sky overhead, and the
sun had some quality in its shining. The children and the caged birds
at the open windows felt it-and there were notes of music here and there
above the traffic and the clamor. Turning down a narrow alley, with a
gutter in the centre, attracted by festive sounds, the visitors came
into a small stone-paved court with a hydrant in the centre surrounded
by tall tenement-houses, in the windows of which were stuffed the
garments that would no longer hold together to adorn the person. Here an
Italian girl and boy, with a guitar and violin, were recalling la bella
Napoli, and a couple of pretty girls from the court were footing it as
merrily as if it were the grape harvest. A woman opened a lower room
door and sharply called to one of the dancing girls to come in, when
Edith and the doctor appeared at the bottom of the alley, but her tone
changed when she recognized the doctor, and she said, by way of apology,
that she didn't like her daughter to dance before strangers. So
the music and the dance went on, even little dots of girls and boys
shuffling about in a stiff-legged fashion, with applause from all
the windows, and at last a largesse of pennies--as many as five
altogether--for the musicians. And the sun fell lovingly upon the pretty
scene.

But then there were the sweaters' dens, and the private rooms where half
a dozen pale-faced tailors stitched and pressed fourteen and sometimes
sixteen hours a day, stifling rooms, smelling of the hot goose and
steaming cloth, rooms where they worked, where the cooking was done,
where they ate, and late at night, when overpowered with weariness,
lay down to sleep. Struggle for life everywhere, and perhaps no more
discontent and heart-burning and certainly less ennui than in the
palaces on the avenues.

The residence of Karl Mulhaus, one of the doctor's patients, was typical
of the homes of the better class of poor. The apartment fronted on a
small and not too cleanly court, and was in the third story. As Edith
mounted the narrow and dark stairways she saw the plan of the house.
Four apartments opened upon each landing, in which was the common
hydrant and sink. The Mulhaus apartment consisted of a room large enough
to contain a bed, a cook-stove, a bureau, a rocking-chair, and two
other chairs, and it had two small windows, which would have more freely
admitted the southern sun if they had been washed, and a room adjoining,
dark, and nearly filled by a big bed.