re puzzle for a while. She could not
hold a flat-iron in her hand; didn't know which end came first. She could
scrub, and we began at that. With infinite patience, she was taught
washing and ironing, and between visits from her rascal husband began to
make out well. For she was industrious, and, with hope reviving, life took
on some dignity, inconceivable in her old setting. In spite of all his
cruelty she never wholly cast off her husband. He was still to her Mr.
Murphy, the head of the house, if by chance he were to be caught out
sober; but the chance never befell. It was right that he should be locked
up, but outside of these official relations of his, as it were, with
society, she had no criticism to make upon him. Only once, when he dropped
a note showing that he had been carrying on a flirtation with a "scrub" on
the Island, did she exhibit any resentment. Mrs. Murphy was jealous; that
is, she was human.

Through all the years of his abuse, with the instinct of her race, she had
managed to keep up an insurance on his life that would give him a decent
burial. And when he lay dead at last she spent it all--more than a hundred
and fifty dollars--on a wake over the fellow, all except a small sum which
she reserved for her own adornment in his honor. She came over to the
Settlement to consult our head worker as to the proprieties of the thing:
should she wear mourning earrings in his memory?

Such is the plain record of the Murphy family, one of the oldest on our
books in Henry Street. Over against it let me set one of much more recent
date, and let them tell their own story.

Our gardener, when he came to dig up from their winter bed by the back
fence the privet shrubs that grow on our roof garden in summer, reported
that one was missing. It was not a great loss, and we thought no more
about it, till one day one of our kindergarten workers came tiptoeing in
and beckoned us out on the roof. Way down in the depth of the
tenement-house yard back of us, where the ice lay in a grimy crust long
after the spring flowers had begun to peep out in our garden above, grew
our missing shrub. A piece of ground, yard-wide, had been cleared of
rubbish and dug over. In the middle of the plot stood the privet shrub,
trimmed to make it impersonate a young tree. A fence had been built about
it with lath, and the whole thing had quite a festive look. A little lad
was watering and tending the "garden." He looked up and saw us and nodded