arping friend, where does he come in? He does not
come in; unless it be that the love and loyalty of his wife which not all
his cruelty could destroy, and the inhumanity of Poverty Gap, plead for
him that another chance may be given the man in him. Who knows?

HEARTSEASE

In a mean street, over on the West Side, I came across a doorway that bore
upon its plate the word "Heartsease." The house was as mean as the street.
It was flanked on one side by a jail, on the other by a big stable
barrack. In front, right under the windows, ran the elevated trains, so
close that to open the windows was impossible, for the noise and dirt.
Back of it they were putting up a building which, when completed, would
hug the rear wall so that you couldn't open the windows there at all.

After nightfall you would have found in that house two frail little women.
One of them taught school by day in the outlying districts of the city,
miles and miles away, across the East River. By night she came there to
sleep, and to be near her neighbors.

And who were these neighbors? Drunken, dissolute women, vile brothels and
viler saloons, for the saloon trafficked in the vice of the other. Those
who lived there were Northfield graduates, girls of refinement and
modesty. Yet these were the neighbors they had chosen for their own. At
all hours of the night the bell would ring, and they would come, sometimes
attended by policemen. Said one of these:

"We have this case. She isn't wanted in this home, or in that institution.
She doesn't come under their rules. We thought you might stretch yours to
take her in. Else she goes straight to the devil."

Yes! that was what he said. And she: "Bless you; we have no rules. Let her
come in." And she took her and put her to bed.

In the midnight hour my friend of Heartsease hears of a young girl,
evidently a new-comer, whom the brothel or the saloon has in its clutch,
and she gets out of bed, and, going after her, demands _her sister_, and
gets her out from the very jaws of hell. Again, on a winter's night, a
drunken woman finds her way to her door--a married woman with a husband
and children. And she gets out of her warm bed again, and, when the other
is herself, takes her home, never leaving her till she is safe.

I found her papering the walls and painting the floor in her room. I said
to her that I did not think you could do anything with those women,--and
neither can you, if they are just "those wom