After telling her mother about it, she and the woman
started for New York, the woman paying the fare. The woman gave her an
address of a party, but when the poor girl got there, there was no job
for a typewriter; it was a very different position. The young girl had
been lured from home on false promises, and here she was a "white slave"
through no fault of her own.
A difficult situation confronted us. The girl was in trouble and needed
help, and what were we going to do about it? She was as pretty a girl as
I ever saw, with large black eyes, a regular Southern type of beauty,
and just beginning the downward career. That means, as the girls on the
Bowery put it, first the Tenderloin, then the white lights and lots of
so-called pleasure, until her beauty begins to fade, which usually takes
about a year. Second, Fourteenth Street, a little lower down the grade.
Third, the Bowery, still lower, where they get nothing but blows and
kicks. The fourth and last step, some joint like this, the back room of
a saloon, down and out, all respect gone, nothing to live for; some
mother's girl picked up some morning frozen stiff; the patrol, the
morgue, and then Potter's Field.
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