st they can. Turkey, coffee, and
pie, with "vegetubles" to fill in. As the file of eagle-eyed
youngsters passes down the long tables, there are swift movements of
grimy hands, and shirt-waists bulge, ragged coats sag at the pockets.
Hardly is the file seated when the plaint rises: "I ain't got no pie!
It got swiped on me." Seven despoiled ones hold up their hands.

The superintendent laughs--it is Christmas eve. He taps one
tentatively on the bulging shirt. "What have you here, my lad?"

"Me pie," responds he, with an innocent look; "I wuz scart it would
get stole."

A little fellow who has been eying one of the visitors attentively
takes his knife out of his mouth, and points it at him with
conviction.

"I know you," he pipes. "You're a p'lice commissioner. I seen yer
picter in the papers. You're Teddy Roosevelt!"

The clatter of knives and forks ceases suddenly. Seven pies creep
stealthily over the edge of the table, and are replaced on as many
plates. The visitors laugh. It was a case of mistaken identity.

Farthest down town, where the island narrows toward the Battery, and
warehouses crowd the few remaining tenements, the sombre-hued colony
of Syrians is astir with preparation for the holiday. How comes it
that in the only settlement of the real Christmas people in New York
the corner saloon appropriates to itself all the outward signs of it?
Even the floral cross that is nailed over the door of the Orthodox
church is long withered and dead; it has been there since Easter, and
it is yet twelve days to Christmas by the belated reckoning of the
Greek Church. But if the houses show no sign of the holiday, within
there is nothing lacking. The whole colony is gone a-visiting. There
are enough of the unorthodox to set the fashion, and the rest follow
the custom of the country. The men go from house to house, laugh,
shake hands, and kiss one another on both cheeks, with the salutation,
"Kol am va antom Salimoon." "Every year and you are safe," the Syrian
guide renders it into English; and a non-professional interpreter
amends it: "May you grow happier year by year." Arrack made from
grapes and flavored with anise seed, and candy baked in little white
balls like marbles, are served with the indispensable cigarette; for
long callers, the pipe.

In a top-floor room of one of the darkest of the dilapidated
tenements, the dusty window panes of which the last glow in the winter
sky is tinging faintly with red, a dance