through plain brown doors we went into the church, which was cool,
quiet, and empty, save for a busy charwoman with humorous Irish
face. Under the altar canopy wavered a small candle spark, and high
overhead, in the dimness, were orange and scarlet gleams from a
stained window. A crystal chandelier hanging in the aisle caught
pale yellow tinctures of light. No Catholic church, wherever you
find it, is long empty; a man and a girl entered just as we went
out. At each side of the front steps the words _Copiosa apud eum
redemtio_ are carved in the stone. The mason must have forgotten the
_p_ in the last word. A silver plate on the brick house next door
says _Redemptorist Fathers_.

York Street, running off to the west, gives a glimpse of the old
Hudson River Railroad freight depot. St. John's Lane, running across
York Street, skirts the ruins of old St. John's Church, demolished
when the Seventh Avenue subway was built. On the old brown house at
the corner some urchin has chalked the word CRAZY. Perhaps this is
an indictment of adult civilization as a whole. If one strolls
thoughtfully about some of these streets--say Thompson Street--on a
hot day, and sees the children struggling to grow up, he feels like
going back to that word CRAZY and italicizing it. The tiny
triangle of park at Beach Street is carefully locked up, you will
notice--the only plot of grass in that neighbourhood--so that bare
feet cannot get at it. Superb irony of circumstance: on the near
corner stands the Castoria factory, Castoria being (if we remember
the ads) what Mr. Fletcher gave baby when she was sick.

Where Varick Street runs in there is a wide triangular spread, and
this, gentle friends, is Finn Park, named for a New York boy who was
killed in France. The name reminded us also of Elfin Finn, the