University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
THICKET STREET: AS IT IS.

“HOUSES in streets are the places to live
in”? Would Lamb ever have said it
if he had spent, as I did, half a day in, and in
the region of, No. 19 Thicket Street, South
Atlas?

My visit was a recent one, and my story is
not; probably, however, the later aspect of the
place is a photograph of the earlier. Streets
have their moods, habits, laws of character.
Once at the bottom of the social stair, they
are apt, like men, to stay there. We make
over our streets to degradation, like old jackets
to the last boy. The big brother always has
the new clothes.

The little one, overgrown and under-dressed,
remains “the eternal child,” — more simply, (and

perhaps to the Father of the ends of the earth
none the less tenderly for the economy,) the
“baby of the family.”

Thicket Street, at the time of my visit, had
about the proportions, to say nothing of other
qualities, of a drain-spout. The inelegance of
the figure may be pardoned if the reader will
bear in mind that I am not writing “a novel
of high life.”

The alley, long and narrow, sloped over a
slimy hill to the water. The sidewalk being
a single foot-path only, there was generally a
child under a wheel or a hoof; this may have
accounted for the number of dwarfs, and gashed,
twisted, “unpleasant bodies” which struck the
stranger's eye.

The alley, I noticed, was imperfectly guttered,
if at all, and, in a storm, became the bed of a
miniature torrent; in the best of weather the
drainage from the high thoroughfares swept it.
Certain old wharves at its mouth, from which
the soft, green wood was constantly falling, were
laden with — I think it was codfish and whale-oil.
One well at the foot of the slope supplied
the street. There were two dead trees boxed

in by rails, and a little ruined stucco-work about
a few door-ways. The houses were of wood, with
heavily projecting eaves, and had most of them
sunk with the descending grade. This gave
them a shame-faced, tipsy air, like that of a man
with his hat over his eyes. They had been built
by a jerky process of landscape gardening, — in
each other's shadow, in each other's light, jutting
here, retreating there; having the appearance
of being about to chassez croisé in a ghastly
dance of ruin and filth. The wind blew generally
from the wharves. The sun seldom drabbled
his golden skirts in the place; even at direct
midday, when from very shining weight they fell
into the foulness, he submitted to the situation
with a sullen pallor like that of faintness. In
the sickly light, heaps of babies and garbage
became distinct. In the damp, triangular shadows,
formed by the irregular house-fronts, a
little cold chickweed crept.

The business spirit of the community expressed
itself in a tobacconist's, three concert-saloons,
two grog-shops, and a crinoline-mender, — who
looked in at the windows of No. 19.

The alley, at the last census, reported between

eighteen and nineteen hundred souls.
The accommodations varied from four persons
to four families in a room.

No. 19 was a very old house, shabby even
amid the shabbiness; it was near the water,
and much discolored, I observed, either by the
saltness or the impurity of the harbor mists;
the wood was crumbling about the sills of
doors and windows, and rank moss notched
the roof. Children swarmed on the steps and
stairs; an old woman, with a childish leer, sat
in a window picking rags; and a young woman,
haggard and old, crouched on the pavement,
sunning herself like an animal. I asked from
the rag-picker the privilege of visiting the second
front seaward corner room, and the girl
piloted me up the crooked stair.

“Many occupants?”

“Fourteen.”

“That 's a pity!”

She laughed stupidly.

“Alwers so. It 's the biggest tenement in
the house; jammed, you bet! Alwers was.”

“It must be a very hard thing or a very bad
thing.”

“Eh?”

“I mean to say that I am sorry for them.”

“Oh!”

She nodded sullenly, flinging open the door
without knock or warning, according to what
I took to be the received form of morning calls
in No. 19.

The room was full and foul. Babies were
numerous and noisy; several women were drunk.
The tenement, low and dark, commanded, through
dingy and broken windows, a muddy line of harbor,
wharves, and a muddy sky. I could see,
without, the crinoline-mender at his window,
a couple of dance-house signs, and the tobacco-shop.
I could see, within, nothing characteristic
or familiar. I should except, perhaps, a certain
dull stain, which bore a rude resemblance to a
spider, over in the eastern corner of the tenement,
low upon the wall. A hospitable lady in
a red frock, anxious to do the honors of the
place, pointed it out.

“There 's where a gal murdered her baby;
years agone. If 't had n't been so long afore
our day, I might have accommodated ye with
partikkelars.”

This was said with that tender regret with
which Mr. White might force himself to drop a
broken legend of Shakespeare, or Baring-Gould
cement a shattered myth of the Golden Years.

I closed the sunken door with suddenly blinded
eyes. I think that I must have offered money to
the haggard girl, which she refused. I suspect
that something which I said to the rag-picker
left her sobbing. I know that I nearly broke
my neck over a couple of babies in the door,
and that I plodded my way, lame and thoughtful,
back through the filth into pure air and
sunshine.