Jist dogs! Of all the positions held during my four years in the underbrush none appealed to me so much as that of license inspector for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It was ideal for my purpose—learning conditions in the tenements as actually existing, meeting the tenement-dwellers in their homes and as fellow human beings.

If the job were an easy one I would be more chary about making such a statement for fear all those persons living or being in Greenwich Village, who refer to themselves as “we villagers,” would descend on the manager of the A. S. P. C. A. as boll-weevils take possession of a field of young and luxuriant cotton.

To prevent such a disaster I state definitely—a license inspector for the A. S. P. C. A. earns every penny of his or her salary. It is a house-to-house, rain-or-shine, freeze-or-sunstroke job. It means going up and down stairs from eight-thirty in the morning to five in the afternoon. Wherever a dog is kept there must the inspector go.

My duties as a social service worker for Bellevue Hospital took me all over New York City—East Side and West Side, from the Bronx to the Battery. As inspector for the A. S. P. C. A. my district extended from the north side of East Fourteenth Street to the south side of East Seventy-ninth, from Madison Avenue to East River.

It included some of the oldest, most dilapidated, and slimiest of filthy tenements to be found in the greater city, and some of the newest, best planned, and best kept of the model tenements. It also included many homes of well-to-do persons and many palaces of multimillionaires. It was a fair slice of the greatest jungle of civilization.

If there is a nationality on the globe not represented in that district, I never heard of it. It is a district in which anybody from anywhere may be met any day. Reading my diary it would seem that I met somebody from everywhere almost every day. That is, with one exception—I never met a Protestant minister of the Gospel.

Every profession, every trade in every walk of life, but never a Protestant minister of the Gospel.

The work was quite simple. On entering a tenement I would hunt up the janitor.

“How are you, janitor?” I would greet, and the rougher and more dishevelled the woman the more courteously sympathetic I would make my tone. “I’m your inspector and have come to go through your house.” Invariably on this announcement an expression of concern, sometimes amounting to consternation, would flash into her face. Then, always hastily, I would add: “I’m calling on all the dogs in your house. How many are there?”

“Oh, dogs!” she would exclaim, and the troubled expression would be wiped off by a look of relief, sometimes by a smile.

Often, instead of replying to my question, she would protest her regret that I was not some other variety of inspector—one who would make the Guineas up-stairs stop throwing garbage out their windows, or maybe reprove the drunken Irishwoman for cursing her. Once I let her begin on her personal woes and it meant a half-hour hold-up for me.

The woes of a tenement janitor are many and various—like setting traps on the stairs whereby she may fall and break her neck, or pelting her with rotten eggs. This last was a favorite method during the war of dealing with janitors suspected of German sympathies. However high the cost of living might soar, an ample quantity of unfresh eggs could always be found among Italian tenants to chase a German janitor to her lair.

Jist dogs! Once past the janitor and provided with the number and location of all the dogs in her house I made my way, knocking at the doors behind which was supposed to be a dog.

“How do you do? I’m your inspector,” I would greet the person opening the door. “I’m calling on your dog.”

As with the janitor this statement of my business produced a reaction pleasing enough to put the person, usually the woman head of the family, in a good humor. Almost invariably she invited me in to rest or wait while she rummaged through various boxes and tin cans, searching for her dog’s license.

It was when I accepted her invitation that I got real information. Chatting about the family pet led naturally to intimate details of her family life, her neighbors, their jobs and wages.

Some day, perhaps, a dog-loving writer will make a book about the exploits of dog heroes. Once he or she begins this work they will find many trails leading into the tenement homes of Greater New York. I found several real heroes among the dogs in my district.

One handsome collie had saved his mistress and a six months’ old baby from being burned alive. The woman, having been unable to sleep for some time, was given a narcotic and fell asleep in the middle of the forenoon. An hour or so later she awoke: the dog was dragging her from her bed by the hair of her head. He had literally torn her night-dress into rags trying to arouse her. The room was stifling with smoke and her bed in flames.

The fire was supposed to have been started by a smoker in an upper story of the apartment-house throwing the butt of his cigarette out the window and onto an awning over the woman’s window. From the awning the curtain caught, and from that her bed.

