At three P. M. I was back at my post. I watched the children come from school. With their many-coloured dresses they looked from far away like a swarm of butterflies, but as they approached they became less gay, less expansive.
Talk about the influence of home on children! Among a group of children I spied the oldest girl of the consumptive man. She walked more slowly than the others, as though she wanted to retard something that waited for her at home. Finally she took leave of the others and entered the hall. By and bye the other sisters and two brothers came. I waited outside. A quarter of an hour later the oldest girl and the second brother, about nine years old, came out, still chewing the piece of bread they had for tea. They walked hand in hand, and I followed them. They turned the corner and entered a tenement house near Fourteenth Street. I intended to follow them upstairs when I observed many other children of about the same age coming. Some were as young as six and seven, however. Some were biting apples, others, boys of nine to twelve years, throwing away the last bit of the butt of a cigarette, with the regretful gesture of the workingman before the factory door closes on him and the bell rings.
"Where in heaven are you all going?" I asked a group of boys.
"None of your rotten business," was the reply in chorus. I withdrew and watched. One after another they went up the stairs until I had counted nearly a hundred. When I saw no more coming I went up the stairs, the dark, ill-smelling stairs, until I reached the third floor. It was a rear yard house. Dark, dirty, dingy. On the third floor I stopped and listened. A buzzing noise came from one of the apartments, as though a thousand hands were crushing silk paper between the fingers. Soon a door opened. A little girl came out. I did not speak to her. Interested, I entered the apartment without knocking at the door. In a room 10 x 15, were two long tables and on both sides sat the little boys and girls on benches. On the tables were piled up all sorts of candies and chocolates, which the children put in paper boxes that lay near them. So engrossed were they in their work that they hardly lifted an eye to see who had entered. A big burly Italian met me and asked what I wanted.