Nibsy\'s Christmas

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[Illustration: Nibsy as Santa Claus.]

NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS

BY

JACOB AUGUST RIIS

Short Story Index Reprint Series

BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS

FREEPORT, NEW YORK

First Published 1893

Reprinted 1969

STANDARD BOOK NUMBER: 8369-3073-8

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 71-90590

MANUFACTURED BY HALLMARK LITHOGRAPHERS, INC. IN THE U.S.A.

* * * * *
_To Her Most Gracious Majesty
Louise
Queen of Denmark
the friend of the afflicted and the mother of the
motherless in my childhood's home
these leaves are inscribed
with the profound respect and admiration
of
the Author_

* * * * *

NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS

It was Christmas-eve over on the East Side. Darkness was closing in on a
cold, hard day. The light that struggled through the frozen windows of
the delicatessen store, and the saloon on the corner, fell upon men with
empty dinner-pails who were hurrying homeward, their coats buttoned
tightly, and heads bent against the steady blast from the river, as if
they were butting their way down the street.

The wind had forced the door of the saloon ajar, and was whistling
through the crack; but in there it seemed to make no one afraid. Between
roars of laughter, the clink of glasses and the rattle of dice on the
hard-wood counter were heard out in the street. More than one of the
passers-by who came within range was taken with an extra shiver in which
the vision of wife and little ones waiting at home for his coming was
snuffed out, as he dropped in to brace up. The lights were long out when
the silent streets re-echoed his unsteady steps toward home, where the
Christmas welcome had turned to dread.

But in this twilight hour they burned brightly yet, trying hard to
pierce the bitter cold outside with a ray of warmth and cheer. Where the
lamps in the delicatessen store made a mottled streak of brightness
across the flags, two little boys stood with their noses flattened
against the window. Their warm breath made little round holes on the
frosty pane, that came and went, affording passing glimpses of the
wealth within, of the piles of smoked herring, of golden cheese, of
sliced bacon and generous, fat-bellied hams; of the rows of odd-shaped
bottles and jars on the shelves that held there was no telling what good
things, only it was certain that they must be good from the looks of
them.

And the heavenly smell of spices and things that reached the boys
through the open door each time the tinkling bell announced the coming
or going of a customer! Better than all, back there on the top shelf the
stacks of square honey-cakes, with their frosty coats of sugar, tied in
bundles with strips of blue paper.

The wind blew straight through the patched and threadbare jackets of the
lads as they crept closer to the window, struggling hard with the frost
to make their peep-holes bigger, to take in the whole of the big cake
with the almonds set in; but they did not heed it.

"Jim!" piped the smaller of the two, after a longer stare than usual;
"hey, Jim! them's Sante Clause's. See 'em?"

"Sante Claus!" snorted the other, scornfully, applying his eye to the
clear spot on the pane. "There ain't no ole duffer like dat. Them's
honey-cakes. Me 'n' Tom had a bite o' one wunst."

"There ain't no Sante Claus?" retorted the smaller shaver, hotly, at his
peep-hole. "There is, too. I seen him myself when he cum to our alley
last----"

"What's youse kids a-scrappin' fur?" broke in a strange voice.

Another boy, bigger, but dirtier and tougher looking than either of the
two, had come up behind them unobserved. He carried an armful of unsold
"extras" under one arm. The other was buried to the elbow in the pocket
of his ragged trousers.

The "kids" knew him, evidently, and the smallest eagerly accepted him as
umpire.

"It's Jim w'at says there ain't no Sante Claus, and I seen him----"

"Jim!" demanded the elder ragamuffin, sternly, looking hard at the
culprit; "Jim! y'ere a chump! No Sante Claus? What're ye givin' us? Now,
watch me!"

With utter amazement the boys saw him disappear through the door under
the tinkling bell into the charmed precincts of smoked herring, jam, and
honey-cakes. Petrified at their peep-holes, they watched him, in the
veritable presence of Santa Claus himself with the fir-branch, fish out
five battered pennies from the depths of his pocket and pass them over
to the woman behind the jars, in exchange for one of the bundles of
honey-cakes tied with blue. As if in a dream they saw him issue forth
with the coveted prize.

"There, kid!" he said, holding out the two fattest and whitest cakes to
Santa Claus's champion; "there's yer Christmas. Run along, now, to yer
barracks; and you, Jim, here's one for you, though yer don't desarve it.
Mind ye let the kid alone."

