alized
by the hoidenish ways of Rose Baruch, the little cloak maker on the
top floor. Rose was seventeen, and boarded with her mother in the
Pincus family. But for her harum-scarum ways she might, in the opinion
of the tenement, be a nice girl and some day a good wife; but these
were unbearable.

For the tenement is a great working hive in which nothing has value
unless exchangeable for gold. Rose's animal spirits, which long hours
and low wages had no power to curb, were exchangeable only for wrath
in the tenement. Her noisy feet on the stairs when she came home woke
up all the tenants, and made them swear at the loss of the precious
moments of sleep which were their reserve capital. Rose was so
Americanized, they said impatiently among themselves, that nothing
could be done with her.

Perhaps they were mistaken. Perhaps Rose's stout refusal to be subdued
even by the tenement was their hope, as it was her capital. Perhaps
her spiteful tread upon the stairs heralded the coming protest of the
free-born American against slavery, industrial or otherwise, in which
their day of deliverance was dawning. It may be so. They didn't see
it. How should they? They were not Americanized; not yet.

However that might be, Rose came to the end that was to be expected.
The judgment of the tenement was, for the time, borne out by
experience. This was the way of it:--

Rose's mother had bought several pounds of kosher meat and put it into
the ice-box--that is to say, on the window-sill of their fifth-floor
flat. Other ice-box these East Side sweaters' tenements have none. And
it does well enough in cold weather, unless the cat gets around, or,
as it happened in this case, it slides off and falls down. Rose's
breakfast and dinner disappeared down the air-shaft, seventy feet or
more, at 10.30 P.M.

There was a family consultation as to what should be done. It was
late, and everybody was in bed, but Rose declared herself equal to the
rousing of the tenants in the first floor rear, through whose window
she could climb into the shaft for the meat. She had done it before
for a nickel. Enough said. An expedition set out at once from the top
floor to recover the meat. Mrs. Baruch, Rose, and Jake, the boarder,
went in a body.

Arrived before the Knauff family's flat on the ground floor, they
opened proceedings by a vigorous attack on the door. The Knauffs woke
up in a fright, believing that the house was full of burglars. They
were stirri