eeing whole push carts full of fish and watching them handled with a
pitch fork as a man tosses hay didn't whet our appetites any, but when
we remembered that it was these same fish--a day or two older,--for
which we had been paying double the price charged for them here the
difference overcame our scruples. The men here interested me. I found
that while the crew of every schooner numbered a goodly per cent. of
foreigners, still the greater part were American born. The new comers
as a rule bought small launches of their own and went into business
for themselves. The English speaking portion of the crews were also
as a rule the rougher element. The loafers and hangers-on about the
wharves were also English speaking. This was a fact that later on I
found to be rather significant and to hold true in a general way in
all branches of the lower class of labor.

The barrooms about here--always a pretty sure index of the men of any
community--were more numerous and of decidedly a rougher character
than those about the square. A man would be a good deal better
justified in carrying a revolver on this street than he would in
Little Italy. I never allowed Ruth to come down here alone.

From here we wandered back and I found a public playground and
bathhouse by the water's edge. This attracted me at once. I
investigated this and found it offered a fine opportunity for bathing.
Little dressing-rooms were provided and for a penny a man could get a
clean towel and for five cents a bathing suit. There was no reason
that I could see, however, why we shouldn't provide our own. It was
within an easy ten minutes of the flat and I saw right then where I
would get a dip every day. It would be a great thing for the boy,
too. I had always wanted him to learn to swim.

On the way home we passed through the Jewish quarter and I made a note
of the clothing offered for sale here. The street was lined with
second hand stores with coats and trousers swinging over the sidewalk,
and the windows were filled with odd lots of shoes. Then too there
were the pawnshops. I'd always thought of a pawnshop as not being
exactly respectable and had the feeling that anyone who secured
anything from one of them was in a way a receiver of stolen goods. But
as I passed them now, I received a new impression. They seemed, down
here, as legitimate a business as the second hand stores. The windows
offered an assortment of everything from watches to banjoes and guns
bu