e, when there is a sufficient number of them within reach, club
together to celebrate its patron saint, and hire a band and set up a
gorgeous altar in a convenient back yard. The fire-escapes overlooking it
are draped with flags and transformed into reserved-seat galleries with
the taste these people display under the most adverse circumstances.
Crowds come and go, parading at intervals in gorgeous uniforms around the
block. Admission is by the saloon-door, which nearly always holds the key
to the situation, the saloonist who prompts the sudden attack of devotion
being frequently a namesake of the saint and willing to go shares on the
principle that he takes the profit and the saint the glory.

[Illustration: AN ITALIAN HOME UNDER A DUMP.]

The partnership lasts as long as there is any profit in it, sometimes the
better part of the week, during which time all work stops. If the feast
panned out well, the next block is liable to be the scene of a rival
celebration before the first is fairly ended. As the supply of Italian
villages represented in New York is practically as inexhaustible as that
of the saloons, there is no reason why Mulberry Street may not become a
perennial picnic ground long before the scheme to make a park of one end
of it gets under way. From the standpoint of the children there can be no
objection to this, but from that of the police there is. They found
themselves called upon to interfere in such a four days' celebration of
St. Rocco last year, when his votaries strung cannon fire-crackers along
the street the whole length of the block and set them all off at once. It
was at just such a feast, in honor of the same saint, that a dozen
Italians were killed a week later at Newark in the explosion of their
fireworks.

It goes without saying that the children enter into this sort of thing
with all the enthusiasm of their little souls. The politician watches it
attentively, alert for some handle to catch his new allies by and effect
their "organization." If it is a new experience for him to find the saloon
put to such use, he betrays no surprise. It is his vantage ground, and
whether it serve as the political bait for the Irishman, or as the
religious initiative of the Italian, is of less account than that its
patrons, young and old, in the end fall into his trap. Conclusive proof
that the Italian has been led into camp came to me on last St. Patrick's
Day through the assurance of a certain popular c