IX

_Dear Kate_:

I haven't wrote you for a long time, cause I know you will be sore at

what I am going to tell you, and I was afraid you would tell some of the

old crowd where I was, and they would queer me in some way. I have been

doing housework, Kate. Yes, I can see you throw a fit as you read it,

but it will tell you one reason why I have not been able to send you any

money the last two months. I had been dancing steady for a long time and

I got dead tired of the crowd. The bum faces and the cheap girls and the

dirty restaurants and the fresh waiters got on my nerves and it even

spoiled my work. Mrs. Smith has been after me for a long time to leave

it. She just talks to me and talks to me every time I go over there. I

got half sick and went over to Lake Rest for a couple of weeks, and I

used to lie at nights up in my room a hearing the sounds and a feeling

the quiet, and in some way it made me hate the sidewalks and the hot

dusty streets and the dance halls and the nights when I was up till

morning and the days when I was a feeling like a boiled owl. I talked it

all over with Mrs. Smith and she didn't want me to do clerking, cause I

would still have to live in a room, and it is the people in the rooming

houses she is dead sore at. She wants me to do something that will take

me away from the crowd. Then she asked me if I would be willing to do

house work. I told her I would be willing to try scrubbing, that

sometimes it seemed that any old thing was better than what I have been

doing for the last seven years. But I told her I didn't know nothing

about housework, as I don't remember ever having been in a real house

except hers. I lived in furnished rooms all my life but I was willing to

learn and it seems to me if you are only willing to try, you can learn

anything. I stayed with her two weeks, and she showed me how to cook

potatoes, to fix meat, and I think the first day I made an apple pie all

by myself, I nearly bust with pride. Why, Kate, there is a joy in just

making something. To take some apples and some flour and butter and lard

and to fix it all yourself, then take it out of the oven crisp and hot

and have some one say, "Ain't that fine"! Why, you feel you have really

_done_ something. It must be like when an artist paints a great picture.

I had _made_ something, something that is a part of me. The last week I

was there, she let me get all the meals, and if I ever marry a man, I

would want to do all the cooking myself. I don't think there could be

any bigger happiness for a woman who really loved her man, than to see

him eat the food that she had fixed with her own hands, and if I could

hear a man of mine say, "Pass me them biscuits, Nan," or "You sure can

make good gravey," well--I would have all that is coming to me. I

learned to set a table and how to put the right knives and the right

forks in the right places, and I always put a bowl of flowers in the

middle. Sometimes they was yellow nasturcheons, and I would mix them in

with leaves and put them in a big yellow bowl and they would make the

food taste better just to look at them. Often the babies and me would go

out in the fields and get great arms full of daisies and I would put

them in with some pretty ferns we had around the house, or else I would

gather red poppies, and wheat and it would make it look as if all

out-doors was a growing on the table.

Mrs. Smith showed me how to make a bed just right, and to dust and

sweep, to iron the clothes and to do all the things that women must know

if they keep a house clean. But finally she said she thought I would do,

and one day she went over town to a friend of hers that lives up in the

Bronx. What she told her I don't know, but anyway I got a job and I went

over to my room and packed my things, and I have been here two months.

It was hard at first, as I didn't know how to manage, and couldn't make

my head save my legs. But I got along somehow, although at night I used

to be so dead tired that two or three times I cried myself to sleep. The

woman ain't as nice as Mrs. Smith, she is kind of suspicious of me, and

watches me a lot, and she feels I ought to know more than I do and tells

me to do things without telling me how. But I am going to stick it out.

The main trouble is that it is devilish lonesome. At night after I get

the dishes done, there ain't no place to go except a little room which

looks out on a courtyard, and there is nothing to do and nobody to talk

to, and I set by myself trying to think things all over. Sometimes I

think I am a fool to work like a dog a whole week and only get six

dollars for it, and then again I remember all Mrs. Smith said to me, and

the nice letters she writes me telling me to be brave and that I am

doing the square thing. My afternoons off I don't take, because I don't

want to see the old crowd, and I don't know no one else. Every two weeks

I have been over to see Billy, but it costs quite a lot, and after I pay

$3.50 a week for his board, I ain't what you call a J. D. Rockefeller.

I used always to take the kid some little thing, but now it has to be so

darned little you can't see it. The woman next door has got a baby, and

she knits things for it, and I asked the woman I worked for if she would

ask the woman to learn me how to knit. She was awful nice about it, and

I bought a lot of white yarn, and nights up in my room I made Billy and

Paul each a jacket, and now I am making them some mittens, so when it

gets cold they can wear them when they play outside. Next week after I

get my pay, I am going to get some of that grey pusey yarn and make them

each a cap.

One night I got so blue I almost died, and I went downtown to see Irene

who is back from St. Louis. I had an awful good time, a lot of fellows

and girls come into Irene's room, and I sent one of the boys out for

some oysters and showed them some fine stunts I could do with the

chafing dish. They was crazy to know where I was and what I was doing

but I wouldn't tell them, as I knowed they wouldn't understand. I

suppose there is something wrong in me somewhere, but it seemed awful

nice to see all the crowd again, and hear them talk and laugh and even

the old cigarette smoke smelled good. There didn't one of them seem to

have any trouble nor have to work hard, and I thought of how they could

sleep in the morning, and how I would have to get up when my old alarm

clock went off at half past six. For a minute I thought I wouldn't go

back, then I thought of Mrs. Smith and how bad she would feel if I

didn't stick, so I said, "Oh, me for my little room," and I left the

crowd at half past ten, sort of the middle of the day for most of them.

