Morning journal and courier., 1881-04-12
Italians in Baxter Street.

We passed through courts and alleys where swarthy Neapolitans were carting bales of rags, and up dark stairs where women and children were sorting them. Some of their homes were low, dark rooms, neglected and squalid others were clean and picturesque,
 with bright patchwork counterpanes on the beds, rows of gay plates on shelves against the wall, mantles and shelves fringed with colored paper, red and blue prints of the saints against the white plaster, and a big nosegay of ilacs on the dresser among the earthen pots. Dogs and children were tumbling together on the thresholds just they do in the cool corridors of Italian towns.
 On the first floor of one of the houses l found an establishment for the repairing of
 hand-organs, where youth was hammerlng at the barrel of one, and 8 swarthy, black
 bearded man, to whom it belonged, was lounging on bench near by. Against the
 smoke -blackened wall an armful of lilacs stood in corner, filling the room with sweet ness, and leading naturally to the thought that with the spring and the flowers the
 organ grinder prepares for trip into the
 country, playing his way from one watering
 place to another, accompanied perhaps by
 h1s family, or at least Il child or two. In
 answer to an inquiry concerning monkeys,
 we were directed to a large double house op-
 posite, said to be inhabited entirely by Nea-
 politans who were swarming about the win dows in all their brown shapeliness. In the hallway, above the rickety outer stairs, lounged several men with red shirts and un- kempt heads and faces One of them the proprietor of the monkey establishment, and his farouche manner disappeared with our first words of interest in his pets. He led us into the little room adjoining, where some six eight half-grown monkeys were peering through the bars of their cages, evi- dently pleading to be let out. The most creditably schooled monkey was released frst handed his cap. made to dof and don it, and shake hands, orders being issued both in Italian and English. Some of the others small brown things with bright eyes, and mot yet quite trained" said the Neapolitan were allowed moments respite from cap tivity, at which they screamed with joy, and made for the dish of soaked bread, dipping their paws into it with great greediness, while the padrone laughed indulgently. properly trained organ monkey IS worth from $2O to $50.
 In the great house known to Baxter street as the Bee hive" we found the handsome padrona whose husband rents organs and sells clocks which latter articles appear to be essential to Italian housekeeping, in default of the many bells of the old country. The padrona was at first by no means eager to give information, she supposed, in good broad American (she was born in New York; that it would be put in the papers, like it was before" It would appear that the advantages of communication with the outer world are not appre- ciated by the inhabitants of Baxter street. The padrona finally informed me that the rent of an organ was four dollars month, and that they had hard work getting it out of the people who hired them, "for they always told you they had been sick, or times were bad or their children had been sick; and when the Italians came over they expected you to give them a room with carpet and clock, else they said you had no kindness" saw in the cluster of eight houses that form the tBee- -hive'' various humble homes, from the neat and graceful poverty adorned with bright color and sweet with bunch of hlacs brought from the mornings marketing (the favorite flower of the neighborhood), to the dens of one room, in which three or four families live, and take boarders and lodgers into the bargain. They told me that the building contained Q thousand souls, and that cases of malarial fever were frequent. It is true that the odors of Baxter street are unhealthy and un- pleasant arguing defective drainage; but those of Venice are equally so, and exist for the prince no less than the beggar. As for overcrowding no one who, for example, has spent a summer in Genoa, and has seen the stream of pallid, languid humanity pour out of the tall old houses of the Cariguano dis trict, can find food for sensationalism in the manner of life common to Baxter street. It must be remembered that the standard of prosperity in America is not that of Italy, and that man is not necessarily destitute nor pauper because he prefers organ-grind- ing or rag picking to shoe-making or bod carving, and likes macaroni cooked in oil bet ter than bakers bread and tough meat.