Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1886-03-18
BEHIND THE MASK.
REAR VIEWS OF A STREET IN
THE METROPOLIS.
The Squalid Rookery and Its
Wretched Denizens-What
a Search for n Lost
Dog Revealed.

lnclosing-what2 Backyards sometimes;
other houses and courts sometimes
whole villages Of little tenements, per-
haps-factories and even grayeyards.
You can never tell by the face street
puts on what sordid secret its prim front
may conceal. / know, on the other hand,
Of handsome old houses that you must
get at BY alleyways through shabby tene-
ments; quiet and pleasant old court
yards, as clean and dainty as if they had
been preserved in the lavender which
was the fashionable scent when their
trim bricks were laid; pretty gardens,
gone wild with mad riot o? the old
fashionable flowers that have no modern
rivals. The great city, rising about them
like swelling sea, has shut them off
from the world like the islets of the
Southern ocean, and there they are, and
will be till the waves, sapping their
sturdy bases like the sea-gnawed rock,
crilmble them into ruin, and the black
waters of trade and toll close over and
engulf them
Last Saturday evening went hunting
apet dog that a careless servant had lost.
This distressing, not to say calamitous
accident, had occurred on an extremely
respectable street, between two Of our
great avenues. The houses which
shadowed it were either handsome fats,
fine private residences or extremely select
lodging and boarding houses. The night,
as you may remember, was bitter one,
with high and piercing wind. The cold
was villainous. Isought the truant the
length Of the block, where the girl swore
she had lost him, and was about to give
the quest up when Noticed dim light
far up low, black tunnel, between two
OF the finest flats. Iplunged into the
passage, through which the wind
Lwh.stled in an icy blast, and came out.
after fierce struggle and chilled to the
marrow, in one Of the filthiest courts I
ever set foot in. Behind me lowered the
walls Of the flats, smooth and solid as
those Of fortress. Before me was an
old brick tenement house, with its wood
work broken and decayed, its windows
mended here and there with old hats or
ragged clothing, with foul tatters of
frozen wash tapping in the blast overhead
and the broken tagged court glazed with
treacherous coat of frozen mire.
On either hand I could follow the gutter
lines of whole row Of similar rookeries
losing themselves in a long perspective in
the darkness. It was a veritable town
within a town; my respectable block was
only hollow shell, painted sepulchre,
filed, like Dead Sea fruit, with foulness
and decay. There was piano playing in
one Of the flats, and in another the mer-
ry voices of achiIdren's party. In the
rookeries man and woman were Quarrel
ing, she cursing him with horrible oaths.
and drunken voice singing fash
song.
l stumbled up shaking wooden step
over basement that looked like an open
grave and knocked at the first door, there
being light inside. It was opened by 4
little, fat old woman, decent enough in
dress and garrulously drunk. Another
old woman was doing behind red hot
cooking stove and apretty young one,
with face the color of putty, sat with
her arms akimbo and stared at me. She
mad q coarse tumbler half full Of what
smelled more like naphtha than spirits on
the table The old woman had tumbler
IN her hand. The reek of the
stuff hung over the plsce Ike
fog. The whole space was no bigger
than fair sized hall bedroom. It was 4
perfect incarnation of wreck. Its frlrni-
ture, its crockery, its walls and floor and
ceiling were broken and patched By all
manner Of make-shift devices The oil
lamps were tied together with cord. and
the coa's cleaned througha dozen cracks
IN the old stove. But it was comfortable
and there was pot Of potatoes boiling
on the fire. They had seen nothing of
my dog, but invited me to warm myself.
internally and externally, at their twin
furnaces Trapped at door across the
passage. Some one stirred softly within.
but there was no answer Trapped again,
and heard the pulsations Of quick
breath close to the door inside. What
was the breath afraid Off Fort certainly
was in mortal fear. went upstairs. In
one room, the man and woman I had heard
quarreling had made it up and were get
ting ready to 60 TO market to buy the Sun
day dinner. He was decent young fell
low, Of the truck-driving variety, and
she great deal too well-dressed to live
In such place and be truckman's duti-
ful wife. In another an old woman was
picking curled wool by the light Of tin
lamp, turned down to a mere glim-
mer. Out Of the corner darkness
Of the little room rattling
breath sounded at regu' ar intervals. He
was worse to o-night, the old woman said.
It was the cold. There was not only no
fire, but no stove in the room, and she
shuddcred in constant tremor Ms she
picked and pailel at the rope Of hair.
Why didn't sac send him to hospitals
/ He had BEN d good husband these fifty
| years tonight, and she'd be good wife
till ono or sothor died What q golden
weddingl IN one room 4 boy with I
head that looked enormously over-Iargt
| for hiai weakened body was reading among