I came back from Europe to find my old friend with a lighter step and a lighter heart than in many a day. The parrot had learned to speak Canadian French to the extent of demanding his crackers and water in the lingo of the _habitant_. Whether he will yet stretch his linguistic acquirements to the learning of Iroquois I shall not say. It is at least possible. The two are inseparable. The last time I went to see them, no one answered my knock on the door-jamb. I raised the curtain that serves for a door, and looked in. Mrs. Ben Wah was asleep upon the bed. Perched upon her shoulder was the parrot, no longer constrained by the bars of a cage, with his head tucked snugly in her neck, asleep too. So I left them, and so I like to remember them always, comrades true. It happened that when I was in Chicago last spring I told their story to a friend, a woman. "Oh, write it!" she said. "You must!" And when I asked why, she replied, with feminine logic: "Because it is so unnecessary. The barrel of flour doesn't stick out all over it." Now I have done as she bade me. Perhaps she was right. Women know these things best. Like my own city, they have hearts, and will understand the unnecessary story of Mrs. Ben Wah and her parrot. INDEX Addams, Miss J., Chicago work, 365, 395. Adler, Professor F., reform work, 71-72, 371, 402. Air-shaft in tenements, tenants' uses and peril of, 93. Alfred Corning Clark buildings, 129, 130. Allen Street-- Children seeking "the commissioner" for justice, 59-60. One-room houses, beginnings of, 97. School building, 354, 357. Anderson, Mrs. A. A., bath gift to city, 282. Armenian Christmas tree, contribution of poor children, 218. Association for improving condition of the poor-- Baths, public, 282. Housing reform movement, 128. Work of, 285. Athletic meets, Crotona Park, 366. Bacillus of the slum, 62. Balkan peninsula, immigration from, 202. Bands, roof playgrounds, 389-395. Barney of Cat Alley, 333-339. Baron Hirsch Fund, _see_ Hirsch Fund. Baths, public-- Anderson, Mrs. A. A., gift, 282. Association for improving condition of poor, work of, 282. Free river baths, 282. Hamilton Fish Park, Tammany use of, 149-152. Lack of public baths scandal, 281. Mott Street bath, 282. Plans for system of municipal baths, 282-283. Rivington Street, 281. Shower-baths for public schools, 283. Battle Row-- Gang, Easter service, 251-252. Improvement, 135. Baxter Street "dens of death," 14, 20. Beds, Mills Houses, 159. Beginning of the battle, 1-4. Bellevue, scandal during Tammany government, 66. Bend, _see_ Mulberry Bend. Ben Wah, Mrs., and her parrot, story of, 441-449. Beresheim, Jacob-- Arrest for murder, 227. Birth in tenement, 228. Law-breaking, 234. Life and environment, 227-236. Schooling neglected, 231. Berlin death-rate, 124.