"There used to be grass there," she said, "but the cats ate it." On the wall above it was chalked the inevitable "Keep off the Grass." They had done their best.
Three or four plants with no traditional prejudices as to soil grew in one corner. "Mike found the seed of them," she said simply. I glanced at the back fence and guessed where.
She was carrying water from the hydrant when I went out. "They're good people," said the old housekeeper, who had come out to see what the strange man was there for. On the stoop sat an old grandfather with a child in his lap.
"It is the way of 'em," he said. "I asked this one," patting the child affectionately, "what she wanted for her birthday. 'Gran'pa,' she said, 'I want a flower.' Now did ye ever hear such a dern little fool?" and he smoothed her tangled head. But I saw that he understood.
Chips from the maelstrom that swirls ever in our great city. We stand on the shore and pull in such wrecks as we may. I set them down here without comment, without theory. For it is not theory that in the last going over we are brothers, being children of one Father. Hence our real heredity is this, that we are children of God. Hence, also, our fight upon the environment that would smother instincts proclaiming our birthright is the great human issue, the real fight for freedom, in all days.
And Murphy, says my carping friend, where does he come in? He does not come in; unless it be that the love and loyalty of his wife which not all his cruelty could destroy, and the inhumanity of Poverty Gap, plead for him that another chance may be given the man in him. Who knows?
In a mean street, over on the West Side, I came across a doorway that bore upon its plate the word "Heartsease." The house was as mean as the street. It was flanked on one side by a jail, on the other by a big stable barrack. In front, right under the windows, ran the elevated trains, so close that to open the windows was impossible, for the noise and dirt. Back of it they were putting up a building which, when completed, would hug the rear wall so that you couldn't open the windows there at all.
After nightfall you would have found in that house two frail little women. One of them taught school by day in the outlying districts of the city, miles and miles away, across the East River. By night she came there to sleep, and to be near her neighbors.
