Jersey Street and Jersey Lane | Page 6

the street.
[Illustration]

But these are Mulberry Street's brief carnival seasons, and when their
splendor is departed the block relapses into workaday dulness, and the
procession that marches and counter-marches before Judge Phoenix
and little sister in any one of the long hours between eight and twelve
and one and six is something like this:
[Illustration]
UP. DOWN.
Detective taking prisoner to Central Office. Chinaman. Messenger boy.
Two house-painters. Two priests. Boy with basket. Jewish sweater,
Boy with tin with coats on beer-pails on a his shoulder. stick. Carpenter.
Another Chinaman. Drunken woman (a regular). Glass-put-in man.
[Illustration]
UP. DOWN.
Washer woman with clothes. Poor woman with market-basket.
Drunken man. Undertaker's man carrying trestles. Butcher's boy. Two
priests. Detective coming back from Central Office alone.
Such is the daily march of the mob in Mulberry Street near the mouth
of Jersey's blind alley, and such is its outrageous behavior as observed
by a presumably decent person from the windows of the big red-brick
building across the way.
Suddenly there is an explosion of sound under the decent person's
window, and a hand-organ starts off with a jerk like a freight train on a
down grade, that joggles a whole string of crashing notes. Then it gets
down to work, and its harsh, high-pitched, metallic drone makes the
street ring for a moment. Then it is temporarily drowned by a chorus of
shrill, small voices. The person--I am afraid his decency begins to drop
off him here--leans on his broad window-sill and looks out. The street
is filled with children of every age, size, and nationality; dirty children,
clean children, well-dressed children, and children in rags, and for
every one of these last two classes put together a dozen children who

are neatly and cleanly but humbly clad--the children of the
self-respecting poor. I do not know where they have all swarmed from.
There were only three or four in sight just before the organ came; now
there are several dozen in the crowd, and the crowd is growing. See, the
women are coming out in the rear tenements. Some male passers-by
line up on the edge of the sidewalk and look on with a superior air. The
Italian barber has come all the way up his steps, and is sitting on the
rail. Judge Phoenix has teetered forward at least half a yard, and stands
looking at the show over the heads of a little knot of women hooded
with red plaid shawls. The epileptic boy comes out on his stoop and
stays there at least three minutes before the area-way swallows him. Up
above there is a head in almost every casement. Mamie is at her
window, and the little mulatto child at hers. There are only two people
who do not stop and look on and listen. One is a Chinaman, who stalks
on with no expression at all on his blank face; the other is the boy from
the printing-office with a dozen foaming cans of beer on his long stick.
But he does not leave because he wants to. He lingers as long as he can,
in his passage through the throng, and disappears in the printing-house
doorway with his head screwed half way around on his shoulders. He
would linger yet, but the big foreman would call him "Spitzbube!" and
would cuff his ears.
[Illustration]
The children are dancing. The organ is playing "On the Blue Alsatian
Mountains," and the little heads are bobbing up and down to it in time
as true as ever was kept. Watch the little things! They are really
waltzing. There is a young one of four years old. See her little worn
shoes take the step and keep it! Dodworth or DeGarmo could not have
taught her better. I wonder if either of them ever had so young a pupil.
And she is dancing with a girl twice her size. Look at that ring of
children--all girls--waltzing round hand in hand! How is that for a
ladies' chain? Well, well, the heart grows young to see them. And now
look over to the grocery. Big sister has come out and climbed on the
vegetable-stand, and is sitting in the potatoes with little sister in her lap.
Little sister waves her fat, red arms in the air and shrieks in babyish
delight. The old women with the shawls over their heads are talking

together, crooning over the spectacle in their Irish way:
[Illustration: THE CHILDREN ARE DANCING. THE ORGAN IS
PLAYING "ON THE BLUE ALSATIAN MOUNTAINS"]
"Thot's me Mary Ann, I was tellin' ye about, Mrs. Rafferty, dancin' wid
the little one in the green apron."
"It's a foine sthring o' childher ye have, Mrs. Finn!" says Mrs. Rafferty,
nodding her head as though it were balanced on wires. And so the
dance