Nibsys Christmas | Page 2

utter amazement the boys saw him disappear through the door
under the tinkling bell into the charmed precincts of smoked herring,
jam, and honey-cakes. Petrified at their peep-holes, they watched him,
in the veritable presence of Santa Claus himself with the fir-branch,
fish out five battered pennies from the depths of his pocket and pass
them over to the woman behind the jars, in exchange for one of the
bundles of honey-cakes tied with blue. As if in a dream they saw him
issue forth with the coveted prize.
"There, kid!" he said, holding out the two fattest and whitest cakes to
Santa Claus's champion; "there's yer Christmas. Run along, now, to yer
barracks; and you, Jim, here's one for you, though yer don't desarve it.
Mind ye let the kid alone."
"This one'll have to do for me grub, I guess. I ain't sold me 'Newses,'
and the ole man'll kick if I bring 'em home."
And before the shuffling feet of the ragamuffins hurrying homeward

had turned the corner, the last mouthful of the newsboy's supper was
smothered in a yell of "Extree!" as he shot across the street to intercept
a passing stranger.
* * * * *
As the evening wore on it grew rawer and more blustering still. Flakes
of dry snow that stayed where they fell, slowly tracing the curb-lines,
the shutters, and the doorsteps of the tenements with gathering white,
were borne up on the storm from the water. To the right and left
stretched endless streets between the towering barracks, as beneath
frowning cliffs pierced with a thousand glowing eyes that revealed the
watch-fires within--a mighty city of cave-dwellers held in the thraldom
of poverty and want.
Outside there was yet hurrying to and fro. Saloon doors were slamming
and bare-legged urchins, carrying beer-jugs, hugged the walls close for
shelter. From the depths of a blind alley floated out the discordant
strains of a vagabond brass band "blowing in" the yule of the poor.
Banished by police ordinance from the street, it reaped a scant harvest
of pennies for Christmas-cheer from the windows opening on the
backyard. Against more than one pane showed the bald outline of a
forlorn little Christmas-tree, some stray branch of a hemlock picked up
at the grocer's and set in a pail for "the childer" to dance around, a
dime's worth of candy and tinsel on the boughs.
From the attic over the way came, in spells between, the gentle tones of
a German song about the Christ-child. Christmas in the East-Side
tenements begins with the sunset on the "holy eve," except where the
name is as a threat or a taunt. In a hundred such homes the whir of
many sewing-machines, worked by the sweater's slaves with weary feet
and aching backs, drowned every feeble note of joy that struggled to
make itself heard above the noise of the great treadmill.
To these what was Christmas but the name for persecution, for
suffering, reminder of lost kindred and liberty, of the slavery of
eighteen hundred years, freedom from which was purchased only with
gold. Aye, gold! The gold that had power to buy freedom yet, to buy

the good will, aye, and the good name, of the oppressor, with his
houses and land. At the thought the tired eye glistened, the aching back
straightened, and to the weary foot there came new strength to finish
the long task while the city slept.
Where a narrow passage-way put in between two big tenements to a
ramshackle rear barrack, Nibsy, the newsboy, halted in the shadow of
the doorway and stole a long look down the dark alley.
He toyed uncertainly with his still unsold papers--worn dirty and
ragged as his clothes by this time--before he ventured in, picking his
way between barrels and heaps of garbage; past the Italian cobbler's
hovel, where a tallow dip, stuck in a cracked beer-glass, before a cheap
print of the "Mother of God," showed that even he knew it was
Christmas and liked to show it; past the Sullivan flat, where blows and
drunken curses mingled with the shriek of women, as Nibsy had heard
many nights before this one.
He shuddered as he felt his way past the door, partly with a
premonition of what was in store for himself, if the "old man" was at
home, partly with a vague, uncomfortable feeling that somehow
Christmas-eve should be different from other nights, even in the alley.
Down to its farthest end, to the last rickety flight of steps that led into
the filth and darkness of the tenement. Up this he crept, three flights, to
a door at which he stopped and listened, hesitating, as he had stopped at
the entrance to the alley; then, with a sudden, defiant gesture, he pushed