But there is a Pied Piper of London Town who
steals them all away. They disappear. One never
sees them again, or anything that suggests them.
You may look for them in vain amongst the gen
eration of grown-ups. Here you will find stunted
forms, ugly faces, and blunt and stolid minds.
Grace, beauty, imagination, all the resiliency of
mind and muscle, are gone. Sometimes, however,
you may see a woman, not necessarily old, but
twisted and deformed out of all womanhood,
bloated and drunken, lift her draggled skirts and
execute a few grotesque 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 quali
ties which make for noble manhood and woman
hood; but the Ghetto itself, like an infuriated
tigress turning on its young, turns upon and de
stroys all these qualities, blots out the light and

[[275]]

p274 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p275w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p276

v?