroom.

745
00:46:16,239 --> 00:46:20,440
An Essex street girl in the crowd watching them go says, disdainfully,

746
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:24,760
none of this humbug. When I get married, it is

747
00:46:24,800 --> 00:46:27,480
the straining of young America at the fetters of tradition.

748
00:46:28,320 --> 00:46:32,039
Ten minutes later, when between double files of women holding candles,

749
00:46:32,239 --> 00:46:34,840
the couple passed to the canopy where the rabbi waits,

750
00:46:35,119 --> 00:46:37,800
she has already forgotten, and when the crunching of a

751
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:40,559
glass under the bridegroom's heel announces that they are one,

752
00:46:41,199 --> 00:46:44,719
and that until the broken pieces be reunited, he is

753
00:46:44,800 --> 00:46:48,079
hers and hers alone, she joins with all the company

754
00:46:48,280 --> 00:46:53,639
in the exulting shout of mazeltov good luck. Then the

755
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:57,400
dupa men and women joining in forgetting all but the moment,

756
00:46:57,679 --> 00:47:00,840
hands on hips, stepping in time for forward, backward and

757
00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:05,480
a cross, and then the feast. They sit at the

758
00:47:05,519 --> 00:47:09,480
long tables by squads and tribes. Those who belong together

759
00:47:09,599 --> 00:47:12,679
sit together. There is no attempt at paring off for

760
00:47:12,800 --> 00:47:16,800
conversation or mutual entertainment. At the speech making or toasting.

761
00:47:17,599 --> 00:47:20,159
The business in hand is to eat, and it is

762
00:47:20,239 --> 00:47:23,599
attended to. The bridegroom at the head of the table

763
00:47:23,840 --> 00:47:27,559
with his shiny silk hat on sets the example, and

764
00:47:27,679 --> 00:47:31,000
the guests emulate it with zeal. The men smoking big

765
00:47:31,039 --> 00:47:35,639
strong cigars between mouthfuls, gosh, ain't it fine? Is the

766
00:47:35,679 --> 00:47:39,639
grateful comment of one curly haired youngster, bravely attacking his

767
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:44,320
third plate of chicken stew finest silk, nods his neighbor

768
00:47:44,360 --> 00:47:48,559
in Knickerbocker's Christmas, for once means something to them that

769
00:47:48,599 --> 00:47:52,239
they can understand. The crowd of hurrying waiters make room

770
00:47:52,320 --> 00:47:56,000
for one bearing aloft, a small turkey, adorned with much

771
00:47:56,079 --> 00:47:59,760
tinsel and many paper flowers. It is for the bride,

772
00:48:00,119 --> 00:48:02,679
though one thing, not to be touched until the next day,

773
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:06,400
one day off from the drudgery of housekeeping, she too,

774
00:48:06,800 --> 00:48:11,440
can keep Christmas. A group of bearded, dark browed men

775
00:48:11,480 --> 00:48:15,639
sit apart the Rabbi. Among them they are the Orthodox,

776
00:48:15,920 --> 00:48:19,320
who cannot break bread with the rest, for fear, though

777
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:23,280
the food be kosher, the plates have been defiled. They

778
00:48:23,280 --> 00:48:25,559
brought their own to the feast and sit at their

779
00:48:25,559 --> 00:48:30,440
own table, stern and justified. Did they but know what

780
00:48:30,519 --> 00:48:32,960
depravity is harbored in the impish mind of the girl

781
00:48:33,079 --> 00:48:35,880
Yonder who plans to hang her stocking over night by

782
00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:40,440
the window. There is no fireplace in the tenement. Queer

783
00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:43,239
things happen over there in the strife between the old

784
00:48:43,280 --> 00:48:46,840
and the new. The girls of the college settlement last

785
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:50,280
Summer felt compelled to explain that the holiday in the

786
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:53,320
country which they offered some of these children was to

787
00:48:53,360 --> 00:48:56,679
be spent in an episcopal clergyman's house, where they had

788
00:48:56,719 --> 00:49:01,760
prayers every morning. Oh, was the indulgent answer. They know

789
00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:05,880
it isn't true, so it won't hurt them. The bell

790
00:49:06,000 --> 00:49:09,239
of a neighboring church tower strikes the vesper hour. A

791
00:49:09,320 --> 00:49:12,840
man in working clothes uncovers his head reverently and passes

