kind of invincible cheerfulness that more potently stirred the
generosity of the man who had knocked him down than ever groans and
complaints could have done.

If the weather was fine and conducive to bodily comfort, the beggar
sometimes turned north and worked his way to Washington Square or the
lower blocks of Fifth Avenue. Sometimes, having agreed to pose for the
head and trunk to some young art student, he left his hand-organ behind,
and permitted himself the extravagance of riding in a surface car. His
boarding of a street-car was a feat of pure gymnastics, swift and
virile; so, too, was his ascending or descending of a flight of steps,
or the high platform on which he was to pose. Incessant practice, added
to natural skill and balance, enabled him to accomplish, without legs,
feats which might have balked a man with a capable and energetic pair of
them. He could travel upon his crutches for the length of a city block
almost as fast as the average man can run, and if it came to climbing a
rope or a rain-duct he was more ape than human. In his own dwelling he
had for his own use, instead of the laborious stairs needed by its other
inmates, a system of knotted ropes by which he could ascend from cellar
to attic, and polished poles by whose aid he could accomplish the most
lightning-like descending slides.

Marrow Lane, shaped like a dog's hind leg, is one of those crooked and
narrow thoroughfares which the approaches and anchorings of the Brooklyn
Bridge have cast into gloom and darkness. There are spots upon which the
sun will not shine again until the great bridge has perished; there are
corners in which drafts strong as a heaven-born wind whistle from one
year's end to the other. There are thousands of children in the region,
and in the more purely tenement settlements to the north, who have yet
to see a green field or to handle a flower.