THE SOUTH END
GHETTO]

The little front bedroom was assigned to me, with only one partner, my
sister Dora. A mouse could not have led a cat much of a chase across
this room; still we found space for a narrow bed, a crazy bureau, and
a small table. From the window there was an unobstructed view of a
lumberyard, beyond which frowned the blackened walls of a factory. The
fence of the lumberyard was gay with theatre posters and illustrated
advertisements of tobacco, whiskey, and patent baby foods. When the
window was open, there was a constant clang and whirr of electric
cars, varied by the screech of machinery, the clatter of empty wagons,
or the rumble of heavy trucks.

There was nothing worse in all this than we had had before since our
exile from Crescent Beach; but I did not take the same delight in the
propinquity of electric cars and arc lights that I had till now. I
suppose the tenement began to pall on me.

It must not be supposed that I enjoyed any degree of privacy, because
I had half a room to myself. We were six in the five rooms; we were
bound to be always in each other's way. And as it was within our flat,
so it was in the house as a whole. All doors, beginning with the
street door, stood open most of the time; or if they were closed, the
tenants did not wear out their knuckles knocking for admittance. I
could stand at any time in the unswept entrance hall and tell, from an
analysis of the medley of sounds and smells that issued from doors
ajar, what was going on in the several flats from below up. That
guttural, scolding voice, unremittent as the hissing of a steam pipe,
is Mrs. Rasnosky. I make a guess that she is chastising the infant
Isaac for taking a second lump of sugar in his tea. _Spam! Bam!_ Yes,
and she is rubbing in her objections with the flat of her hand. That
blubbering and moaning, accompanying an elephantine tread, is fat Mrs.
Casey, second floor, home drunk from an afternoon out, in fear of the
vengeance of Mr. Casey; to propitiate whom she is burning a pan of
bacon, as the choking fumes and outrageous sizzling testify. I hear a
feeble whining, interrupted by long silences. It is that scabby baby
on the third floor, fallen out of bed again, with nobody home to pick
him up.

To escape from these various horrors I ascend to the roof, where bacon
and babies and child-beating are not. But there I find two figures in
calico wrappers, with bare red arms akimbo, a basket of wet clothes in