792
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:16,639
on through the vista of green bowers formed of the

793
00:49:16,679 --> 00:49:20,320
grocer's stock of Christmas trees. A passing glimpse of flaring

794
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:23,960
torches in the distant square is caught. They touch with

795
00:49:24,039 --> 00:49:27,880
flame the gilt cross towering high above the white garden

796
00:49:28,239 --> 00:49:32,320
as the German residence call Tompkins Square. On the sidewalk,

797
00:49:32,639 --> 00:49:36,320
the Holy Eve Fair is in its busiest hour. In

798
00:49:36,360 --> 00:49:40,559
the pine bored booths stand rows of staring dogs alternately

799
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:45,480
with plaster saints. Red apples and candy are hawked from carts.

800
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:50,440
Peddlers offer colored candles with shrill outcry. A huckster feeding

801
00:49:50,480 --> 00:49:53,719
his horse by the curb scatters unseen a share for

802
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:57,800
the sparrows. The cross flashes white against the dark sky

803
00:49:59,480 --> 00:50:01,760
in one of the side streets near the East River

804
00:50:02,119 --> 00:50:05,559
has stood for thirty years a little mission church called

805
00:50:05,880 --> 00:50:09,320
Hope Chapel by its founders in the brave spirit in

806
00:50:09,360 --> 00:50:12,639
which they built it. It has had plenty use for

807
00:50:12,719 --> 00:50:16,280
the spirit since of the kind of problems that beset

808
00:50:16,320 --> 00:50:19,239
its pastor. I caught a glimpse the other day when

809
00:50:19,320 --> 00:50:21,960
as I entered his room, a rough looking man went

810
00:50:22,000 --> 00:50:26,519
out one of my cares, said mister Devons, looking after

811
00:50:26,599 --> 00:50:30,440
him with contracted brow. He has spent two Christmas days

812
00:50:30,480 --> 00:50:34,239
of twenty three out of jail. He is a burglar,

813
00:50:34,559 --> 00:50:38,280
or was. His daughter has brought him round. She is

814
00:50:38,280 --> 00:50:41,800
a seamstress. For three months now she has been keeping

815
00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:45,400
him in the home working nights. If I could only

816
00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:49,199
get him a job, he won't stay honest long without it.

817
00:50:49,559 --> 00:50:52,280
But who wants a burglar for a watchman? And how

818
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:56,199
can I recommend him? A few doors from the chapel

819
00:50:56,400 --> 00:50:59,360
and alley sets into the block we halted at the

820
00:50:59,360 --> 00:51:03,599
mouth of it. Come in, said mister Devans, and wish

821
00:51:03,639 --> 00:51:09,079
blind Jenny a merry Christmas. We went in single file.

822
00:51:09,559 --> 00:51:12,480
There was not room for two. As we climbed the

823
00:51:12,519 --> 00:51:15,679
creaking stairs of the rear tenement, A chorus of children's

824
00:51:15,719 --> 00:51:20,639
shrill voices burst into song somewhere above. It is her class,

825
00:51:21,079 --> 00:51:23,679
said the pastor of Hope Chapel, as he stopped on

826
00:51:23,719 --> 00:51:27,360
the landing. They are all kinds. We could never hope

827
00:51:27,360 --> 00:51:30,679
to reach them. Jenny. Can they fetch her the papers

828
00:51:30,719 --> 00:51:33,079
given out in the Sunday school and read to her

829
00:51:33,119 --> 00:51:35,840
what is printed under the pictures? She tells them the

830
00:51:35,880 --> 00:51:39,320
story of it. There is nothing Jenny doesn't know about

831
00:51:39,320 --> 00:51:43,800
the Bible. The door opened upon a low ceilinged room,

832
00:51:44,119 --> 00:51:47,920
where the evening shades lay deep the red glow from

833
00:51:47,960 --> 00:51:51,679
the kitchen stove. Discovered a jamb of children, young girls,

834
00:51:51,719 --> 00:51:56,119
mostly perched on the table the chairs in one another's laps,

835
00:51:56,360 --> 00:51:58,960
or squatting on the floor. In the midst of them

836
00:51:59,159 --> 00:52:02,559
a little old one with heavily veiled face and wan

837
00:52:02,679 --> 00:52:06,679
wrinkled hands folded in her lap. The singing ceased as

838
00:52:06,679 --> 00:52:11,440
we stepped across the threshold. Be welcome, piped a harsh

839
00:52:11,559 --> 00:52:15,320
voice with a singular note of cheerfulness in it. Whose

840
00:52:15,360 --> 00:52:18,280
step is that with you? Past her? I don't know it.

