Jacob A. Riis 1849–1914. The Battle with the Slum. 1902.
Page 390
| and a pair of suspenders and an undershirt as his only other garments, labored up the long flight, carrying his baby brother on his back. I watched them go clear up, catching glimpses of them at every turn, and then I went up after. |
| I found them in a corner, propped against the wall, a look of the serenest bliss on their faces as they drank it all in. It was their show at last. The band was playing “Alabama,” and fifteen hundred boys and girls were dancing, hopping, prancing to the tune, circling about and about while they sang and kept time to the music. When the chorus was reached, every voice was raised to its shrillest pitch: “Way—down—yonder—in—the—cornfield.” And for once in my life the suggestion of the fields and the woods did not seem hopelessly out of place in the Tenth Ward crowds. Baby in its tired mother’s lap looked on wide-eyed, out of the sweep of the human current. |
| The band ceased playing, and the boys took up some game, dodging hither and thither in pursuit of a ball. How they did it will ever be a mystery to me. There did not seem to be room for another child, but they managed as if they had it all to themselves. There was no disorder; no one was hurt, or even knocked down, unless in the game, and that was the game, so it was as it should be. Right in the middle of it, the strains of “Sunday |