h some other children dwell, or of the hard and cruel battle for
life they are doomed to fight from the very beginning!

To get out from these comfortable homes and from the midst of tenderly
cared-for little ones, and stand face to face with squalor and hunger,
with suffering, debasement and crime, to look upon the starved faces
of children and hear their helpless cries, is what scarcely one in a
thousand will do. It is too much for our sensibilities. And so we stand
aloof, and the sorrow, and suffering, the debasement, the wrong and
the crime, go on, and because we heed it not we vainly imagine that no
responsibility lies at our door; and yet there is no man or woman who is
not, according to the measure of his or her influence, responsible for
the human debasement and suffering I have portrayed.

The task I set for myself has not been a pleasant one. It has hurt my
sensibilities and sickened my heart many times as I stood face to face
with the sad and awful degradation that exists in certain regions of
our larger cities; and now that my work is done, I take a deep breath
of relief. The result is in your hands, good citizen, Christian reader,
earnest philanthropist! If it stirs your heart in the reading as it
stirred mine in the writing, it will not die fruitless.

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. The unwelcome babe--The defrauded young mother--The struggle
between life and death--"Your baby is in heaven"--A brief retrospect--A
marriage for social position--An ambitious wife and a disappointed
husband--The young daughter--The matrimonial market--The Circassian
slaves of modern society--The highest bidder--Disappearance--The old sad
story--Secret marriage--The letters--Disappointed ambition--Interview
between the parents--The mother's purpose--"Baffled, but not
defeated"--The father's surprise--The returned daughter--Forgiven--"I am
not going away again, father dear"--Insecurity and distrust

CHAPTER II. The hatred of a bad woman--Mrs. Dinneford's plans for the
destruction of Granger--Starting in business--Plots of Mrs. Dinneford
and Freeling--The discounted notes--The trap--Granger's suspicions
aroused--Forgery--Mrs. Dinneford relentless--The arrest--Fresh evidence
of crime upon Granger's person--The shock to Edith--"That night her baby
was born"

CHAPTER III. "It is a splendid boy"--A convenient, non-interfering
family doctor--Cast adrift--Into the world in a basket, unnamed
and disowned--Edith's secon