morals
are not that high.

Of course we have many across-the-street friends, but I cannot tell you
of them all. I will only mention the plump widow who keeps the
lunch-room and bakery on the Houston Street corner, where the boys go
for their luncheon. It is through her that many interesting details of
personal gossip find their way into this office.

[Illustration]

Jersey Street, or at least the rear of it, seems to be given up wholly
to the Italians. The most charming tenant of Jersey Street is the lovely
Italian girl, who looks like a Jewess, whose mission in life seems to be
to hang all day long out of her window and watch the doings in the
little stone-flagged courts below her. In one of these an old man
sometimes comes out, sits him down in a shady corner, and plays on the
Italian bagpipes, which are really more painful than any hand-organ
that ever was made. After a while his wife opens hostilities with him
from her window. I suppose she is reproaching him for an idle devotion
to art, but I cannot follow the conversation, although it is quite loud
enough on both sides. But the handsome Italian girl up at the window
follows the changes of the strife with the light of the joy of battle in
her beautiful dark eyes, and I can tell from her face exactly which of
the old folk is getting the better of it.

But though the life of Jersey and Mulberry Streets may be mildly
interesting to outside spectators who happen to have a fellow-feeling of
vulgarity with the mob, the mob must find it rather monotonous. Jersey
Street is not only a blind alley, but a dead one, so far as outside life
is concerned, and Judge Phoenix and little sister see pretty much the
same old two-and-sixpence every day. The bustle and clamor of Mulberry
Bend are only a few blocks below them, but the Bend is an exclusive
slum; and Police Headquarters--the Central Office--is a block above, but
the Central Office deals only with the refinements of artistic crime,
and is not half so interesting as an ordinary police station. The
priests go by from the school below, in their black robes and tall silk
hats, always two by two, marching with brisk, business-like tread. An
occasional drunken man or woman wavers along, but generally their faces
and their conditions are both familiar. Sometimes two men hurry by,
pressing side by side. If you have seen that peculiar walk before you
know what it means. Two light steel rings link their wrists together.
The old