A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil's Row who were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him
His infantile countenance was livid with fury. His small body was writhing in the delivery of great, crimson oaths
"Run, Jimmie, run! Dey'll get yehs," screamed a retreating Rum Alley child
"Naw," responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, "dese micks can't make me run."
Howls of renewed wrath went up from Devil's Row throats. Tattered gamins on the right made a furious assault on the gravel heap. On their small, convulsed faces there shone the grins of true assassins. As they charged, they threw stones and cursed in shrill chorus
The little champion of Rum Alley stumbled precipitately down the other side. His coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle, and his hat was gone. He had bruises on twenty parts of his body, and blood was dripping from a cut in his head. His wan features wore a look of a tiny, insane demon
On the ground, children from Devil's Row closed in on their antagonist. He crooked his left arm defensively about his head and fought with cursing fury. The little boys ran to and fro, dodging, hurling stones and swearing in barbaric trebles
From a window of an apartment house that upreared its form from amid squat, ignorant stables, there leaned a curious woman. Some laborers, unloading a scow at a dock at the river, paused for a moment and regarded the fight. The engineer of a passive tugboat hung lazily to a railing and watched. Over on the Island, a worm of yellow convicts came from the shadow of a grey ominous building and crawled slowly along the river's bank
By saying that “Howls of RENEWED wrath went up from Devil’s Row throats”, Crane suggests that this rivalry and controversy between the Rum Alley and the kids from Devil’s Row has been existent in the past as well. Crane gives the second sentence of the paragraph an almost war-like feel to it by word choice like “furious assault” and “gravel heap”, as if the scene was some sort of legendary battle that would be remembered for the ages to come. 
 
 The children’s “small” yet “convulsed” faces once again creates another contradiction in the text, offering the reader a clearer suggestion that these kids have not been raised in what most people would call “normal conditions”. Cranes language re-assures the reader that the tenements is a place where children are raised with an almost natural sense aggression by using words like “true assassins”. The final sentence is sort of a transition back into the reality of the situation, in which various small children proceed to throw stones at each other while screaming furiously back and forth, pointlessly.
The Honor of Rum Alley I