section of the rapidly growing
city ... and, below and above, the Steel Mills, with their great,
flaring furnaces, rose, it seemed, over night, one after one ... and a
welter of strange people we then called the "low Irish" came to work in
them, and our Mansion Avenue became "Kilkenny Row." And a gang of tough
kids sprang up called the "Kilkenny Cats," with which my gang used to
fight.

After the "Low Irish" came the "Dagoes" ... and after them the "Hunkies"
... each wilder and more poverty-stricken than the former.

* * * * *

The Industrial Panic of '95 (it was '95, I think) was on ... always very
poor since the breaking up of our family, now at times even bread was
scarce in the house.

I was going to school, scrawny and freckle-faced and ill-nourished. I
had a pet chicken that fortunately grew up to be a hen. It used to lay
an egg for me nearly every morning during that hard time.

* * * * *

My early remembrances of school are chiefly olfactory. I didn't like the
dirty boy who sat next to me and spit on his slate, rubbing it clean
with his sleeve. I loved the use of my yellow, new sponge, especially
after the teacher had taught me all about how it had grown on the bottom
of the ocean, where divers had to swim far down to bring it up, slanting
through the green waters. But the slates of most of the boys stunk
vilely with their spittle.

I didn't like the smell of the pig-tailed little girls, either. There
was a close soapiness about them that offended me. And yet they
attracted me. For I liked them in their funny, kilt-like, swinging
dresses. I liked the pudginess of their noses, the shiny apple-glow of
their cheeks.

It was wonderful to learn to make letters on a slate. To learn to put
down rows of figures and find that one and one, cabalistically, made
two, and two and two, four!

It always seemed an age to recess. And the school day was as long as a
month is now.

We were ready to laugh at anything ... a grind-organ in the street, a
passing huckster crying "potatoes," etc.

I have few distinct memories of my school days. I never went to
kindergarten. I entered common school at the age of eight.

My grandfather, after his hegira from Mornington, left behind his
library of travels, lives of famous American Statesmen and Business
Men, and his Civil War books. Among these books were four treasure
troves that set my boy's imagination on fir