in anxiety and awake in fear. It is apt to
interfere with the circulation of the vital ether of happiness in the
young, which is damaging to the complexion of the soul. It is bitter,
when you are middle-aged and unsuccessful, to go to sleep in
self-reproach and awake unexonerated. It is likely to cause
fermentation in the sweetest nature; it is certain to breed gray hairs
and a premature longing for death. It is pitiful, if you are the
home-keeping mother of an impoverished family, to drop in your traces
helpless at night, and awake unstrengthened in the early morning. The
haunting consciousness of rooted poverty is an improper bedfellow for
a woman who still bears. It has been known to induce physical and
spiritual malformations in the babies she nurses.

It did require strength to lift the burden of life, in the gray
morning, on Dover Street; especially on Saturday morning. Perhaps my
mother's pack was the heaviest to lift. To the man of the house,
poverty is a bulky dragon with gripping talons and a poisonous breath;
but he bellows in the open, and it is possible to give him knightly
battle, with the full swing of the angry arm that cuts to the enemy's
vitals. To the housewife, want is an insidious myriapod creature that
crawls in the dark, mates with its own offspring, breeds all the year
round, persists like leprosy. The woman has an endless, inglorious
struggle with the pest; her triumphs are too petty for applause, her
failures too mean for notice. Care, to the man, is a hound to be kept
in leash and mastered. To the woman, care is a secret parasite that
infects the blood.

Mrs. Hutch, of course, was only one symptom of the disease of poverty,
but there were times when she seemed to me the sharpest tooth of the
gnawing canker. Surely as sorrow trails behind sin, Saturday evening
brought Mrs. Hutch. The landlady did not trail. Her movements were
anything but impassive. She climbed the stairs with determination and
landed at the top with emphasis. Her knock on the door was clear
sharp, unfaltering; it was impossible to pretend not to hear it. Her
"Good-evening" announced business; her manner of taking a chair
suggested the throwing-down of the gauntlet. Invariably she asked for
my father, calling him Mr. Anton, and refusing to be corrected; almost
invariably he was not at home--was out looking for work. Had he left
her the rent? My mother's gentle "No, ma'am" was the signal for the
storm. I do not want to repeat