Children of the TenementsRiis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
General
Children of the Tenements
Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Short stories, American; Tenement houses -- Fiction
Up there two crews labored with a Siamese joint hose throwing a stream
as big as a man's thigh. It got away from them, and for a while there
was panic and a struggle up on the heights as well as in the street.
The throbbing hose bounded over the roof, thrashing right and left,
and flinging about the men who endeavored to pin it down like
half-drowned kittens. It struck the coping, knocked it off, and the
resistless stream washed brick and stone down into the yard as upon
the wave of a mighty flood.
Amid the fright and uproar the seven alone were calm. The sun rose
upon their little band perched upon the pile of trunks, victorious and
defiant. It shone upon Old Glory and the Salvation Army's flag
floating from their improvised fort, and upon an ample lake, sprung up
within an hour where yesterday there was a vacant sunken lot. The fire
was out, the firemen going home.
The lodgers in the Holly-Tree Inn, of whom there is one for every day
in the year, looked upon the sudden expanse of water, shivered, and
went in. The tenants returned to their homes. The fright was over,
with the darkness.
WAR ON THE GOATS
War has been declared in Hell's Kitchen. An indignant public opinion
demands to have "something done ag'in' them goats," and there is alarm
at the river end of the street. A public opinion in Hell's Kitchen
that demands anything besides schooners of mixed ale is a sign. Surer
than a college settlement and a sociological canvass, it foretells the
end of the slum. Sebastopol, the rocky fastness of the gang that gave
the place its bad name, was razed only the other day, and now the
police have been set on the goats. Cause enough for alarm.
A reconnaissance in force by the enemy showed some foundation for the
claim that the goats owned the block. Thirteen were found foraging in
the gutters, standing upon trucks, or calmly dozing in doorways. They
evinced no particularly hostile disposition, but a marked desire to
know the business of every chance caller in the block. This caused a
passing unpleasantness between one big white goat and the janitress of
the tenement on the corner. Being crowded up against the wall by the
animal, bent on exploring her pockets, she beat it off with her
scrubbing-pail and mop. The goat, thus dismissed, joined a horse at
the curb in apparently innocent meditation, but with one leering eye
fixed back over its shoulder upon the housekeeper setting out an ash
barrel.
Her back was barely turned when it was in the barrel, with head and
fore feet exploring its depths. The door of the tenement opened upon
the housekeeper trundling another barrel just as the first one fell
and rolled across the sidewalk, with the goat capering about. Then was
the air filled with bad language and a broomstick and a goat for a
moment, and the woman was left shouting her wrongs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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