This is Gotham Court (see illustration facing page 94), that stood, until three or four years ago, almost on the identical spot where George Washington lived when he was the first President of this Republic. His house was directly across the street, and in his day it was of course as fine a neighborhood as there was in the city. Within sixty years after his death, the slum had moved in. That tells the story of the mighty strides New York took towards metropolitan greatness, and of the perils that hedged in our path in the race for sudden wealth. For that was the time when we forgot. When I made a census of the Court some years before it was demolished, I found one hundred and forty-two families there. It happened that just half of them were Italians and the other half the original Irish, except that there were two German families there. Perhaps you can imagine the kind of time those two German families were having. The process of displacing the Hibernian element with the Italian is not altogether a peaceful one, as the constant presence of the policemen in the alley bore witness. It was an Irishman, of course, who told me, when I asked him why the policeman was there, that it was “all on account of them two Dutch families in the alley; they make so much trouble that no one can stand it.” Nobody else would have thought of it. I shall not try to describe to you in detail what life meant in that place, for it is gone now and I am glad. One Christmas when I was Santa Claus in the alley for the King’s Daughters, two hundred little girls came out of it and claimed dolls from me. They might have told you. Do you see the “wall of wrath” of which I spoke? Wait till I will give you a better view of it. There, now, are the Alderman’s tenements (see illustration facing page 96) that were cursed by it, as were his tenants all the days of their lives. But the wall, too, is gone. It went one Christmas, and in its fall it was to me as if I heard again the chorus of angels’ voices singing, “Peace on earth, good-will towards men.” I had never heard any angels’ voices in that alley before. [Illustration: A “DRUNKEN” FLAT From “How the Other Half Lives.” Copyright, 1890, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.]