E CHRISTMAS SUN SAW IN THE TENEMENTS

The December sun shone clear and cold upon the city. It shone upon rich
and poor alike. It shone into the homes of the wealthy on the avenues
and in the uptown streets, and into courts and alleys hedged in by
towering tenements down town. It shone upon throngs of busy holiday
shoppers that went out and in at the big stores, carrying bundles big
and small, all alike filled with Christmas cheer and kindly messages
from Santa Claus.

It shone down so gayly and altogether cheerily there, that wraps and
overcoats were unbuttoned for the north wind to toy with. "My, isn't it
a nice day?" said one young lady in a fur shoulder-cape to a friend,
pausing to kiss and compare lists of Christmas gifts.

"Most too hot," was the reply, and the friends passed on. There was
warmth within and without. Life was very pleasant under the Christmas
sun up on the avenue.

Down in Cherry Street the rays of the sun climbed over a row of tall
tenements with an effort that seemed to exhaust all the life that was in
them, and fell into a dirty block, half-choked with trucks, with
ash-barrels and rubbish of all sorts, among which the dust was whirled
in clouds upon fitful, shivering blasts that searched every nook and
cranny of the big barracks. They fell upon a little girl, bare-footed
and in rags, who struggled out of an alley with a broken pitcher in her
grimy fist, against the wind that set down the narrow slit like the
draught through a big factory chimney. Just at the mouth of the alley it
took her with a sudden whirl, a cyclone of dust and drifting ashes,
tossed her fairly off her feet, tore from her grip the threadbare shawl
she clutched at her throat, and set her down at the saloon-door
breathless and half-smothered. She had just time to dodge through the
storm-doors before another whirlwind swept whistling down the street.

"My, but isn't it cold?" she said, as she shook the dust out of her
shawl and set the pitcher down on the bar. "Gimme a pint," laying down a
few pennies that had been wrapped in a corner of the shawl, "and mamma
says make it good and full."

"All'us the way with youse kids--want a barrel when yees pays fer a
pint," growled the bartender. "There, run along, and don't ye hang
around that stove no more. We ain't a steam-heatin' the block fer
nothin'."

The little girl clutched her shawl and the pitcher, and slipped out into
the street where the wind lay in ambush and promptly