FullReads

The children had meanwhile grown into young men and women. The first summer, when we sent the two girls to a clergyman’s family in the country, they stole some rings and came near wrecking all our plans. But those good people had sense, and saw that the children stole as a magpie steals–the gold looked good to them. They kept them, and they have since grown into good women. To be sure, it was like a job of original creation. They had to be built, morally and intellectually, from the ground up. But in the end we beat Poverty Gap. The boys? That was a harder fight, for the gutter had its grip on them. But we pulled them out. At all events, they did better than their father. When they were fifteen they wore neckties, which in itself was a challenge to the traditions of the Gap. I don’t think I ever saw Mr. Murphy with one, or a collar either. They will never be college professors, but they promised fair to be honest workingmen, which was much.

What to do with the mother was a sore puzzle for a while. She could not hold a flat-iron in her hand; didn’t know which end came first. She could scrub, and we began at that. With infinite patience, she was taught washing and ironing, and between visits from her rascal husband began to make out well. For she was industrious, and, with hope reviving, life took on some dignity, inconceivable in her old setting. In spite of all his cruelty she never wholly cast off her husband. He was still to her Mr. Murphy, the head of the house, if by chance he were to be caught out sober; but the chance never befell. It was right that he should be locked up, but outside of these official relations of his, as it were, with society, she had no criticism to make upon him. Only once, when he dropped a note showing that he had been carrying on a flirtation with a “scrub” on the Island, did she exhibit any resentment. Mrs. Murphy was jealous; that is, she was human.

Through all the years of his abuse, with the instinct of her race, she had managed to keep up an insurance on his life that would give him a decent burial. And when he lay dead at last she spent it all–more than a hundred and fifty dollars–on a wake over the fellow, all except a small sum which she reserved for her own adornment in his honor. She came over to the Settlement to consult our head worker as to the proprieties of the thing: should she wear mourning earrings in his memory?

Such is the plain record of the Murphy family, one of the oldest on our books in Henry Street. Over against it let me set one of much more recent date, and let them tell their own story.

Our gardener, when he came to dig up from their winter bed by the back fence the privet shrubs that grow on our roof garden in summer, reported that one was missing. It was not a great loss, and we thought no more about it, till one day one of our kindergarten workers came tiptoeing in and beckoned us out on the roof. Way down in the depth of the tenement-house yard back of us, where the ice lay in a grimy crust long after the spring flowers had begun to peep out in our garden above, grew our missing shrub. A piece of ground, yard-wide, had been cleared of rubbish and dug over. In the middle of the plot stood the privet shrub, trimmed to make it impersonate a young tree. A fence had been built about it with lath, and the whole thing had quite a festive look. A little lad was watering and tending the “garden.” He looked up and saw us and nodded with perfect frankness. He was Italian, by the looks of him.