In the next apartment a woman had put her six months’ old baby to sleep and had gone up-stairs to visit a neighbor. A bit of the flaming awning was blown through the window and lighting in the baby’s cradle set its pillow on fire.

This was not a question of self-preservation on the part of the dog. He was in the streets taking his morning run when his mistress took the narcotic. Knowing he would return shortly she left the outer door of her apartment ajar. The dog, had he been actuated by an instinct for self-preservation, might easily have fled from the flaming room and aroused the house by his barks. Instead he risked his own life to drag his mistress from the jaws of death.

Another dog hero lived on Avenue A: To him fate was not so kind as to the collie. When scarcely more than a pup he saved the life of a child. It is true the child was unknown to him, and his saving it was treated as a casual happening. Out walking at his master’s heels on a Sunday afternoon, he chanced to be passing at the instant that a two-year-old child, having climbed on top of the one plank wall separating the island of Manhattan from the waters of East River, fell in.

“Right in after it went Buster, quicker’n a wink,” the master, a little old cripple, told me when I paid my first call on this hero. “I’d taught ’im to jump in the river after sticks. I guess when he heard that baby’s splash he thought it was a stick. He was right there when she comes up, an’ got his teeth tangled in her skirts somehow. The way he paddled with those front paws of his’n. He kept his grip till they could get a boat to ’im and take the baby. Then Buster swum back to shore. He was that far gone I had to help ’im land.”

While listening to the old man I was seated in his shop in the rear of one of the oldest and most dilapidated tenements in my district. Besides being the janitor of the tenement he was a mender of pots, pans, and all things of metal. The corners of his shop were heaped with a miscellaneous collection of metal articles, useful and ornamental, most of them of brass, copper, or wrought iron.

“I mends ’em and brushes ’em up a bit when work is slack,” he explained, while tinkering an old brass kettle, mending a leak near the gracefully curved spout. "It’s surprisin’ the price some people will pay for that old junk when I rubs it up a bit.

“Don’t need to have no clock down here,” the old man went on, enjoying my interest in his dog. “Ten o’clock, twelve, three, and six, sharp, Buster comes for me. Them’s the times my wife takes her medicine—she’s bedrid, been like that twenty years. I used to try teasin’ Buster, made like I didn’t hear ’im bark. He caught on. Now he just puts his head in that door and barks onct and back he trots. He knows that’s his job, I guess.”

“His job?” I questioned, not understanding the tinker’s reference.

Having finished mending the kettle he put it to one side and took up a grinning black face—part of an old wrought-iron fire-dog.

“Takin’ care of my wife. She can’t move nothin’ but her hands, an’ not them real well.” He was rummaging through a box of old metal parts, trying to find a screw to fit the hole at the base of the grinning face. “I props ’er up in bed mornin’s and gives ’er ’er breakfast. Buster does the rest—gets the comb and brush for ’er; when she finishes with ’em he puts ’em back on the table.”

Having found a screw to his liking he held it between his teeth while he scraped the hole with a bit of wire.

“Italian woman and her daughter—they been livin’ on our top floor near thirty year—is the onliest ones Buster will let cross that door-sill whilst I’m out. The postman—” He chuckled, as he fitted the screw in the hole. “Buster hears ’is whistle and meets ’im at the door and takes the letters. Julie, my wife, says he knows when there’s a letter from Jack.”

Having fitted the screw to the grinning face he began the work of fastening it to the lower part of the fire-dog.

“Jack’s our grandson. He’s somewhere in France.” Unconsciously he heaved a sigh that sounded almost like a sob. “Soon as Buster gives a letter from him to Julie, without her tellin’ ’m nothin’ he trots down here for me. He knows I wants the news quick as the letter comes. Buster knows.”

Coming in contact with so many dogs, day after day, winding back and forth in and out of the dirty halls and crooked stairways of the tenements, memories of Buster and the lame tinker were rubbed from my mind. Among the bunch of complaints handed me one morning at the office was a pencil scrawl about a dog that was terrorizing the neighbors around an address on Avenue A.

