are 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
guards set, to give notice of the approach of the children's
joy-destroying Siva--otherwise the policeman--they played ball. Here
"cat" and "one old cat" render bearable many a wilting hour for the
little urchins. Here "Sally in our Alley" and "Skip-rope" made the
little girls forget that the temperature was far above blood-heat. Here
of an evening, Peter smoked and watched them.

At first he was an object of suspicion, and the sport visibly ceased
when he put in an appearance. But he simply sat on one of the benches
and puffed his pipe, and after a few evenings they lost all fear of him,
and went on as if he were not there. In time, an intercourse sprang up
between them. One evening Peter appeared with a stick of wood, and as he
smoked, he whittled at it with a _real_ jack-knife! He was scrutinized
by the keen-eyed youngsters with interest at once, and before he had
whittled long, he had fifty children sitting in the shape of a
semicircle on the stone pavement, watching his doings with almost
breathless Interest. When the result of his work actually developed into
a "cat" of marvellous form and finish, a sigh of intense joy passed
through the boy part of his audience. When the "cat" was passed over to
their