841
00:52:18,639 --> 00:52:22,360
He is welcome in Jenny's house, whoever he be, Girls

842
00:52:22,599 --> 00:52:26,400
make him to home. The girls moved up to make room.

843
00:52:27,639 --> 00:52:31,000
Jenny has not seen since she was a child, said

844
00:52:31,000 --> 00:52:34,280
the clergyman gently. But she knows a friend without it.

845
00:52:34,840 --> 00:52:37,519
Some day she shall see the great Friend in his glory,

846
00:52:37,960 --> 00:52:42,480
and then she shall be blind Jenny no more. The

847
00:52:42,559 --> 00:52:46,400
little woman raised the veil from a face, shockingly disfigured,

848
00:52:46,719 --> 00:52:51,760
and touched the eyeless sockets. Some day, she repeated, Jenny

849
00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:56,880
shall see not long now, not long. Her pastor patted

850
00:52:56,880 --> 00:53:00,239
her hand. The silence of the dark room was broken

851
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:05,880
by blind Jenny's voice, rising, cracked and quavering. Alas, and

852
00:53:06,039 --> 00:53:10,639
did my Savior bleed? The shrill chorus burst in. It

853
00:53:10,800 --> 00:53:14,079
was there by faith I received my sight, and now

854
00:53:14,199 --> 00:53:18,360
I am happy all the day. The light that falls

855
00:53:18,400 --> 00:53:21,440
from the windows of the Neighborhood Guild into Lancey Street

856
00:53:21,760 --> 00:53:25,599
makes a white path across the asphalt pavement. Within there

857
00:53:25,679 --> 00:53:29,400
is mirth and laughter. The tenth Ward's Social Reform Club

858
00:53:29,719 --> 00:53:34,599
is having its Christmas festival. Its members poor mothers, scrub women.

859
00:53:34,920 --> 00:53:37,519
The president is a janitress. In the tenement near by

860
00:53:38,039 --> 00:53:41,239
have brought their little ones a few their husbands to

861
00:53:41,320 --> 00:53:44,199
share in the fun. One little girl has to be

862
00:53:44,280 --> 00:53:46,880
dragged up to the grab bag. She cries. At the

863
00:53:46,920 --> 00:53:50,239
sight of Santa Claus, the baby has drawn a wooly horse.

864
00:53:50,599 --> 00:53:53,360
He kisses the toy with a look of ecstatic bliss,

865
00:53:53,440 --> 00:53:56,400
and toddles away. At the far end of the hall,

866
00:53:56,679 --> 00:53:59,400
a game of blind Man's Bluff is starting up. The

867
00:53:59,480 --> 00:54:03,280
aged grandmother, who has watched it with growing excitement, bids

868
00:54:03,280 --> 00:54:06,000
one of the settlement workers hold her grandchild that she

869
00:54:06,119 --> 00:54:09,000
may join in, and she does join in, with all

870
00:54:09,039 --> 00:54:12,880
the pent up hunger of fifty joyless years. The worker,

871
00:54:13,159 --> 00:54:17,679
looking on, smiles. One has been reached. Thus is the

872
00:54:17,679 --> 00:54:21,719
battle against the slum waged, and one with the child's play.

873
00:54:23,480 --> 00:54:27,639
Tramp Tramp comes the tomorrow. Upon the stage. Two hundred

874
00:54:27,679 --> 00:54:31,079
and fifty pairs of little feet keeping step are marching

875
00:54:31,119 --> 00:54:34,960
to dinner in the newsboys lodging house. Five hundred pairs

876
00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:40,159
more are restlessly awaiting their turn upstairs in prison, hospital

877
00:54:40,239 --> 00:54:43,840
and almshouse. To night, the city is host and gives

878
00:54:44,039 --> 00:54:47,639
of her plenty. Here an unknown friend has spread a

879
00:54:47,760 --> 00:54:50,920
generous repast for the waifs, who all the rest of

880
00:54:50,960 --> 00:54:54,840
their days shift for themselves as best they can turkey,

881
00:54:55,199 --> 00:54:59,800
coffee and pie, with vegetables to fill in as the

882
00:54:59,800 --> 00:55:03,159
fire isle of eagle eyed youngsters passes down the long tables.

