At Rivington Street he turned East again, entering another populous world quite different in style from that of the Bowery. Here, on a mild night the family life of the East side, predominantly Jewish, was revealed. This was Wilfred’s objective. His solitariness was comforted by the vicarious sharing in many households. A narrow street hemmed in on either side by tall sooty tenements. The fronts of the houses were decorated with webs of rusty fire-escapes, the platforms of which were heaped with the overflow of goods from the crowded rooms within. From web to web criss-cross, everywhere ran the clotheslines with their fluttering damp burdens. In Rivington Street even the air was crowded. The narrow sidewalk was maggoty with people. The inner side was lined by humble shops, the outer by an endless line of gay pushcarts like boats anchored alongside the curb, stretching for block after block and displaying every manner of goods. The low stoops between the shops were crowded, mostly with women of a complete, unconfined fatness; nearly every one of them suckling an infant. These mothers surveyed the scene with an equanimity that arrested Wilfred. To have a whole lot of children must be one way of solving the riddle. He _liked_ these featherbed women; because . . . it was difficult for him to find the word for his thought; they didn’t fidget; they bore their fruit as inevitably as orchard trees. From the windows overhead leaned other fat women, comfortably supporting their forearms on pillows laid across the sills. Their faces expressed a great content. Wilfred yielded himself to the scene of life. He had the sensation of straining open like petals. This was the pleasure they couldn’t take away from him; a pleasure that left a sweet taste in the mind.—The lavish set-out of goods under the brown canvas shelters; apples floating in brine and unwholesome-looking preserved fish; rows upon rows of ratty fur neckpieces and muffs; bolts of printed cottons; gay garters and suspenders; jewelry; dazzling tinware. The pushcarts were lighted by smoking kerosene torches that threw leaping, ruddy lights and sooty shadows on the scene. I must notice everything; Wilfred would say to himself; and forthwith begin to enumerate a catalogue in his mind. But his darting eyes could not wait for the names of things; they flew ahead and he forgot the catalogue. Presently he would come to consciousness thinking: I am not noticing anything! The people! The dirty, savage, robust children shouldering their way through the crowd, shrieking to each other. To these children grown-ups were no more than bushes obstructing their hunting paths. Then there were the young people; the scornful, comely youths flaunting their masculinity, and the pretty girls undismayed by it. Empty and hard these young people were; what of it? They were aware of their beauty, and of their desirability in each other’s eyes; they were proud with youth; it was fine to see.