"This one'll have to do for me grub, I guess. I ain't sold me 'Newses,'
and the ole man'll kick if I bring 'em home."

And before the shuffling feet of the ragamuffins hurrying homeward had
turned the corner, the last mouthful of the newsboy's supper was
smothered in a yell of "Extree!" as he shot across the street to
intercept a passing stranger.

* * * * *

As the evening wore on it grew rawer and more blustering still. Flakes
of dry snow that stayed where they fell, slowly tracing the curb-lines,
the shutters, and the doorsteps of the tenements with gathering white,
were borne up on the storm from the water. To the right and left
stretched endless streets between the towering barracks, as beneath
frowning cliffs pierced with a thousand glowing eyes that revealed the
watch-fires within--a mighty city of cave-dwellers held in the thraldom
of poverty and want.

Outside there was yet hurrying to and fro. Saloon doors were slamming
and bare-legged urchins, carrying beer-jugs, hugged the walls close for
shelter. From the depths of a blind alley floated out the discordant
strains of a vagabond brass band "blowing in" the yule of the poor.
Banished by police ordinance from the street, it reaped a scant harvest
of pennies for Christmas-cheer from the windows opening on the backyard.
Against more than one pane showed the bald outline of a forlorn little
Christmas-tree, some stray branch of a hemlock picked up at the grocer's
and set in a pail for "the childer" to dance around, a dime's worth of
candy and tinsel on the boughs.

From the attic over the way came, in spells between, the gentle tones
of a German song about the Christ-child. Christmas in the East-Side
tenements begins with the sunset on the "holy eve," except where the
name is as a threat or a taunt. In a hundred such homes the whir of many
sewing-machines, worked by the sweater's slaves with weary feet and
aching backs, drowned every feeble note of joy that struggled to make
itself heard above the noise of the great treadmill.

To these what was Christmas but the name for persecution, for suffering,
reminder of lost kindred and liberty, of the slavery of eighteen hundred
years, freedom from which was purchased only with gold. Aye, gold! The
gold that had power to buy freedom yet, to buy the good will, aye, and
the good name, of the oppressor, with his houses and land. At the
thought the tired eye glistened, the aching back straightened, and to
the weary foot there came new strength to finish the long task while the
city slept.

Where a narrow passage-way put in between two big tenements to a
ramshackle rear barrack, Nibsy, the newsboy, halted in the shadow of
the doorway and stole a long look down the dark alley.

He toyed uncertainly with his still unsold papers--worn dirty and ragged
as his clothes by this time--before he ventured in, picking his way
between barrels and heaps of garbage; past the Italian cobbler's hovel,
where a tallow dip, stuck in a cracked beer-glass, before a cheap print
of the "Mother of God," showed that even he knew it was Christmas and
liked to show it; past the Sullivan flat, where blows and drunken curses
mingled with the shriek of women, as Nibsy had heard many nights before
this one.

He shuddered as he felt his way past the door, partly with a premonition
of what was in store for himself, if the "old man" was at home, partly
with a vague, uncomfortable feeling that somehow Christmas-eve should be
different from other nights, even in the alley. Down to its farthest
end, to the last rickety flight of steps that led into the filth and
darkness of the tenement. Up this he crept, three flights, to a door at
which he stopped and listened, hesitating, as he had stopped at the
entrance to the alley; then, with a sudden, defiant gesture, he pushed
it open and went in.

A bare and cheerless room; a pile of rags for a bed in the corner,
another in the dark alcove, miscalled bedroom; under the window a broken
cradle and an iron-bound chest, upon which sat a sad-eyed woman with
hard lines in her face, peeling potatoes in a pan; in the middle of the
room a rusty stove, with a pile of wood, chopped on the floor alongside.
A man on his knees in front fanning the fire with an old slouch hat.
With each breath of draught he stirred, the crazy old pipe belched forth
torrents of smoke at every point. As Nibsy entered, the man desisted
from his efforts and sat up glaring at him. A villainous ruffian's face,
scowling with anger.

"Late ag'in!" he growled; "an' yer papers not sold. What did I tell yer,
brat, if ye dared----"

"Tom! Tom!" broke in the wife, in a desperate attempt to soothe the
ruffian's temper.

