they were heaped up with great piles of
coal-ashes, from which cropped out large quantities of the unburnt
mineral, as black and shining as when it came from the mines. There were
thousands of loads of this residuum, in which many hundred tons of pure
coal must have been thus wastefully thrown away. In other parts of the
city the same evidence of carelessness existed, so that the waste of a
single city in the one article of coal must be enormous. Then, over
these commons were scattered, almost daily, the remains of clothing, old
hats, bonnets, and the indestructible hoop-skirts, of which the
collar-maker had complained as being in everybody's way, as much so when
out of use as when in. Somebody had been guilty of wastefulness in thus
casting these things away. But though losses to some, they were gains to
others. By early daylight the rag-pickers came in platoons to gather up
all these waifs. The hats, the bonnets, and the clothing were quickly
appropriated by women and children who had come out of the narrow courts
and hovels of the city in search of what they knew was an every-day
harvest. These small gatherings of the rag-pickers amounted to hundreds
of dollars daily. Then there was another class of searchers after
abandoned treasure, in the persons of other women and children, who,
with pronged or pointed sticks, worked their way into the piles of
ashes, and picked out basketfuls of coal as heavy as they could carry,
and in this laborious way provided themselves with summer and winter
fuel.

There was living near us a man who made a business of gathering up the
offal of several hundred kitchens in the city, as food for pigs. I know
that he grew rich at this vocation. He lived in a much better house than
ours, and his wife and daughters dressed as expensively as the
wealthiest women. They had a piano, and music in abundance. He had
several carts which were sent on their daily rounds through the city,
collecting the kitchen-waste of boarding-houses, hotels, and private
families. The quantity of good, wholesome food which these carts brought
away to be fed to pigs was incredible. It was a common thing to see
whole loaves of bread taken out of the family swill-tub, with joints of
meat not half eaten, sound vegetables, and fragments of other food, as
palatable and valuable as the portion that had been consumed on the
table. It seemed as if there were hundreds of families who made it a
point never to have food served up