Jersey Street and Jersey Lane | Page 3

about what she
might have done if she had only gone in for literature, that it really
never occurred to her at all to think whether she had been any more just
and charitable than the poor ignorant man who had annoyed her.
She was especially pleased with the part that had the legal phraseology
in it, and with the scornful rebuke of the police for their unwillingness
to disobey municipal ordinances. That was founded partly on
something that she had heard nephew John say once, and partly on a
general idea she has that the present administration has forcibly
usurped the city government.
Now, I have no doubt that when that organ-grinder went home at night,
he and his large family laid themselves down to rest in a back room of
the Jersey Street slum, and if it be so, I may sometimes see him when I
look out of a certain window of the great red-brick building where my
office is, for it lies on Mulberry Street, between Jersey and Houston.
My own personal and private window looks out on Mulberry Street. It
is in a little den at the end of a long string of low-partitioned offices
stretching along the Mulberry Street side; and we who tenant them
have looked out of the windows for so many years that we have got to
know, at least by sight, a great many of the dwellers thereabouts. We
are almost in the very heart of that "mob" on whose "fellow-feeling of
vulgarity" the fellows who grind the organ rely to sustain them in their
outrageous behavior. And, do you know, as we look out of those
windows, year after year, we find ourselves growing to have a
fellow-feeling of vulgarity with that same mob.
[Illustration]
The figure and form which we know best are those of old Judge
Phoenix--for so the office-jester named him when we first moved in,

and we have known him by that name ever since. He is a fat old
Irishman, with a clean-shaven face, who stands summer and winter in
the side doorway that opens, next to the little grocery opposite, on the
alley-way to the rear tenement. Summer and winter he is buttoned to
his chin in a faded old black overcoat. Alone he stands for the most part,
smoking his black pipe and teetering gently from one foot to the other.
But sometimes a woman with a shawl over her head comes out of the
alley-way and exchanges a few words with him before she goes to the
little grocery to get a loaf of bread, or a half-pint of milk, or to make
that favorite purchase of the poor--three potatoes, one turnip, one carrot,
four onions, and the handful of kale--a "b'ilin'." And there is also
another old man, a small and bent old man, who has some strange job
that occupies odd hours of the day, who stops on his way to and from
work to talk with the Judge. For hours and hours they talk together, till
one wonders how in the course of years they have not come to talk
themselves out. What can they have left to talk about? If they had been
Mezzofanti and Macaulay, talking in all known languages on all known
topics, they ought certainly to have exhausted the resources of
conversation long before this time.
Judge Phoenix must be a man of independent fortune, for he toils not,
neither does he spin, and the lilies of the field could not lead a more
simple vegetable life, nor stay more contentedly in one place. Perhaps
he owns the rear tenement. I suspect so, for he must have been at one
time in the labor-contract business. This, of course, is a mere guess,
founded upon the fact that we once found the Judge away from his post
and at work. It was at the time they were repaving Broadway with the
great pavement. We discovered the Judge at the corner of Bleecker
Street perched on a pile of dirt, doing duty as sub-section boss. He was
talking to the drivers of the vehicles that went past him, through the
half-blockaded thoroughfare, and he was addressing them, after the true
professional contractor's style, by the names of their loads.
"Hi there, sand," he would cry, "git along lively! Stone, it's you the
boss wants on the other side of the street! Dhry-goods, there's no place
for ye here; take the next turn!" It was a proud day for the old Judge,
and I have no doubt that he talks it over still with his little bent old

crony, and boasts of vain deeds that grow in the telling.
Judge Phoenix is not, however, without mute company. Fair days and
foul are all one to the Judge, but on