came through
the street. They took a fearsome delight in watching for the big dime
museum giant, who lived around in Elizabeth Street, and who in his last
days looked quite lean and hungry enough to send a thrill to any little
boy's heart, though he had never cooked one and eaten him in his whole
life, being quite a harmless and peaceable giant. And they loved Trilby.

[Illustration: Trilby.

_By permission of the Century Company._]

Trilby was the dog. As far back as my memory reaches there was never
another in Cat Alley. She arrived in the block one winter morning on a
dead run, with a tin can tied to her stump of a tail, and with the
Mott Street gang in hot pursuit. In her extremity she saw the mouth of
the alley, dodged in, and was safe. The Mott Streeters would as soon
have thought of following her into police headquarters as there. Ever
after she stayed. She took possession of the alley and of headquarters,
where the reporters had their daily walk, as if they were hers by right
of conquest, which in fact they were. With her whimsically grave
countenance, in which all the cares of the vast domain she made it her
daily duty to oversee were visibly reflected, she made herself a
favorite with every one except the "beanery-man" on the corner, who
denounced her angrily, when none of her friends were near, for coming in
with his customers at lunch-time on purpose to have them feed her with
his sugar, which was true. At regular hours, beginning with the opening
of the department offices, she would make the round of the police
building and call on all the officials, forgetting none. She rode up in
the elevator and left it at the proper floors, waited in the anterooms
with the rest when there was a crowd, and paid stated visits to the
chief and the commissioners, who never omitted to receive her with a nod
and a "Hello, Trilby!" no matter how pressing the business in hand. The
gravity with which she listened to what went on, and wrinkled up her
brow in an evident effort to understand, was comical to the last
degree. She knew the fire alarm signals and when anything momentous was
afoot. On the quiet days, when nothing was stirring, she would flock
with the reporters on the stoop and sing.

There never was such singing as Trilby's. That was how she got her name.
I tried a score of times to find out, but to this day I do not know
whether it was pain or pleasure that was in her note. She had only one,
but it made up in volu