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 *tesque and lumbering steps upon the pavement. It is a hint that she was once one of those children who danced to the organ-grinder. Those grotesque and lumbering steps are all that is left of the promise of childhood. In the befogged recesses of her brain has arisen a fleeting memory that she was once a girl. The crowd closes in. Little girls are dancing beside her, about her, with all the pretty graces she dimly recollects, but can no more than parody with her body. Then she pants for breath, exhausted, and stumbles out through the circle. But the little girls dance on.

The children of the Ghetto possess all the qualities which make for noble manhood and womanhood; but the Ghetto itself, like an infuriated tigress turning on its young, turns upon and destroys all these qualities, blots out the light and laughter, and moulds those it does not kill into sodden and forlorn creatures, uncouth, degraded, and wretched below the beasts of the field.

Slum Children

(From "Songs of Joy")

(See page 577)

Your songs at night a drunkard sings, Stones, sticks and rags your daily flowers; Like fishes' lips, a bluey white, Such lips, poor mites, are yours.

Poor little things, so sad and solemn, Whose lives are passed in human crowds— When in the water I can see Heaven with a flock of clouds.