"The boy can't help it, an' it's Christmas-eve. For the love o'----"

"To thunder with yer rot and with yer brat!" shouted the man, mad with
the fury of passion. "Let me at him!" and, reaching over, he seized a
heavy knot of wood and flung it at the head of the boy.

Nibsy had remained just inside the door, edging slowly toward his
mother, but with a watchful eye on the man at the stove. At the first
movement of his hand toward the woodpile he sprang for the stairway with
the agility of a cat, and just dodged the missile. It struck the door,
as he slammed it behind him, with force enough to smash the panel.

Down the three flights in as many jumps Nibsy went, and through the
alley, over barrels and barriers, never stopping once till he reached
the street, and curses and shouts were left behind.

In his flight he had lost his unsold papers, and he felt ruefully in his
pocket as he went down the street, pulling his rags about him as much
from shame as to keep out the cold.

Four pennies were all he had left after his Christmas treat to the two
little lads from the barracks; not enough for supper or for a bed; and
it was getting colder all the time.

On the sidewalk in front of the notion store a belated Christmas party
was in progress. The children from the tenements in the alley and across
the way were having a game of blindman's-buff, groping blindly about in
the crowd to catch each other. They hailed Nibsy with shouts of
laughter, calling to him to join in.

"We're having Christmas!" they yelled.

Nibsy did not hear them. He was thinking, thinking, the while turning
over his four pennies at the bottom of his pocket.

Thinking if Christmas was ever to come to him, and the children's Santa
Claus to find his alley where the baby slept within reach of her
father's cruel hand. As for him, he had never known anything but blows
and curses. He could take care of himself. But his mother and the
baby----. And then it came to him with shuddering cold that it was
getting late, and that he must find a place to sleep.

He weighed in his mind the merits of two or three places where he was in
the habit of hiding from the "cops" when the alley got to be too hot for
him.

There was the hay-barge down by the dock, with the watchman who got
drunk sometimes, and so gave the boys a chance. The chances were at
least even of its being available on Christmas-eve, and of Santa Claus
having thus done him a good turn after all.

Then there was the snug berth in the sandbox you could curl all up in.
Nibsy thought with regret of its being, like the hay-barge, so far away
and to windward too.

Down by the printing-offices there were the steam-gratings, and a chance
corner in the cellars, stories and stories underground, where the big
presses keep up such a clatter from midnight till far into the day.

As he passed them in review, Nibsy made up his mind with sudden
determination, and, setting his face toward the south, made off down
town.

* * * * *

The rumble of the last departing news-wagon over the pavement, now
buried deep in snow, had died away in the distance, when, from out of
the bowels of the earth there issued a cry, a cry of mortal terror and
pain that was echoed by a hundred throats.

From one of the deep cellar-ways a man ran out, his clothes and hair and
beard afire; on his heels a breathless throng of men and boys; following
them, close behind, a rush of smoke and fire.

The clatter of the presses ceased suddenly, to be followed quickly by
the clangor of hurrying fire-bells. With hook and axes the firemen
rushed in; hose was let down through the manholes, and down there in the
depths the battle was fought and won.

The building was saved; but in the midst of the rejoicing over the
victory there fell a sudden silence. From the cellar-way a grimy,
helmeted figure arose, with something black and scorched in his arms. A
tarpaulin was spread upon the snow and upon it he laid his burden, while
the silent crowd made room and word went over to the hospital for the
doctor to come quickly.

Very gently they lifted poor little Nibsy--for it was he, caught in his
berth by a worse enemy than the "cop" or the watchman of the
hay-barge--into the ambulance that bore him off to the hospital cot, too
late.

Conscious only of a vague discomfort that had succeeded terror and pain,
Nibsy wondered uneasily why they were all so kind. Nobody had taken the
trouble to as much as notice him before. When he had thrust his papers
into their very faces they had pushed him roughly aside. Nibsy, unhurt
and able to fight his way, never had a show. Sick and maimed and sore,
he was being made much of, though he had been caught where the boys were
forbidden to go. Things were queer, anyhow, and----

The room was getting so dark that he could hardly see the doctor's
kindly face, and had to grip his hand tightly to make sure that he was
there; almost as dark as the stairs in the alley he had come down in
such a hurry.

There was the baby now--poor baby--and mother--and then a great blank,
and it was all a mystery to poor Nibsy no longer. For, just as a
wild-eyed woman pushed her way through the crowd of nurses and doctors
to his bedside, crying for her boy, Nibsy gave up his soul to God.

