When the warm weather again closed the courts and galleries, and brought
an end to the concerts and theatres, Peter found time harder to kill,
the more, because he had pretty well explored the city. Still he walked
much to help pass the time, and to get outside of his rooms into the
air. For the same reason he often carried his book, after the heat of
the day was over, to one of the parks, and did his reading there. Not
far from his office, eastwardly, where two streets met at an angle, was
a small open space too limited to be called a square, even if its shape
had not been a triangle. Here, under the shade of two very sickly trees,
surrounded by tall warehouses, were a couple of benches. Peter sat here
many evenings smoking his pipe. Though these few square feet made
perhaps the largest "open" within half a mile of his office, the angle
was confined and dreary. Hence it is obvious there must have been some
attraction to Peter, since he was such a walker, to make him prefer
spending his time there rather than in the parks not far distant The
attraction was the children.

Only a few hundred feet away was one of the most densely crowded
tenement districts of New York. It had no right to be there, for the
land was wanted for business purposes, but the hollow on which it was
built had been a swamp in the old days, and the soft land, and perhaps
the unhealthiness, had prevented the erection of great warehouses and
stores, which almost surrounded it. So it had been left to the storage
of human souls instead of merchandise, for valuable goods need careful
housing, while any place serves to pack humanity. It was not a nice
district to go through, for there was a sense of heat and dirt, and
smell, and crowd, and toil and sorrow throughout. It was probably no
nicer to live in, and nothing proved it better than the overflow of the
children therefrom into the little, hot, paved, airless angle. Here they
could be found from five in the morning till twelve at night. Here, with