BY STEPHEN CRANE ,1 WfrMs' University of California Berkeley LOCKVVOOn MEMORIAL LIBRARY OF THE VNIVERSITY OF BVFKALO, PRE SEN UY GEORGE ? 'HAN NEWMAN OF BVFFALO NEW YORK MAGGIE A GIRL OF THE STREETS Red Badge of Courage. An Episode of the American Civil War. By STE PHEN CRANE. i2mo. Cloth, $1.00. " Never before have we had the seamy side of glorious war so well depicted." Chicago Evening Post. " Of such interest that no one having begun it will lay it aside until the end is reached." Philadelphia Ledger. " We have had many stories of the war ; this stands abso lutely alone." Boston Transcript, " Has no parallel, unless it be Tolstoy's ' Sebastopol.' " San Francisco Chronicle. "A strong book, and it is a true book; true to life." The Critic. " Has been surpassed by few writers dealing with war." New York Mail and Express. " So vivid is the picture of actual conflict that the reader comes face to face with war." Atlantic Monthly. " Original, striking, astonishing, powerful ; holding the atten tion with the force of genius." Louisville Post. " The best novel which the war has yet produced." Kansas City Journal. New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue. MAGGIE A GIRL OF THE STREETS BY STEPHEN CRANE AUTHOR OF THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1896 COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. Copyright, 1893, by Stephen Crane. PUBLISHER'S NOTE. THE interest which has been shown in The Red Badge of Courage has been most gratify ing, but it has also involved a few inaccu racies of statement in regard to the history of Mr. Crane's literary work. The Red Badge of Courage was offered to and ac cepted by the publishers in December, 1894, and it was published in October, 1895. As it happened, the actual publication in Eng land came some two months later. By that time the American press had appreciated the quality of the book so cordially and unani mously as to dispose of the lingering tradi tion that only a well-known author, or an author with the hall mark of foreign approval, is recognised by our reviewers. As to the book which succeeds The Red v i PUBLISHER'S NOTE. Badge of Courage, it should be said that Maggie has never been published before, even in serial form. The story was put into type and copyrighted by Mr. Crane three years ago, but this real and strenuous tale of New York life is now given to the public for the first time. MAGGIE. CHAPTER I. A VERY little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honour of Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil's Row, who were circling madly about the heap and pelting him. His infantile countenance was livid with the fury of battle. His small body was writh ing in the delivery of oaths. " Run, Jimmie, run ! Dey'll git yehs ! " screamed a retreating Rum Alley child. " Naw," responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, " dese mugs can't make me run." Howls of renewed wrath went up from Devil's Row throats. Tattered gamins on the right made a furious assault on the 2 MAGGIE. gravel heap. On their small convulsed faces shone the grins of true assassins. As they charged, they threw stones and cursed in shrill chorus. The little champion of Rum Alley stum bled precipitately down the other side. His coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle and his hat was gone. He had bruises on twenty parts of his body, and blood was dripping from a cut in his head. His wan features looked like those of a tiny insane demon. On the ground, children from Devil's Row closed in on their antagonist. He crooked his left arm defensively about his head and fought with madness. The little boys ran to and fro, dodging, hurling stones, and swearing in barbaric trebles. From a window of an apartment house that uprose from amid squat ignorant stables there leaned a curious woman. Some la bourers, unloading a scow at a dock at the river, paused for a moment and regarded the fight. The engineer of a passive tugboat MAGGIE. 3 hung lazily over a railing and watched. Over on the island a worm of yellow convicts came from the shadow of a gray ominous building and crawled slowly along the river's bank. A stone had smashed in Jimmie's mouth. Blood was bubbling over his chin and down upon his ragged shirt. Tears made furrows on his dirt-stained cheeks. His thin legs had begun to tremble and turn weak, causing his small body to reel. His roaring curses of the first part of the fight had changed to a blas phemous chatter. In the yells of the whirling mob of Devil's Row children there were notes of joy like songs of triumphant savagery. The little boys seemed to leer gloatingly at the blood upon the other child's face. Down the avenue came boastfully saun tering a lad of sixteen years, although the chronic sneer of an ideal manhood already sat upon his lips. His hat was tipped over his eye with an air of challenge. Between 4 MAGGIE. his teeth, a cigar stump was tilted at the angle of defiance. He walked with a certain swing of the shoulders which appalled the timid. He glanced over into the vacant lot in which the little raving boys from Devil's Row seethed about the shrieking and tearful child from Rum Alley. " Gee ! " he murmured with interest, " a scrap. Gee ! " He strode over to the cursing circle, swinging his shoulders in a manner which denoted that he held victory in his fists. He approached at the back of one of the most deeply engaged of the Devil's Row children. "Ah, what d' h 11," he said, and smote the deeply engaged one on the back of the head. The little boy fell to the ground and gave a tremendous howl. He scrambled to his feet, and perceiving, evidently, the size of his assailant, ran quickly off, shouting alarms. The entire Devil's Row party fol lowed him. They came to a stand a short MAGGIE. 5 distance away and yelled taunting oaths at the boy with the chronic sneer. The latter, momentarily, paid no attention to them. "What's wrong wi'che, Jimmie?" he asked of the small champion. Jimmie wiped his blood-wet features with his sleeve. " Well, it was dis way, Pete, see ! I was goin' teh lick dat Riley kid and dey all pitched on me." Some Rum Alley children now came for ward. The party stood for a moment ex changing vainglorious remarks with Devil's Row. A few stones were thrown at long dis tances, and words of challenge passed be tween small warriors. Then the Rum Alley contingent turned slowly in the direction of their home street. They began to give, each to each, distorted versions of the fight. Causes of retreat in particular cases were magnified. Blows dealt in the fight were enlarged to catapultian power, and stones thrown were alleged to have hurtled with 6 MAGGIE. infinite accuracy. Valour grew strong again, and the little boys began to brag with great spirit. " Ah, we blokies kin lick d' hull d n Row," said a child, swaggering. Little Jimmie was striving to stanch the flow of blood from his cut lips. Scowling, he turned upon the speaker. " Ah, where was yehs when I was doin' all deh fightin'?" he demanded. " Youse kids makes me tired." "Ah, go ahn ! " replied the other argu- mentatively. Jimmie replied with heavy contempt. "Ah, youse can't fight, Blue Billie ! I kin lick yeh wid one han'." " Ah, go ahn ! " replied Billie again. " Ah ! " said Jimmie threateningly. " Ah ! " said the other in the same tone. They struck at each other, clinched, and rolled over on the cobblestones. " Smash 'im, Jimmie, kick d' face off MAGGIE. 