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Abe's Game of Jacks 222

A Little Picture 226

A Dream of the Woods 228

'Twas 'Liza's Doings 234

Heroes who Fight Fire 247

John Gavin, Misfit 284

A Heathen Baby 289

The Christening in Bottle Alley 294

In the Mulberry Street Court 299

Difficulties of a Deacon 302

Fire in the Barracks 310

War on the Goats 313

He kept His Tryst 319

Rover's Last Fight 323

How Jim went to the War 330

A Backwoods Hero 341

Jack's Sermon 347

Skippy of Scrabble Alley 357

Making a Way out of the Slum 365

CHILDREN OF THE TENEMENTS

THE RENT BABY

Adam Grunschlag sat at his street stand in a deep brown study. He
heeded not the gathering twilight, or the snow that fell in great
white flakes, as yet with an appreciable space between, but with the
promise of a coming storm in them. He took no notice of the bustle and
stir all about that betokened the approaching holiday. The cries of
the huckster hawking oranges from his cart, of the man with the
crawling toy, and of the pedler of colored Christmas candles passed
him by unheard. Women with big baskets jostled him, stopped and
fingered his cabbages; he answered their inquiries mechanically.
Adam's mind was not in the street, at his stand, but in the dark back
basement where his wife Hansche was lying, there was no telling how
sick. They could not afford a doctor. Of course, he might send to the
hospital for one, but he would be sure to take her away, and then what
would become of little Abe? Besides, if they had nothing else in the
whole world, they had yet each other. When that was no longer the
case--Adam would have lacked no answer to the vexed question if life
were then worth living.

Troubles come not singly, but in squads, once the bag