prostitution on the "Levee," and the names of
the "madames" who kept them, and the days when they gave their state
banquets, which the police captains and the big politicians all
attended. If a visiting "country customer" were to ask them, they could
show him which was "Hinkydink's" famous saloon, and could even point out
to him by name the different gamblers and thugs and "hold-up men" who
made the place their headquarters. And worse yet, the boys were getting
out of the habit of coming home at night. What was the use, they would
ask, of wasting time and energy and a possible carfare riding out to
the stockyards every night when the weather was pleasant and they could
crawl under a truck or into an empty doorway and sleep exactly as well?
So long as they brought home a half dollar for each day, what mattered
it when they brought it? But Jurgis declared that from this to ceasing
to come at all would not be a very long step, and so it was decided
that Vilimas and Nikalojus should return to school in the fall, and
that instead Elzbieta should go out and get some work, her place at home
being taken by her younger daughter.

Little Kotrina was like most children of the poor, prematurely made old;
she had to take care of her little brother, who was a cripple, and also
of the baby; she had to cook the meals and wash the dishes and clean
house, and have supper ready when the workers came home in the evening.
She was only thirteen, and small for her age, but she did all this
without a murmur; and her mother went out, and after trudging a couple
of days about the yards, settled down as a servant of a "sausage
machine."

Elzbieta was used to working, but she found this change a hard one, for
the reason that she had to stand motionless upon her feet from seven
o'clock in the morning till half-past twelve, and again from one till
half-past five. For the first few days it seemed to her that she
could not stand it--she suffered almost as much as Jurgis had from the
fertilizer, and would come out at sundown with her head fairly reeling.
Besides this, she was working in one of the dark holes, by electric
light, and the dampness, too, was deadly--there were always puddles of
water on the floor, and a sickening odor of moist flesh in the room. The
people who worked here followed the ancient custom of nature, whereby
the ptarmigan is the color of dead leaves in the fall and of snow in the
winter, and the chameleon, who is black when he l