Neighbors: Life Stories of the Other Half. Jacob August Riis

to say was that, when all was over and he out of the way, his widow came in and wanted our advice as to whether she ought to wear mourning earrings in his memory. Without rhyme or reason the two are associated in my mind, for they were as different as could be. The widow of Poverty Gap was Irish and married to a brute. Mrs. Salvini was an Italian; her husband was a hard-working fellow who had the misfortune to be killed on the railway. The point of contact is in the earrings. The widow Salvini did wear mourning earrings, a little piece of crape draped over the gold bangles of her care-free girlhood, and it was not funny but infinitely touching. It just shows how little things do twist one’s mind.