at
great teeming slum that harbored more than a hundred thousand persons,
young and old. Even the graveyard was shut in by a high brick wall, so
that a glimpse of the greensward over the old mounds was to be caught
only through the spiked iron gates, the key to which was lost, or by
standing on tiptoe and craning one's neck. The dead there were of more
account, though they had been forgotten these many years, than the
living children who gazed so wistfully upon the little paradise
through the barred gates, and were chased by the policeman when he
came that way. Something like this thought was in Paolo's mind when he
stood at sunset and peered in at the golden rays falling athwart the
green, but he did not know it. Paolo was not a philosopher, but he
loved beauty and beautiful things, and was conscious of a great hunger
which there was nothing in his narrow world to satisfy.

Certainly not in the tenement. It was old and rickety and wretched, in
keeping with the slum of which it formed a part. The whitewash was
peeling from the walls, the stairs were patched, and the door-step
long since worn entirely away. It was hard to be decent in such a
place, but the widow did the best she could. Her rooms were as neat as
the general dilapidation would permit. On the shelf where the old
clock stood, flanked by the best crockery, most of it cracked and
yellow with age, there was red and green paper cut in scallops very
nicely. Garlic and onions hung in strings over the stove, and the red
peppers that grew in the starch-box at the window gave quite a
cheerful appearance to the room. In the corner, under a cheap print
of the Virgin Mary with the Child, a small night-light in a blue glass
was always kept burning. It was a kind of illumination in honor of the
Mother of God, through which the widow's devout nature found
expression. Paolo always looked upon it as a very solemn show. When he
said his prayers, the sweet, patient eyes in the picture seemed to
watch him with a mild look that made him turn over and go to sleep
with a sigh of contentment. He felt then that he had not been
altogether bad, and that he was quite safe in their keeping.

Yet Paolo's life was not wholly without its bright spots. Far from it.
There were the occasional trips to the dump with Uncle Pasquale's
dinner, where there was always sport to be had in chasing the rats
that overran the place, fighting for the scraps and bones the trimmers
had rescued from the sc