Out of Mulberry Street: Stories of Tenement life in New York CityRiis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
General
Out of Mulberry Street: Stories of Tenement life in New York City
Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Poor -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction; Tenement houses -- Fiction
The policeman had found them sitting on a big trunk in the Grand Central
Station, waiting patiently for something or somebody that didn't come.
When he had let them sit until he thought the child ought to be in bed, he
took them into the police station in the depot, and there an effort was
made to find out who and what they were. It was not an easy matter.
Neither could speak English. They knew a few words of French, however, and
between that and a note the old woman had in her pocket the general
outline of the trouble was gathered. They were of the Canaghwaga tribe of
Iroquois, domiciled in the St. Regis reservation across the Canadian
border, and had come down to sell a trunkful of beads, and things worked
with beads. Some one was to meet them, but had failed to come, and these
two, to whom the trackless wilderness was as an open book, were lost in
the city of ten thousand homes.
The matron made them understand by signs that two of the nine white beds
in the nursery were for them, and they turned right in, humbly and
silently thankful. The little girl had carried up with her, hugged very
close under her arm, a doll that was a real ethnological study. It was a
faithful rendering of the Indian papoose, whittled out of a chunk of
wood, with two staring glass beads for eyes, and strapped to a board the
way Indian babies are, under a coverlet of very gaudy blue. It was a
marvelous doll baby, and its nurse was mighty proud of it. She didn't let
it go when she went to bed. It slept with her, and got up to play with her
as soon as the first ray of daylight peeped in over the tall roofs.
The morning brought visitors, who admired the doll, chirruped to the
little girl, and tried to talk with her grandmother, for that they made
her out to be. To most questions she simply answered by shaking her head
and holding out her credentials. There were two letters: one to the
conductor of the train from Montreal, asking him to see that they got
through all right; the other, a memorandum, for her own benefit
apparently, recounting the number of hearts, crosses, and other treasures
she had in her trunk. It was from those she had left behind at the
reservation.
"Little Angus," it ran, "sends what is over to sell for him. Sarah sends
the hearts. As soon as you can, will you try and sell some hearts?" Then
there was "love to mother," and lastly an account of what the mason had
said about the chimney of the cabin. They had sent for him to fix it. It
was very dangerous the way it was, ran the message, and if mother would
get the bricks, he would fix it right away.
The old squaw looked on with an anxious expression while the note was
being read, as if she expected some sense to come out of it that would
find her folks; but none of that kind could be made out of it, so they sat
and waited until General Parker should come in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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