a tenement-house. The little play she ever had was on sidewalks
and in the gutters; she's scarcely ever seen the country. Almost
before she knew how to play she began to work. When she was only
seventeen a coarse, bad man married her. How it ever came about
I never could understand. I don't believe he knew anything more
of love than a pig; for he lived like one and died like one, only
he didn't die soon enough. It seems horrible that I should speak
in this way of my father, and yet why should I not, when he was a
horror to me ever since I can remember? Instead of taking care of
mother, she had to take care of him. He'd take the pittance she
had wrung from the washtub for drink, and then come back to repay
her for it with blows and curses. I guess we must have lived in
fifty tenements, for we were always behind with the rent and so
had to move here and there, wherever we could get a place to put
our heads in. Queer places some of them were, I can tell you--mere
rat-holes. They served one purpose, though--they finished off the
children. To all mother's miseries and endless work was added the
anguish of child-bearing. They were miserable, puny, fretful little
imps, that were poisoned off by the bad air in which we lived, and
our bad food--that is, when we had any--after they had made all the
trouble they could. I had the care of most of them, and my life
became a burden before I was seven years old. I used to get so
tired and faint that I was half glad when they died. At last, when
mother became so used up that she really couldn't work any more,
father did for us the one good act that I know anything about--he
went off on a big spree that finished him. Mother and I have clung
together ever since. We've often been hungry, but we've never been
separated a night. What a long night is coming now, in which the
doctor says we shall be parted!" and the poor girl crouched on the
floor where her mother could not see her should she open her eyes,