mp had stunted
him. He did not even know what a letter was. He had been there five years,
and garbage limited his mental as well as his physical horizon.

Enough has been said to show that the lot of the poor child of the
Mulberry Street Bend, or of Little Italy, is not a happy one, courageously
and uncomplainingly, even joyously, though it be borne. The stories of two
little lads from the region of Crosby Street always stand to me as typical
of their kind. One I knew all about from personal observation and
acquaintance; the other I give as I have it from his teachers in the Mott
Street Industrial School, where he was a pupil in spells. It was the death
of little Giuseppe that brought me to his home, a dismal den in a rear
tenement down a dark and forbidding alley. I have seldom seen a worse
place. There was no trace there of a striving for better things--the
tenement had stamped that out--nothing but darkness and filth and misery.
From this hole Giuseppe had come to the school a mass of rags, but with
that jovial gleam in his brown eyes that made him an instant favorite with
the teachers as well as with the boys. One of them especially, little
Mike, became attached to him, and a year after his cruel death shed tears
yet, when reminded of it. Giuseppe had not been long at the school when
he was sent to an Elizabeth Street tenement for a little absentee. He
brought her, shivering in even worse rags than his own; it was a cold
winter day.

"This girl is very poor," he said, presenting her to the teacher, with a
pitying look. It was only then that he learned that she had no mother. His
own had often stood between the harsh father and him when he came home
with unsold evening papers. Giuseppe fished his only penny out of his
pocket--his capital for the afternoon's trade. "I would like to give her
that," he said. After that he brought her pennies regularly from his day's
sale, and took many a thrashing for it. He undertook the general
supervision of the child's education, and saw to it that she came to
school every day. Giuseppe was twelve years old.

There came an evening when business had been very bad, so bad that he
thought a bed in the street healthier for him than the Crosby Street
alley. With three other lads in similar straits he crawled into the iron
chute that ventilated the basement of the Post-office on the Mail Street
side and snuggled down on the grating. They were all asleep, when fire
broke out in the cella