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.
One of our workers went around in Madison Street to invite him to the Settlement, where we would give him all the flowers he wanted.
"But come by the front door, not over the back fence," was the message she bore, and he said he would. He made no bones of having raided our yard. He wanted the "tree" and took it. But he didn't come. It was a long way round; his was more direct. This spring the same worker caught him climbing the back fence once more, and this time trying to drag back with him a whole window-box. She was just in time to pull it back on our side. He let go his grip without resentment. It was the fate of war; that time we won. We renewed our invitation after that, and, when he didn't respond, sent him four blossoming geraniums with the friendly regards of a neighbor who bore no grudge. For in our social creed the longing for a flower in the child-heart covers a maze of mischief; and a maze it is always with the boys. No wonder we feel that way. Our work, all of it, sprang from that longing and was built upon it. But that is another story.