7 'im ! " yelled Pete, the lad with the chronic sneer, in tones of delight. The small combatants pounded and kicked, scratched and tore. They began to weep and their curses struggled in their throats with sobs. The other little boys clasped their hands and wriggled their legs in excitement. They formed a bobbing cir cle about the pair. A tiny spectator was suddenly agitated. " Cheese it, Jimmy, cheese it ! Here comes yer fader," he yelled. The circle of little boys instantly parted. They drew away and waited in ecstatic awe for that which was about to happen. The two little boys, fighting in the modes of four thousand years ago, did not hear the warning. Up the avenue there plodded slowly a man with sullen eyes. He was carrying a dinner pail and smoking an apple-wood pipe. As he neared the spot where the little 8 MAGGIE. boys strove, he regarded them listlessly. But suddenly he roared an oath and advanced upon the rolling fighters. " Here, you Jim, git up, now, while I belt yer life out, yeh disorderly brat." He began to kick into the chaotic mass on the ground. The boy Billie felt a heavy boot strike his head. He made a furious effort and disentangled himself from Jimmie. He tottered away. Jimmie arose painfully from the ground and confronting his father, began to curse him. His parent kicked him. " Come home, now," he cried, "an' stop yer jawin', er I'll lam the everlasting head off yehs." They departed. The man paced placidly along with the apple-wood emblem of serenity between his teeth. The boy followed a dozen feet in the rear. He swore luridly, for he felt that it was degradation for one who aimed to be some vague kind of a soldier, or a man of blood with a sort of sublime license, to be taken home by a father. CHAPTER II. EVENTUALLY they entered a dark region where, from a careening building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the street and the gutter. A wind of early autumn raised yellow dust from cobbles and swirled it against a hundred windows. Long streamers of garments fluttered from fire- escapes. In all unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags, and bottles. In the street infants played or fought with other infants or sat stupidly in the way of vehicles. Formidable women, with uncombed hair and disordered dress, gossipped while leaning on railings, or screamed in frantic quarrels. Withered persons, in curious postures of submission to something, sat smoking pipes in obscure corners. A thousand odours of 9 10 MAGGIE. cooking food came forth to the street. The building quivered and creaked from the weight of humanity stamping about in its bowels. A small ragged girl dragged a red, bawl ing infant along the crowded ways. He was hanging back, babylike, bracing his wrinkled, bare legs. The little girl cried out: "Ah, Tommie, come ahn. Dere's Jimmie and fader. Don't be a-pullin' me back." She jerked the baby's arm impatiently. He fell on his face, roaring. With a second jerk she pulled him to his feet, and they went on. With the obstinacy of his order, he protested against being dragged in a chosen direction. He made heroic endeav ours to keep on his legs, denounced his sister, and consumed a bit of orange peeling which he chewed between the times of his infantile orations. As the sullen-eyed man, followed by the blood-covered boy, drew near, the little girl MAGGIE. 1 1 burst into reproachful cries. "Ah, Jimmie, youse bin fightin' agin." The urchin swelled disdainfully. "Ah, what d' h 1, Mag. See?" The little girl upbraided him. " Youse allus fightin', Jimmie, an* yeh knows it puts mudder out when yehs come home half dead, an' it's like we'll all get a poundin'." She began to weep. The babe threw back his head and roared at his prospects. "Ah," cried Jimmie, "shut up er I'll smack yer mout'. See?" As his sister continued her lamentations, he suddenly struck her. The little girl reeled and, recovering herself, burst into tears and quaveringly cursed him. As she slowly re treated, her brother advanced dealing her 'cuffs. The father heard and turned about. "Stop that, Jim, d'yeh hear? Leave yer sister alone on the street. It's like I can never beat any sense into yer wooden head." The urchin raised his voice in defiance to his parent and continued his attacks. The 12 MAGGIE. babe bawled tremendously, protesting with great violence. During his sister's hasty manoeuvres he was dragged by the arm. Finally the procession plunged into one of the gruesome doorways. They crawled up dark stairways and along cold, gloomy halls. At last the father pushed open a door and they entered a lighted room in which a large woman was rampant. She stopped in a career from a seething stove to a pan-covered table. As the father and children filed in she peered at them. "Eh, what? Been fightin' agin!" She threw herself upon Jimmie. The urchin tried to dart behind the others, and in the scuffle the babe, Tommie, was knocked down. He protested with his usual vehemence, because they had bruised his tender shins against a table leg. The mother's massive shoulders heaved with anger. Grasping the urchin by the neck and shoulder she shook him until he rattled. She dragged him to an unholy sink, and, MAGGIE. I3 soaking a rag in water, began to scrub his lacerated face with it. Jimmie screamed in pain and tried to twist his shoulders out of the clasp of the huge arms. The babe sat on the floor watching the scene, his face in contortions like that of a woman at a tragedy. The father, with a newly ladened pipe in his mouth, sat in a backless chair near the stove. Jimmie's cries annoyed him. He turned about and bellowed at his wife : " Let the kid alone for a minute, will yeh, Mary? Yer allus poundin' 'im. When I come nights I can't git no rest 'cause yer allus poundin' a kid. Let up, d'yeh hear? Don't be allus poundin' a kid." The woman's operations on the urchin in stantly increased in violence. At last she tossed him to a corner where he limply lay weeping. The wife put her immense hands on her hips, and with a chieftainlike stride ap proached her husband. I 4 MAGGIE. " Ho! " she said, with a great grunt of con tempt. " An' what in the devil are you stick- in* your nose for ? " The babe crawled under the table and, turning, peered out cautiously. The ragged girl retreated, and the urchin in the corner drew his legs carefully beneath him. The man puffed his pipe calmly and put his great muddied boots on the back part of the stove. " Go t' h 1," he said tranquilly. The woman screamed and shook her fists before her husband's eyes. The rough yel low of her face and neck flared suddenly crimson. She began to howl. He puffed imperturbably at his pipe for a time, but finally arose and went to look out of the window into the darkening chaos of back yards. " You've been drinkin', Mary," he said. " You'd better let up on the bot', ol' woman, or you'll git done." " You're a liar. I ain't had a drop," she MAGGIE. !5 roared in reply. They had a lurid alterca tion. The babe was staring out from under the table, his small face working in his excite ment. The ragged girl went stealthily over to the corner where the urchin lay. " Are yehs hurted much, Jimmie ? " she whispered timidly. "Not a little bit. See?" growled the little boy. "Will I wash d f blood?" " Naw ! " " Will I " " When I catch dat Riley kid I'll break 'is face! Dat's right! See?" He turned his face to the wall as if re solved grimly to bide his time. In the quarrel between husband and wife the woman was victor. The man seized his hat and rushed from the room, apparently de termined upon a vengeful drunk. She fol lowed to the door and thundered at him as he made his way downstairs. l6 MAGGIE. She returned and stirred up the room until her children were bobbing about like bubbles. " Git outa d' way/' she bawled persist ently, waving feet with their dishevelled shoes near the heads of her children. She shrouded herself, puffing and snorting, in a cloud of steam at the stove, and eventually extracted a frying pan full of potatoes that hissed. She