883
00:55:03,480 --> 00:55:07,000
There are swift movements of grimy hands and waist shirts.

884
00:55:07,079 --> 00:55:10,800
Bulge ragged coats sag at the pockets hardly as the

885
00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:15,039
file seated. When the plaint arises, I ain't got no pie.

886
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:19,480
It got swiped on me. Seven despoiled ones hold up

887
00:55:19,519 --> 00:55:24,800
their hands. The superintendent laughs, it is Christmas Eve. He

888
00:55:24,880 --> 00:55:28,679
taps one tentatively on the bulging shirt. What have you here,

889
00:55:28,760 --> 00:55:33,800
my lad me pie, responds he with an innocent look.

890
00:55:34,119 --> 00:55:37,840
I was scared it would get stole. A little fellow

891
00:55:37,880 --> 00:55:40,880
who has been eyeing one of the visitors attentively takes

892
00:55:40,880 --> 00:55:43,159
his knife out of his mouth and points it at

893
00:55:43,199 --> 00:55:47,320
him with conviction. I know you, he pipes. You're a

894
00:55:47,320 --> 00:55:50,760
police commissioner. I senior picked her in the papers. You're

895
00:55:50,880 --> 00:55:56,480
Teddy Roosevelt. The clatter of knives and forks ceases. Suddenly,

896
00:55:57,079 --> 00:56:00,000
seven pies creep stealthily over the edge of the table

897
00:56:00,320 --> 00:56:04,800
and are placed on as many plates. The visitors laugh

898
00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:10,199
it was a case of mistaken identity. Farthest down town,

899
00:56:10,559 --> 00:56:13,960
where the island narrows toward the battery and warehouses crowd

900
00:56:14,000 --> 00:56:18,119
the few remaining tenements. The somber hued colony of Syrians

901
00:56:18,199 --> 00:56:22,079
is astir with preparations for the holiday. How comes it that,

902
00:56:22,199 --> 00:56:25,039
in the only settlement of the real Christmas people in

903
00:56:25,119 --> 00:56:28,679
New York, the corner Saloon appropriates to itself all the

904
00:56:28,719 --> 00:56:32,599
outward signs of it. Even the floral cross that is

905
00:56:32,679 --> 00:56:35,480
nailed over the door of the Orthodox Church is long

906
00:56:35,519 --> 00:56:39,079
withered and dead. It has been there since Easter, and

907
00:56:39,199 --> 00:56:42,199
it is yet twelve days to Christmas, by the belated

908
00:56:42,239 --> 00:56:45,880
reckoning of the Greek Church. But if the houses show

909
00:56:45,960 --> 00:56:49,000
no sign of the holiday within, there is nothing lacking.

910
00:56:49,480 --> 00:56:52,840
The whole colony is gone a visiting. There are enough

911
00:56:52,880 --> 00:56:55,679
of the unorthodox to set the fashion, and the rest

912
00:56:55,719 --> 00:56:58,519
follow the custom of the country. The men go from

913
00:56:58,559 --> 00:57:02,320
house to house, la shake hands and kiss one another

914
00:57:02,400 --> 00:57:06,360
on both cheeks with a salutation col aen vaugh An

915
00:57:06,440 --> 00:57:11,639
toomb Salamon every year and you are safe. The Syrian

916
00:57:11,679 --> 00:57:15,440
guide renders it into English, and a non professional interpreter

917
00:57:15,559 --> 00:57:20,719
amends it may you grow happier year by year. Arak

918
00:57:20,840 --> 00:57:24,599
made from grapes and flavored with aniseed and candy, baked

919
00:57:24,599 --> 00:57:27,239
and little white balls like marbles, are served with the

920
00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:32,880
indispensable cigarette for long collars. The pipe in the top

921
00:57:32,920 --> 00:57:36,159
floor room of one of the darkest of the dilapidated tenements,

922
00:57:36,639 --> 00:57:39,159
the dusty window panes of which the last glow in

923
00:57:39,199 --> 00:57:42,559
the winter sky is tinging faintly with red, A dance

924
00:57:42,639 --> 00:57:45,920
is in progress. The guests, most of them fresh from

925
00:57:45,960 --> 00:57:49,639
the hillsides of Mount Lebanon, squat about the room. A

926
00:57:49,800 --> 00:57:53,320
reed pipe and a tambourine furnish the music. One has

927
00:57:53,360 --> 00:57:56,119
the center of the floor with a beer jug filled

928
00:57:56,119 --> 00:58:00,519
to the brim on his head. He skips and sways, bending, twisting, kneeling,

929
00:58:00,599 --> 00:58:04,000
gesturing and keeping time while the men clap their hands.

