worse in construction and condition, but there is none controlled by one
management where so many are gathered under one roof. The first floor
has rooms for fourteen families, the remaining five for sixteen each;
and the census of 1880 gave the number of inhabitants as 478, a
sufficient number to make up the population of the average village. The
formal inspection and the report upon it were made in September, 1886,
and the report is now accessible to all who desire information on these
phases of city life. It is Mrs. Maloney herself whose methods best give
us the heart of the matter, and who, having several callings, is the
owner of an experience which appears to hold as much surprise for
herself as for the hearer.

"Shure I foind things that interestin' that I'm in no haste to be
through wid 'em, an' on for me taste o' purgatory, not hintin' that
there mightn't be more 'n a taste," Mrs. Maloney said, on a day in which
she unfolded to me her views of life in general, her small gray eyes
twinkling, her arms akimbo on her mighty hips, and her cap-border
flapping about a face weather-beaten and high-colored to a degree not
warranted even by her present profession as apple-woman. Whether
whiskey or stale beer is more responsible is unknown. It is only
certain that, having submitted with the utmost cheerfulness to the
perennial beatings of a husband only half her size, she found
consolation in a glass now and then with a sympathizing neighbor and at
last in a daily resort to the same friend. There had been a gradual
descent from prosperity. Dennis, if small, was wiry and phenomenally
strong, and earned steady wages as porter during their first years in
the country. But the children, as they grew, went to the bad entirely,
living on the earnings of the mother, who washed and scrubbed and
slaved, with a heart always full of excuses for the hulking brutes, who
came naturally at last to the ends that might have been foretold. Their
education had been in the Fourth Ward; they were champion bullies and
ruffians of whom the ward still boasts, Mrs. Maloney herself acquiring a
certain distinction as the mother of the hardest cases yet sent up from
Cherry Street. But if she had no power to save her own, life became
easier for whomsoever she elected to guard. Wretched children crept
under her wing to escape the beating awaiting them when they had failed
to bring home the amount demanded of them. Women, beaten and turned out
into the n