After Cherry and Roosevelt and Water streets, Madison street seems another Fifth Avenue. The old New Yorker knows it as the once stately and decorous abode of old Dutch families, a few of whom still cling to the ancient homes, but most of these are now cheap boarding-Pouses and tenements, while here and there a new genuine tenement-house is sandwiched between the tiled roofs and dormer-windows which still hold suggestions of former better days. The more respectable class of 'longshoremen find quarters here, and some of the mission-people, who, well-to-do enough to seek quieter homes, choose to be as near as possible to the work waiting for them, and for more like them, in that nest of evil and outrage and slime, the Fourth Ward. Brita's head was bowed on the table as I went in, and Jan's face was sorrowful as he looked toward her. "It iss not so alvay," he said. "She hass made it all so good, and now she dinks of Brita, dat vill not see it, and she say still, 'God iss hard to take her avay.'" "How is it, Jan? Did work come all at once?" "No, and yet yes. Shall I say it all, my lady?" "Surely, Jan, if you have time." "It iss de last day I vill be here in my home all day," he began, drawing one of the children between his knees and holding its hands fondly. "But see on de vall! It iss dat hass done some vork for me." I looked to where he pointed. On the wall, near the small looking-glass, hung a round cap with hanging fox's tail--such a cap as the half-bloods of our north-western forests wear, and the peasants of the European North as well. Jan smiled as he saw my puzzled look. "It iss vy I say I vill tell it all," he went on in his grave, steady voice. "Ven I see dat it iss to see de North. For, see, it vas not alvays I am in de city. No. It iss true I am many years in Stockholm, but I am not Swede: I am Finn--yes, true Finn--and know my own tongue vell, and dat iss vat some Finns vill nefer do. I haf learn to read Swedish, for I must. Our own tongue iss not for us, but I learn it, and Brita dere, she know it too. Brita iss of Helsingfors, and I am of de country far out, but I come dere vid fur, for I hunt many months each year. Den I know Brita, and ve marry, and I must stay in de city, and I am strong; and first I am porter, but soon dey know I read and can be drusted, and it iss china dat I must put in boxes all day, and I know soon how to touch it so as it nefer break.