flourished it. " Come t' yer suppers, now," she cried with sudden exasperation. " Hurry up, now, er I'll help yeh ! " The children scrambled hastily. With prodigious clatter they arranged themselves at table. The babe sat with his feet dan gling high from a precarious infant's chair and gorged his small stomach. Jimmie forced, with feverish rapidity, the grease- enveloped pieces between his wounded lips. Maggie, with side glances of fear of interruption, ate like a small pursued ti gress. MAGGIE. ij The mother sat blinking at them. She de livered reproaches, swallowed potatoes, and drank from a yellow-brown bottle. After a time her mood changed and she wept as she carried little Tommie into another room and laid him to sleep, with his fists doubled, in an old quilt of faded red and green grandeur. Then she came and moaned by the stove. She rocked to and fro upon a chair, shedding tears and crooning miserably to the two chil dren about their "poor mother" and "yer fader, d n 'is soul." The little girl plodded between the table and the chair with a dish pan on it. She tottered on her small legs beneath burdens of dishes. Jimmie sat nursing his various wounds. He cast furtive glances at his mother. His practised eye perceived her gradually emerge from a mist of muddled sentiment until her brain burned in drunken heat. He sat breath less. Maggie broke a plate. !8 MAGGIE. The mother started to her feet as if pro pelled. " Good Gawd ! " she howled. Her glitter- ing eyes fastened on her child with sudden hatred. The fervent red of her face turned almost to purple. The little boy ran to the halls, shrieking like a monk in an earth quake. He floundered about in darkness until he found the stairs. He stumbled, panic-strick en, to the next floor. An old woman opened a door. A light behind her threw a flare on the urchin's face. " Eh, child, what is it dis time ? Is yer fader beatin' yer mudder, or yer mudder beatin' yer fader ? " CHAPTER III. JIMMIE and the old woman listened long in the hall. Above the muffled roar of con versation, the dismal wailings of babies at night, the thumping of feet in unseen corri dors and rooms, and the sound of varied hoarse shoutings in the street and the rat tling of wheels over cobbles, they heard the screams of the child and the roars of the mother die away to a feeble moaning and a subdued bass muttering. The old woman was a gnarled and leath ery personage who could don, at will, an ex pression of great virtue. She possessed a small music box capable of one tune, and a collection of " God bless yehs " pitched in as sorted keys of fervency. Each day she took a position upon the stones of Fifth Avenue, 19 20 MAGGIE. where she crooked her legs under her and crouched, immovable and hideous, like an idol. She received daily a small sum in pennies. It was contributed, for the most part, by per sons who did not make their homes in that vicinity. Once, when a lady had dropped her purse on the sidewalk, the gnarled woman had grabbed it and smuggled it with great dexter ity beneath her cloak. When she was ar rested she had cursed the lady into a partial swoon, and with her aged limbs, twisted from rheumatism, had kicked the breath out of a huge policeman whose conduct upon that occasion she referred to when she said, " The police, d n 'em ! " " Eh, Jimmie, it's a shame," she said. " Go, now, like a dear an' buy me a can, an' if yer mudder raises 'ell all night yehs can sleep here." Jimmie took a tendered tin pail and seven pennies and departed. He passed into the side door of a saloon and went to the bar. MAGGIE. 2 1 Straining up on his toes he raised the pail and pennies as high as his arms would let him. He saw two hands thrust down to I take them. Directly the same hands let down the filled pail and he left. In front of the gruesome doorway he met a lurching figure. It was his father, swaying about on uncertain legs. " Give me deh can. See ? " said the man. "Ah, come off! I got dis can fer dat ol' woman an' it 'ud be dirt teh swipe it. See ? " cried Jirnmie. The father wrenched the pail from the urchin. He grasped it in both hands and lifted it to his mouth. He glued his lips to the under edge and tilted his head. His throat swelled until it seemed to grow near his chin. There was a tremendous gulping movement and the beer was gone. The man caught his breath and laughed. He hit his son on the head with the empty pail. As it rolled clanging into the street, 22 MAGGIE. Jimmie began to scream, and kicked repeat edly at his father's shins. " Look at deh dirt what yeh done me," he yelled. " Deh ol' woman 'ill be trowin' fits." He retreated to the middle of the street, but the man did not pursue. He staggered toward the door. " I'll paste yeh when I ketch yeh ! " he shouted, and disappeared. During the evening he had been standing against a bar drinking whiskies and declaring to all comers, confidentially : " My home reg'lar livin' h 1! Why do I come an' drin' whisk' here thish way ? 'Cause home reg'lar livin' h 1 ! " Jimmie waited a long time in the street and then crept warily up through the build ing. He passed with great caution the door of the gnarled woman, and finally stopped outside his home and listened. He could hear his mother moving heavily about among the furniture of the room. She was chanting in a mournful voice, occasion- MAGGIE. 23 f ally interjecting bursts of volcanic wrath at the father, who, Jimmie judged, had sunk down on the floor or in a corner. " Why deh blazes don' chere try teh keep Jim from fightin'? I'll break yer jaw ! " she suddenly bellowed. The man mumbled with drunken indiffer ence. " Ah, Wats bitin' yeh? Wa's odds? Wha' makes kick?" " Because he tears 'is clothes, yeh fool ! " cried the woman in supreme wrath. The husband seemed to become aroused. "Go chase yerself!" he thundered fiercely in reply. There was a crash against the door and something broke into clattering fragments. Jimmie partially suppressed a yell and darted down the stairway. Below he paused and listened. He heard howls and curses, groans and shrieks a confused chorus as if a battle were raging. With it all there was the crash of splintering furni ture. The eyes of the urchin glared in his fear that one of them would discover him. 24 MAGGIE. Curious faces appeared in doorways, and whispered comments passed to and fro. " Ol' Johnson's playin'^horse agin." Jimmie stood until the noises ceased and the other inhabitants of the tenement had all yawned and shut their doors. Then he crawled upstairs with the caution of an in vader of a panther's den. Sounds of laboured breathing- came through the broken door panels. He pushed the door open and en tered, quaking. A glow from the fire threw red hues over the bare floor, the cracked and soiled plaster ing, and the overturned and broken furni ture. In the middle of the floor lay his mother asleep. In one corner of the room his father's limp body hung across the seat of a chair. The urchin stole forward. He began to shiver in dread of awakening his parents. His mother's great chest was heaving pain fully. Jimmie paused and looked down at MAGGIE. 25 her. Her face was inflamed and swollen from drinking. Her yellow brows shaded eyelids that had grown blue. Her tangled hair tossed in waves over her forehead. Her mouth was set in the same lines of vindictive hatred that it had, perhaps, borne during the fight. Her bare, red arms were thrown out above her head in an attitude of exhaustion, something, mayhap, like that of a sated villain. The urchin bent over his mother. He was fearful lest she should open her eyes, and the dread within him was so strong that he could not forbear to stare, but hung as if fascinated over the woman's grim face. Suddenly her eyes opened. The urchin found himself looking straight into an ex pression, which, it would seem, had the power to change his blood to salt. He howled piercingly and fell backward. The woman floundered for a moment, tossed her arms about her head as if in com bat, and again began to snore. 