Without any of that diffidence which characterizes so many of all classes she rises and putting one hand on the shoulder of her heavy, solemn-looking husband, asks him to strike the appropriate chord, and then breaks forth into one of those plaintive folksongs of the Tyrol which describes the longing of the singer for his native land.
“I have such a poor woice now,” she insists when she concludes. “When I was younger it was different.”
“Poor!” I exclaim. “It’s very clear and beautiful. How old are you?”
“I will be fifty next August,” she answers.
This woman is possessed of a sympathetic and altogether lovely disposition. How can she exist in Hell’s Kitchen, amid grime and apparent hardness, and remain so sweet and sympathetic? In my youth and ignorance I wonder.
* * * * *
I am returning one day from a serious inspection of the small stores and shops of the neighborhood. As I near my door I am preceded up the street by three grimy coal-heavers, evidently returning from work in an immense coalyard in Eleventh Avenue.
“Come on in and have a pint,” invites one great hulking fellow, with hands like small coal-shovels. He was, as it chanced, directly in front of my doorway.
One of his two companions needs no second invitation, but the other, a small, feeble-witted-looking individual, seems uncertain as to whether to go on or stay.
“Come on! Come on back and have a pint!” shouts the first coal-heaver. “What the hell—ain’t you no good at all? Come on!”