-ring in
hand, and looking fixedly at what had once been the passageway to the
alley, but was now a barred gap between the houses, leading nowhere. He
stood there long, gazing sadly at the gateway, at the children dancing
to the Italian's hand-organ, at Trilby trying to look unconcerned on the
stoop, and then went his way silently, a poor castaway, and I saw him no
more.

So Cat Alley, with all that belonged to it, passed out of my life. It
had its faults, but it can at least be said of it, in extenuation, that
it was very human. With them all it had a rude sense of justice that did
not distinguish its early builders. When the work of tearing down had
begun, I watched, one day, a troop of children having fun with a seesaw
they had made of a plank laid across a lime barrel. The whole Irish
contingent rode the plank, all at once, with screams of delight. A
ragged little girl from the despised "Dago" colony watched them from the
corner with hungry eyes. Big Jane, who was the leader by virtue of her
thirteen years and her long reach, saw her and stopped the show.

"Here, Mame," she said, pushing one of the smaller girls from the plank,
"you get off an' let her ride. Her mother was stabbed yesterday."

And the little Dago rode, and was made happy.

CHAPTER XIII

JUSTICE TO THE BOY

Sometimes, when I see my little boy hugging himself with delight at the
near prospect of the kindergarten, I go back in memory forty years and
more to the day when I was dragged, a howling captive, to school, as a
punishment for being bad at home. I remember, as though it were
yesterday, my progress up the street in the vengeful grasp of an
exasperated servant, and my reception by the aged monster--most fitly
named Madame Bruin--who kept the school. She asked no questions, but led
me straightway to the cellar, where she plunged me into an empty barrel
and put the lid on over me. Applying her horn goggles to the bunghole,
to my abject terror, she informed me, in a sepulchral voice, that that
was the way bad boys were dealt with in school. When I ceased howling
from sheer fright, she took me out and conducted me to the yard, where a
big hog had a corner to itself. She bade me observe that one of its ears
had been slit half its length. It was because the hog was lazy, and
little boys who were that way minded--zip! she clipped a pair of
tailor's shears close to my ear. It was my first lesson in school. I
hated it from that hour.

The