_Dear Kate_:
It is raining and I am staying in the room cause I bit my tongue last
night and I can't talk. I am sore. Sometimes I think I will never do a
good trick for a person as long as I live, and then, when the time comes
I am always Mr. Easymark. Last night I was coming along home after work
about two o'clock, and it was cold and rainy and a miserably bum night.
At the corner of Sixth Avenue I saw a fellow all sort of hunched up,
walking along as if he had a jag. As I went by him I saw it was Fred
Dennis, and he sure looked all in. He was shaking as if he had chills
and fever, and I stopped and asked him what was the matter. He said he
just come out of the hospital where he had typhoid. Between you and me,
I think he had been in the jag ward at Bellevue, but that was none of
my business, and he sure needed help. He said he was stone broke, that
he didn't have the price for a ten-cent lodging house, and he give me a
touch. First I thought I would cough, then I looked in his shifty eyes,
and I knew he would go straight to Kelly's and get a drink and take a
chance of sleeping on the floor, so I said to him, "You come up to my
room, and I will make you some hot cocoa, and you go to bed in a _bed_.
That is what you need, or you will be costing the City a funeral." I
sneaked him up to the room and had him put on that old Japanese wadded
wrapper of mine and get in bed, and I made him some hot cocoa. His teeth
chattered like they was playing a tune, but I piled all my bed clothes
on him and my winter coat and most of my clothes and when he got warm, I
went in and slept with Myrtle Seaman. She has only a single bed, and I
went to turn over in the night and fell out and bit my tongue. Say, but
it is sore. It seems to fill my whole mouth, and I spend most of my
time setting in front of the looking glass to see if the swelling is
stopped.
But my tongue ain't half as sore as I was, when I went into my room this
morning thinking I would make Fred some coffee and give him a half a
dollar, so as he could get a square meal. Now what do you think that
piker had done? He had copped everything in my room that he could hock.
He took my black bag, my winter coat, my new green silk petticoat that I
got to wear with my slit skirt, the buckles off my dancing slippers, and
the little silver frame that had Billy's picture in it. My can of cocoa
was gone and he even sneaked the bottle of milk in front of the door.
Can you beat that for nerve! Now, the next time I see a bum standing on
a corner, shaking his teeth out with the cold, he can stand there and
scatter his pearls from 14th Street to 42nd for all me.
I am just sore to-day. I have been a setting here and a thinking that
this game ain't worth it. There must be something better somewhere than
living from hand to mouth with people that would steal the pennies off
your eyes. You can't tell where you stand with any of them. They will be
good to you one minute, and the next minute do you a dirty trick. Just
like Ethel Rooney who sat up three nights running with Mamie Callahan
when she was sick, then pinched her only pair of slippers. I believe
crooks have something wrong down deep inside of them. They never do
nothing like other people. Their hearts are good, they will go to the
pen for a friend rather than peach on him, and yet that friend wouldn't
trust him alone in his room with a five dollar bill, and the women--if
they don't steal each other's money, they steal each other's fellows if
they're left around careless-like.
I sent your letter to Jim, and I told you before, I paid the storage
man. Don't get so blue, it won't be long, and I am doing everything I
can for you. You are always a kicking at me, Kate, and I am a doing the
best I know how. I am working like a dog, and I don't spend a cent for
myself more than I have to. I am a thinking of you, Kate, and I love you
even if you do seem to always have a grouch against me.
Yours,
_Nan_.