"

"They give her nine months." (Calcutta is the roughest settlement round
here.) "Why, that gyrl wars her hair cut short, and she shoots and cuts
like a man. She drew her knife on a man last week--cut his face all up
and into his side through his lung. Tried to pass as she was his wife,
but when they had her up, ma'am, they proved she had been three men's
wives and he four gyrl's husbands. He liked to died of the cut. They've
given her nine months, but he ain't the only man that bears her marks.
Over to Calcutta it's the knife and the gun at a wink. This yere was an
awful pretty gyrl. My Min seed her peekin' out from behind the loom in
the weave-room, thought she was a boy, and said: 'Who's that yere pretty
boy peekin' at me?' And that gyrl told Min that she couldn't help knife
the men, they all worried on her so! 'Won't never leave me alone; I jest
have to draw on 'em; there ain't no other way.'"...

For the annals of morality and decency do not take up this faithful
account and picture the cotton-mill village. You will not find it in
these scenes drawn from the life as it is at this hour, as it is
portrayed by the words that the very people themselves will pour into
your ears. Under the walls of Calcutta Negroes are engaged in laying
prospective flower beds, so that the thirteen-hour workers may look out
from time to time and see the forms of flowers. On the other side rise
some twenty shanties. These houses of Calcutta village are very small,
built from the roughest unpainted boards. Here it is, in this little
settlement, that the knife comes flashing out at a word--that the women
shoot as well as men, and perhaps more quickly.

* * * * *

"Richmond aint so bad as the other!" I can hear Mrs. Foster drawl out
this recommendation to us. "They ain't so much chills here. We dun move
up from town first; had to--too high rents for we-all; now we dun stay
hyar. Why, some of the gyrls and boys works to Granton and bo'ds hyar;
seems like it's mo' healthy."

Moving, ambulant population! tramping from hill to hill, from sand-heap
to sand-heap to escape the slow or quick death, to prolong the toiling,
bitter existence--pilgrims of eternal hope; born in the belief, in the
sane and wholesome creed that, no matter what the horror is, no matter
what the burden's weight must be, _one must live_! It takes a great
deal to wake in these inexpressive, indifferent faces illumination of
interest. At wha