[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, allother inconsistencies are as in the original. Author's spelling hasbeen maintained.
Hyphen have been removed from God's-acre.
The two types of Thought Breaks used in the book have been used in thisproject as well, type 1: 2 blank lines, type 2: line of asterisks.]
CHILDREN OF THETENEMENTS
"The Kid was standing barefooted in the passageway."
CHILDREN OF THETENEMENTS
BY
JACOB A. RIIS
Author of "The Making of an American," "The Battle withthe Slum," "How the Other Half Lives," etc.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY C. M. RELYEAAND OTHERS
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1903
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1897, 1898,
By THE CENTURY CO.
Copyright, 1903,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up, electrotyped, and published October, 1903.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
PREFACE (p. v)
I have been asked a great many times in the last dozen years if Iwould not write an "East-side novel," and I have sometimes had muchdifficulty in convincing the publishers that I meant it when I said Iwould not. Yet the reason is plain: I cannot. I wish I could. Thereare some facts one can bring home much more easily than otherwise bywrapping them in fiction. But I never could invent even a small partof a plot. The story has to come to me complete before I can tell it.The stories printed in this volume came to me in the course of my workas police reporter for nearly a quarter of a century, and were printedin my paper, the Evening Sun. Some of them I published in theCentury Magazine, the Churchman, and other periodicals, and theywere embodied in an earlier collection under the title, "Out ofMulberry Street." Occasionally, I have used the freedom of (p. vi)the writer by stringing facts together to suit my own fancy. But noneof the stories are invented. Nine out of ten of them are just as theycame to me fresh from the life of the people, faithfully to portraywhich should, after all, be the aim of all fiction, as it must be itssufficient reward.
J. A. R.