t neither
ventures beyond its neutral ground.

Judge Phoenix and little sister are by far the most interesting
figures to be seen from my windows, but there are many others whom we
know. There is the Italian barber whose brother dropped dead while
shaving a customer. You would never imagine, to see the simple and
unaffected way in which he comes out to take the air once in a while,
standing on the steps of his basement, and twirling his tin-backed comb
in idle thought, that he had had such a distinguished death in his
family. But I don't let him shave me.

[Illustration]

Then there is Mamie, the pretty girl in the window with the
lace-curtains, and there is her epileptic brother. He is insane, but
harmless, and amusing, although rather trying to the nerves. He comes
out of the house in a hurry, walks quickly up the street for twenty or
thirty feet, then turns suddenly, as if he had forgotten something, and
hurries back, to reappear two minutes later from the basement door, only
to hasten wildly in another direction, turn back again, plunge into the
basement door, emerge from the upper door, get half way down the block,
forget it again, and go back to make a new combination of doors and
exits. Sometimes he is ten or twenty minutes in the house at one time.
Then we suppose he is having a fit. Now, it seems to me that that
modest retirement shows consideration and thoughtfulness on his part.

In the window next to Mamie's is a little, putty-colored face, and a
still smaller white face, that just peeps over the sill. One belongs to
the mulatto woman's youngster. Her mother goes out scrubbing, and the
little girl is alone all day. She is so much alone, that the sage-green
old bachelor in the second den from mine could not stand it, last
Christmas time, so he sent her a doll on the sly. That's the other face.

Then there is the grocer, who is a groceress, and the groceress's
husband. I wish that man to understand, if his eye ever falls upon this
page--for wrapping purposes, we will say--that, in the language of
Mulberry Street, I am on to him. He has got a job recently, driving a
bakery wagon, and he times his route so that he can tie up in front of
his wife's grocery every day at twelve o'clock, and he puts in a solid
hour of his employer's time helping his wife through the noonday rush.
But he need not fear. In the interests of the higher morality I suppose
I ought to go and tell his employer about it. But I won't. My