* * * * *

It was very quiet in the alley. Christmas had come and gone. Upon the
last door a bow of soiled crape was nailed up with two tacks. It had
done duty there a dozen times before, that year.

Upstairs, Nibsy was at home, and for once the neighbors, one and all,
old and young, came to see him.

Even the father, ruffian that he was, offered no objection. Cowed and
silent, he sat in the corner by the window farthest from where the plain
little coffin stood, with the lid closed down.

A couple of the neighbor-women were talking in low tones by the stove,
when there came a timid knock at the door. Nobody answering, it was
pushed open, first a little, then far enough to admit the shrinking form
of a little ragamuffin, the smaller of the two who had stood breathing
peep-holes on the window-pane of the delicatessen store the night before
when Nibsy came along.

He dragged with him a hemlock branch, the leavings from some
Christmas-tree fitted into its block by the grocer for a customer.

"It's from Sante Claus," he said, laying it on the coffin. "Nibsy
knows." And he went out.

Santa Claus had come to Nibsy, after all, in his alley. And Nibsy knew.

[Illustration]

WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW IN THE TENEMENTS

The December sun shone clear and cold upon the city. It shone upon rich
and poor alike. It shone into the homes of the wealthy on the avenues
and in the uptown streets, and into courts and alleys hedged in by
towering tenements down town. It shone upon throngs of busy holiday
shoppers that went out and in at the big stores, carrying bundles big
and small, all alike filled with Christmas cheer and kindly messages
from Santa Claus.

It shone down so gayly and altogether cheerily there, that wraps and
overcoats were unbuttoned for the north wind to toy with. "My, isn't it
a nice day?" said one young lady in a fur shoulder-cape to a friend,
pausing to kiss and compare lists of Christmas gifts.

"Most too hot," was the reply, and the friends passed on. There was
warmth within and without. Life was very pleasant under the Christmas
sun up on the avenue.

Down in Cherry Street the rays of the sun climbed over a row of tall
tenements with an effort that seemed to exhaust all the life that was in
them, and fell into a dirty block, half-choked with trucks, with
ash-barrels and rubbish of all sorts, among which the dust was whirled
in clouds upon fitful, shivering blasts that searched every nook and
cranny of the big barracks. They fell upon a little girl, bare-footed
and in rags, who struggled out of an alley with a broken pitcher in her
grimy fist, against the wind that set down the narrow slit like the
draught through a big factory chimney. Just at the mouth of the alley it
took her with a sudden whirl, a cyclone of dust and drifting ashes,
tossed her fairly off her feet, tore from her grip the threadbare shawl
she clutched at her throat, and set her down at the saloon-door
breathless and half-smothered. She had just time to dodge through the
storm-doors before another whirlwind swept whistling down the street.

"My, but isn't it cold?" she said, as she shook the dust out of her
shawl and set the pitcher down on the bar. "Gimme a pint," laying down a
few pennies that had been wrapped in a corner of the shawl, "and mamma
says make it good and full."

"All'us the way with youse kids--want a barrel when yees pays fer a
pint," growled the bartender. "There, run along, and don't ye hang
around that stove no more. We ain't a steam-heatin' the block fer
nothin'."

The little girl clutched her shawl and the pitcher, and slipped out into
the street where the wind lay in ambush and promptly bore down on her in
pillars of whirling dust as soon as she appeared. But the sun that
pitied her bare feet and little frozen hands played a trick on old
Boreas--it showed her a way between the pillars, and only just her skirt
was caught by one and whirled over her head as she dodged into her
alley. It peeped after her half-way down its dark depths, where it
seemed colder even than in the bleak street, but there it had to leave
her.

It did not see her dive through the doorless opening into a hall where
no sun-ray had ever entered. It could not have found its way in there
had it tried. But up the narrow, squeaking stairs the girl with the
pitcher was climbing. Up one flight of stairs, over a knot of children,
half babies, pitching pennies on the landing, over wash-tubs and
bedsteads that encumbered the next--house-cleaning going on in that
"flat;" that is to say, the surplus of bugs was being burned out with
petroleum and a feather--up still another, past a half-open door through
which came the noise of brawling and curses. She dodged and quickened
her step a little until she stood panting before a door on the fourth
landing that opened readily as she pushed it with her bare foot.

