couldn't bear to part with her, but I had to let her go soon, she
promising to come back again. I was still suffering, but after hearing
her, and her being so kind to dirty, loathsome me, I made up my mind
I'd try to 'grin and bear' the misery if it took my very life.

"Next time she came, I was out of the dungeon, up on the next floor in
my cell. Say, Mother Roberts, you wouldn't have known me if you had
seen me then and as I look now. I didn't weigh ninety pounds. Now I
weigh close onto one hundred and seventy. Praise the Lord!

"I was always a mass of filth and rags whenever the cops [police] would
run me in.

"What did they arrest me for? Why for stealing of course. We'll swipe
anything to supply ourselves and our chums with 'dope' [morphine,
cocaine, opium, etc.]. That last time I'd been sentenced for three
months. When my time was up, my missionary friend called for me, and we
came down on the train to San Jose. She hired a hack at the depot;
wasn't she considerate? God bless her!

"When we reached this home, the matron [Sister Griffith] met me at the
door, and, said she, 'Welcome, dear child, welcome in the name of the
Lord.' Then she put her arm around me, and led me into this very room
we are sitting in now. I fell in love with her right on the spot. She
had a lovely face and the beautifullest white hair I ever saw.

"I asked her to please let me go to bed, and would she gave me a room
where I couldn't escape; also to please take away all my clothes, all
but the bedding and a nightdress. I told her I'd come there to fight it
out, that I'd been in hell on earth for years, _that for twenty-seven