"Yes, there is Tom Ticket. I wonder what he has been doing."
"Nothing new, of course! They wanted a carpenter down here, so they sent
up for him. The carpenter was discharged the other day, and I heard one
of the men say they'd have another down in a few days,--they knew just
where to lay their hands on one of the best in the city."
"Do you mean to say, Lissett, that they can have a man brought down here
a prisoner, because they want a carpenter?" I asked.
"Yes, ma'am. They know he drinks, and can prove it, but they don't want
too many at a time, so they let him run till they want him; then, they
have him taken up, and fetched down here."
My face must have expressed the utter abhorrence I felt of such work. O
let us cleanse our whited sepulchres! Is there not work enough within
our own borders to employ our Christian men and reforming women! We need
not go abroad for work with such festering sores in our own vitals. For
very shame let us cleanse these places!--were my thoughts.
Here was another occasion for glib Annie O'Brien to hold forth; and such
occasions were never slighted by her.
"Half that come in here," she said, "are not doing anything when they
come. My coming, when I came, was a put up job."
"What do you mean by that?"
"A policeman was hired to take me up. I was sitting in a store, about
nine o'clock in the evening, when he came in and told me to follow him."
"Who put him up to it?"
"A man that kept a saloon paid him five dollars, and he did it. Any of
the policemen will take a person up for five dollars. When I came here I
wasn't doing anything out of the way; but, of course, they knew what I
had done."
"What did the saloon man want you taken up for?"
"Because I wouldn't tend for him. He had tried to get me in there, and I
wouldn't go."
"Why wouldn't you go? Wouldn't it have been better for you to earn an
honest living?"
"An honest living! I'd had to gone with any man he said if I'd gone
there, and I rather choose my own friends."
"O, Annie, how can you stand there, and tell this over? I should think
your heart would burst with grief when you think of it!"
"O pshaw! it's nothing when you get used to it!" said Lissett, and
snapping her fingers at the imagination that O'Brien had called up, she
flounced out of the room. But for all that, I saw that she choked as she
said it, and the tears came in her eyes.
"I hadn't got quite so used to it as to go to that pitch," said O'Brien.
And where are the men that make these women what they are? I asked
myself. Coolly walking the streets outside the terrors of the law. At
that moment I could have locked all of mankind in solitary, and fed them
on bread and water, without suffering one pang. Is there no help for
this state of things, that the weak suffer for the sins of the strong?
If man does not meet his punishment here he is borne on, by time, to
judgment, where he will have no power to screen his guilty acts or shift
his punishment upon the helpless.
That reflection did not satisfy me at the time. A more summary
retribution would be better suited to the sin. One that would inflict
immediate tribulation and anguish upon him, such as had fallen upon his
victims.
Annie turned again to look out of the window.
"There is but one woman taking a ride in the fancy carriage of the
government. Exercise in that carriage is excellent for dyspepsia."
"Do you know her?" asked Allen.
"No! she's a jail-bird, I know, by her looks. She's come from the
Superior Court; she'll have a long sentence. She's coming through the
kitchen."
Annie sprang down to look at her, and all of the rest followed her to
the door which stood open, into the garden, for the men to bring in the
bread for supper.
"Stand back! It isn't necessary for you to give her a welcome."
The newly arrived had her veil drawn tightly down over her face; but I
could see that she was young, and very good looking.
In the absence of the female Receiving Officer I took her from the
Clerk, and waited upon her to the reception room where she was stripped
of her own clothes, and put into a bathing-tub. When she was thoroughly
scrubbed and dried, she was arrayed in the uniform of the place, and
sent to the shop.
There her capabilities were tried, and she was assigned to the work for
which she was best adapted.
The clothes that she had taken off were carefully folded, put in a bag
by themselves, and labeled, to restore to her when she went out of the
prison.
When I returned to the kitchen, my girls had found out who the new
prisoner was, how long a sentence she had, and what was the offense for
which she had been committed.
How the facts got circulation in so short a time, was a mystery to me.