Lily begins her hospital reminiscences.  “I had typhoy fever—­I was in the childun’s ward awful long, and one night they turned down the lights—­it was just evening—­and a man came in and he took one of the babies up in his arms, and we all said, ’What’s the row?  What’s the row?’ and he says ‘Hush, the baby’s dead.’  And out in the hall there was something white, and he carried the baby and put it in the white thing, and the baby had a doll that could talk, and he put that in the white thing too, right alongside o’ the dead baby.  Another time,” Lily goes on, “there was a baby in a crib alongside of mine, and one day he was takin’ his bottle, and all of a suddint he choked; and he kept on chokin’ and then he died, and he was still takin’ his bottle.”

Lily is five.  I see in her and in her companions a familiarity not only with the mysteries but with the stern realities of life.  They have an understanding look at the mention of death, drunkenness and all domestic difficulties or irregularities.  Their vocabulary and conversation image the violent and brutal side of existence—­the only one with which they are acquainted.

At bedtime I find my way upward through dark and narrow stairs that open into a long room with a slanting roof.  It serves as nursery and parlour.  In the dull light of a stove and an oil lamp four or five women are seated with babies on their knees.  They have the meek look of those who doom themselves to acceptance of misfortune, the flat, resigned figures of the overworked.  Their loose woolen jackets hang over their gaunt shoulders; their straight hair is brushed hard and smooth against high foreheads.  One baby lies a comfortable bundle in its mother’s arms; one is black in the face after a spasm of coughing; one howls its woes through a scarlet mask.  The corners of the room are filled with the drones—­those who “work for a bite of grub.”  The cook, her washing done, has piled her aching bones in a heap; her drawn face waits like an indicator for some fresh signal to a new fatigue.  Mary, the woman-of-all-work, who has spent more than one night within a prison’s walls, has long ago been brutalized by the persistence of life in spite of crime; her gray hair ripples like sand under receding waves; her profile is strong and fine, but her eyes have a film of misery over them—­dull and silent, they deaden her face.  And Jennie, the charwoman, is she a cripple or has toil thus warped her body?  Her arms, long and withered, swing like the broken branches of a gnarled tree; her back is twisted and her head bowed toward earth.  A stranger to rest, she seems a mechanical creature wound up for work and run down in the middle of a task.