strictly intent on their own affairs. No part of the town is more
crowded or more industrious. If youth is the hope of the country, the
sight was encouraging, for children were in the gutters, on the house
steps, at all the windows. The houses seemed bursting with humanity,
and in nearly every room of the packed tenements, whether the inmates
were sick or hungry, some sort of industry was carried on. In the damp
basements were junk-dealers, rag-pickers, goose-pickers. In one noisome
cellar, off an alley, among those sorting rags, was an old woman of
eighty-two, who could reply to questions only in a jargon, too proud to
beg, clinging to life, earning a few cents a day in this foul occupation.
But life is sweet even with poverty and rheumatism and eighty years.
Did her dull eyes, turning inward, see the Carpathian Hills, a free
girlhood in village drudgery and village sports, then a romance of love,
children, hard work, discontent, emigration to a New World of promise?
And now a cellar by day, the occupation of cutting rags for carpets, and
at night a corner in a close and crowded room on a flock bed not fit for
a dog. And this was a woman's life.

Picturesque foreign women going about with shawls over their heads and
usually a bit of bright color somewhere, children at their games, hawkers
loudly crying their stale wares, the click of sewing-machines heard
through a broken window, everywhere animation, life, exchange of rough or
kindly banter. Was it altogether so melancholy as it might seem? Not
everybody was hopelessly poor, for here were lawyers' signs and doctors'
signs--doctors in whom the inhabitants had confidence because they
charged all they could get for their services--and thriving pawnbrokers'
shops. There were parish schools also--perhaps others; and off some dark
alley, in a room on the ground-floor, could be heard the strident noise
of education going on in high-voiced study and recitation. Nor were
amusements lacking--notices of balls, dancing this evening, and ten-cent