How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New YorkRiis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
History
How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York
Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
Poor -- New York (State) -- New York; Tenement houses -- New York (State) -- New York
Newspaper Row is merely their headquarters. They are to be found all
over the city, these Street Arabs, where the neighborhood offers a
chance of picking up a living in the daytime and of "turning in"
at night with a promise of security from surprise. In warm weather
a truck in the street, a convenient out-house, or a dug-out in a
hay-barge at the wharf make good bunks. Two were found making their
nest once in the end of a big iron pipe up by the Harlem Bridge,
and an old boiler at the East River served as an elegant flat for
another couple, who kept house there with a thief the police had long
sought, little suspecting that he was hiding under their very noses
for months together. When the Children's Aid Society first opened
its lodging-houses, and with some difficulty persuaded the boys that
their charity was no "pious dodge" to trap them into a treasonable
"Sunday-school racket," its managers overheard a laughable discussion
among the boys in their unwontedly comfortable beds--perhaps the first
some of them had ever slept in--as to the relative merits of the
different styles of their everyday berths. Preferences were divided
between the steam-grating and a sand-box; but the weight of the
evidence was decided to be in favor of the sand-box, because, as its
advocate put it, "you could curl all up in it." The new "find" was
voted a good way ahead of any previous experience, however. "My eyes,
ain't it nice!" said one of the lads, tucked in under his blanket up
to the chin, and the roomful of boys echoed the sentiment. The compact
silently made that night between the Street Arabs and their hosts has
never been broken. They have been fast friends ever since.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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