Out of Mulberry Street: Stories of Tenement life in New York City — John Shaqi
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
One after another the lights went out in the tenement. Only the one in the
inventor's room burned steadily through the night. The policeman on the
beat noticed the lighted window, and made a mental note of the fact that
some one was sick. Once during the early hours he stopped short to listen.
Upon the morning breeze was borne a muffled sound, as of a distant
explosion. But all was quiet again, and he went on, thinking that his
senses had deceived him. The dawn came in the eastern sky, and with it the
stir that attends the awakening of another day. The lamp burned steadily
yet behind the dim window-pane.
The milkmen came, and the push-cart criers. The policeman was relieved,
and another took his place. Lastly came the mail-carrier with a large
official envelop marked, "Pension Bureau, Washington." He shouted up the
stairway:
"Krueger! Letter!"
The landlord came to the door and was glad. So it had come, had it?
"Run, Emma," he said to his little daughter, "run and tell Mr. Godfrey his
letter has come."
The child skipped up the steps gleefully. She knocked at the inventor's
door, but no answer came. It was not locked, and she pushed it open. The
little lamp smoked yet on the table. The room was strewn with broken
models and torn papers that littered the floor. Something there frightened
the child. She held to the banisters and called faintly:
"Papa! Oh, papa!"
They went in together on tiptoe without knowing why, the postman with the
big official letter in his hand. The morrow had kept its promise. Of
hunger and want there was an end. On the bed, stretched at full length,
with his Grand Army hat flung beside him, lay the inventor, dead. A little
round hole in the temple, from which a few drops of blood had flowed, told
what remained of his story. In the night disillusion had come, with
failure.
THE KID
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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