lay
hold of the child, the charity schools have fallen into a way of bidding
for him with clothes, shoes, and other bait that is never lost on Mulberry
Street. Even sectarian scruples yield to such an argument, and the
parochial school, where they get nothing but on the contrary are expected
to contribute, gets left.

In a few charity schools where the children are boarded they have
discovered this, and frown upon Italian children unless there is the best
of evidence that the father is really unable to pay for their keep and
not simply unwilling. But whatever his motive, the effect is to
demonstrate in a striking way the truth of the observation that real
reform of poverty and ignorance must begin with the children. In his case,
at all events, the seed thus sown bears some fruit in the present as well
as in the coming generation of toilers. The little ones, with their new
standards and new ambitions, become in a very real sense missionaries of
the slums, whose work of regeneration begins with their parents. They are
continually fetched away from school by the mother or father to act as
interpreters or go-betweens in all the affairs of daily life, to be
conscientiously returned within the hour stipulated by the teacher, who
offers no objection to this sort of interruption, knowing it to be the
best condition of her own success. One cannot help the hope that the
office of trust with which the children are thus invested may, in some
measure, help to mitigate their home-hardships. From their birth they have
little else, though Italian parents are rarely cruel in the sense of
abusing their offspring.

It is the home itself that constitutes their chief hardship. It is only
when his years offer the boy an opportunity of escape to the street, that
a ray of sunlight falls into his life. In his backyard or in his alley it
seldom finds him out. Thenceforward most of his time is spent there, until
the school and the shop claim him, but not in idleness. His mother toiled,
while she bore him at her breast, under burdens heavy enough to break a
man's back. She lets him out of her arms only to share her labor. How well
he does it anyone may see for himself by watching the children that swarm
where an old house is being torn down, lugging upon their heads loads of
kindling wood twice their own size and sometimes larger than that. They
come, as crows scenting carrion, from every side at the first blow of the
axe. Their odd old-mannish