iceman on the beat, and come away in a
ferment of anger and disgust that would keep me awake far into the
morning hours planning means of its destruction. That was what it was
like. Thank God, we shall never see another such!

[Illustration: A Cellar Dive in the Bend.]

That was the exhibit that urged us on. But the civic conscience was not
very robust yet, and required many and protracted naps. It slumbered
fitfully eight long years, waking up now and then with a start, while
the Bend lay stewing in its slime. I wondered often, in those years of
delay, if it was just plain stupidity that kept the politicians from
spending the money which the law had put within their grasp; for with
every year that passed, a million dollars that could have been used for
small park purposes was lost.[12] But they were wiser than I. I
understood when I saw the changes which letting in the sunshine worked.
They were not of the kind that made for their good. We had all believed
it, but they knew it all along. At the same time, they lost none of the
chances that offered. They helped the landlords in the Bend, who
considered themselves greatly aggrieved because their property was
thereafter to front on a park instead of a pigsty, to transfer the whole
assessment of half a million dollars for park benefit to the city. They
undid in less than six weeks what it had taken considerably more than
six years to do; but the park was cheap at the price. We could afford to
pay all it cost to wake us up. When finally, upon the wave of wrath
excited by the Parkhurst and Lexow disclosures, reform came with a shock
that dislodged Tammany, it found us wide awake, and, it must be
admitted, not a little astonished at our sudden access of righteousness.

[Footnote 12: The Small Parks law of 1887 allowed the expenditure of
a million dollars a year for the making of neighborhood parks; but
only as payment for work done or property taken. If not used in any
one year, that year's appropriation was lost.]

The battle went against the slum in the three years that followed, until
it found backing in the "odium of reform" that became the issue in the
municipal organization of the greater city. Tammany made notes. The cry
meant that we were tired of too much virtue. Of what was done, how it
was done, and why, during those years, I shall have occasion to speak
further in these pages. Here I wish to measure the stretch we have come
since I wrote "How th