rty-stricken cabin in the desolate bog, are herded in such
barracks to-day in New York. Potatoes they have; yes, and meat at four
cents--even seven. Beer for a relish--never without beer. But home? The
home that was home even in a bog, with the love of it that has made
Ireland immortal and a tower of strength in the midst of her
suffering--what of that? There are no homes in New York's poor
tenements.

Down the crooked path of the Mulberry Street Bend the sunlight slanted
into the heart of New York's Italy. It shone upon bandannas and yellow
neckerchiefs; upon swarthy faces and corduroy breeches; upon
blackhaired girls--mothers at thirteen; upon hosts of bow-legged
children rolling in the dirt; upon pedlers' carts and ragpickers
staggering under burdens that threatened to crush them at every step.
Shone upon unnumbered Pasquales dwelling, working, idling, and gambling
there. Shone upon the filthiest and foulest of New York's tenements,
upon Bandits' Roost, upon Bottle Alley, upon the hidden by-ways that
lead to the tramp's burrows. Shone upon the scene of annual infant
slaughter. Shone into the foul core of New York's slums that is at last
to go to the realm of bad memories because civilized man may not look
upon it and live without blushing.

It glanced past the rag-shop in the cellar, whence welled up stenches to
poison the town, into an apartment three flights up that held two women,
one young, the other old and bent. The young one had a baby at her
breast. She was rocking it tenderly in her arms, singing in the soft
Italian tongue a lullaby, while the old granny listened eagerly, her
elbows on her knees, and a stumpy clay-pipe, blackened with age,
between her teeth. Her eyes were set on the wall, on which the musty
paper hung in tatters, fit frame for the wretched, poverty-stricken
room, but they saw neither poverty nor want; her aged limbs felt not the
cold draught from without, in which they shivered; they looked far over
the seas to sunny Italy, whose music was in her ears.

"O dolce Napoli," she mumbled between her toothless jaws, "O suol
beato----"

The song ended in a burst of passionate grief. The old granny and the
baby woke up at once. They were not in sunny Italy; not under Southern,
cloudless skies. They were in "The Bend" in Mulberry Street, and the
wintry wind rattled the door as if it would say, in the language of
their new home, the land of the free: "Less music! More work! Root, hog,
or die!"