ons
and things in it were infected--and how could it be otherwise
where no one had time or money or any effective means whatsoever
to combat nature's inflexible determination to breed wherever
there is a breeding spot? The last traces of civilization were
slipping from the two girls; they were sinking to a state of nature.

Even personal pride, powerful in Susan and strong in Etta
through Susan's example, was deserting them. They no longer
minded Dan's sleeping in their room. They saw him, his father,
the other members of the family in all stages of nudity and at
the most private acts; and they were seen by the Cassatts in the
same way. To avoid this was impossible, as impossible as to
avoid the parasites swarming in the bed, in the woodwork, in
cracks of ceiling, walls, floor.

The Cassatts were an example of how much the people who live in
the sheltered and more or less sunny nooks owe to their shelter
and how little to their own boasted superiority of mind and
soul. They had been a high class artisan family until a few
months before. The hard times struck them a series of quick,
savage blows, such as are commonplace enough under our social
system, intricate because a crude jumble of makeshifts, and
easily disordered because intricate. They were swept without a
breathing pause down to the bottom. Those who have always been
accustomed to prosperity have no reserve of experience or
courage to enable them to recuperate from sudden and extreme
adversity. In an amazingly short time the Cassatts had become
demoralized--a familiar illustration of how civilization is
merely a wafer-thin veneer over most human beings as yet. Over
how many is it more? They fought after a fashion; they fought
valiantly. But how would it have been possible not steadily to
yield ground against such a pitiless, powerful foe as poverty?
The man had taken to drink, to blunt outraged self-respect and
to numb his despair before the spectacle of his family's
downfall. Mrs. Cassatt was as poor a manager as the average
woman in whatever walk of life, thanks to the habit of educating
woman in the most slipshod fashion, if at all, in any other part
of the business but sex-trickery. Thus she was helpless before
the tenement conditions. She gave up, went soddenly about in
rags with an incredibly greasy and usually dangling tail of hair.

"Why don't you tie up that tail, ma?" said the son Dan, who had
ideas about neatness.

"What's the u