The Bowery, that Broadway of the slums, odoriferous sink of , , and crime, wore its familiar, everyday aspect of ugly squalor and vice—grimy, dilapidated rookeries, dark, hallways, , pavements littered with decayed fruit skins, choked up with offensive black slime, suspicious-looking characters, stenches of sauerkraut and stale beer which offended the on every side. On the slender rails high overhead occasional trains crashed by with a roar; in the middle of the roadway rushing cars noisily clanged their warning gongs, while on either sidewalk stretching as far south as the City Hall cheap clothing shops, tough saloons, low dance halls, , penny , shows, displayed their signs. Up and down pushed and jostled a and motley crowd—bearded Jew peddlers, sweat-shop workers, Chinese, flashily dressed "toughs," furtive-eyed , sailors on shore leave, factory girls,painted street walkers, slouching longshoremen, tramps, derelicts of both sexes—an host of unkempt, unwashed, evil-smelling humanity.
In the side streets, just off the main thoroughfare, conditions were even more congested and depressing. On either hand ricketty, grimy were alive with bearded Russians, fierce-looking Italians, vociferating Irish, pot-bellied Germans. From broken windows hung clotheslines bending under the load of newly washed rags; on flimsy, fire-escapes were jammed filthy on which slept the wretched occupants, glad to escape from the air and heat within; dark stairways and stoops were with neglected, consumptive children. The evil smells were so numerous that it was impossible to determine which was the most objectionable. The air was full of , nerve-racking sounds. On one side of the street an Italian was grinding a wheezy organ, while little girls, some with bare feet, danced to the music. A few yards farther on, boys with white faces by hunger, were eagerly in ash barrels, hunting for of refuse. Two women were pulling each other's hair in the centre of a circle of encouraging neighbors, neglected babes were screaming, dogs were barking, a was his . It was Hell, yet nothing unusual—only everyday life in the slums.
"Isn't it dreadful?" murmured Paula, as she and Tod hurried along Rivington Street.
"!" replied her escort. "Look at some of those faces! They seem hardly human. Animals are better looking."
"They are not to blame," answered Paula sadly. "These poor people are the victims of circumstances. They have been brutalized—the Jews by centuries of race , the others by merciless economic conditions. The black poverty in which they live is well nigh inconceivable. Their desperate struggle for existence is unbelievable."
"Phew!" exclaimed Tod, as he peeped through the window of a gloomy, broken-down rookery. "How can any one live in such a place? The Black Hole of Calcutta couldn't have been much worse!"
"That's just it," answered Paula, with some warmth. "You self-satisfied, well-fed people uptown don't take the trouble to come down here to find out how the poor live. We Settlement workers know, for we are right in the heart of it all. What you see from the street is nothing. You must enter some of these tenements if you wish to become[Pg 164] really acquainted with the shocking conditions in which they live—the crushing poverty, the physical and moral suffering, the gross . In some places as many as twelve persons, full-grown men and women, half-grown boys and girls, all eat and sleep in one dark, ill-ventilated room. Can you wonder that such a life brutalizes them and that they die like flies?"
Tod his shoulders.
"What good would it do if we did know? We couldn't help all of them. You remember what Rothschild said to a wild-eyed who one day managed to break into his office a pistol: 'My friend, you insist that I share my fortune with the poor. I am worth five millions of dollars. There are in the world more than five hundred million . Here is your share—exactly one cent.'"
"That's all very well," smiled Paula. "I don't go to that extreme. We can't help all, but we can help a little. If the rich could see things as they are, it would make them reflect. I don't think they would be so wickedly in their own homes if they saw all this . The price of one big dinner served in a Fifth Avenue would support half a dozen families here for a year."
Tod looked .
"I like to hear you talk," he said lightly, "because you're so earnest about it, but really you're wrong. If these people were given assistance to-day they would be as badly off to-morrow. All civilizations have had this problem to deal with. The poor are the underdogs in the struggle for life. They're only half human, anyway. Most of them have never known anything better. They are used to roughing it. They actually enjoy their dirt. They themselves are largely responsible for their own misfortunes. They drink, they're shiftless and thriftless."
