WITH HENRIETTA MANNERS 108

IX INTRODUCING HENRIETTA'S "SPECIAL GENTLEMAN-FRIEND" 123

X IN WHICH I FIND MYSELF A HOMELESS WANDERER
IN THE NIGHT 142

XI I BECOME AN "INMATE" OF A HOME FOR WORKING GIRLS 151

XII IN WHICH I SPEND A HAPPY FOUR WEEKS MAKING
ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS 180

XIII THREE "LADY-FRIENDS," AND THE ADVENTURES THAT
BEFALL THEM 197

XIV IN WHICH A TRAGIC FATE OVERTAKES MY "LADY-FRIENDS" 215

XV I BECOME A "SHAKER" IN A STEAM-LAUNDRY 229

XVI IN WHICH IT IS PROVED TO ME THAT THE DARKEST HOUR
COMES JUST BEFORE THE DAWN 249

EPILOGUE 266

THE LONG DAY

I

IN WHICH I ARRIVE IN NEW YORK

The rain was falling in great gray blobs upon the skylight of the little
room in which I opened my eyes on that February morning whence dates the
chronological beginning of this autobiography. The jangle of a bell had
awakened me, and its harsh, discordant echoes were still trembling upon
the chill gloom of the daybreak. Lying there, I wondered whether I had
really heard a bell ringing, or had only dreamed it. Everything about me
was so strange, so painfully new. Never before had I waked to find
myself in that dreary, windowless little room, and never before had I
lain in that narrow, unfriendly bed.

Staring hard at the streaming skylight, I tried to think, to recall some
one of the circumstances that might possibly account for my having
entered that room and for my having laid me down on that cot. When? and
how? and why? How inexplicable it all was in those first dazed moments
after that rude awakening! And then, as the fantasies of a dream
gradually assume a certain vague order in the waking recollection, there
came to me a confused consciousness of the events of the preceding
twenty-four hours--the long journey and the weariness of it; the
interminable frieze of flying landscape, with its dreary, snow-covered
stretches blurred with black towns; the shriek of the locomotive as it
plunged through the darkness; the tolling of ferry-bells, and then, at
last, the slow sailing over a black river toward and into a giant city
that hung splendid upon the purple night, turret upon turret, and tower
upon tower, their myriad lights burning side by si