law about it, you might as well go to heaven at once. The saloonkeeper
stood in with all the big politics men in the district; and when you had
once found out what it meant to get into trouble with such people, you
would know enough to pay what you were told to pay and shut up.

What made all this the more painful was that it was so hard on the few
that had really done their best. There was poor old ponas Jokubas, for
instance--he had already given five dollars, and did not every one know
that Jokubas Szedvilas had just mortgaged his delicatessen store for two
hundred dollars to meet several months' overdue rent? And then there was
withered old poni Aniele--who was a widow, and had three children, and
the rheumatism besides, and did washing for the tradespeople on Halsted
Street at prices it would break your heart to hear named. Aniele had
given the entire profit of her chickens for several months. Eight of
them she owned, and she kept them in a little place fenced around on her
backstairs. All day long the children of Aniele were raking in the dump
for food for these chickens; and sometimes, when the competition there
was too fierce, you might see them on Halsted Street walking close to
the gutters, and with their mother following to see that no one robbed
them of their finds. Money could not tell the value of these chickens
to old Mrs. Jukniene--she valued them differently, for she had a feeling
that she was getting something for nothing by means of them--that with
them she was getting the better of a world that was getting the better
of her in so many other ways. So she watched them every hour of the day,
and had learned to see like an owl at night to watch them then. One of
them had been stolen long ago, and not a month passed that some one
did not try to steal another. As the frustrating of this one attempt
involved a score of false alarms, it will be understood what a tribute
old Mrs. Jukniene brought, just because Teta Elzbieta had once loaned
her some money for a few days and saved her from being turned out of her