t the reason is plain: I cannot. I wish I could. There
are some facts one can bring home much more easily than otherwise by
wrapping them in fiction. But I never could invent even a small part
of a plot. The story has to come to me complete before I can tell it.
The stories printed in this volume came to me in the course of my work
as police reporter for nearly a quarter of a century, and were printed
in my paper, the _Evening Sun_. Some of them I published in the
_Century Magazine_, the _Churchman_, and other periodicals, and they
were embodied in an earlier collection under the title, "Out of
Mulberry Street." Occasionally, I have used the freedom of the writer
by stringing facts together to suit my own fancy. But none of the
stories are invented. Nine out of ten of them are just as they came to
me fresh from the life of the people, faithfully to portray which
should, after all, be the aim of all fiction, as it must be its
sufficient reward.

J. A. R.

CONTENTS

PAGE

The Rent Baby 1

A Story of Bleecker Street 13

The Kid hangs up His Stocking 21

The Slipper-maker's Fast 28

Death comes to Cat Alley 31

A Proposal on the Elevated 35

Little Will's Message 41

Lost Children 53

Paolo's Awakening 63

The Little Dollar's Christmas Journey 78

The Kid 93

When the Letter Came 96

The Cat took the Kosher Meat 100

Nibsy's Christmas 104

In the Children's Hospital 117

Nigger Martha's Wake 126

What the Christmas Sun saw in the Tenements 133

Midwinter in New York 150

A Chip from the Maelstrom 173

Sarah Joyce's Husbands 177

Merry Christmas in the Tenements 18