26 MAGGIE. Jimmie crawled back into the shadows and waited. A noise in the next room had followed his cry at the discovery that his mother was awake. He grovelled in the gloom, his eyes riveted upon the intervening door. He heard it creak, and then the sound of a small voice came to him. " Jimmie ! Jim mie ! Are yehs dere?" it whispered. The urchin started. The thin, white face of his sister looked at him from the doorway of the other room. She crept to him across the floor. The father had not moved, but lay in the same deathlike sleep. The mother writhed in an uneasy slumber, her chest wheezing as if she were in the agonies of strangulation. Out at the window a florid moon was peering over dark roofs, and in the distance the waters of a river glimmered pallidly. The small frame of the ragged girl was quivering. Her features were haggard from weeping, and her eyes gleamed with fear. MAGGIE. 27 She grasped the urchin's arm in her little trembling hands and they huddled in a cor ner. The eyes of both were drawn, by some force, to stare at the woman's face, for they thought she need only to awake and all the fiends would come from below. They crouched until the ghost mists of dawn appeared at the window, drawing close to the panes, and looking in at the prostrate, heaving body of the mother. CHAPTER IV. THE babe, Tommie, died. He went away in an insignificant coffin, his small waxen hand clutching a flower that the girl, Maggie, had stolen from an Italian. She and Jimmie lived. The inexperienced fibres of the boy's eyes were hardened at an early age. He became a young man of leather. He lived some red years without labouring. During that time his sneer became chronic. He studied human nature in the gutter, and found it no worse than he thought he had reason to believe it. He never conceived a respect for the world, because he had begun with no idols that it had smashed. He clad his soul in armour by means of happening hilariously in at a mission church 28 MAGGIE. 29 where a man composed his sermons of " yous." Once a philosopher asked this man why he did not say " we " instead of " you." The man replied, "What?" While they got warm at the stove he told his hearers just where he calculated they stood with the Lord. Many of the sinners were im patient over the pictured depths of their deg radation. They were waiting for soup tickets. A reader of the words of wind demons might have been able to see the portions of a dialogue pass to and fro between the ex- horter and his hearers. "You are damned," said the preacher. And the reader of sounds might have seen the reply go forth from the ragged people : " Where's our soup ? " Jimmie and a companion sat in a rear seat and commented upon the things that didn't concern them, with all the freedom of Eng lish tourists. When they grew thirsty and * went out, their minds confused the speaker with Christ. 30 MAGGIE. Momentarily, Jimmie was sullen with thoughts of a hopeless altitude where grew fruit. His companion said that if he should ever go to heaven he would ask for a million dollars and a bottle of beer. Jimmie's occupation for a long time was to stand on street corners and watch the world go by, dreaming blood-red dreams at the passing of pretty women. He menaced mankind at the intersections of streets. On the corners he was in life and of life. The world was going on and he was there to perceive it. He maintained a belligerent attitude to ward all well-dressed men. To him fine raiment was allied to weakness, and all good coats covered faint hearts. He and his order were kings, to a certain extent, over the men of untarnished clothes, because these latter dreaded, perhaps, to be either killed or laughed at. Above all things he despised obvious Christians and ciphers with the chrysanthe- MAGGIE. 3! mums of aristocracy in their buttonholes. He considered himself above both of these classes. He was afraid of nothing. When he had a dollar in his pocket his satisfaction with existence was the greatest thing in the world. So, eventually, he felt obliged to work. His father died and his mother's years were divided up into periods of thirty days. He became a truck driver. There was given to him the charge of a painstaking pair of horses and a large rattling truck. He in vaded the turmoil and tumble of the down town streets, and learned to breathe maledic tory defiance at the police, who occasionally used to climb up, drag him from his perch, and punch him. In the lower part of the city he daily in volved himself in hideous tangles. If he and his team chanced to be in the rear he pre served a demeanour of serenity, crossing his legs and bursting forth into yells when foot passengers took dangerous dives beneath the 32 MAGGIE. noses of his champing horses. He smoked his pipe calmly, for he knew that his pay was marching on. If his charge was in the front and if it be came the key-truck of chaos, he entered terrifically into the quarrel that was raging to and fro among the drivers on their high seats, and sometimes roared oaths and vio lently got himself arrested. After a time his sneer grew so that it turned its glare upon all things. He became so sharp that he believed in nothing. To him the police were always actuated by malignant impulses, and the rest of the world was com posed, for the most part, of despicable crea tures who were all trying to take advantage of him, and with whom, in defence, he was obliged to quarrel on all possible occasions. He himself occupied a down-trodden position, which had a private but distinct element of grandeur in its isolation. The greatest cases of aggravated idiocy were, to his mind, rampant upon the front MAGGIE. 33 platforms of all of the street cars. At first his tongue strove with these beings, but he eventually became superior. In him grew a majestic contempt for those strings of street cars that followed him like intent bugs. He fell into the habit, when starting on a long journey, of fixing his eye on a high and distant object, commanding his horses to start and then going into a trance of observation. Multitudes of drivers might howl in his rear, and passengers might load him with oppro brium, but he would not awaken until some blue policeman turned red and began fren- ziedly to seize bridles and beat the soft noses of the responsible horses. When he paused to contemplate the atti tude of the police toward himself and his fellows, he believed that they were the only men in the city who had no rights. When driving about, he felt that he was held liable by the police for anything that might occur in the streets, and that he was the common 34 MAGGIE. prey of all energetic officials. In revenge, he resolved never to move out of the way of anything, until formidable circumstances or a much larger man than himself forced him to it. Foot passengers were mere pestering flies with an insane disregard for their legs and his convenience. He could not comprehend their desire to cross the streets. Their madness smote him with eternal amazement. He was continually storming at them from his throne. He sat aloft and denounced their frantic leaps, plunges, dives, and strad dles. When they would thrust at, or parry, the noses of his champing horses, making them swing their heads and move their feet, and thus disturbing a stolid, dreamy repose, he swore at the men as fools, for he himself could perceive that Providence had caused it clearly to be written that he and his team had the unalienable right to stand in the proper path of the sun chariot, and if they MAGGIE. 