The Bend was a much jollier adversary than the police lodging-houses.
It kicked back. It did not have to be dragged into the discussion
at intervals, but crowded in unbidden. In the twenty years of my
acquaintance with it as a reporter I do not believe there was a week
in which it was not heard from in the police reports, generally in
connection with a crime of violence, a murder or a stabbing affray.
It was usually on Sunday, when the Italians who lived there were
idle and quarreled over their cards. Every fight was the signal
for at least two more, sometimes a dozen, for they clung to their
traditions and met all efforts of the police to get at the facts
with their stubborn "fix him myself." And when the detectives
had given up in dismay and the man who was cut had got out of the
hospital, pretty soon there was news of another fight, and the feud
had been sent on one step. By far the most cheering testimony that
our Italian is becoming one of us came to me a year or two ago in
the evidence that on two occasions Mulberry Street had refused to
hide a murderer even in his own village.
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