y ticket next fall it ought to get us home in time to
sleep on a bed once or twice before they line us up at the polls.'

"'A-playing of my flute into the airshaft, says Patsey Rourke, 'and
a-perspiring in me own windy to the joyful noise of the passing
trains and the smell of liver and onions and a-reading of the latest
murder in the smoke of the cooking is well enough for me,' says he.
'What is this herding us in grass for, not to mention the crawling
things with legs that walk up the trousers of us, and the Jersey
snipes that peck at us, masquerading under the name and denomination
of mosquitoes. What is it all for Carney, and the rint going on just
the same over at the flats?'

"''Tis the great annual Municipal Free Night Outing Lawn Party,' says
I, 'given by the polis, Hetty Green and the Drug Trust. During the
heated season they hold a week of it in the principal parks. 'Tis a
scheme to reach that portion of the people that's not worth taking up
to North Beach for a fish fry.'

"'I can't sleep on the ground,' says Patsey, 'wid any benefit. I
have the hay fever and the rheumatism, and me car is full of ants.'

"Well, the night goes on, and the ex-tenants of the Flats groans and
stumbles around in the dark, trying to find rest and recreation in
the forest. The children is screaming with the coldness, and the
janitor makes hot tea for 'em and keeps the fires going with the
signboards that point to the Tavern and the Casino. The tenants try
to lay down on the grass by families in the dark, but you're lucky if
you can sleep next to a man from the same floor or believing in the
same religion. Now and then a Murpby, accidental, rolls over on the
grass of a Rosenstein, or a Cohen tries to crawl under the O'Grady
bush, and then there's a feeling of noses and somebody is rolled down
the hill to the driveway and stays there. There is some hair-pulling
among the women folks, and everybody spanks the nearest howling kid
to him by the sense of feeling only, regardless of its parentage and
ownership. 'Tis hard to keep up the social distinctions in the dark
that flourish by daylight in the Beersheba Flats. Mrs. Rafferty, that
despises the asphalt that a Dago treads on, wakes up in the morning
with her feet in the bosom of Antonio Spizzinelli. And Mike O'Dowd,
that always threw peddlers downstairs as fast as he came upon 'em,
has to unwind old Isaacstein's whiskers from around his neck, and
wake up the whole gang at daylight.