Children of the Tenements | Page 7

the girl knelt by her bed and prayed. When she had
ended, Mamie Anderson fell asleep.
She was still sleeping when the others got up. They noticed after a
while that she lay very quiet and white, and one of them going to see,
found her dead.
That is the story of Mamie Anderson, as Bleecker Street told it to me.
Out on Long Island there is, in a suburban cemetery, a lovely shaded
spot where I sometimes sit by our child's grave. The green hillside
slopes gently under the chestnuts, violets and buttercups spring from
the sod, and the robin sings its jubilant note in the long June twilights.
Halfway down the slope, six or eight green mounds cluster about a
granite block in which are hewn the words:--
These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed
their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
It is the burial-plot of the Florence Mission. Under one of the mounds
lies all that was mortal of Mamie Anderson.

THE KID HANGS UP HIS STOCKING
The clock in the West Side Boys' Lodging-house ticked out the seconds
of Christmas eve as slowly and methodically as if six fat turkeys were
not sizzling in the basement kitchen against the morrow's spread, and as
if two-score boys were not racking their brains to guess what kind of
pies would go with them. Out on the avenue the shopkeepers were
barring doors and windows, and shouting "Merry Christmas!" to one
another across the street as they hurried to get home. The drays ran
over the pavement with muffled sounds; winter had set in with a heavy
snow-storm. In the big hall the monotonous click of checkers on the
board kept step with the clock. The smothered exclamations of the boys
at some unexpected, bold stroke, and the scratching of a little fellow's
pencil on a slate, trying to figure out how long it was yet till the big
dinner, were the only sounds that broke the quiet of the room. The

superintendent dozed behind his desk.
A door at the end of the hall creaked, and a head with a shock of
weather-beaten hair was stuck cautiously through the opening.
"Tom!" it said in a stage-whisper. "Hi, Tom! Come up an' git on ter de
lay of de Kid."
A bigger boy in a jumper, who had been lounging on two chairs by the
group of checker players, sat up and looked toward the door.
Something in the energetic toss of the head there aroused his instant
curiosity, and he started across the room. After a brief whispered
conference the door closed upon the two, and silence fell once more on
the hall.
They had been gone but a little while when they came back in haste.
The big boy shut the door softly behind him and set his back against it.
"Fellers," he said, "what d'ye t'ink? I'm blamed if de Kid ain't gone an'
hung up his sock fer Chris'mas!"
The checkers dropped, and the pencil ceased scratching on the slate, in
breathless suspense.
"Come up an' see," said Tom, briefly, and led the way.
The whole band followed on tiptoe. At the foot of the stairs their leader
halted.
"Yer don't make no noise," he said, with a menacing gesture. "You,
Savoy!"--to one in a patched shirt and with a mischievous
twinkle,--"you don't come none o' yer monkey-shines. If you scare de
Kid you'll get it in de neck, see!"
With this admonition they stole upstairs. In the last cot of the double
tier of bunks a boy much smaller than the rest slept, snugly tucked in
the blankets. A tangled curl of yellow hair strayed over his baby face.
Hitched to the bedpost was a poor, worn little stocking, arranged with

much care so that Santa Claus should have as little trouble in filling it
as possible. The edge of a hole in the knee had been drawn together and
tied with a string to prevent anything falling out. The boys looked on in
amazed silence. Even Savoy was dumb.
Little Willie, or, as he was affectionately dubbed by the boys, "the
Kid," was a waif who had drifted in among them some months before.
Except that his mother was in the hospital, nothing was known about
him, which was regular and according to the rule of the house. Not as
much was known about most of its patrons; few of them knew more
themselves, or cared to remember. Santa Claus had never been
anything to them but a fake to make the colored supplements sell. The
revelation of the Kid's simple faith struck them with a kind of awe.
They sneaked quietly downstairs.
"Fellers," said Tom, when they were all together again in