A room almost devoid of stick or rag one might dignify with the name of
furniture. Two chairs, one with a broken back, the other on three legs,
beside a rickety table that stood upright only by leaning against the
wall. On the unwashed floor a heap of straw covered with dirty bed-tick
for a bed; a foul-smelling slop-pail in the middle of the room; a crazy
stove, and back of it a door or gap opening upon darkness. There was
something in there, but what it was could only be surmised from a heavy
snore that rose and fell regularly. It was the bedroom of the apartment,
windowless, airless, and sunless, but rented at a price a millionaire
would denounce as robbery.

"That you, Liza?" said a voice that discovered a woman bending over the
stove. "Run 'n' get the childer. Dinner's ready."

The winter sun glancing down the wall of the opposite tenement, with a
hopeless effort to cheer the backyard, might have peeped through the one
window of the room in Mrs. McGroarty's "flat," had that window not been
coated with the dust of ages, and discovered that dinner-party in
action. It might have found a hundred like it in the alley. Four unkempt
children, copies each in his or her way of Liza and their mother, Mrs.
McGroarty, who "did washing" for a living. A meat bone, a "cut" from
the butcher's at four cents a pound, green pickles, stale bread and
beer. Beer for the four, a sup all round, the baby included. Why not? It
was the one relish the searching ray would have found there. Potatoes
were there, too--potatoes and meat! Say not the poor in the tenements
are starving. In New York only those starve who cannot get work and have
not the courage to beg. Fifty thousand always out of a job, say those
who pretend to know. A round half-million asking and getting charity in
eight years, say the statisticians of the Charity Organization. Any one
can go round and see for himself that no one need starve in New York.

From across the yard the sunbeam, as it crept up the wall, fell
slantingly through the attic window whence issued the sound of
hammer-blows. A man with a hard face stood in its light, driving nails
into the lid of a soap-box that was partly filled with straw. Something
else was there; as he shifted the lid that didn't fit, the glimpse of
sunshine fell across it; it was a dead child, a little baby in a white
slip, bedded in straw in a soap-box for a coffin. The man was hammering
down the lid to take it to the Potter's Field. At the bed knelt the
mother, dry-eyed, delirious from starvation that had killed her child.
Five hungry, frightened children cowered in the corner, hardly daring to
whisper as they looked from the father to the mother in terror.

There was a knock on the door that was drowned once, twice, in the noise
of the hammer on the little coffin. Then it was opened gently, and a
young woman came in with a basket. A little silver cross shone upon her
breast. She went to the poor mother, and putting her hand soothingly on
her head knelt by her with gentle and loving words. The half-crazed
woman listened with averted face, then suddenly burst into tears and hid
her throbbing head in the other's lap.

The man stopped hammering and stared fixedly upon the two; the children
gathered around with devouring looks as the visitor took from her basket
bread, meat, and tea. Just then, with a parting, wistful look into the
bare attic room, the sun-ray slipped away, lingered for a moment about
the coping outside and fled over the house-tops.

As it sped on its winter-day journey, did it shine into any cabin in an
Irish bog more desolate than these Cherry Street "homes?" An army of
thousands whose one bright and wholesome memory, only tradition of home,
is that poverty-stricken cabin in the desolate bog, are herded in such
barracks to-day in New York. Potatoes they have; yes, and meat at four
cents--even seven. Beer for a relish--never without beer. But home? The
home that was home even in a bog, with the love of it that has made
Ireland immortal and a tower of strength in the midst of her
suffering--what of that? There are no homes in New York's poor
tenements.

Down the crooked path of the Mulberry Street Bend the sunlight slanted
into the heart of New York's Italy. It shone upon bandannas and yellow
neckerchiefs; upon swarthy faces and corduroy breeches; upon
blackhaired girls--mothers at thirteen; upon hosts of bow-legged
children rolling in the dirt; upon pedlers' carts and ragpickers
staggering under burdens that threatened to crush them at every step.
Shone upon unnumbered Pasquales dwelling, working, idling, and gambling
there. Shone upon the filthiest and foulest of New York's tenements,
upon Bandits' Roost, upon Bottle Alley, upon the hidden by-ways that
lead to the tramp's burrows. Shone upon the scene of annual infant
slaughter. Shone into the foul core of New York's slums that is at last
to go to the realm of bad memories because civilized man may not look
upon it and live without blushing.

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