where's your family, sonny?
and your father? where's he, then?
where all those streets come together right ahead is the true five points. but most speak of the five points and mean anywhere between the battery and the bowery. although the night's cold, the streets are jammed. whores painted like carnival gypsies sell themselves to any man sober enough to stand up. sounds of laughter and combat filter out from garish saloons like the little naples, the hell hole, the egyptian hall. in the midst of all this highlife are beggars and the sickly, looking for charity, scrounging garbage in the street. an indigent battles a cripple for a meager scrap of faod. a richly dressed woman, riding by in a carriage, hides her eyes by raising a huge bouquet of flowers in front of her face.
streets hereabouts are lively of an evening. the city comes here to sport. but there's places to put up a boy on his own.
well, those. those are, as you might say, a sort of.
 sort of whatnot.
hey!