"The rich have more than the poor," answered Paula quietly. "The poor drink to drown their troubles. We can't say just why, of two men born with the same advantages, one and the other in the . We can only deal with the problem as we find it. It is dreadful to think that buried in these fearful tenements, brutalized by their environments, are numbers of talented young men and women who are trying to better themselves. Left to themselves they are likely to sink deeper in the frightful that surrounds them, but if extended a hand they may be able to rise above the appalling conditions and so escape the terrible degradation and suffering that otherwise awaits them. A boy or girl, children of the tenements, may have within the genius of a Wagner or a Rosa Bonheur, but from these children are so dragged down, so brutalized by their unspeakable environments that their natural and talents are hopelessly crushed. It is to such as these that the Settlement lends its aid. We are trying to help the deserving, we are seeking to the gold from the . Look, there is the Settlement House!"
On the opposite side of the street was a substantial-looking building resembling a small school-house. by its cleanliness among the surrounding tenements, by enlightened and idealists for the sole purpose of uplifting humanity, it stood as a kind of moral lighthouse set down in a deadly morass of crime and hopeless pauperism.
"Come, I will show you all through," cried Paula enthusiastically. Her face brightened up and her step was as once more she found herself in the midst of her fellow workers. Smiles and nods greeted her from every direction. The place was busy as a beehive. The halls were full of people; classes were going on in the different rooms. Taking Tod's arm, she led him in this direction and that, proud to show all there was to be seen. There were regular night classes where those employed during the day could receive instruction in , bookkeeping, and other useful , gymnasiums, classes where the technical trades were taught, classes where music lessons were given. There were also attractive recreation rooms which kept young men from the dangers of saloons and young girls from the temptations of the dance halls.
"It's such interesting work," she said. "Here I have no time to think of my troubles. I can forget Uncle James and Bascom Cooley."
Tod was full of enthusiasm.
"No wonder you've no use for society and the rest," he said admiringly. "If I'd taken a taste for this sort of thing years ago perhaps I wouldn't have made such a fool of myself."
Paula laughed.
"There's still time," she said . "It's never too late to mend, you know." Leading him once more in the direction of the street, she added: "This is the bright side of my work; I'll let you look now on the darker side. It isn't so pleasant. Come with me."
he followed her out of the building, wondering where he was being taken, caring little, so long as she was with him. This dark-eyed girl, with her serious views and charming manner, had[Pg 168] already taken a strong hold of the young man. She was different from any girl he had ever known, and secretly with himself, he came to the conclusion that the comparison was in her favor.
Quite unconscious that she was the object of her companion's thoughts, Paula hurried along the narrow, slippery pavements, crowded with pale-faced women and children, by all kinds of and hucksters' . Stopping for a moment at a delicatessen shop, she purchased some ham, eggs, butter, and bread, and then hastened on again until she came to a big, .
"We go in here," she said, quite out of breath after the quick walk. "It is the home of one of my favorite pupils, Annie Hughes. They are wretchedly poor. The father is an drunkard and the mother is bedridden. Only the devotion of her child keeps her alive. I want you to see Annie. She is only twelve, but she does the work of two women. She cannot play like other children of her age, yet she never complains. She is to her mother. It's a dreadful hovel they live in. You'll be shocked at what you see, but don't show surprise. Mrs. Hughes is a decent woman, and it will only her. She's[Pg 169] consumptive and can't live long. If she dies I shall adopt and educate Annie as my own."
They entered a dark, narrow, forbidding-looking hallway, with walls thickly begrimed with the accumulated of years, and so cracked that the plaster in places had fallen out in huge , exposing the wood . At the far end was a , ricketty staircase, every stair filthy with refuse and rubbish, and only dimly lighted by small windows that did not look as if they had been washed since the house was built. It was a steep climb to the sixth floor, and both were out of breath when they reached the top. Paula approached a door, and knocked.
"Is that you, Annie?" called out a feeble voice.
"No, Mrs. Hughes—it is I, Miss , with a friend."
Without waiting for further in............