It included some of the oldest, most dilapidated, and slimiest of filthy tenements to be found in the greater city, and some of the newest, best planned, and best kept of the model tenements. It also included many homes of well-to-do persons and many palaces of multimillionaires. It was a fair slice of the greatest jungle of civilization.
If there is a nationality on the globe not represented in that district, I never heard of it. It is a district in which anybody from anywhere may be met any day. Reading my diary it would seem that I met somebody from everywhere almost every day. That is, with one exception—I never met a Protestant minister of the Gospel.
Every profession, every trade in every walk of life, but never a Protestant minister of the Gospel.
The work was quite simple. On entering a tenement I would hunt up the janitor.
“How are you, janitor?” I would greet, and the rougher and more dishevelled the woman the more courteously sympathetic I would make my tone. “I’m your inspector and have come to go through your house.” Invariably on this announcement an expression of concern, sometimes amounting to consternation, would flash into her face. Then, always hastily, I would add: “I’m calling on all the dogs in your house. How many are there?”
“Oh, dogs!” she would exclaim, and the troubled expression would be wiped off by a look of relief, sometimes by a smile.
Often, instead of replying to my question, she would protest her regret that I was not some other variety of inspector—one who would make the Guineas up-stairs stop throwing garbage out their windows, or maybe reprove the drunken Irishwoman for cursing her. Once I let her begin on her personal woes and it meant a half-hour hold-up for me.
The woes of a tenement janitor are many and various—like setting traps on the stairs whereby she may fall and break her neck, or pelting her with rotten eggs. This last was a favorite method during the war of dealing with janitors suspected of German sympathies. However high the cost of living might soar, an ample quantity of unfresh eggs could always be found among Italian tenants to chase a German janitor to her lair.
Jist dogs! Once past the janitor and provided with the number and location of all the dogs in her house I made my way, knocking at the doors behind which was supposed to be a dog.