Just before we gained admittance to the desired quarters we were in the office of a real-estate man who has an exclusively Italian custom in the lower West Side quarter, renting to people of his own race and tongue houses owned by wealthy people up-town. When he had refused to give us an opportunity at anything on his lists I said to him:
“See here. We have been hunting rooms all day. We have been frustrated from Mulberry Street to Fifteenth. I have got money and can give references, but nobody seems to care about either. What is the matter? Why can we not get into an Italian house?”
“Scoose me, mister, bot wye youse want to?”
“We want to live with Italians in order to learn to speak Italian properly.”
“Yes, all ri—ght. I don’ know wye.” A shrug of the shoulders and a side glance with dropped eyes. “Mebbe Eyetayun peoples sink-a youse try to fin’ a out somesings, mebbe don’ a want somebodys fin’ youse. Youse knows deys-a only dirty dagoes.”
This last was said with a bitterness which showed clearly how well the Italians understand the tolerant, semi-contemptuous regard of Americans towards them and how keenly they resent it. I understood at once how and why they suspected us because we, who were obviously “Americans proper” as they nicely express the difference between the native and imported American, desired to come and make our home among them. Only a knowledge that the persons are still living and a wholesome respect for the libel law prevent me from telling how well founded were the suspicions among the Italians of the “Americans proper” who lived about us later.
Thus, to begin with we were met by the barrier of suspicion and misunderstanding raised against us by all our neighbors. We had to overcome it carefully or do our work in spite of it.
CHAPTER II
LIFE IN A NEW YORK ITALIAN TENEMENT
Our room was about seven feet wide and twelve long. It was half of a room of ordinary size that had been cut nicely in two by a partition, and had a sort of small extension at the back that looked out on the rear of the house. It was barely possible to get by the bed in order to pass from the door to the rear window. The bed itself, while not being a geometrical point, had neither length, breadth, nor thickness. In one corner was a small cook-stove, that should have been under pension. There was a small table in the tiny extension, covered with a dark-patterned piece of oilcloth. A careful inspection of it showed me that dark oilcloth has certain advantages over light. A kerosene lamp with a discouragingly short wick stood on an imitation marble mantelpiece that was a relic of the days of the old mansion’s former glory.
We contrived to get one steamer trunk under the bed, and as soon as we could sort out articles of essential wear, the others drifted to that place of uncertainty called “storage.”