The cards
had once more been shuffled; a new deal was on.
A new deal. What? To fly to another city--that meant another
Palmer, or the miseries of the unprotected woman of the
streets, or slavery to the madman of what the French with cruel
irony call a _maison de joie_. To return to work----
What was open to her, educated as the comfortable classes
educate their women? Work meant the tenements. She loathed
the fast life, but not as she loathed vermin-infected
tenements. To toil all day at a monotonous task, the same task
every day and all day long! To sleep at night with Tucker and
the vermin! To her notion the sights and sounds and smells and
personal contacts of the tenements were no less vicious;
were--for her at least--far more degrading than anything in the
Tenderloin and its like. And there she got money to buy
whiskey that whirled her almost endurably, sometimes even
gayly, over the worst things--money to buy hours, whole days of
respite that could be spent in books, in dreams and plannings,
in the freedom of a clean and comfortable room, or at the
theater or concert. There were degrees in horror; she was
paying a hateful price, but not so hateful as she had paid when
she worked. The wages of shame were not so hard earned as the
wages of toil, were larger, brought her many of the things she
craved. The wages of toil brought her nothing but the right to
bare existence in filth and depravity and darkness.
Pages:
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791