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
Mr. Cleary lives in a rear tenement and has only one goat. It belongs,
he says, to his little boy, and is no good except to amuse him. Minnie
is her name, and she once had a mate. When it was sold, the boy cried
so much that he was sick for two weeks. Mr. Cleary couldn't think of
parting with Minnie.
Neither will Mr. Lennon, in the next yard, give up his. He owns the
stable, he says, and axes no odds of anybody. His goat is some good
anyhow, for it gives milk for his tea. Says his wife, "Many is the
dime it has saved us." There are two goats in Mr. Lennon's yard, one
perched on top of a shed surveying the yard, the other engaged in
chewing at a buck-saw that hangs on the fence.
Mrs. Buckley does not know how many goats she has. A glance at the
bigger of the two that are stabled at the entrance to the tenement
explains her doubts, which are temporary. Mrs. Buckley says that her
husband "generally sells them away," meaning the kids, presumably to
the butcher for mutton.
"Hey, Jenny!" she says, stroking the big one at the door. Jenny eyes
the visitor calmly, and chews an old newspaper. She has two horns.
"She ain't as bad as they lets on," says Mrs. Buckley.
The scouting party reports the new public opinion of the Kitchen to be
of healthy but alien growth, as yet without roots in the soil strong
enough to stand the shock of a general raid on the goats. They
recommend as a present concession the seizure of the one-horned Billy
that seems to have no friends on the block, if indeed he belongs
there, and an ambush is being laid accordingly.
HE KEPT HIS TRYST
Policeman Schultz was stamping up and down his beat in Hester Street,
trying to keep warm, on the night before Christmas, when a human
wreck, in rum and rags, shuffled across his path and hailed him:--
"You allus treated me fair, Schultz," it said; "say, will you do a
thing for me?"
"What is it, Denny?" said the officer. He had recognized the wreck as
Denny the Robber, a tramp who had haunted his beat ever since he had
been on it, and for years before, he had heard, further back than any
one knew.
"Will you," said the wreck, wistfully--"will you run me in and give me
about three months to-morrow? Will you do it?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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