The authorities do not question
it; but still they do not provide playgrounds. Private charity has
to keep a beggarly half-dozen going where there ought to be forty
or fifty, as a matter of right, not of charity. Call it official
conservatism, inertia, treachery, call it by soft names or hard;
in the end it comes to this, I suppose, that it is the whetstone
upon which our purpose is sharpened, and in that sense we have
apparently got to be thankful for it. So a man may pummel his
adversary and accept him as a means of grace at the same time. If
there were no snags, there would be no wits to clear them away,
or strong arms to wield the axe. It was the same story with the
Mulberry Bend. Until the tramp lodging-houses were closed, until
the Bend was gone, it seemed as if progress were flat down impossible.
As I said, decency had to begin there, or not at all.
[Illustration: The Mulberry Bend as it was.]
Before I tackle the Bend, perhaps I had better explain how I came
to take up photographing as a--no, not exactly as a pastime. It
was never that with me.
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