tle
Christmas-tree, some stray branch of a hemlock picked up at the grocer's
and set in a pail for "the childer" to dance around, a dime's worth of
candy and tinsel on the boughs.

From the attic over the way came, in spells between, the gentle tones
of a German song about the Christ-child. Christmas in the East-Side
tenements begins with the sunset on the "holy eve," except where the
name is as a threat or a taunt. In a hundred such homes the whir of many
sewing-machines, worked by the sweater's slaves with weary feet and
aching backs, drowned every feeble note of joy that struggled to make
itself heard above the noise of the great treadmill.

To these what was Christmas but the name for persecution, for suffering,
reminder of lost kindred and liberty, of the slavery of eighteen hundred
years, freedom from which was purchased only with gold. Aye, gold! The
gold that had power to buy freedom yet, to buy the good will, aye, and
the good name, of the oppressor, with his houses and land. At the
thought the tired eye glistened, the aching back straightened, and to
the weary foot there came new strength to finish the long task while the
city slept.

Where a narrow passage-way put in between two big tenements to a
ramshackle rear barrack, Nibsy, the newsboy, halted in the shadow of
the doorway and stole a long look down the dark alley.

He toyed uncertainly with his still unsold papers--worn dirty and ragged
as his clothes by this time--before he ventured in, picking his way
between barrels and heaps of garbage; past the Italian cobbler's hovel,
where a tallow dip, stuck in a cracked beer-glass, before a cheap print
of the "Mother of God," showed that even he knew it was Christmas and
liked to show it; past the Sullivan flat, where blows and drunken curses
mingled with the shriek of women, as Nibsy had heard many nights before
this one.

He shuddered as he felt his way past the door, partly with a premonition
of what was in store for himself, if the "old man" was at home, partly
with a vague, uncomfortable feeling that somehow Christmas-eve should be
different from other nights, even in the alley. Down to its farthest
end, to the last rickety flight of steps that led into the filth and
darkness of the tenement. Up this he crept, three flights, to a door at
which he stopped and listened, hesitating, as he had stopped at the
entrance to the alley; then, with a sudden, defiant gesture, he pushed
it open and went in.

A b