rt through the
street, and mixed his cry with the joyous screams and shouts of the
children and the scolding and gossiping voices of the women; the burly
blue bulk of a policeman defined itself at the corner; a drunkard
zigzagged down the sidewalk toward him. It was not the abode of the
extremest poverty, but of a poverty as hopeless as any in the world,
transmitting itself from generation to generation, and establishing
conditions of permanency to which human life adjusts itself as it does
to those of some incurable disease, like leprosy.

The time had been when the Marches would have taken a purely
aesthetic view of the facts as they glimpsed them in this street of
tenement-houses; when they would have contented themselves with saying
that it was as picturesque as a street in Naples or Florence, and with
wondering why nobody came to paint it; they would have thought they were
sufficiently serious about it in blaming the artists for their failure
to appreciate it, and going abroad for the picturesque when they had it
here under their noses. It was to the nose that the street made one of
its strongest appeals, and Mrs. March pulled up her window of the coupe.
"Why does he take us through such a disgusting street?" she demanded,
with an exasperation of which her husband divined the origin.

"This driver may be a philanthropist in disguise," he answered, with
dreamy irony, "and may want us to think about the people who are not
merely carried through this street in a coupe, but have to spend their
whole lives in it, winter and summer, with no hopes of driving out of
it, except in a hearse. I must say they don't seem to mind it. I haven't
seen a jollier crowd anywhere in New York. They seem to have forgotten
death a little more completely than any of their fellow-citizens,
Isabel. And I wonder what they think of us, making this gorgeous
progress through their midst. I suppose they think we're rich, and hate
us--if they hate rich people; they don't look as if they hated anybody.
Should we be as patient as they are with their discomfort? I don't
believe there's steam heat or an elevator in the whole block. Seven
rooms and a bath would be more than the largest and genteelest family
would know what to do with. They wouldn't know what to do with the bath,
anyway."

His monologue seemed to interest his wife apart from the satirical point
it had for themselves. "You ought to get Mr. Fulkerson to let you work
some of these New Y