Jersey Street and Jersey Lane | Page 4

fair days his companion is brought
out. In front of the grocery is a box with a sloping top, on which are
little bins for vegetables. In front of this box, again, on days when it is
not raining or snowing, a little girl of five or six comes out of the
grocery and sets a little red chair. Then she brings out a smaller girl yet,
who may be two or three, a plump and puggy little thing; and down in
the red chair big sister plunks little sister, and there till next mealtime
little sister sits and never so much as offers to move. She must have
been trained to this unchildlike self-imprisonment, for she is lusty and
strong enough. Big sister works in the shop, and once in a while she
comes out and settles little sister more comfortably in her red chair; and
then little sister has the sole moment of relief from a monotonous
existence. She hammers on big sister's face with her fat little hands, and
with such skill and force does she direct the blows that big sister often
has to wipe her streaming eyes. But big sister always takes it in good
part, and little sister evidently does it, not from any lack of affection,
but in the way of healthy exercise. Then big sister wipes little sister's
nose and goes back into the shop. I suppose there is some compact
between them.
[Illustration]
Of course there is plenty of child life all up and down the sidewalk on
both sides, although little sister never joins in it. My side of the street
swarms with Italian children, most of them from Jersey Street, which is
really not a street, but an alley. Judge Phoenix's side is peopled with
small Germans and Irish. I have noticed one peculiar thing about these
children: they never change sides. They play together most amicably in
the middle of the street or in the gutter, but neither ventures beyond its
neutral ground.
Judge Phoenix and little sister are by far the most interesting figures to
be seen from my windows, but there are many others whom we know.
There is the Italian barber whose brother dropped dead while shaving a
customer. You would never imagine, to see the simple and unaffected

way in which he comes out to take the air once in a while, standing on
the steps of his basement, and twirling his tin-backed comb in idle
thought, that he had had such a distinguished death in his family. But I
don't let him shave me.
[Illustration]
Then there is Mamie, the pretty girl in the window with the
lace-curtains, and there is her epileptic brother. He is insane, but
harmless, and amusing, although rather trying to the nerves. He comes
out of the house in a hurry, walks quickly up the street for twenty or
thirty feet, then turns suddenly, as if he had forgotten something, and
hurries back, to reappear two minutes later from the basement door,
only to hasten wildly in another direction, turn back again, plunge into
the basement door, emerge from the upper door, get half way down the
block, forget it again, and go back to make a new combination of doors
and exits. Sometimes he is ten or twenty minutes in the house at one
time. Then we suppose he is having a fit. Now, it seems to me that that
modest retirement shows consideration and thoughtfulness on his part.
In the window next to Mamie's is a little, putty-colored face, and a still
smaller white face, that just peeps over the sill. One belongs to the
mulatto woman's youngster. Her mother goes out scrubbing, and the
little girl is alone all day. She is so much alone, that the sage-green old
bachelor in the second den from mine could not stand it, last Christmas
time, so he sent her a doll on the sly. That's the other face.
Then there is the grocer, who is a groceress, and the groceress's
husband. I wish that man to understand, if his eye ever falls upon this
page--for wrapping purposes, we will say--that, in the language of
Mulberry Street, I am on to him. He has got a job recently, driving a
bakery wagon, and he times his route so that he can tie up in front of
his wife's grocery every day at twelve o'clock, and he puts in a solid
hour of his employer's time helping his wife through the noonday rush.
But he need not fear. In the interests of the higher morality I suppose I
ought to go and tell his employer about it. But I won't. My morals are
not that high.

Of course we have many across-the-street friends, but I cannot tell you
of them all.