NEW YORK: Shrine in The Bronx

Once upon a time there was a little boy whose parents were very poor. They lived in The Bronx, in a drab backwash of a great city.

Joseph Vitolo Jr., nine years old and small in the underfed fashion of the poor, was the 18th child (nine still living) of an immigrant Italian who makes a little money working on an ash truck, and a fat Italian mother who helps buy food by cutting flowers out of cloth. He went to school, where his teachers considered him bright, and in the evenings he played...