The little lad from the basement was our first invited guest. The simple but appetizing dinner my comrade prepared, while I set the table and placed the flowers. The boy’s mother came up later in the evening to find out what we had given him, for Tommie had rushed down with eyes bulging and had reported that “them ladies live like the Queen of England and eat off of solid gold plates.”
We learned the most efficient use of the fire-escape and felt many times blessed because of our easy access to the roof. We also learned the infinite uses to which stairs can be put. Later we achieved “local color” in our rooms by the addition of interesting pieces of brass and copper purchased from a man on Allen Street whom we and several others had “discovered.” His little dark shop under the elevated railway was fitfully illuminated by the glowing forge. On our first visit the proprietor emerged from a still darker inner room with prayer-shawl and phylactery. He became one of our pleasant acquaintances and lost no occasion of acknowledging what he considered his debt to the appreciative customers who had helped to make him and his wares known to a wider circle than that of the neighborhood.
The mere fact of living in the tenement brought undreamed-of opportunities for widening our knowledge and extending our human relationships. That we were Americans was wonderful to our fellow-tenants. They were all immigrants—Jews from Russia or Roumania. The sole exception was the janitress, Mrs. McRae, who at once dedicated herself and her entire family to the service of the top floor. Dear Mrs. McRae! From her basement home she covered us with her protecting love and was no small influence in holding us to sanity. Humor, astuteness, and sympathy were needed and these she gave in abundance.
It was vouchsafed us to know many fine personalities who influenced and guided us from the first few weeks of residence in the friendly college settlement through the many years that have followed. The two women who stand out with greatest distinction from the first are this pure-souled Scotch-Irish immigrant and Josephine Shaw Lowell. Both, if they were here, would understand the tribute in linking them together.
Occasionally Mrs. McRae would feel impelled to reprove us for “overdoing” ourselves, and from our top story we were hard pushed to save visitors from being sent away when she thought we needed to finish a meal or go to bed. Cautious as we were not to make any distinctions in commenting upon the visitors who came to see us, she made her own deductions. At whatever hour we returned, she would be at the door to welcome us and to report on the happenings during our absence. “So-and-so was here”: shrewd descriptions which often enabled us to identify individuals when names were forgotten. “Lots of visitors to-night,” she would report. “Were messages left, or names?” we would naturally inquire. “No, darlints, nothing at all. I know sure they didn’t bring you anything.”
The key to our apartments, usually left with her, was one day forgotten, and when, upon unlocking the door, we saw a well-known society woman seated in our little living-room, we were naturally puzzled to know how she had arrived there. Mrs. McRae explained that she had taken her up the fire-escape!—no slight venture and exertion for the inexperienced. We suggested that other ways might have been more agreeable and safer. “Whisht,” said Mrs. McRae, with a smile and a wink, “it’s no harm at all. She’ll be havin’ lots of talk for her friends on this.”
When her roving husband died at home, the funeral arrangements were given a last touch by Mrs. McRae, who placed on the casket his tobacco and pipe and ordered the procession to pass his tenement home twice before driving to the cemetery, “So he’d not think we were not for forgivin’ him and hurryin’ him away.”