When the door of the flat was opened to me I found myself confronted by the lame tinker, with Buster at his heels. Behind them in the duskiness of the room I made out the helpless figure of the wife, propped up in bed and combing her hair.

“This can’t possibly refer to Buster,” I told them, as I handed the scrawl to the old man.

“Crooks,” he assured me, and having read the letter he passed it on to his wife.

“This is the only house in this block that hasn’t been broke in,” she piped, her voice thinned by weakness and much suffering. “It’s Buster. Crooks can’t git by my dog.”

“It’s a wonder they don’t poison him,” I told them, recalling the number of dogs whose deaths their owners attributed to poison.

The old tinker glared up at me, a shrewd twinkle in his old eyes. Then smiling he waved one hand toward his wife.

“It’s her,” he said, with a chuckle of appreciation. “When he was a pup she trained ’im. He won’t touch nothin’ ’thout it goes through her hands, not even from me. When I goes to the butcher’s and buys ’im a bone, he won’t touch it until she tells ’im to.”

“Tell the lady ’bout the pile of boiled sponges youse picked up in the yard,” the sick woman reminded him.

“Sure! I muster picked up a hundred, fust and last, in the yard between this house and my shop. You see Buster sleeps in my shop nights.”

“Will a sponge boiled in oil really kill a dog?” I asked, for I had heard so often since beginning to work in the tenements that such was the case.

The old man’s face ceased to twinkle; Julie cast down her eyes and picked at her bed.

“It does worse’n kill ’em,” she told me in a piping whisper. “It make’s ’em pine away and they suffer so, howlin’, squirmin’ with pain, until you’re glad to see ’em die.”

“You see it’s the sponge swellin’ inside ’em,” the tinker supplemented. “When you boils a sponge it natu’ly shrivels up to a hard knot. The dog gnaws it to get the oil,—swallows it. There ain’t nothin’ to be done unless you take all ’is insides out. We lost four that way before we got Buster.”

Though I received four other pencilled scrawls written by the same hand I paid no attention to them. The matter faded from my mind. When I covered my district I turned about, and again beginning on the north side of East Fourteenth Street, worked my way up-town. When I reached the tinker’s address I crossed the little back yard and stopped in the door of his shop.

He was busy mending a leak in an agate saucepan.

“You see I’m back again,” I announced cheerfully. “No use asking if you have renewed Buster’s license.”

“Yes. I got it out,” he replied, and though he paused in his work long enough to glance up at me he did not smile.

Such a different tinker! Something must have gone wrong. I glanced about the little shop. The place had been stripped. Except for the saucepan, a couple of pots, and his tools, all on the work-bench at his side, there was no evidence of his trade. The heaps of old brass, copper, and wrought iron that had filled all the corners were gone.

“You’ve had a clearing out,” I said, letting him see me looking about the shop.

“Thieves,” he replied, in the same colorless tone. “Broke in and carried off everything. These are new.” He motioned to the few tools beside him.

“Where was Buster?”

“I had him killed.”

I could not believe my ears. And the tragedy of the man’s eyes!

“You had Buster killed! What had he done?”

“He hadn’t done nothin’ but what he had oughter do—what I’d taught ’im to do.” His tone reminded me of a dense fog so saturated with grayness. “He bit a postman.”

Pushing aside the two pots I took my seat on his work-bench.

“How did he happen to bite the postman?” I asked, thinking it might do him good to talk his trouble out. “I thought Buster and the postman understood each other?”

“He was a new postman, one of them fresh guys. Buster barked at ’im, and Julie called to ’im—warned ’im that the dog would bite. ’Stead of ’im doin’ what he was told he tried to step into the room.” He straightened up and his eyes flashed with pride. “Buster pounced on ’im, ’most tore his shirt offen ’im. I wish to God he’d a tore his liver out, so I do.”

“If he didn’t draw blood why did you have him killed?” I demanded sternly, for in spite of my sympathy with the old man it appeared to me that the dog hadn’t had a square deal.

“The postmaster wrote me a letter,” he answered, as he fumbled in an old leather wallet.

It was on the official paper of the Post-Office Department of the United States, and was signed by the postmaster of New York City. Coldly official, it informed the old tinker that unless he got rid of the dog he would have to get his mail at the general delivery window of the general post-office.

