ple are quiet and orderly," said the captain of the Tompkins
Square precinct.

The police took the square from a mob by storm twice in my recollection,
and the commander of the precinct was hit on the head with a hammer by
"his people" and laid out for dead.

"The Hook Gang is gone," said he of Corlear's Hook. The professional
pursuit of that gang was to rob and murder inoffensive citizens by
night and throw them into the river, and it achieved a bad eminence at
its calling.

[Illustration: Mulberry Bend Park.]

"The whole neighborhood has taken a change, and decidedly for the
better," said the captain of Mulberry Street; and the committee rose and
said that it had heard enough.

The map was hung on the wall, and in it were stuck pins to mark the site
of present and projected schools as showing where the census had found
the children crowding. The moment that was done the committee sent the
map and a copy of chapter 338 of the laws of 1895 to the mayor, and
reported that its task was finished. This is the law and all there is of
it:--

"The people of the State of New York, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:--

"Section 1. Hereafter no schoolhouse shall be constructed in the city of
New York without an open-air playground attached to or used in
connection with the same.

"Section 2. This act shall take effect immediately."

Where the map was daubed with red the school pins crowded one another.
On the lower East Side, where child crime was growing fast, and no less
than three storm centres were marked down by the police, nine new
schools were going up or planned, and in the up-town precinct whence
came the wail about the ball players there were seven. It was common
sense, then, to hitch the school playground and the children together.
It seemed a happy combination, for the new law had been a
stumbling-block to the school commissioners, who were in a quandary over
the needful size of an "open-air playground." The roof garden idea,
which was at the start a measure of simple economy to save large
expenditure for land, had suggested a way out. But there was the long
vacation, when schools are closed and children most in need of a chance
to play. To get the playground on the roof of the school house
recognized as the _public playground_ seemed a long step toward turning
it into a general neighborhood evening resort, that should be always
open, and so towards bringing school and people, and esp