The Nine-Tenths

lid red-brick tenements, now in shadow, now in the glow of some little shop window, now under a sparkling lamp. At Avenue A they went south to Seventy-ninth Street, and again turned east, passing a row of bright model tenements, emerging at last at the strange riverside.

Down to the very edge of the unpaved waste they walked, or rather floated, so strange and uplifted and glorious they felt, blown and carried bodily with the exultant west wind, and they only stopped when they reached the wooden margin, where an old scow, half laden with brick, was moored fast with ropes. This scow heaved up and down with the motion of the rolling waters; the tight ropes grated; the water swashed melodiously.

The man and woman seemed alone there, a black little lump in the vast spaces, for behind them the city receded beyond empty little hill-sides and there was nothing some distance north and south.

"Look," said Joe, "look at the tide!"

It was running north, a wide expanse of rolling waters from their feet to Blac