I have allowed for my food exactly one dollar a week and allow the same
now. I go down to the Washington Market early in the morning. I revel
in the sight of the fresh vegetables, of the flowers and fruits. The
market-people know me now, and many a gift-flower I have brought back
with me to my room, and several times a pot of herbs or spring bulbs;
now and then a few sprays of parsley or thyme. These I look upon as my
commission! Without leaving the market, I buy a loaf of bread for ten
cents; a knuckle of veal, or a beef bone, a pound and a half of
sausages, or a pound of salt pork, for fifteen cents; I vary my
purchases from time to time that I may have variety. Ten cents for
vegetables--I vary these, also, as much as possible; these, with a
pound of rice, nine cents, a half a pound of butter, eighteen cents,
and a quart of beans for another ten cents, give me satisfying
combinations. When eggs are cheap I vary this diet with them, lettuce
and bacon. I buy things that are cheapest in their season. In summer,
I drop out all meat and substitute milk. I allow myself one pound of
sugar a week; no tea, no coffee; the city water is the only thing of
which I can have enough free. With what is left of my hundred
cents,--for in my art it is the cents with which I reckon, not
dollars,--I buy fruit in its season, a bit of cheese, sometimes even a
Philadelphia squab! At times, they are cheaper than meat in the
Market. In the season I can get one for ten cents.
I have an extra treat when I buy that last, for the old man at the
poultry stall, who draws the chickens and various fowl, is a model from
the old Italian masters. An Italian himself, he speaks little English,
wears a skull cap and, to my delight, looks like one of Fra Angelico's
saints. I learn all this from the Metropolitan Museum, and apply it in
the Washington Market!
At times I haunt the fish stalls, select good sea food for a change,
and am rewarded by the play of color on the zinc counters--the mottled
green of live lobsters, the scarlet of boiled ones, the silver and rose
of pompano, the pomegranate of salmon. I have stood by the half hour
to watch the slow-moving turtles, the scuttling crabs in the tanks. I
have good friends throughout the Market--men and women. They confide
in me at times, like the cod-and-hake man, dealer in dried fish, who
told me he had "a girl once down on Cape Cod". He seemed relieved by
this confession. He was serving me at the time, and his two hundred or
more pounds, his red face and his cordiality were delightful. My
butter-egg-and-cheese man also confides to me that he is a commuter;
has purchased a home on the instalment plan; has three children, and
his wife runs a private laundry.
What remains of the four dollars after the weekly bills are paid, I lay
aside for clothes. I make my own shirt waists. It took me eleven
months to earn a good skirt of brown Panama cloth; but it has lasted me
four years.
I think I live well, _considering_; but, in living thus, there is no
denying I cross the bridge of mere sustenance every day, and am obliged
to burn my bridge behind me! I don't like it--but am thankful for
work. I 'm not beneath adding to my reserve fund five cents at a time.
Dec. 18, 1908. They 're nice boys, the theological students--but
queer, some of them. I 've watched different sets of them come and go
during these six years. Two or three have attempted to make a little
love to me; a few have adopted me--so they said--for their sister. I
'm forgotten with their graduation and their flitting! One or two are
really friends; they 're younger than I, of course, and I can patronize
and quiz them.
Johnny is my favorite. There is little theological nonsense about him,
and there is an inquisitive disposition to see New York and make the
most of his time here. He 's from the north part of the state; likes
books, likes people, likes a good time, whenever he can get it, on his
limited income to which he adds by helping the basement barber two days
in the week, canvassing for books in the summer, and on Saturdays
waiting on the patrons of a book stall in a corridor of one of the big
hotels.
Taken altogether, Johnny is a man who has not as yet found his calling,
although he is anchored for the present, through affection for his
father, to "Chelsea" and a career that, at times, irks him. We 've had
many a good talk about this matter. I tell him he 's not dragging
anchor, but weighing it.
I like to see New York through Johnny's eyes--Adirondack eyes, keen,
honest, and blue; they take in all the metropolitan sights, from the
Hippodrome, to the Bowery vaudevilles and the Cathedral of St. John.
It's fun to "do" the city with him, with no expense except car fares.
Jan. 1909. Johnny and I stood outside the Metropolitan Opera House
this evening, to see the hodge-podge of carriages and automobiles
arrive with their contents: the women who toil not, neither do they
spin anything except financial webs for men's undoing. It was a queer
sight! Hundreds of women passed me. As I looked at them, I saw the
same long, pointed, manicured nails, the same jewelled fingers, the
incurving fronts, the distorted busts, the lined and rouged faces--like
those I loathed so when I first came to this city. I asked myself,
"What's the difference between the two kinds? Is it money alone that
makes it?"
"But are there two kinds?" I was asking myself again, when Johnny, who
has an eye for good clothes on man and woman, called my attention to a
woman's opera cloak. It was worth a man's ransom. From a deep yoke of
Russian sable depended the long cape of pale green satin covered with
graduated flounces, from eight to fourteen inches deep, of Venetian
point. And taking in all this, I saw--
Well, I don't know that I dare to set down in words, even for my own
enlightenment, what I saw in that Vision. But, suddenly, all the rich
robings, opera cloaks, clinging gowns of silk, velvet and chiffon, the
diamond tiaras, the jewelled necklaces, the French lingerie even--all
dropped from every one in that procession; and there, on a New York
sidewalk, in the harsh glare of electric lights, amidst the hiss and
cranking of their automobiles, the clank of silver-mounted harness and
the champing of bits, the shouts and calls and myriad city noises, I
saw them for what they really are:--women, like unto all other women;
women made originally for the mates of men, for mothers, for
burden-bearers, with prehensile hands to grasp, then lead and uplift,
and so aid in the work of the world.
And what more I saw in the Vision I may scarcely write down; for,
therein, I was shown for these same women both unfathomable depths and
scarce attainable heights, both degradation and transfiguration, the
human bestial and the humanly divine--the Vampire, the Angel.
And I was shown in that Vision the Calvaries of maternity common to
all, whether the conception be immaculate, so-called if within the law,
or maculate, so-called if without the law. I saw, also, the
Gethsemanes of motherhood common to all. I saw, moreover, the three
Dolorous Ways which their feet--and the feet of all women, because
women--are treading, have ever trod, must ever tread, that the seed
which shall propagate the Race may be trodden deep for germination.
Moreover, I saw in that Vision the women treading the seed in the Ways.
One of the Ways was stony, and those therein walked with bleeding feet
for their labor was in vain; the land was sterile. And the second was
deeply rutted with sand, and those therein labored heavily with sweat
and toil; the fruition was but for a day. And the third Way was heavy
with deeply-furrowed fertile soil, and those that trod it toiled long
and late that the seed might not fail of abundant harvest.
Furthermore, I saw that every woman was treading one of these three
Ways; and silk, and chiffon, or velvet gown, opera cloaks of sable and
satin, diamond tiaras and jewelled necklaces could avail them naught.
Trammelled by these or by rags--it matters not which--they must tread
the Ways.
I pressed my hand over my eyes to clear them of this Vision; for, at
last, I understood. I knew that I, too, being a woman, must tread one
of the three Dolorous Ways even as my mother had trodden one before me.
But which?