The sequel of Maggie’s story only served to prove the unwisdom of the parental policy which had tried to “keep her down.” One day Maggie returned to her sister’s home with her six-months-old baby. A week later her sister announced with the utmost gratification and relief that Maggie was married. “If she’d only told us at the start, there’d never been any need for all this trouble. Hannick is a decent fellow and has steady work. He was looking for Maggie all the time she was in the hospital and he was afraid to ask her folks what had become of her. As soon as she came back here, he sent word to me and asked if he could see her. That was the first time I knew who her fellow was. When he came around I told them they ought to go straight off to the priest, and they did.”
The street corner has become, with its free and easy etiquette, a substitute for the home. It is very popular in spite of nagging from the “cop.” Still, the policeman is not a very censorious chaperon. Even the older girl whose parents have opened their door to her company has often learned to prefer its lack of supervision. As a place of rendezvous it is greatly preferred to a parlor of one’s own where one must be “real lady-like.” “You see,” one of the girls explained, “my friend comes to my home; then if he wants me to go somewhere to a dance, my mother’ll likely hear and won’t let me. My brother knows all the places and he’ll tell my mother there’s likely to be shooting there. He makes it bad for me that way.”
The boys’ preference for the street corner is quite as strong as the girls’. Their habit is to send a small boy as intermediary to the girl’s door to tell her who is waiting in the hall below. An incident at “471” gave the smaller boys a chance to express their sentiment. Their gang, known in the neighborhood as “tough young nuts,” were giving a return party to their girl friends. It was to be a “swell” affair, and had involved much consultation and collecting of money beforehand. The instructions had been, “Buy three times as much ice cream as the girls had at their party. Get a cake as big as the cover of this table (a centerpiece 22 inches round). Get three pounds of good candy. Get all the milk and cocoa you want for them girls, but none of that for us. We want soda and ginger ale and celery tonic.” These concoctions, not as harmless as their names suggest, had been purchased by the boys. Everything was elaborately ready and the party had begun. All the guests had arrived except the special friends of two of the boys. A club leader’s naïve suggestion was that Peter and “Gimp” should call for the girls at their homes. Gimp leaned forward, astonished, as if uncertain of what he had heard. “Homes,” he gasped, in a tone surcharged with dismay. “Gee,” the other boy added, “that sure w’d be some place to go, a’right.”
Still, the home is by no means to be discounted entirely as a place for recreation. There is too much Irish jollity and good-fellowship in our neighborhood to make it altogether a tame and stupid place. The “house party,” as any home gathering is known, is not unusual. Music, dancing, and drinking are the chief features of the entertainment on such occasions. A Thanksgiving party at the McKeevers’, for instance, to which the family invited one of the club leaders, showed that the happy good-fellowship which Goldsmith mourned as forever departed from the “Deserted Village” has crossed the ocean with the Irish immigrants and is still preserved to some extent in their newer stronghold on the Middle West Side.
The homelike spirit of the gathering was noticeable. Mrs. McKeever, gray-haired, fifty-two years of age, presided over the festivities. She sat in the only rocking chair, holding in her arms the small son of a neighbor, aged three, extremely dirty and ragged, and as a companion a fox terrier, the pet of the McCormick family. Then came Mrs. O’Hara, the neighbor from the next tenement, large and fat and slovenly, but perfectly good-natured and kindly. She was nursing a small child who was boarded with her by some organization. The child was sleepy and tired and whenever he dozed off was wakened by the music and dancing. In the corner of the sofa next to Mrs. O’Hara was a small, undeveloped specimen of humanity in a faded flannellette dress and very much broken shoes whose appearance classed her as degenerate. She was also a neighbor and had come in to take part in the Thanksgiving festivities. On the same sofa with her at the other end sat a well made-up Negro minstrel, with feet crossed and a large guitar in his arms, who played and sang as well as many a man in a minstrel show on the stage. Next to him, on a kitchen chair, sat a chap of probably thirty-five years. A crutch stood beside his chair, and upon a closer look one could see that one of his legs had been amputated. He was very dreamily playing an accordion, and had had just enough drink to make him very solemn and uninterested in people and things in general. Mrs. McKeever several times deposited the small child and the fox terrier in the middle of the floor and went over to remonstrate with him for not being willing to take part in the ceremonies. He, however, could not be persuaded and sat perfectly still, only occasionally extracting a glass of beer from under his chair and offering it to the others. Over in the corner next to the man with the accordion was a short, stout boy, probably of seventeen years, in his shirt sleeves, whose chief desire was to dance, but who found it difficult to procure partners.
These were the guests on one side of the room. In front of the large pier glass at the end the chair was occupied by an immense Teddy bear, who occasionally was forced into taking part in the dances and general merrymaking. The next seat was occupied by Delia McKeever. Delia was a remarkably good-looking girl, and on most occasions was neat and tidy, but this evening she was conspicuous because of her untidiness. She had had enough beer to make her unusually mirthful and to make her dance much better than usual. Next to Delia sat Annie, also in most untidy condition. Lizzie, the youngest daughter, was sent for to come in from the street. She was dressed in boy’s clothes and had been out masquerading. Holding the center of the floor was a rather handsome chap who played the mandolin well and had a bellowing baritone voice.
The McKeever family were very solicitous that their guests should have a good time, and went around whispering to the musicians, telling them to play or sing whatever the visitors suggested. Everyone sang “The Suwanee River,” and the players of the mandolin and accordion sang several of the latest popular songs. Delia and Annie did a fancy dance known as the “Novelty.” Delia also danced with the chap in the corner, who was ever busy trying to procure a partner. He was so much shorter than Delia that she could conveniently rest her forehead on his head, which she did during the entire dance, making him act very much as a prop to her wilful, antic steps.
There are two places in which the unoccupied of all ages and types may be seen—the streets and the moving picture shows. Eighth Avenue, the residence street of our aristocracy, is the promenade of the district. No one has better expressed the essential spirit of these promenades than Mr. Wells has done in The New Machiavelli.[81]
“Unkindly critics, blind to the inner meanings of things, call them, I believe, Monkey’s Parades—the shop apprentices, the young work girls, the boy clerks, and so forth, stirred by mysterious intimations, spend their first-earned money upon collars and ties, chiffon hats, smart lace collars, walking-sticks, sunshades, or cigarettes, and come valiantly into the vague transfiguring mingling of gas light and evening, to walk up and down, to eye meaningly, even to accost and make friends. It is a queer instinctive revolt from the narrow, limited, friendless homes in which so many find themselves, a going out toward something, romance, if you will, beauty, that has suddenly become a need—a need that hitherto has lain dormant and unsuspected. They promenade. Vulgar!—it is as vulgar as the spirit that calls the moth abroad in the evening and lights the body of the glow-worm in the night.”