35 so minded, to obstruct its mission or take a wheel off. And if the god driver had had a desire to step down, put up his flame-coloured fists, and manfully dispute the right of way, he * would have probably been immediately op posed by a scowling mortal with two sets of hard knuckles. It is possible, perhaps, that this young man would have derided, in an axle-wide alley, the approach of a flying ferry boat. Yet he achieved a respect for a fire engine. As one charged toward his truck, he would drive fearfully upon a sidewalk, threatening untold people with annihilation. When an engine struck a mass of blocked trucks, split ting it into fragments, as a blow annihilates a cake of ice, Jimmie's team could usually be observed high and safe, with whole wheels, on the sidewalk. The fearful coming of the engine could break up the most intricate muddle of heavy vehicles at which the police had been storming for half an hour. 36 MAGGIE. A fire engine was enshrined in his heart as an appalling thing that he loved with a distant, doglike devotion. It had been known to overturn a street car. Those leaping horses, striking sparks from the cobbles in their forward lunge, were creatures to be ineffably admired. The clang of the gong pierced his breast like a noise of remem bered war. When Jimmie was a little boy, he began to be arrested. Before he reached a great age, he had a fair record. He developed too great a tendency to climb down from his truck and fight with other drivers. He had been in quite a num ber of miscellaneous fights, and in some general barroom rows that had become known to the police. Once he had been arrested for assaulting a Chinaman. Two women in different parts of the city, and entirely unknown to each other, caused him considerable annoyance by breaking forth, simultaneously, at fateful intervals, into wail- MAGGIE. 37 ings about marriage and support and in fants. Nevertheless, he had, on a certain star lit evening, said wonderingly and quite reverently : " Deh moon looks like h 1, don't it?" CHAPTER V. THE girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle. She grew to be a most rare and wonderful production of a tenement district, a pretty girl. None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins. The philosophers, upstairs, downstairs, and on the same floor, puzzled over it. When a child, playing and fighting with gamins in the street, dirt disguised her. At tired in tatters and grime, she went unseen. There came a time, however, when the young men of the vicinity said, " Dat John son goil is a puty good looker." About this period her brother remarked to her : " Mag, I'll tell yeh dis! See? Yeh've edder got t' go on d f toif er go t' work ! " Whereupon 38 MAGGIE. 39 she went to work, having the feminine aver sion to the alternative. By a chance, she got a position in an estab lishment where they made collars and cuffs. She received a stool and a machine in a room where sat twenty girls of various shades of yellow discontent. She perched on the stool and treadled at her machine all day, turning out collars with a name which might have been noted for its irrelevancy to anything connected with collars. At night she re turned home to her mother. Jimmie grew large enough to take the vague position of head of the family. As in cumbent of that office, he stumbled upstairs late at night, as his father had done before him. He reeled about the room, swearing at his relations, or went to sleep on the floor. The mother had gradually arisen to such a degree of fame that she could bandy words with her acquaintances among the police jus tices. Court officials called her by her first name. When she appeared they pursued a 40 MAGGIE. course which had been theirs for months. They invariably grinned, and cried out, " Hello, Mary, you here again ? " Her gray head wagged in many courts. She always be sieged the bench with voluble excuses, ex planations, apologies, and prayers. Her flam ing face and rolling eyes were a familiar sight on the island. She measured time by means of sprees, and was eternally swollen and di shevelled. One day the young man Pete, who as a lad had smitten the Devil's Row urchin in the back of the head and put to flight the antag onists of his friend Jimmie, strutted upon the scene. He met Jimmie one day on the street, promised to take him to a boxing match in Williamsburg, and called for him in the evening. Maggie observed Pete. He sat on a table in the Johnson home, and dangled his checked legs with an enticing nonchalance. His hair was curled down over his forehead in an oiled bang. His pugged MAGGIE. 4I nose seemed to revolt from contact with a bristling mustache of short, wirelike hairs. His blue double-breasted coat, edged with black braid, was buttoned close to a red puff tie, and his patent leather shoes looked like weapons. His mannerisms stamped him as a man who had a correct sense of his personal supe riority. There was valour and contempt for circumstances in the glance of his eye. He waved his hands like a man of the world who dismisses religion and philosophy, and says " Rats ! " He had certainly seen everything, and with each curl of his lip he declared that it amounted to nothing. Maggie thought he must be a very " elegant " bartender. He was telling tales to Jimmie. Maggie watched him furtively, with half- closed eyes, lit with a vague interest. " Hully gee ! Dey makes me tired," he said. " Mos' e'ry day some farmer comes in an' tries t' run d' shop. See? But d' gits t'rowed right out. I jolt dem right out in 42 MAGGIE. d' street before dey knows where dey is. See?" " Sure," said Jimmie. " Dere was a mug come in d' place d' odder day wid an idear he wus goin' t' own d' place. Hully gee ! he wus goin' t' own d' place. I see he had a still on, an' I didn' wanna giv 'im no stuff, so I says, ' Git outa here an' don' make no trouble,' I says like dat. See? ' Git outa here an' don' make no trouble ; ' like dat. ' Git outa here,' I says. See?" Jimmie nodded understandingly. Over his features played an eager desire to state the amount of his valour in a similar crisis, but the narrator proceeded. "Well, deh blokie he says: ' T' blazes wid it ! I ain' lookin' for no scrap,' he says see ? ' but,' he says, ' I'm 'spectable cit'zen an' I wanna drink, an' quick, too.' See? ' Aw, goahn!' I says, like dat. 'Aw, goahn,' I says. See ? * Don' make no trouble,' I says, like dat. 'Don' make no trouble.' See? MAGGIE. 43 Den d' mug he squared off an* said he was fine as silk wid his dukes see ? an' he wanned a drink quick. Dat's what he said. See ? " " Sure," repeated Jimmie. Pete continued. "Say, I jes' jumped d' bar, an' d' way I plunked dat blokie was outa sight. See? Dat's right! In d' jaw ! See? Hully gee ! he t'rowed a spittoon true d' front windee. Say, I taut I'd drop dead. But d' boss, he comes in after, an' he says : * Pete, yens done jes' right ! Yeh've gota keep order, an' it's all right.' See ? < It's all right,' he says. Dat's what he said." The two held a technical discussion. " Dat bloke was a dandy," said Pete, in conclusion, " but he hadn' oughta made no trouble. Dat's what I says t' dem : ' Don' come in here an* make no trouble,' I says, like dat. 