Tales of Mean Streets | Page 3

puny squall of croupy
infants. After this, a new trotting of little feet to docks, gas-works, and
ship-yards with father's dinner in a basin and a red handkerchief, and so
to the board school again. More muffled scrubbing and more squalling,
and perhaps a feeble attempt or two at decorating the blankness of a
square hole here and there by pouring water into a grimy flower-pot
full of dirt. Then comes the trot of little feet toward the oblong holes,
heralding the slower tread of sooty artisans; a smell of bloater up and
down; nightfall; the fighting of boys in the street, perhaps of men at the
corner near the beer-shop; sleep. And this is the record of a day in this
street; and every day is hopelessly the same.
Every day, that is, but Sunday. On Sunday morning a smell of cooking
floats round the corner from the half-shut baker's and the little feet trot
down the street under steaming burdens of beef, potatoes, and
batter-pudding--the lucky little feet these, with Sunday boots on them,
when father is in good work and has brought home all his money; not
the poor little feet in worn shoes, carrying little bodies in the threadbare
clothes of all the week, when father is out of work, or ill, or drunk, and
the Sunday cooking may very easily be done at home--if any there be to
do.
On Sunday morning one or two heads of families appear in wonderful
black suits, with unnumbered creases and wrinklings at the seams. At
their sides and about their heels trot the unresting little feet, and from
under painful little velvet caps and straw hats stare solemn little faces
toweled to a polish. Thus disposed and arrayed, they fare gravely
through the grim little streets to a grim Little Bethel where are gathered
together others in like garb and attendance; and for two hours they
endure the frantic menace of hell-fire.
Most of the men, however, lie in shirt and trousers on their beds and
read the Sunday paper; while some are driven forth--for they hinder the
housework--to loaf, and await the opening of the beer-shop round the
corner. Thus goes Sunday in this street, and every Sunday is the same
as every other Sunday, so that one monotony is broken with another.
For the women, however, Sunday is much as other days, except that

there is rather more work for them. The break in their round of the
week is washing day.
No event in the outer world makes any impression in this street.
Nations may rise, or may totter in ruin; but here the colorless day will
work through its twenty-four hours just as it did yesterday, and just as it
will to-morrow. Without there may be party strife, wars and rumors of
wars, public rejoicings; but the trotting of the little feet will be neither
quickened nor stayed. Those quaint little women, the girl-children of
this street, who use a motherly management toward all girl-things
younger than themselves, and toward all boys as old or older, with
'Bless the child!' or 'Drat the children!'--those quaint little women will
still go marketing with big baskets and will regard the price of bacon as
chief among human considerations. Nothing disturbs this
street--nothing but a strike.
Nobody laughs here--life is too serious a thing; nobody sings. There
was once a woman who sung--a young wife from the country. But she
bore children, and her voice cracked. Then her man died, and she sung
no more. They took away her home, and with her children about her
skirts she left this street forever. The other women did not think much
of her. She was 'helpless.'
One of the square holes in this street--one of the single, ground-floor
holes--is found, on individual examination, to differ from the others.
There has been an attempt to make it into a shop-window. Half a dozen
candles, a few sickly sugar-sticks, certain shriveled bloaters, some
boot-laces, and a bundle or two of firewood compose a stock which at
night is sometimes lighted by a little paraffine lamp in a tin sconce, and
sometimes by a candle. A widow lives here--a gaunt bony widow with
sunken, red eyes. She has other sources of income than the candles and
the bootlaces: she washes and chars all day, and she sews cheap shirts
at night. Two 'young men lodgers,' moreover, sleep upstairs, and the
children sleep in the back room; she herself is supposed not to sleep at
all. The policeman does not knock here in the morning--the widow
wakes the lodgers herself; and nobody in the street behind ever looks
out of window before going to bed, no matter how late, without seeing

a light in the widow's room where she plies her needle. She is a