The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-08-10

Summer is taking heavy toll this
season of the children of New York's
hideous tenement house sections. 1t is
hardly possible to walk block with
out seeing a white Grape streamer
hanging from the common entrance to
a barracks. In some of the crowded
blocks every other door flaunts one.
To the stranger this is, no doubt,
the most shocking sight to be seen in
those sections filled with unusual
sights. For the crowding that robs
the living of all the little privacies
that more fortunate human beings
hold sacred, robs death still more. In
the tenement house, man, woman and
child must die as they have lived, in
public. Children play with the poor,
cheap token of a family's sorrow; the
other inmates of the tenement sit and
lounge In the doorway where it hangs,
and talk and laugh; the dingy hall
ways resound with the voices of the
peddlers and merchants who deliver
their wares, and with the chaffering of
their customers; the undertakerS men
arrive with clatter, and joke with
the neighbors as they halt before The
door; often the streamer f1utters over
the wares of the shopkeeper who has
his store or stand in the ground floor.
One day last week there was small
crowd around one of the many sticky,
fy-besieged, evil soda water fountains
that are erected everywhere on the
sidewalk. From the doorway along
side white Grape, with a few sad little
artificial blossoms wreathed around 1t,
waved in the damp, warm wind and at
last whippd into the glass of poisonous
loking pink fluid that a customer had
just raised to his lips. Shrill laughter
from the bystanders greeted the Incl
dent Then followed a bitter dispute,
in which, before long, score of men
and women were enthusiastic partici-
pants, because the customer demanded
that the owner of the fountain replace
what part of the drink had been lost.
Upstairs, a little form, wasted until
1t looked startlingly like q, big, broken
doll, lay on a bed in a room crowded
with chattering neighbors. All who
passed through the common hall
craned their necks to look in over the
shoulders of those who filled the room.
No man who went by the open door
where the tiny corpse lay took off his
hat. On the threshold stood a large
woman with her elbows glistening
with the soapsuds of her weeks wash
ing. She was telling an interminable
story of one of her children that was
"as sick as this one" and how it
would have lived IL she had only done
so and so.
The mother sat by the bed OF her
baby. Now and then she would reach
out furtively and pat the little dead
hands. Now and then she would cry
quietly, with piteous self-repression
The father? He was away working as
usual-no, not quite as usual, for he
had taken a heavy heart with him that
morning. The large woman broke off
once in her tale to wonder how he felt
I always feared, sort of" she said,
that maybe he made too much of Es-
Their. Don't you remember" she APP
pealed to the mother, how he used to
call to her as soon as he got to the cor
ner and hold out his arms for her and
carry her home? Poor man! Poor
man! Is he goin' to- work all day to-
day? It's good he's got it to do
though. Funerals is terrible expensive
When our little Sammy died." and the
endless tale began anew.
When the father appeared at last
walking slowly up the street with a
new stoop in his weary shoulders,
there was no diminution of interest.
Men and women stopped him on the
street and the children crowded around
and listened A neighbor woman bust
led into the kitchen and cooked his
supper for him, calling on him contin-
TALLY with kindly, loud-voiced insist
ence to Come away now; come away
from her and eat. You can't do her no
good, poor little dear. She's better on;