In this world of noxious and
repulsive weeds, what sudden startling upshooting of what
beautiful flowers! Flowers where you would expect to find the
most noisome weeds of all, and vilest weeds where you would
expect to find flowers. What a world!
However--the fifty a week must be got--and she must be
businesslike.
Most of the girls who took to the streets came direct from the
tenements of New York, of the foreign cities or of the factory
towns of New England. And the world over, tenement house life
is an excellent school for the life of the streets. It
prevents modesty from developing; it familiarizes the eye, the
ear, the nerves, to all that is brutal; it takes away from a
girl every feeling that might act as a restraining influence
except fear--fear of maternity, of disease, of prison. Thus,
practically all the other girls had the advantage over Susan.
Soon after they definitely abandoned respectability and
appeared in the streets frankly members of the profession, they
became bold and rapacious. They had an instinctive feeling
that their business was as reputable as any other, more
reputable than many held in high repute, that it would be most
reputable if it paid better and were less uncertain. They
respected themselves for all things, talk to the contrary in
the search for the sympathy and pity most human beings crave.
They despised the men as utterly as the men despised them.
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