930
00:58:04,559 --> 00:58:07,239
He lies down and turns over, but not a drop

931
00:58:07,320 --> 00:58:12,280
is spilled. Another succeeds him, stepping proudly gracefully, furling and

932
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:15,920
unfurling a handkerchief like a banner. As he sits down,

933
00:58:16,119 --> 00:58:18,800
and the beer goes around. One in the corner, who

934
00:58:18,800 --> 00:58:21,679
looks like a shepherd fresh from his pasture, strikes up

935
00:58:21,719 --> 00:58:26,599
a song, A far off, lonesome, plaintive lay far as

936
00:58:26,679 --> 00:58:29,679
the hills, says the guide, A song of the old

937
00:58:29,760 --> 00:58:33,880
days and the old people, now seldom heard. All together

938
00:58:34,000 --> 00:58:37,599
croon the refrain. The host delivers himself of an epoch

939
00:58:37,880 --> 00:58:40,960
about his love across the seas, with the most agonizing

940
00:58:41,039 --> 00:58:45,039
expression and in a shockingly bad voice. He is the

941
00:58:45,079 --> 00:58:49,039
worst singer I have ever heard. But his companions greet

942
00:58:49,079 --> 00:58:53,280
his effort with approving shouts of ye yee. They look

943
00:58:53,360 --> 00:58:56,960
so fierce and yet are so childishly happy that at

944
00:58:57,000 --> 00:58:59,440
the thought of their exile and of the dark tenement,

945
00:58:59,599 --> 00:59:04,840
the question arises, why all this joy? The Guide answers

946
00:59:04,880 --> 00:59:08,239
it with a look of surprise. They sing, he says,

947
00:59:08,639 --> 00:59:11,440
because they are glad they are free. Did you not know?

948
00:59:13,280 --> 00:59:17,079
The bells in Old Trinity chime the midnight hour from

949
00:59:17,199 --> 00:59:20,679
dark hallways. Men and women pour forth and hasten to

950
00:59:20,760 --> 00:59:24,760
the Marianite church in the loft of the dingy old warehouse,

951
00:59:25,119 --> 00:59:28,760
wax candles burned before an altar of brass. The priest,

952
00:59:29,079 --> 00:59:31,519
in a white robe with a huge gold cross worked

953
00:59:31,559 --> 00:59:35,519
on the back, chants the ritual. The people respond. The

954
00:59:35,559 --> 00:59:38,840
women kneel in the aisles, shrouding their heads and their shawls.

955
00:59:39,360 --> 00:59:43,360
The surpliced Alkalite swings his censer. The heavy perfume of

956
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:47,840
burning incense fills the hall. The band at the Anarchist's

957
00:59:47,840 --> 00:59:51,119
ball is tuning up for the last dance. Young and

958
00:59:51,239 --> 00:59:56,320
old float to the happy strains forgetting injustice, oppression, hatred.

959
00:59:57,280 --> 01:00:00,719
Children slide upon the waxed floor, weaving feardlessly in and

960
01:00:00,800 --> 01:00:04,440
out between the couples, between fierce bearded men and short

961
01:00:04,480 --> 01:00:08,239
haired women with crimson bordered kerchiefs. A punch and judy

962
01:00:08,280 --> 01:00:13,360
show in the corner evokes shouts of laughter outside, the

963
01:00:13,440 --> 01:00:17,800
snow is falling. It sifts silently into each nook and corner,

964
01:00:18,320 --> 01:00:21,519
softens all the hard and ugly lines, and throws the

965
01:00:21,559 --> 01:00:26,960
spotless mantle of charity over the blemishes the shortcomings. Christmas

966
01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:35,519
morning will dawn pure and white and of merry Christmas.

967
01:00:35,559 --> 01:00:37,800
In the Tenements by Jacob Riese