“I tried to get ’em to leave my mail in the store next door, or with a friend in the next block.” He shook his head. “It was get rid of Buster or go to the general post-office.” He paused, but seeing that he had more to say I waited. “If it hadn’t been for Jack’s bein’ somewheres in France, I’d a gone to the general office. Jack’s all we’ve got, an’ it didn’t seem right we should risk not hearin’ from ’im, or”—he paused and swallowed hard—“or the government in case anything happened to ’im.”

Killing so faithful and intelligent a dog without a more serious attempt to placate the “fresh guy” seemed a dreadful act. But knowing the helplessness of the ignorant poor in New York City, I realized the injustice of finding fault with the old tinker.

Halting in the door of the shop on my way out I glanced back at its empty corners.

“I suppose the persons who wrote me those complaints against Buster did all this,” I remarked. “It didn’t take them long to find out that Buster was gone.”

“They sandbagged the woman on our top floor the night after Buster was killed.”

Amazed I turned and stared at the old tinker.

“You don’t mean the old Italian mother, who was working and saving to get money to return to Italy and die in her old home?” I finally questioned.

The tinker nodded. He was scraping the bottom of a pot preparatory to applying solder.

“They most worked theyselves to death, her and her daughter. Done piece-work nights and Sundays,” he told me, glancing up from his task of blowing on the charcoal in his little bucket with his little bellows. “The mother was goin’ back, had drawed their savin’ out the bank that day, an’ was goin’ down the next mornin’ to pay for her passage and get the balance of her money changed. She stopped in on her way up to say a few words to Julie—she always done that evenin’s comin’ in from work. ’Bout half an hour later her daughter found her in the hall outside their door. She’d been knocked senseless and her clothes ’most tore off looking for her money.”

There was a short silence and the old man began to tinker with the pot.

“Where is she now?” I asked.

“On the Island.” The solder being melted he applied it to the hole in the bottom of the pot. “They kept her in Bellevue till they seen there wasn’t no chance of curin’ her. You see, it’s her brain,” he explained as he wiped his hands on his bedticking apron. “Some of it oozed out where the sand-bag broke her skull. It stands to reason she never can have right good sense again, and one side of her’s paralyzed worse than Julie’s.”

Tommaso was a brindle and white mongrel. Though he had never rescued a woman, a baby, or any other human, so far as I learned, from a violent death, I number him first among the dog heroes of my district. His master and mistress, Mr. and Mrs. Pasquali Dominic, were both natives of Italy. Meeting for the first time in New York they were married at the City Hall August 9, 1898. Twenty years, one week, and five days after this happy event I paid my first call on Tommaso.

Crouched in one corner of the family’s basement kitchen-living-room-bedroom, he was trying not to watch too greedily the spoonfuls of thin porridge and the hunks of Italian bread being taken in alternate swallows by the five youngest of Mr. and Mrs. Dominic’s eighteen children. Being a gentleman as well as a hero he rose on my entrance.

“Go way, Tommaso. Come in, lady; he don’t bite,” Mrs. Dominic greeted me.

On my accepting an invitation to take a seat Tommaso returned to his corner, and did his best to show me respectful attention while keeping watch for his hoped-for share of the food—the licking of each child’s bowl, with a morsel of its bread.

“He a good dog,” Mrs. Dominic assured me. “He take nothin’ ’less I tell ’im. Lucretia, why you scrape your bowl? Give it to Tommaso. Good Tommaso.”

Like a gentleman Tommaso accepted the offered bowl as though unconscious that the lickings had been scraped out, and without remarking on the total absence of his share of Lucretia’s bread. In spite of the too evident joints of his back-bone and the prominence of his ribs he refused to give way to the cravings of his appetite.

Day after day he sat among those children, watched them take food which might have been his had he been a hero of lesser caliber—made a snatch and fled to the fastnesses of crooked stairs and dark hallways surrounding him.

Ah, Tommaso! I know what appetite suppression means. I know how it feels to watch other persons eat food of which you stand in need. I served as waitress in a fashionable hotel on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. Jist dogs—both of us, Tommaso!