Woman's chronicle. (Little Rock, Ark.) 1888-1???, 1890-06-14

peI ol gang, mao Deen g00Q TO ner IN way;
and when she was allowed to see him the day be-
fore he died, she had shown such wild remorse and
grief that even the prison officials had been awe
stricken.
II never want to see anythn like it again."
said the kind-hearted policeman. "Sure if she
had been standin' before Ged, she couldn't have
blamed herself worse"
One may picture to ones self the misery, re-
morse, and suffering gone through with in those
two years, and hope that an eternity of woe may
have been oblterated.
Some years ago was walking with school
friend on Fifth Avenue. A poor, thnly-clad,
middle-aged woman met us when we were almost
opposite the cathedral.
'Would you please tell me where st. Luke's
Hospital is, ladies?" she asked
directed her the few blocks further on when
something in her face arrested my attention She
was miserably dressed. Shoes worn into holes on
all sides. Dress thin, darned and draggled; and
d shawl and bonnet almost without shape or tex
ture, from constant wettings, dust and age; and
yet the lisp and half-affected turn of the head re-
minded me of some one. We had walked several
blocks, and the woman was out of sight, when |
suddenly remembered who she was.
Three or four years before this time, and while
l was girl at college, | had earned my pocket
money by collecting rents for my brother, who
owned very respectable tenement house on the
east side.
One Of the incest families in this house, the fam
lily who paid most promptly, the one most decorous
in conduct and neatest in appearance, was that of
a certain Mr.. Riley.
Mr. h,;o 10, I,,+ do IL nj
Riley, who had been milliner before her mar
riage, still made bonnets for her neghbors, and In
this way added to the family income.
Their little home was very pleasantly furnished;
and l remember the dainty little lace-trimmed
apron Mrs. Riley used to wear, as she sat in her
sunny window at work on the bright flowers and
ribbons Of her bonnets.
What could this new poverty mean, then?
| determined to find out the history of these
people, so | started one snowy afternoon, and
made my way from one east-sde tenement house
to another, until finally traced them to their last
home.
'What was the cause of their poverty?" asked
the housekeeper.
''Drink mas am. 1t is the same with all of them.
They get to working the growler;' that means, if
you please, ma'am, sending out for the can of
BEER and they get to sending for it so often that
they just put themselves from doing anything de-
cent at all. He lost his work. and then she took
to pawning SO that when they left this house, you
could have carried out all in your hand that they
had to carry"
l tried to find out what could have taken Mrs.
Riley up to st. Luke's but was unable to do so.
One bitter cold night the pipes in this east-side
tenement got frozen. The plumbers went down
into the cellar to thaw them out, and stumbled
over the almost inanimate body of a woman.
She was recognized by some of the tenants as a
woman who slept in the cellar sometimes, and who
once lived in the house. They took her to the
hospital, and since then no one has heard of Mrs.
Riley. SARAH l.. RoYs.
On looking over the world, the cause of nine
parts in ten of the lamentable failures which occur