y and by, when all the
official red tape is unwound,--and what a lot of it there is to plague
mankind!--will be levelled out and made into playgrounds for little feet
that have been aching for them too long. Perhaps it will surprise some
good people to hear that Santa Claus knew the old alleys; but he did. I
have been there with him, and I knew that, much as some things which he
saw there grieved him,--the starved childhood, the pinching poverty, and
the slovenly indifference that cut deeper than the rest because it spoke
of hope that was dead,--yet by nothing was his gentle spirit so grieved
and shocked as by the show that proposed to turn his holiday into a
battalion drill of the children from the alleys and the courts for
patricians, young and old, to review. It was well meant, but it was not
Christmas. That belongs to the home, and in the darkest slums Santa
Claus found homes where his blessed tree took root and shed its mild
radiance about, dispelling the darkness, and bringing back hope and
courage and trust.

They are gone, the old alleys. Reform wiped them out. It is well. Santa
Claus will not have harder work finding the doors that opened to him
gladly, because the light has been let in. And others will stand ajar
that before were closed. The chimneys in tenement-house alleys were
never built on a plan generous enough to let him in in the orthodox way.
The cost of coal had to be considered in putting them up. Bottle Alley
and Bandits' Roost are gone with their bad memories. Bone Alley is gone,
and Gotham Court. I well remember the Christmas tree in the court, under
which a hundred dolls stood in line, craving partners among the girls in
its tenements. That was the kind of battalion drill that they
understood. The ceiling of the room was so low that the tree had to be
cut almost in half; but it was beautiful, and it lives yet, I know, in
the hearts of the little ones, as it lives in mine. The "Barracks" are
gone, Nibsey's Alley is gone, where the first Christmas tree was lighted
the night poor Nibsey lay dead in his coffin. And Cat Alley is gone.

[Illustration: The First Christmas Tree in Gotham Court.]

Cat Alley was my alley. It was mine by right of long acquaintance. We
were neighbors for twenty years. Yet I never knew why it was called Cat
Alley. There was the usual number of cats, gaunt and voracious, which
foraged in its ash-barrels; but beyond the family of three-legged cats,
that presented its own pro