'Don' make no trouble.' See?" As Jimmie and his friend exchanged tales descriptive of their prowess, Maggie leaned back in the shadow. Her eyes dwelt wonder- ingly and rather wistfully upon Pete's face. 4 44 MAGGIE. The broken furniture, grimy walls, and gen eral disorder and dirt of her home of a sudden appeared before her and began to take a po tential aspect. Pete's aristocratic person looked as if it might soil. She looked keenly at him, occasionally wondering if he was feeling contempt. But Pete seemed to be enveloped in reminiscence. " Hully gee ! " said he, " dose mugs can't phase me. Dey knows I kin wipe up d' street wid any tree of dem." When he said, "Ah, what d' h 1 ! " his voice was burdened with disdain for the inevi table and contempt for anything that fate might compel him to endure. Maggie perceived that here was the ideal man. Her dim thoughts were often searching for far away lands where the little hills sing together in the morning. Under the trees of her dream-gardens there had always walked a lover. CHAPTER VI. PETE took note of Maggie. "Say, Mag, I'm stuck on yer shape. It's outa sight," he said, parenthetically, with an affable grin. As he became aware that she was listen ing closely, he grew still more eloquent in his descriptions of various happenings in his career. It appeared that he was invincible in fights. " Why," he said, referring to a man with whom he had had a misunderstanding, " dat mug scrapped like a dago. Dat's right. He was dead easy. See? He tau't he was a scrapper. But he foun' out diff ent. Hully gee!" He walked to and fro in the small room, which seemed then to grow even smaller 45 46 MAGGIE, and unfit to hold his dignity, the attribute of a supreme warrior. That swing of the shoulders which had frozen the timid when he was but a lad had increased with his growth and education in the ratio of ten to one. It, combihed with the sneer upon his mouth, told mankind that there was nothing in space which could appall him. Maggie marvelled at him and surrounded him with greatness. She vaguely tried to calculate the altitude of the pinnacle from which he must have looked down upon her. " I met a chump deh odder day way up in deh city," he said. " I was goin' teh see a frien' of mine. When I was a-crossin' deh street deh chump runned plump inteh me, an* den he turns aroun' an' says, ' Yer insolen* ruffin ! ' he says, like dat. ' Oh, gee ! ' I says, ' oh, gee ! git off d' eart' ! ' I says, like dat. See ? ' Git off d' eart' ! ' like dat. Den deh blokie he got wild. He says I was a con- tempt'ble scoun'el, er somethin' like dat, an' he says I was doom' teh everlastin' pe'dition, MAGGIE. 47 er somethin' like dat. ' Gee ! ' I says, ' gee ! Yer joshin' me,' I says. ' Yer joshin' me.' An* den I slugged 'im. See?" With Jimmie in his company, Pete de parted in a sort of a blaze of glory from the Johnson home. Maggie, leaning from the window, watched him as iie walked down the street. Here was a formidable man who disdained the strength of a world full of fists. Here was one who had contempt for brass-clothed power; one whose knuckles could ring de fiantly against the granite of law. He was a knight. The two men went from under the glim mering street lamp and passed into shadows. Turning, Maggie contemplated the dark, dust-stained walls, and the scant and crude furniture of her home. A clock, in a splin tered and battered oblong box of varnished wood, she suddenly regarded as an abomina tion. She noted that it ticked raspingly. The almost vanished flowers in the carpet 48 MAGGIE. pattern, she conceived to be newly hideous. Some faint attempts which she had made with blue ribbon to freshen the appearance of a dingy curtain, she now saw to be piteous. She wondered what Pete dined on. She reflected upon the collar-and-cuff fac tory. It began to appear to her mind as a dreary place of endless grinding. Pete's ele gant occupation brought him, no doubt, into contact with people who had money and man ners. It was probable that he had a large acquaintance with pretty girls. He must have great sums of money to spend. To her the earth was composed of hard ships and insults. She felt instant admiration for a man who openly defied it. She thought that if the grim angel of death should clutch his heart, Pete would shrug his shoulders and say, " Oh, ev'ryt'ing goes." She anticipated that he would come again shortly. She spent some of her week's pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for a lambrequin. She made it with infinite care, MAGGIE. 49 and hung it to the slightly careening mantel over the stove in the kitchen. She studied it with painful anxiety from different points in the room. She wanted it to look well on Sunday night when, perhaps, Jimmie's friend would come. On Sunday night, however, Pete did not appear. Afterward the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation. She was now con vinced that Pete was superior to admiration for lambrequins. A few evenings later Pete entered with fascinating innovations in his apparel. As she had seen him twice and he wore a different suit each time, Maggie had a dim impression that his wardrobe was prodigious. " Say, Mag," he said, " put on yer bes' duds Friday night an' I'll take yehs t' d* show. See?" He spent a few moments in flourishing his clothes, and then vanished without having glanced at the lambrequin. Over the eternal collars and cuffs in the 5Q MAGGIE. factory Maggie spent the most of three days in making imaginary sketches of Pete and his daily environment. She imagined some half dozen women in love with him, and thought he must lean dangerously toward an indefi nite one, whom she pictured as endowed with great charms of person, but with an alto gether contemptible disposition. She thought he must live in a blare of pleasure. He had friends and people who were afraid of him. She saw the golden glitter of the place where Pete was to take her. It would be an entertainment of many hues and many melodies, where she was afraid she might ap pear small and mouse coloured. Her mother drank whisky all Friday morning. With lurid face and tossing hair she cursed and destroyed furniture all Friday afternoon. When Maggie came home at half- past six her mother lay asleep amid the wreck of chairs and a table. Fragments of various household utensils were scattered MAGGIE. 5 1 about the floor. She had vented some phase of drunken fury upon the lambrequin. It lay in a bedraggled heap in the corner. *' Hah ! " she snorted, sitting up suddenly, "where yeh been? Why don' yeh come home earlier? Been loafin' 'round d' streets. Yer gettin' t' be a reg'lar devil." When Pete arrived Maggie, in a worn black dress, was waiting for him in the midst of a floor strewn with wreckage. The curtain at the window had been pulled by a heavy hand and hung by one tack, dangling to and fro in the draught through the cracks at the sash. The knots of blue ribbons appeared like violated flowers. The fire in the stove had gone out. The displaced lids and open doors showed heaps of sullen gray ashes. The remnants of a meal, ghastly, lay in a cor ner. Maggie's mother, stretched on the floor, blasphemed and gave her daughter a bad name. CHAPTER VII. AN orchestra of yellow silk women and bald-headed men, on an elevated stage near the centre of a great green-hued hall, played a popular waltz. The place was crowded with people grouped about little tables. A battalion of waiters slid among the throng, carrying trays of beer glasses and making change from the inexhaustible vaults of their trousers pockets. Little boys, in the cos tumes of French chefs, paraded up and down the irregular aisles vending fancy cakes. There was a low rumble of conversation and a subdued clinking of glasses. Clouds of to bacco smoke rolled and wavered high in air about the dull gilt of the chandeliers. The vast crowd had an air throughout of having just quitted labour. Men with cal- 52 MAGGIE. 