Maggie | Page 8

district, a pretty girl.
None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins. The
philosophers up-stairs, down-stairs and on the same floor, puzzled over
it.
When a child, playing and fighting with gamins in the street, dirt
disguised her. Attired in tatters and grime, she went unseen.
There came a time, however, when the young men of the vicinity said:
"Dat Johnson goil is a puty good looker." About this period her brother
remarked to her: "Mag, I'll tell yeh dis! See? Yeh've edder got teh go
teh hell or go teh work!" Whereupon she went to work, having the
feminine aversion of going to hell.
By a chance, she got a position in an establishment where they made

collars and cuffs. She received a stool and a machine in a room where
sat twenty girls of various shades of yellow discontent. She perched on
the stool and treadled at her machine all day, turning out collars, the
name of whose brand could be noted for its irrelevancy to anything in
connection with collars. At night she returned home to her mother.
Jimmie grew large enough to take the vague position of head of the
family. As incumbent of that office, he stumbled up-stairs late at night,
as his father had done before him. He reeled about the room, swearing
at his relations, or went to sleep on the floor.
The mother had gradually arisen to that degree of fame that she could
bandy words with her acquaintances among the police- justices.
Court-officials called her by her first name. When she appeared they
pursued a course which had been theirs for months. They invariably
grinned and cried out: "Hello, Mary, you here again?" Her grey head
wagged in many a court. She always besieged the bench with voluble
excuses, explanations, apologies and prayers. Her flaming face and
rolling eyes were a sort of familiar sight on the island. She measured
time by means of sprees, and was eternally swollen and dishevelled.
One day the young man, Pete, who as a lad had smitten the Devil's Row
urchin in the back of the head and put to flight the antagonists of his
friend, Jimmie, strutted upon the scene. He met Jimmie one day on the
street, promised to take him to a boxing match in Williamsburg, and
called for him in the evening.
Maggie observed Pete.
He sat on a table in the Johnson home and dangled his checked legs
with an enticing nonchalance. His hair was curled down over his
forehead in an oiled bang. His rather pugged nose seemed to revolt
from contact with a bristling moustache of short, wire-like hairs. His
blue double-breasted coat, edged with black braid, buttoned close to a
red puff tie, and his patent-leather shoes looked like murder-fitted
weapons.
His mannerisms stamped him as a man who had a correct sense of his

personal superiority. There was valor and contempt for circumstances
in the glance of his eye. He waved his hands like a man of the world,
who dismisses religion and philosophy, and says "Fudge." He had
certainly seen everything and with each curl of his lip, he declared that
it amounted to nothing. Maggie thought he must be a very elegant and
graceful bartender.
He was telling tales to Jimmie.
Maggie watched him furtively, with half-closed eyes, lit with a vague
interest.
"Hully gee! Dey makes me tired," he said. "Mos' e'ry day some farmer
comes in an' tries teh run deh shop. See? But dey gits t'rowed right out!
I jolt dem right out in deh street before dey knows where dey is! See?"
"Sure," said Jimmie.
"Dere was a mug come in deh place deh odder day wid an idear he wus
goin' teh own deh place! Hully gee, he wus goin' teh own deh place! I
see he had a still on an' I didn' wanna giv 'im no stuff, so I says: 'Git
deh hell outa here an' don' make no trouble,' I says like dat! See? 'Git
deh hell outa here an' don' make no trouble'; like dat. 'Git deh hell outa
here,' I says. See?"
Jimmie nodded understandingly. Over his features played an eager
desire to state the amount of his valor in a similar crisis, but the
narrator proceeded.
"Well, deh blokie he says: 'T'hell wid it! I ain' lookin' for no scrap,' he
says (See?), 'but' he says, 'I'm 'spectable cit'zen an' I wanna drink an'
purtydamnsoon, too.' See? 'Deh hell,' I says. Like dat! 'Deh hell,' I says.
See? 'Don' make no trouble,' I says. Like dat. 'Don' make no trouble.'
See? Den deh mug he squared off an' said he was fine as silk wid his
dukes (See?) an' he wanned a drink damnquick. Dat's what he said.
See?"
"Sure,"