The house on Henry Street

by Lillian D. Wald

Many years’ familiarity with the children’s attempts to play in the streets has not made me indifferent to its pathos, which is not the less real because the children themselves are unconscious of it. In the midst of the push-cart market, with its noise, confusion, and jostling, the checker or crokinole board is precariously perched on the top of a hydrant, constantly knocked over by the crowd and patiently replaced by the little children. One tearful small boy described his morning when he said he had done nothing but play, but first the “cop” had snatched his dice, then his “cat” (a piece of wood sharpened at both ends), and nobody wanted him to chalk on the sidewalk, and he had been arrested for throwing a ball.

A man since risen to distinction in educational circles, whose childhood was passed in our neighborhood, told me how he and his companions had once taken a dressmaker’s lay figure. They had no money to spend on the theater and no place to play in but a cellar. They had admired the gaudy posters of a melodrama in which the hero rescues the lady and carries her over a chasm. Having no lady in their cast, they borrowed the dressmaker’s lay figure—without permission. Fortunately, and accidentally, they escaped detection. It is not difficult to see how the entire course of this boy’s career might have been altered if arrest had followed, with its consequent humiliation and degradation. At least, looking back upon it, the young man sees how the incident might have deflected his life.

The instruction in folk-dancing which the children now receive in the public schools and recreation centers has done much to develop a wholesome and delightful form of exercise, and has given picturesqueness to the dancing in the streets. But yesterday I found myself pausing on East Houston Street to watch a group of children assemble at the sound of a familiar dance from a hurdy-gurdy, and looking up I met the sympathetic smile of a teamster who also had stopped. The children, absorbed in their dance, were quite unconscious that congested traffic had halted and that busy people had taken a moment from their engrossing problems to be refreshed by the sight of their youth and grace. For that brief instant even the cry of “War Extra” was unheeded.

Touching as are the little children deprived of opportunity for wholesome play, a deeper compassion stirred our hearts when we began to realize the critically tender age at which many of them share the experiences, anxieties, and tragedies of the adult. I cannot efface from my memory the picture of a little eight-year-old girl whom I once found standing on a chair to reach a washtub, trying with her tiny hands to cleanse some bed-linen which would have been a task for an older person. Every few minutes the child got down from her chair to peer into the next room where her mother and the new-born baby lay, all her little mind intent upon giving relief and comfort. She had been alone with her mother when the baby was born and terror was on her face.

I think the memory never left her, but it may be only that her presence called up, even after the lapse of years, a vision of the anxious little face inevitably contrasted in my mind with the picture of irresponsible childhood.

At about the same time we made the acquaintance of the K⸺ family, through nursing one of the children. The mother was a large-framed, phlegmatic, seemingly emotionless type, although she did show appreciation of our liking for her children. The father was only occasionally mentioned. We assumed that he was away seeking work, a common explanation then of the absence of the men of the families. One afternoon I stopped at their house to make arrangements for the children’s trip to the country. Early the next morning, awakened by a pounding on the door, I opened it to find little Esther beside herself with excitement, repeating over and over, “My mother she die! My mother she die!” Following fast, it was not possible to keep pace with her. When, breathless, I entered their rooms it was to see the mother’s body hanging from a doorway. She had been brooding over a summons to testify in court that morning against her husband, who had been arrested for bigamy, and this was her answer to the court and to the other woman.

The frightened little children were scattered among different institutions. From one of these Esther was sent West, to a home that was found for her. Possibly she was so young that the terrible picture faded from her mind. At least there was no mention of it in the first letter which she wrote, announcing that her new home was a farm and that they had “six cows, eighty chickens, eleven pigs, and a nephew.” The nephew Esther eventually married.

In the first party of children that we sent to the country were three little girls, daughters of a skilled cobbler. The mother, a complaining, exacting invalid, spent a large proportion of her husband’s earnings for patent medicines. Annie, not quite twelve, was the household drudge, and the coming of the settlement nurse lifted only part of her burden. The new friends, determined to get at least two weeks of care-free childhood for the little girls, procured an invitation for them, through a Fresh-Air agency, from a farmer in the western part of the state. It was necessary to secure the mother’s admission to a hospital during the time the children would be absent from home—not an easy task, as she was not what is termed a “hospital case.” When we met the children at the railroad station on their return, their joyousness and bubbling spirits attracted the attention of the on-lookers; but as Annie neared home its responsibilities fell like a heavy cloud upon her, and before we reached the tenement she was silent. Her quick eye discerned the absence of the brick which had kept the front hall door open, and in a second she had darted into the yard and replaced it. Before we left, with sleeves rolled up she was beginning to wash the pile of dishes that had accumulated in her absence. Gone was the gayety. The little drudge had resumed her place. Later, when the child swore falsely to her age, and the notary public, upon whose certificate employment papers could at that time be obtained, affixed his signature to her perjury, the position she secured as cash girl in the basement of a department store was, to her, emancipation from hateful labor and an opportunity for fellowship with children.

Recalling early days, I am constantly reminded of the sympathy and comprehension of those friends who, though not stimulated as my comrade and I were by constant reminders of the children’s needs, from the beginning promoted and often anticipated our efforts to provide innocent recreation. We had not thought of the possibility of giving pleasure to large groups of children in picnics and day parties, when a friend, a few days after our arrival in the neighborhood, asked us to celebrate his sister’s birthday by giving “fun” to some of our new acquaintances. I yet remember the thrill I felt when I realized that this gift was not for shoes or practical necessities, but for “just what children anywhere would like.”

Two memories of this first party stand out sharply: the songs the children sang,—“She’s More to be Pitied than Censured,” and “Judge, Forgive Him, ’Tis His First Offense,”—painfully revealing a precocious knowledge, and their ecstasy at the sight of a wonderful dogwood tree. Now, when the settlement children go on day parties, they have another repertory, and the music they learn in the public schools reflects the finer thought for the child.