Her mother's milk mingled with the very water
with which she scrubbed the floors until she should return at
midnight, heated and exhausted, to feed her screaming child with
what remained within her breasts.
These are only a few of the problems connected with the lives of
the poorest people with whom the residents in a Settlement are
constantly brought in contact.
I cannot close this chapter without a reference to that gallant
company of men and women among whom my acquaintance is so large,
who are fairly indifferent to starvation itself because of their
preoccupation with higher ends. Among them are visionaries and
enthusiasts, unsuccessful artists, writers, and reformers. For
many years at Hull-House, we knew a well-bred German woman who was
completely absorbed in the experiment of expressing musical
phrases and melodies by means of colors. Because she was small
and deformed, she stowed herself into her trunk every night, where
she slept on a canvas stretched hammock-wise from the four corners
and her food was of the meagerest; nevertheless if a visitor left
an offering upon her table, it was largely spent for apparatus or
delicately colored silk floss, with which to pursue the
fascinating experiment. Another sadly crippled old woman, the
widow of a sea captain, although living almost exclusively upon
malted milk tablets as affording a cheap form of prepared food,
was always eager to talk of the beautiful illuminated manuscripts
she had sought out in her travels and to show specimens of her own
work as an illuminator.
Pages:
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196