LEROY SCOTT

AUTHOR OF TO HIM THAT HATH, ETC.

I had taken a car over to Painter's Mill and Painter's Row and got off at the farther end of the dingy, smoke-hung settlement. I went through and about the houses which the great Carnegie Company leases to its workers (with no trouble about collecting the rent, for that is taken from their wages),—houses so close to the mill, some even wall to wall with it, that they share almost equally with the mill its smoke and grime and clangor,—houses which had been as unsanitary and disease-breeding as any I have ever seen offered the poor even by hardened slum landlords. And then, after I had gone through the rows of houses, at the end of the settlement nearest Pittsburgh, I came upon a sudden contrast. It was an open space, with a portion of it canopied, and over the canopy this black-lettered sign:

LITTLE JIM PARK

It wasn't much of a park,—just a little bit of ground, in area hardly more than an average city lot, with a second-hand iron fence around it, with rough benches, a pavement of tan-bark and a few flowerbeds bordered with whitewashed bricks. A poor, pitiably insignificant little place,—yet startlingly pleasant when compared with its surroundings. On the one side, with a row of dreary houses between, rumbled and belched the mill; at its back was a littered waste; at its front, across the street, was a steep hill topped by the ramshackle houses of Stewart's Row, and this hill was muddy, stubbled over with lank dead weeds, gullied with foul-looking, foul-smelling streams of waste water and garbage.

I entered the park, sat down beneath the canopy, and my imagination proceeded to explain how the park had been established. Its name was a certain clue. "Little Jim Park,"—that fairly reeked with ultra-sentimentality. Some rich woman had been emotionally stirred by the stories of the cheerless life of tenement children,—the Little Jims and the Little Rosies; she had chanced to see how especially cheerless the life of the children of Painter's Row; she had established the park, and given it as title the more or less generic name by which tenement children are known to sentiment, "Little Jim."

I had just credited the park to my Lady Bountiful,—had just finished with Romance,—when Realism sauntered into the park and took the other end of my bench. He was a working man, whose decent clothes and white collar told me this was his day off. His coat collar was turned up, his slouch hat pulled down. One jaw stood out with a quid of tobacco, and his face was deeply wrinkled. He was perhaps twenty-one.

"Won't you tell me," I asked, "who gave this park to Painter's Row?"

He smiled good-naturedly at me. "Who give it? Nobody give it."

"Then how did you get it?"

"We took it," said he.

"Took it! But the name,——?"

"Oh, we just took that, too."

Here was something new in the park-building line. I drew nearer. "I wish you'd tell me about it," I asked.

"Sure, I'll tell," said he, and I could detect pride in the park in both the young fellow's tone and manner. He tossed his quid down upon the tan-bark. "Used to be a little old church standing here. Little Jim church they called it, Queer name for a church, wasn't it? Damned if I know why they named it that. For the last five or six years it wasn't used at all, and last spring it just collapsed. The Hunkies come scramblin' over it and carried away all the wood to burn, and what was left was certainly a mess.

"Well, I don't know just who started the idea,—I guess it was John Donohue and Jim Leary (they works around the rolls in the mill),—but pretty soon a lot of us guys had decided it would be great if we could clear up the place and make a park. So we started at the job, and when any of us was laid off over at the mill we was workin' here. The iron fence we got when they tore down part of Painter's Row,—it was just old junk you know; the bricks 'round the flower beds were some left over from buildin' a brewery down the street, we just helped ourselves to 'em; the arch over the gate we made out of an old pipe; the flag-pole there used to be a pump handle of a barge pump down on the river,—we swiped that; the ball on top of the flag-pole a carpenter give us. We chipped in and bought this tent, and we chipped in and bought a flag. The first one was whipped to pieces by the wind and we had to chip in and buy another before the summer was over. Then we set out some flowers, splashed around with some paint and whitewash, and the park was done. The name of the church seemed sorter to belong to the place, so we called it 'Little Jim Park.'

"The park was what you might say opened on Decoration Day when the kids come in and sang and performed. It was a great place for the kids to play all summer, and a fine place for us to sit around of evenings and chin and sing. Never had nothin' of the sort here before, you know. But the big show here at Little Jim Park was Old Home Week, when we had it all fixed up with buntin' and had it lit up of nights. I guess the park ain't much to look at just now, for the geraniums have all been took up, and the fellows are takin' care of 'em in their houses through the winter. But in summer, when the flowers are out, and things are fixed up, I tell you what Little Jim Park looks mighty good to Painter's Row!"

Somehow, when he had finished, this little park, a park by the people, seemed to be a thousand fold more beautiful, a thousand fold more significant. It and the great mill stood there in striking contrast; the mill and the houses expressing the indifference of the company to its human machines, the park the spontaneous expression of a great native desire, though choked down by long hours and the general oppressive dinginess,—the up-reaching, outreaching desire of the people for light, for air, for natural happiness, for development.