passes on. Through the vista of green bowers formed of the grocer’s stock of Christmas trees a passing glimpse of flaring torches in the distant square is caught. They touch with flame the gilt cross towering high above the “White Garden,” as the German residents call Tompkins Square. On the sidewalk the holy-eve fair is in its busiest hour. In the pine-board booths stand rows of staring toy dogs alternately with plaster saints. Red apples and candy are hawked from carts. Peddlers offer colored candles with shrill outcry. A huckster feeding his horse by the curb scatters, unseen, a share for the sparrows. The cross flashes white against the dark sky.

In one of the side-streets near the East River has stood for thirty years a little mission church, called Hope Chapel by its founders, in the brave spirit in which they built it. It has had plenty of use for the spirit since. Of the kind of problems that beset its pastor I caught a glimpse the other day, when, as I entered his room, a rough-looking man went out.

“One of my cares,” said Mr. Devins, looking after him with contracted brow. “He has spent two Christmas days of twenty-three out of jail. He is a burglar, or was. His daughter has brought him round. She is a seamstress. For three months, now, she has been keeping him and the home, working nights. If I could only get him a job! He won’t stay honest long without it; but who wants a burglar for a watchman? And how can I recommend him?”

A few doors from the chapel an alley sets into the block. We halted at the mouth of it.

“Come in,” said Mr. Devins, “and wish Blind Jennie a Merry Christmas.”

We went in, in single file; there was not room for two. As we climbed the creaking stairs of the rear tenement, a chorus of children’s shrill voices burst into song somewhere above.

“It is her class,” said the pastor of Hope Chapel, as he stopped on the landing. “They are all kinds. We never could hope to reach them; Jennie can. They fetch her the papers given out in the Sunday-school, and read to her what is printed under the pictures; and she tells them the story of it. There is nothing Jennie doesn’t know about the Bible.”

The door opened upon a low-ceiled room, where the evening shades lay deep. The red glow from the kitchen stove discovered a jam of children, young girls mostly, perched on the table, the chairs, in one another’s laps, or squatting on the floor; in the midst of them, a little old woman with heavily veiled face, and wan, wrinkled hands folded in her lap. The singing ceased as we stepped across the threshold.

“Be welcome,” piped a harsh voice with a singular note of cheerfulness in it. “Whose step is that with you, pastor? I don’t know it. He is welcome in Jennie’s house, whoever he be. Girls, make him to home.” The girls moved up to make room.

“Jennie has not seen since she was a child,” said the clergyman, gently; “but she knows a friend without it. Some day she shall see the great Friend in his glory, and then she shall be Blind Jennie no more.”

The little woman raised the veil from a face shockingly disfigured, and touched the eyeless sockets. “Some day,” she repeated, “Jennie shall see. Not long now—not long!” Her pastor patted her hand. The silence of the dark room was broken by Blind Jennie’s voice, rising cracked and quavering: “Alas! and did my Saviour bleed?” The shrill chorus burst in:

It was there by faith I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day.

The light that falls from the windows of the Neighborhood Guild, in Delancey street, makes a white path across the asphalt pavement. Within there is mirth and laughter. The Tenth Ward Social Reform Club is having its Christmas festival. Its members, poor mothers, scrubwomen,—the president is the janitress of a tenement near by,—have brought their little ones, a few their husbands, to share in the fun. One little girl has to be dragged up to the grab-bag. She cries at the sight of Santa Claus. The baby has drawn a woolly horse. He kisses the toy with a look of ecstatic bliss, and toddles away. At the far end of the hall a game of blindman’s-buff is starting up. The aged grandmother, who has watched it with growing excitement, bids one of the settlement workers hold her grandchild, that she may join in; and she does join in, with all the pent-up hunger of fifty joyless years. The worker, looking on, smiles; one has been reached. Thus is the battle against the slum waged and won with the child’s play.

Tramp! tramp! comes the to-morrow upon the stage. Two hundred and fifty pairs of little feet, keeping step, are marching to dinner in the Newsboys’ Lodging-house. Five hundred pairs more are restlessly awaiting their turn up-stairs. In prison, hospital, and almshouse to-night the city is host, and gives of her plenty. Here an unknown friend has spread a generous repast for the waifs who all the rest of the days shift for themselves as best they can. Turkey, coffee, and pie, with “vegetubles” to fill in. As the file of eagle-eyed youngsters passes down the long tables, there are swift movements of grimy hands, and shirt-waists bulge, ragged coats sag at the pockets. Hardly is the file seated when the plaint rises: “I ain’t got no pie! It got swiped on me.” Seven despoiled ones hold up their hands.

The superintendent laughs—it is Christmas eve. He taps one tentatively on the bulging shirt. “What have you here, my lad?”

“Me pie,” responds he, with an innocent look; “I wuz scart it would get stole.”

A little fellow who has been eying one of the visitors attentively takes his knife out of his mouth, and points it at him with conviction.

“I know you,” he pipes. “You’re a p’lice commissioner. I seen yer picter in the papers. You’re Teddy Roosevelt!”

The clatter of knives and forks ceases suddenly. Seven pies creep stealthily over the edge of the table, and are replaced on as many plates. The visitors laugh. It was a case of mistaken identity.

Farthest down-town, where the island narrows toward the Battery, and warehouses crowd the few remaining tenements, the somber-hued colony of Syrians is astir with preparation for the holiday. How comes it that in the only settlement of the real Christmas people in New York the corner saloon appropriates to itself all the outward signs of it? Even the floral cross that is nailed over the door of the Orthodox church is long withered and dead: it has been there since Easter, and it is yet twelve days to Christmas by the belated reckoning of the Greek Church. But if the houses show no sign of the holiday, within there is nothing lacking. The whole colony is gone a-visiting. There are enough of the unorthodox to set the fashion, and the rest follow the custom of the country. The men go from house to house, laugh, shake hands, and kiss one another on both cheeks, with the salutation, “Kol am va antom Salimoon.” “Every year and you are safe,” the Syrian guide renders it into English; and a non-professional interpreter amends it: “May you grow happier year by year.” Arrack made from grapes and flavored with aniseed, and candy baked in little white balls like marbles, are served with the indispensable cigarette; for long callers, the pipe.

In a top-floor room of one of the darkest of the dilapidated tenements, the dusty window-panes of which the last glow in the winter sky is tinging faintly with red, a dance is in progress. The guests, most of them fresh from the hillsides of Mount Lebanon, squat about the room. A reed-pipe and a tambourine furnish the music. One has the center