“We always make out with the set tubs,” the older woman told me. “It’s not very handy, stooping under the china-closet, but it’s better than bathing in a tub used by so many.” Glancing at the set tubs I realized the advantage of being small. It seemed an easy matter for these two little women to step on a chair and then into the tub, but how about big me? Yet I managed it somehow. That summer the only thing in the way of bathing I did was in that set tub; crouching under the built-in china cupboard, I splashed the water over various parts of my anatomy. Once you make up your mind you can do almost anything. Unlike the model tenement in which the artist lived, this place was a slice of tenement life in New York City. Of the two blind sons of the Irishwoman who had the flat next mine, one went out daily with his little tin cup, while the other, who was not totally blind, made brooms in a workshop for the blind. Their unmarried sister was a trained nurse. The three supported the mother, who, being Irish, like Lot’s wife was continually looking back and weeping over past glories. The flat beyond this family was occupied by the matron of one of the city courts; next came two more women, a Swede and Hollander. The first was a forewoman in a shirt-waist factory, the other before becoming a helpless cripple from rheumatism had been a dressmaker. Across the court on the same floor was an Italian tailor with nine children, an undertaker’s assistant, a clerk in a Second Avenue grocery, and the driver of a milk-wagon. Occupying other flats in the house were a stevedore, a Greek peddler, an Italian who helped in a coal-and-ice cellar, a Hungarian street-sweeper, a man who drove a dump-cart, a baker, a butcher, several factory workers, a cook, an incapacitated nurse, two Russians whose business nobody knew, and myself, who because of my khaki frock was called by the children the “army nurse.” Of June evenings, when I first moved in I used to sit on my doorstep, with my feet on the little balcony overlooking the court, and try to untangle the conversations being carried on around me in eleven foreign languages. As the days wore on, the July sun beat down on the tenements. When there was a breeze it was to be avoided, not enjoyed. Though hot and prickly in its feel, worse, many times worse, were the odors with which it was laden—the odors of decaying garbage and the filth of unwashed streets. Those torrid summer nights! Instead of trying to untangle foreign tongues, I used to try to stop my ears against the wails of sick children, the weak frettings of a baby too far gone to make louder protests. When at last, worn out by hard work and lack of sleep, I would doze off, it was only to be wakened by the shriek of the baby’s mother—never again in this world would her baby disturb her neighbors.