* * * * *

The big house in which my grandmother, my Aunt Millie, and I lived was
looking rather seedy by this time. The receding tide of fashion and
wealth had withdrawn far off to another section of the rapidly growing
city ... and, below and above, the Steel Mills, with their great,
flaring furnaces, rose, it seemed, over night, one after one ... and a
welter of strange people we then called the "low Irish" came to work in
them, and our Mansion Avenue became "Kilkenny Row." And a gang of tough
kids sprang up called the "Kilkenny Cats," with which my gang used to
fight.

After the "Low Irish" came the "Dagoes" ... and after them the "Hunkies"
... each wilder and more poverty-stricken than the former.

* * * * *

The Industrial Panic of '95 (it was '95, I think) was on ... always very
poor since the breaking up of our family, now at times even bread was
scarce in the house.

I was going to school, scrawny and freckle-faced and ill-nourished. I
had a pet chicken that fortunately grew up to be a hen. It used to lay
an egg for me nearly every morning during that hard time.

* * * * *

My early remembrances of school are chiefly olfactory. I didn't like the
dirty boy who sat next to me and spit on his slate, rubbing it clean