Jacob A. Riis 1849–1914. The Battle with the Slum. 1902.
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| SITTING by my window the other day, I saw a boy steering across the street for my little lad, who was laying out a base-ball diamond on the lawn. It seems that he knew him from school. |
| “Hey,” he said, as he rounded to at the gate, “we’ve got yer dad’s book to home; yer father was a bum onct.” |
| Proof was immediately forthcoming that whatever the father might have been, his son was able to uphold the family pride, and I had my revenge. Some day soon now my boy will read his father’s story 1 himself, and I hope will not be ashamed. They read it in their way in the other boy’s house, and got out of it that I was a “bum” because once I was on the level of the Bowery lodging house. But if he does not stay there, a man need not be that; and for that matter, there are plenty who do whom it would be a gross injury to call by such a name. There are lonely men, who, with no kin of their own, prefer even such society as the cheap |