The Wondersmith

A small lane, the name of which I have forgotten, or do not choose to
remember, slants suddenly off from Chatham Street, (before that
headlong thoroughfare reaches into the Park,) and retreats suddenly
down towards the East River, as if it were disgusted with the smell of
old clothes, and had determined to wash itself clean. This excellent
intention it has, however, evidently contributed towards the making of
that imaginary pavement mentioned in the old adage; for it is still
emphatically a dirty street. It has never been able to shake off the
Hebraic taint of filth which it inherits from the ancestral
thoroughfare. It is slushy and greasy, as if it were twin brother of
the Roman Ghetto.

I like a dirty slum; not because I am naturally unclean,--I have not a
drop of Neapolitan blood in my veins,--but because I generally find a
certain sediment of philosophy precipitated in its gutters. A clean
street is terribly prosaic. There is no food for thought in carefully
swept pavements, barren kennels, and vulgarly spotless houses. But
when I go down a street which has been left so long to itself that it
has acquired a distinct outward character, I find plenty to think
about. The scraps of sodden letters lying in the ash-barrel have their
meaning: desperate appeals, perhaps, from Tom, the baker's assistant,
to Amelia, the daughter of the dry-goods retailer, who is always
selling at a sacrifice in consequence of the late fire. That may be
Tom himself who is now passing me in a white apron, and I look up at
the windows of the house (which does not, however, give any signs of a
recent conflagration) and almost hope to see Amelia wave a white
pocket-handkerchief. The bit of orange-peel lying on the sidewalk
inspires thought. Who will fall over it? who but the industrious
mother of six children, the eldest of which is only nine months old,
all of whom are dependent on her exertions for support? I see her slip
and tumble. I see the pale face convulsed with agony, and the vain
struggle to get up; the pitying crowd closing her off from all air;
the anxious young doctor who happened to be passing by; the
manipulation of the broken limb, the shake of the head, the moan of
the victim, the litter borne on men's shoulders, the gates of the New
York Hospital unclosing, the subscription taken up on the spot. There
is some food for speculation in that three-year-old, tattered child,
masked with dirt, who is throwing a brick at another three-year-old,
tattered child, masked with dirt. It is not difficult to perceive that
he is destined to lurk, as it were, through life. His bad, flat face--
or, at least, what can be seen of it--does not look as if it were made
for the light of day. The mire in which he wallows now is but a type
of the moral mire in which he will wallow hereafter. The feeble little
hand lifted at this instant to smite his companion, half in earnest,
half in jest, will be raised against his fellow-beings forevermore.