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
During the long search, I had occasion to go more than once to the
Lubinskys' home. They lived up three flights, in one of the big barracks
that give to the lower end of Essex street the appearance of a deep black
cañon with cliff-dwellers living in tiers all the way up, their
watch-fires showing like so many dull red eyes through the night. The hall
was pitch-dark, and the whole building redolent of the slum; but in the
stuffy little room where the peddler lived there was, in spite of it all,
an atmosphere of home that set it sharply apart from the rest. One of
these visits I will always remember. I had stumbled in, unthinking, upon
their Sabbath-eve meal. The candles were lighted, and the children
gathered about the table; at its head, the father, every trace of the
timid, shrinking peddler of Mulberry street laid aside with the week's
toil, was invoking the Sabbath blessing upon his house and all it
harbored. I saw him turn, with a quiver of the lip, to a vacant seat
between him and the mother; and it was then that I noticed the baby's high
chair, empty, but kept ever waiting for the little wanderer. I understood;
and in the strength of domestic affection that burned with unquenched
faith in the dark tenement after the many months of weary failure I read
the history of this strange people that in every land and in every day has
conquered even the slum with the hope of home.
It was not to be put to shame here, either. Yette returned, after all, and
the way of it came near being stranger than all the rest. Two long years
had passed, and the memory of her and hers had long since faded out of
Mulberry street, when, in the overhauling of one of the children's homes
we thought we had canvassed thoroughly, the child turned up, as
unaccountably as she had been lost. All that I ever learned about it was
that she had been brought there, picked up by some one in the street,
probably, and, after more or less inquiry that had failed to connect with
the search at our end of the line, had been included in their flock on
some formal commitment, and had stayed there. Not knowing her name,--she
could not tell it herself, to be understood,--they had given her one of
their own choosing; and thus disguised, she might have stayed there
forever but for the fortunate chance that cast her up to the surface once
more, and gave the clue to her identity at last. Even then her father had
nearly as much trouble in proving his title to his child as he had had in
looking for her, but in the end he made it good. The frock she had worn
when she was lost proved the missing link. The mate of it was still
carefully laid away in the tenement. So Yette returned to fill the empty
chair at the Sabbath board, and the peddler's faith was justified.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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