E-text prepared by Al Haines
by
Author of
"The Forbidden Trail," "Still Jim," "The Heart of the Desert," "Lydiaof the Pines," etc.
A. L. Burt Company
Publishers ———— New York
Published by arrangement with William Morrow and Company, Inc.
Copyright, 1921, by
Honoré Willsie Morrow
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages
Printed in the United States of America
"A boy at fourteen needs a mother or the memory of a mother as he doesat no other period of his life."—Enoch's Diary.
Except for its few blocks that border Washington Square, MacDougal
Street is about as squalid as any on New York's west side.
Once it was aristocratic enough for any one, but that was nearly acentury ago. Alexander Hamilton's mansion and Minetta Brook are lessthan memories now. The blocks of fine brick houses that coveredRichmond Hill are given over to Italian tenements. Minetta Brook, ifit sings at all, sings among the sewers far below the dirty pavements.
But Minetta Lane still lives, a short alley that debouches on MacDougalStreet. Edgar Allan Poe once strolled on summer evenings throughMinetta Lane with his beautiful Annabel Lee. But God pity thesweethearts to-day who must have love in its reeking precincts! It isa lane of ugliness, now; a lane of squalor; a lane of poverty andhopelessness spelled in terms of filth and decay.
About midway in the Lane stands a two-story, red-brick house with anexquisite Georgian doorway. The wrought-iron handrail that borders thecrumbling stone steps is still intact. The steps usually are crowdedwith dirty, quarreling children and a sore-eyed cat or two. Nobodyknows and nobody cares who built the house. Enough that it is now thehome of poverty and of ways that fear the open light of day. Just whenthe decay of the old dwelling began there is none to say. But NewYorkers of middle age recall that in their childhood the Lane alreadyhad been claimed by the slums, with the Italian influx just beginning.
One winter afternoon a number of years ago a boy stood leaning againstthe iron newel post of the old house, smoking a cigarette. He wasperhaps fourteen or fifteen years of age, but he might have been eitherolder or younger. The city