from the majority of those about her. Phases of life of
which she had scarcely dreamed were the common topics of conversation.
In her mother she had learned to venerate gray hairs, and it was an
awful shock to learn that so many of the feeble creatures about her
were coarse, wicked, and evil-disposed. How could their withered lips
frame the words they spoke? How could they dwell on subjects that were
profanation, even to such wrecks of womanhood as themselves?

Moreover, they persecuted her by their curiosity. The good material in
her apparel had been examined and commented on; her wedding ring had
been seen and its absence soon noted, for Alida, after gaining the
power to recall the past fully, had thrown away the metal lie, feeling
that it was the last link in a chain binding her to a loathed and hated
relationship. Learning from their questions that the inmates of the
almshouse did not know her history, she refused to reveal it, thus
awakening endless surmises. Many histories were made for her, the
beldams vying with each other in constructing the worst one. Poor Alida
soon learned that there was public opinion even in an almshouse, and
that she was under its ban. In dreary despondency she thought,
"They've found out about me. If such creatures as these think I'm
hardly fit to speak to, how can I ever find work among good,
respectable people?"

Her extreme depression, the coarse, vulgar, and uncharitable natures by
which she was surrounded, retarded her recovery. By her efforts to do
anything in her power for others she disarmed the hostility of some of
the women, and those that were more or less demented became fond of
her; but the majority probed her wound by every look and word. She was
a saint compared with any of these, yet they made her envy their
respectability. She often thought, "Would to God that I was as old and
ready to die as the feeblest woman here, if I could only hold up my
head like her!"

One day a woman who had a child left it sleeping in its rude wooden
cradle and went downstairs. The babe wakened and began to cry. Alida
took it up and found a strange solace in rocking it to sleep again upon
her breast. At last the mother returned, glared a moment into Alida's
appealing eyes, then snatched the child away with the cruel words,
"Don't ye touch my baby ag'in! To think it ud been in the arms o' the
loikes o'ye!"

Alida went away and sobbed until her strength was gone. She found that