But I ain't been unhappy, though I didn't know there was so little money

in the world. Why, it seems funny not to be able to buy anything at all.

When you look in the shop windows and see all the fluffy petticoats and

the pretty collars and the silk stockings and the fancy shoes, and you

know you can't buy one of them, it makes you feel sore all over. Why, I

think every body ought to take their hat off to a pretty girl who is

pegging along on six or eight a week, and who wants pretty things just

the same as all women do and who knows all she has got to do is to give

a little nod to get them, I say, _them_ is the people that ought to have

a statue up on that hall of fame on the Hudson.

I had to buy two maid's dresses when I come here, plain black with

little white collars and cuffs, and in the afternoon the woman makes me

wear a dinkey little cap on my head which makes my hair look curlier

than ever though I brush it down as best I can. Callers kind of looked

surprised when they see me first, I guess cause I am kind of thin now

and my eyes sort of fill my face.

Billy is looking fine. He is most as big as Paul and he has learned a

lot of things. Mr. Smith takes the kids with him in the woods and Billy

knows the names of trees and plants and can tell the Robin's call from

the Blue Bird's whistle. Mrs. Smith reads little stories to the children

and they know their A B C's already, and by the time Billy is ten, he

will have lots more book-learning than I have now.

Now don't write me a rotten letter, Kate, and don't put any of the gang

on to try to queer me nor to try and come and talk to me, cause house

work ain't no joke for a person who ain't never done nothing, and

sometimes I feel all in and something told me at the wrong time, might

make me throw the whole thing up. And I don't want to. I want to make

good if it is only at housework, and if I can, I am going to stick to it

till there's skating down below.

_Nan_.

X

_Dear Kate_:

I am back in my old room and I guess there is where I belong. I did

intend to stick, and I didn't think I would ever see this old room

again, but here I am, and guess here I will stay. You know I was getting

along real well in that place where I worked, and things got much

easier, as I kind of learned to save my steps and plan the work, and it

didn't make me so tired as it did at first. I had saved up twelve

dollars too, and was going to buy Billy's winter clothes and send you

five, then the darn thing fell. I had been over on Sunday to see Billy

and was chasing along home about half past ten at night along 33rd

Street to catch the subway, when one of them old rounders passed me by

and stuck his old face down into mine and as I didn't say nothing, he

kept chasing after me and saying something in a low voice. I pretended

I didn't hear and went on a little faster and he kept right after me.

When we got near to Fourth Avenue, he came up close to me and said,

"Don't be in such a hurry, little girl," and I didn't say nothing, then

he stuck his face right down into mine and said something, and it just

made me sick, and before I knew what I did I slapped his dirty old mouth

for him. He stood still a minute, and almost turned white and then what

do you think the piker did? He called the cop from the corner and had me

arrested for speaking to him. It was Casey who knew me and I told Casey

he was a liar, and Casey said to the man, "Are you going to court and

make a charge against this girl?" And the man says, "I am, and if you

don't take her I will have you broke." I honestly think Casey believed

me, but he couldn't do nothing, and they took me down to Jefferson

Court. I hoped I would never see that place again, but there I was with

the girls and the bums and the plain closemen and the cops and the

shister lawyers and the probation officer who knew me at once as your

sister, and I kinda felt I was up against it. But I told my story

straight to the Judge, and the man told his, and of course the Judge

took his word against mine and he fined me ten dollars or ten days. When

I thought of that ten dollars and what it meant and how hard I had saved

and scrimped for it, and how I had gone without things and that Billy

wouldn't have the winter things that he ought to have, I just lost my

head and I told the Judge he was an old fool, that if he couldn't tell a

lie from the truth, he had not orter be a setting up there like an old

brooding hen. I told him he didn't see nothing but crooks, and he

couldn't tell a crook from a decent person and then he got back at me by

saying, "_Did_ I say ten dollars or ten days, I made a mistake, I meant

ten dollars _and_ ten days," and I had to go to the Island. I don't

think I was ever so broke up in my life, it didn't seem I was getting a

square deal. I suppose I did say things I shouldn't have, cause I was so

mad I couldn't see and then I cried all night. I wrote a letter to Mrs.

Smith and told her just how it was and asked her to go and see the woman

I worked for and tell her about it and not blame me. Now, Mrs. Smith

believed me and came over to see me on the Island but that other woman

didn't believe me and went down to the night court and saw the probation

officer and I guess she got the idea you built the Jefferson Court with

your fines. Anyway, she said she didn't want me in her house no more. I

guess she is afraid I would hurt the dishes. When I got out I went up to

see her and her face was hard and nasty and she wouldn't take my word at

all. I asked her if she seen a thing out of the way for four months, if

I hadn't done my work right and if I hadn't stayed in nights and been as

good as any girl she ever had. She said "yes" to them all, but she

didn't believe in encouraging vice and she never could tell what I might

do because I come of a bad family. She got your record from A to Z and

she even knew about father and she acted as if she thought perhaps,

that all the cussedness of the family was stored up in me and might

have busted any minit.

Well, it made me all sore, and I come right down to the old room and

told Mrs. Murphy that she quite likely would have me for the rest of her

life, I had all I wanted a working. I went out that night to Kelly's

dance hall and danced till closing time trying to forget my troubles. It

did make me forget because I can dance, Kate, and if I ain't a fine dish

washer nor fit to be in somebody's kitchen, I sure can tango. I fished

out all my pretty clothes again and done them two maid's dresses up in a

wad and threw them under the bed. It is me for the slit skirt and the

high heeled slippers, and I am going to be the best dancer on Broadway

or know the difference.

Yours,

_Nan_.