of the alley, but her tone changed when she recognized the doctor, and she said, by way of apology, that she didn’t like her daughter to dance before strangers.  So the music and the dance went on, even little dots of girls and boys shuffling about in a stiff-legged fashion, with applause from all the windows, and at last a largesse of pennies—­as many as five altogether—­for the musicians.  And the sun fell lovingly upon the pretty scene.

But then there were the sweaters’ dens, and the private rooms where half a dozen pale-faced tailors stitched and pressed fourteen and sometimes sixteen hours a day, stifling rooms, smelling of the hot goose and steaming cloth, rooms where they worked, where the cooking was done, where they ate, and late at night, when overpowered with weariness, lay down to sleep.  Struggle for life everywhere, and perhaps no more discontent and heart-burning and certainly less ennui than in the palaces on the avenues.

The residence of Karl Mulhaus, one of the doctor’s patients, was typical of the homes of the better class of poor.  The apartment fronted on a small and not too cleanly court, and was in the third story.  As Edith mounted the narrow and dark stairways she saw the plan of the house.  Four apartments opened upon each landing, in which was the common hydrant and sink.  The Mulhaus apartment consisted of a room large enough to contain a bed, a cook-stove, a bureau, a rocking-chair, and two other chairs, and it had two small windows, which would have more freely admitted the southern sun if they had been washed, and a room adjoining, dark, and nearly filled by a big bed.  On the walls of the living room were hung highly colored advertising chromos of steamships and palaces of industry, and on the bureau Edith noticed two illustrated newspapers of the last year, a patent-medicine almanac, and a volume of Schiller.  The bureau also held Mr. Mulhaus’s bottles of medicine, a comb which needed a dentist, and a broken hair-brush.  What gave the room, however, a cheerful aspect were some pots of plants on the window-ledges, and half a dozen canary-bird cages hung wherever there was room for them.

None of the family happened to be at home except Mr. Mulhaus, who occupied the rocking-chair, and two children, a girl of four years and a boy of eight, who were on the floor playing “store” with some blocks of wood, a few tacks, some lumps of coal, some scraps of paper, and a tangle of twine.  In their prattle they spoke, the English they had learned from their brother who was in a store.

“I feel some better today,” said Mr. Mulhaus, brightening up as the visitors entered, “but the cough hangs on.  It’s three months since this weather that I haven’t been out, but the birds are a good deal of company.”  He spoke in German, and with effort.  He was very thin and sallow, and his large feverish eyes added to the pitiful look of his refined face.  The doctor explained to Edith that he had been getting fair wages in a type-foundry until he had become too weak to go any longer to the shop.