n an' decent, an' she wouldn't eat till
hunger made her. Then there was a long time she came up with three or
four that made a kind of a livin' pickin' pockets an' a turn now an'
then as newsboys, or beggin' cold victuals an' pickin' up any light
thing they could see if they were let in. Nan changed hands a dozen
times, an' she never would have known where she come from if Charley
Calkins hadn't kept half an eye to her. He was six years older, an'
nobody knew who he belonged to; an' he an' Nan picked rags together, an'
whatever trick he knew he taught her. They cropped her hair, an' dirt
hid all the prettiness there was, but by ten she'd learned enough to get
any bit of finery she could, an' to fight 'em off when they wanted to
cut her hair still. She'd dance an' sing to any hand-organ that come
along; an' that was where I saw her first--when she was twelve, I should
think--with a lot o' men an' boys standin' round, an' she dancin' an'
singin' till the very monkey on the organ danced too. I was in a house
on Cherry street then, with some girls that played at a variety theatre
on the Bowery, an' Nan by this time was so tall they'd made her a
waiter-girl in one of the beer-shops. It was there the theatre-man saw
her one day goin' down to the ferry. He thought she was older, for she
never let on, an' she was tall as she ever was, an' her hair floatin'
back the way she would always have it. She could read. She'd been to
school one term, because she would, an' she had a way with her that
you'd think she was twenty. So it didn't take long. The variety-man said
he'd make her fortune, an' she thought he would; an' next day she come
an' told me she had agreed for three years.

"She didn't know there was work in it, but she soon found there was just
as much drudgery as in the rag-pickin' or a beer-shop. But she had an
ambition. She said she'd started here, an' she would stay an' learn
everything there was, but she believed she should be an actress in the
Old Bowery yet. That seemed a great thing to me in those days, an' I
looked at her an' wondered if she knew enough, an' if she'd speak to us
when she got there. She was so silent sometimes that it daunted us, an'
then she'd have spells of bein' wilder than the wildest; but she said
straight enough, 'I'm not goin' to stay down in this hole: I'm goin' to
be rich an' a lady; an' you'll see it.'

"The time came when she did get to the Old Bowery, an' the manager glad
to have her too