53 loused hands, and attired in garments that showed the wear of an endless drudging for a living, smoked their pipes contentedly and spent five, ten, or perhaps fifteen cents for beer. There was a mere sprinkling of men who smoked cigars purchased elsewhere. The great body of the crowd was composed of people who showed that all day they strove with their hands. Quiet Germans, with may be their wives and two or three children, sat listening to the music, with the expressions of happy cows. An occasional party of sail ors from a war ship, their faces pictures of sturdy health, spent the earlier hours of the evening at the small round tables. Very in frequent tipsy men, swollen with the value of their opinions, engaged their companions in earnest and confidential conversation. In the balcony, and here and there below, shone the impassive faces of women. The nationalities of the Bowery beamed upon the stage from all directions. Pete walked aggressively up a side aisle 54 MAGGIE. and took seats with Maggie at a table be neath the balcony. " Two beehs ! " Leaning back, he regarded with eyes of superiority the scene before them. This atti tude affected Maggie strongly. A man who - could regard such a sight with indifference must be accustomed to very great things. It was obvious that Pete had visited this place many times before, and was very fami liar with it. -A knowledge of this fact made Maggie feel little and new. He was extremely gracious and attentive. He displayed the consideration of a cultured gentleman who knew what was due. " Say, what's eatin' yeh ? Bring d' lady a big glass ! What use is dat pony ? " " Don't be fresh, now," said the waiter, with some warmth, as he departed. " Ah, git off d' eart' ! " said Pete, after the other's retreating form, Maggie perceived that Pete brought forth all his elegance and all his knowledge of MAGGIE. 55 high-class customs for her benefit. Her heart warmed as she reflected upon his condescen sion. The orchestra of yellow silk women and bald-headed men gave vent to a few bars of anticipatory music, and a girl, in a pink dress with short skirts, galloped upon the stage. She smiled upon the throng as if in acknowl edgment of a warm welcome, and began to walk to and fro, making profuse gesticulations, and singing, in brazen soprano tones, a song the words of which were inaudible. When she broke into the swift rattling measures of a chorus some half-tipsy men near the stage joined in the rollicking refrain, and glasses were pounded rhythmically upon the tables. People leaned forward to watch her and to try to catch the words of the song. When she vanished there were long rollings of ap plause. Obedient to more anticipatory bars, she reappeared amid the half-suppressed cheer ing of the tipsy men. The orchestra plunged 56 MAGGIE. into dance music, and the laces of the dancer fluttered and flew in the glare of gas jets. She divulged the fact that she was attired in some half dozen skirts. It was patent that any one of them would have proved ade quate for the purpose for which skirts are in tended. An occasional man bent forward, in tent upon the pink stockings. Maggie won dered at the splendour of the costume and lost herself in calculations of the cost of the silks and laces. The dancer's smile of enthusiasm was turned for ten minutes upon the faces of her audience. In the finale she fell into some of those grotesque attitudes which were at the time popular among the dancers in the the atres uptown, giving to the Bowery public the diversions of the aristocratic theatre-going public at reduced rates. " Say, Pete," said Maggie, leaning forward, " dis is great." "Sure!" said Pete, with proper compla cence. MAGGIE. 57 A ventriloquist followed the dancer. He held two fantastic dolls on his knees. He made them sing mournful ditties and say funny things about geography and Ireland. " Do dose little men talk ? " asked Mag gie. " Naw," said Pete, " it's some big jolly. See?" Two girls, set down on the bills as sisters, came forth and sang a duet which is heard occasionally at concerts given under church auspices. They supplemented it with a dance, which, of course, can never be seen at con certs given under church auspices. After they had retired, a woman of debata ble age sang a negro melody. The chorus necessitated some grotesque waddlings sup posed to be an imitation of a plantation darky, under the influence, probably, of music and the moon. The audience was just enthu siastic enough over it to have her return and sing a sorrowful lay, whose lines told of a mother's love, and a sweetheart who waited, 58 MAGGIE. and a young man who was lost at sea under harrowing circumstances. From the faces of a score or so in the crowd the self-contained look faded. Many heads were bent forward with eagerness and sympathy. As the last distressing sentiment of the piece was brought forth, it was greeted by the kind of applause which rings as sincere. As a final effort, the singer rendered some verses which described a vision of Britain an nihilated by America, and Ireland bursting her bonds. A carefully prepared climax was reached in the last line of the last verse, when the singer threw out her arms and cried, " The star-spangled banner." Instantly a great cheer swelled from the throats of this assemblage of the masses, most of them of foreign birth. There was a heavy rumble of booted feet thumping the floor. Eyes gleamed with sudden fire, and calloused hands waved frantically in the air. After a few moments' rest, the orchestra played noisily, and a small fat man burst out MAGGIE. 59 upon the stage. He began to roar a song and to stamp back and forth before the footlights, wildly waving a silk hat and throwing leers broadcast. He made his face into fantastic grimaces until he looked like a devil on a Jap anese kite. The crowd laughed gleefully. His short, fat legs were never still a moment. He shouted and roared and bobbed his shock of red wig until the audience broke out in ex cited applause. Pete did not pay much attention to the progress of events upon the stage. He was drinking beer and watching Maggie. Her cheeks were blushing with excitement and her eyes were glistening. She drew deep breaths of pleasure. No thoughts of the at mosphere of the collar-and-cuff factory came to her. With the final crash of the orchestra they jostled their way to the sidewalk in the crowd. Pete took Maggie's arm and pushed a way for her, offering to fight with a man or two. They reached Maggie's home at a late 60 MAGGIE. hour and stood for a moment in front of the gruesome doorway. " Say, Mag," said Pete, " give us a kiss for takin* yeh t' d' show, will yer ? " Maggie laughed, as if startled, and drew away from him. " Naw, Pete," she said, "dat wasn't in it." " Ah, why wasn't it ? " urged Pete. The girl retreated nervously. " Ah, go ahn ! " repeated he. Maggie darted into the hall, and up the stairs. She turned and smiled at him, then disappeared. Pete walked slowly down the street. He had something of an astonished expression upon his features. He paused under a lamp post and breathed a low breath of surprise. " Gee ! " he said, " I wonner if I've been played fer a duffer." CHAPTER VIII. As thoughts of Pete came to Maggie's mind, she began to have an intense dislike for all of her dresses. " What ails yeh ? What makes ye be allus fixin' and fussin'?" her mother would fre quently roar at her. She began to note with more interest the well-dressed women she met on the avenues. She envied elegance and soft palms. She craved those adornments of person which she saw every day on the street, conceiving them to be allies of vast importance to women. Studying faces, she thought many of the women and girls she chanced to meet smiled with serenity as though forever cherished and watched over by those they loved. The air in the collar-and-cuff establishment 61 62 MAGGIE. strangled her. She knew she was gradually and surely shrivelling in the hot, stuffy room. The begrimed windows rattled incessantly from the passing of elevated trains. The place was filled with a whirl of noises and odours. She became lost in thought as she looked at some of the grizzled women in the room, mere mechanical contrivances sewing seams and grinding out, with heads bent over their work, tales of imagined or real girlhood hap piness, or of past drunks, or the baby at home, and unpaid wages. She wondered how long her youth would endure. She began to see the bloom upon her cheeks as something of value. She imagined herself, in an exasperating future, as a scrawny woman with an eternal grievance. She thought Pete to be a very fastidious person concerning the appearance of women. She felt that she should love to see some body entangle their fingers in the oily beard MAGGIE. 63 of the fat foreigner who owned the establish ment. He was a detestable creature. He wore white socks with low shoes. He sat all day delivering orations in the depths of a cushioned chair. His pocketbook deprived them of the power of retort. " What do you sink I pie fife dolla a week for? Play? No, py tamn ! " Maggie was anxious for a friend to whom she could talk about Pete. She would have liked to discuss his admirable mannerisms with a reliable mutual friend. At home, she found her mother often drunk and always raving. It seemed that the world had treated this woman very badly, and she took a deep re venge upon such portions of it as came within her reach. She broke furniture as if she were at last getting her rights. She swelled with virtuous indignation as she carried the lighter articles of household use, one by one, under the shadows of the three gilt balls, where Hebrews chained them with chains of in terest. 64 MAGGIE. Jimmie came when he was obliged to by circumstances over which he had no control. His well-trained legs brought him stagger ing home and put him to bed some nights when he would rather have gone elsewhere. Swaggering Pete loomed like a golden sun to Maggie. He took her to a dime museum where rows of meek freaks aston ished her. She contemplated their deform ities with awe and thought them a sort of chosen tribe. Pete, racking his brains for amusement, discovered the Central Park Menagerie and the Museum of Arts. Sunday afternoons would sometimes find them at these places. Pete did not appear to be particularly in terested in what he saw. He stood around looking heavy, while Maggie giggled in glee. Once at the menagerie he went into a trance of admiration before the spectacle of a very small monkey threatening to thrash a cageful because one of them had pulled his MAGGIE. 65 tail and he had not wheeled about quickly enough to discover who did it. Ever after Pete knew that monkey by sight and winked at him, trying to induce him to fight with other and larger monkeys. At the museum, Maggie said, " Dis is outa sight ! " "Aw, rats!" said Pete; "wait till next summer an' I'll take yehs to a picnic." While the girl wandered in the vaulted rooms, Pete occupied himself in returning stony stare for stony stare, the appalling scrutiny of the watchdogs of the treasures. Occasionally he would remark in loud tones, " Dat jay has got glass eyes," and sentences of the sort. When he tired of this amusement he would go to the mummies and moralize over them. Usually he submitted with silent dignity to all that he had to go through, but at times he was goaded into comment. "Aw!" he demanded once. "Look at all dese little jugs ! Hundred jugs in a row ! 66 MAGGIE. Ten rows in a case, an' 'bout a t'ousand cases ! What d' blazes use is dem ? " In the evenings of week days he often took her to see plays in which the dazzling heroine was rescued from the palatial home of her treacherous guardian by the hero with the beautiful sentiments. The latter spent most of his time out at soak in pale-green snow storms, busy with a nickel-plated re volver rescuing aged strangers from vil lains. Maggie lost herself in sympathy with the wanderers swooning in snow storms beneath happy-hued church windows, while a choir within sang " Joy to the World." To Maggie and the rest of the audience this was tran scendental realism. Joy always within, and they, like the actor, inevitably without. Viewing it, they hugged themselves in ecstatic pity of their imagined or real con dition. The girl thought the arrogance and gran- ite-heartedness of the magnate of the play MAGGIE. 67 were very accurately drawn. She echoed the maledictions that the occupants of the gallery showered on this individual when his lines compelled him to expose his extreme selfishness. Shady persons in the audience revolted from the pictured villainy of the drama. With untiring zeal they hissed vice and ap plauded virtue. Unmistakably bad men evinced an apparently sincere admiration for virtue. The loud gallery was over whelmingly with the unfortunate and the op pressed. They encouraged the struggling hero with cries, and jeered the villain, hoot ing and calling attention to his whiskers. When anybody died in the pale-green snow storms, the gallery mourned. They sought out the painted misery and hugged it as akin. In the hero's erratic march from poverty in the first act, to wealth and triumph in the final one, in which he forgives all the enemies that he has left, he was assisted by the gallery, 68 MAGGIE. which applauded his generous and noble senti ments and confounded the speeches of his op ponents by making irrelevant but very sharp remarks. Those actors who were cursed with the parts of villains were confronted at every turn by the gallery. If one of them rendered lines containing the most subtile distinctions between right and wrong, the gal lery was immediately aware that the actor meant wickedness, and denounced him ac cordingly. The last act was a triumph for the hero, poor and of the masses, the representative of the audience, over the villain and the rich man, his pockets stuffed with bonds, his heart packed with tyrannical purposes, imperturb able amid suffering. Maggie always departed with raised spirits from these melodramas. She rejoiced at the way in which the poor and virtuous eventu ally overcame the wealthy and wicked. The theatre made her think. She wondered if the culture and refinement she had seen imitated, MAGGIE. 69 perhaps grotesquely, by the heroine on the stage, could be acquired by a girl who lived in a tenement house and worked in a shirt factory. CHAPTER IX. A GROUP of urchins were intent upon the side door of a saloon. Expectancy gleamed from their eyes. They were twisting their fingers in excitement. " Here she comes ! " yelled one of them suddenly. The group of urchins burst instantly asun der and its individual fragments were spread in a wide, respectable half circle about the point of interest. The saloon door opened with a crash, and the figure of a woman ap peared upon the threshold. Her gray hair fell in knotted masses about her shoulders. Her face was crimsoned and wet with per spiration. Her eyes had a rolling glare. '* Not a cent more of me money will yehs ever get not a red ! I spent me money here 70 MAGGIE. ji fer free years, an' now yehs tells me yeh'll sell me no more stuff ! Go fall on yerself, John nie Murckre ! ' Disturbance ? ' Disturbance be blowed ! Go fall on yerself, John- nie ' The door received a kick of exasperation from within, and the woman lurched heavily out on the sidewalk. The gamins in the half circle became vio lently agitated. They began to dance about and hoot and yell and jeer. A wide dirty grin spread over each face. The woman made a furious dash at a par ticularly outrageous cluster of little boys. They laughed delightedly, and scampered off a short distance, calling out to her over their shoulders. She stood tottering on the curb stone and thundered at them.