The New Magdalen

"I claim no credit to myself--young as I was, placed as I was between

the easy life of Vice and the hard life of Virtue--for acting as I did.

The man simply horrified me: my natural impulse was to escape from him.

But let it be remembered, before I approach the saddest part of my

sad story, that I was an innocent girl, and that I was at least not to

blame.

"Forgive me for dwelling as I have done on my early years. I shrink from

speaking of the events that are still to come.

"In losing the esteem of my first benefactress, I had, in my friendless

position, lost all hold on an honest life--except the one frail hold

of needle-work. The only reference of which I could now dispose was the

recommendation of me by my landlady to a place of business which largely

employed expert needle-women. It is needless for me to tell you how

miserably work of that sort is remunerated: you have read about it in

the newspapers. As long as my health lasted I contrived to live and to

keep out of debt. Few girls could have resisted as long as I did

the slowly-poisoning influences of crowded work-room, insufficient

nourishment, and almost total privation of exercise. My life as a

child had been a life in the open air: it had helped to strengthen

a constitution naturally hardy, naturally free from all taint of

hereditary disease. But my time came at last. Under the cruel stress

laid on it my health gave way. I was struck down by low fever, and

sentence was pronounced on me by my fellow-lodgers: 'Ah, poor thing,

_her_ troubles will soon be at an end!' "The prediction might have proved true--I might never have committed the

errors and endured the sufferings of after years--if I had fallen ill in

another house.

"But it was my good, or my evil, fortune--I dare not say which--to have

interested in myself and my sorrows an actress at a suburban theatre,

who occupied the room under mine. Except when her stage duties took her

away for two or three hours in the evening, this noble creature

never left my bedside. Ill as she could afford it, her purse paid my

inevitable expenses while I lay helpless. The landlady, moved by her

example, accepted half the weekly rent of my room. The doctor, with the

Christian kindness of his profession, would take no fees. All that the

tenderest care could accomplish was lavished on me; my youth and my

constitution did the rest. I struggled back to life--and then I took up

my needle again.

"It may surprise you that I should have failed (having an actress for my

dearest friend) to use the means of introduction thus offered to me to

try the stage--especially as my childish training had given me, in some

small degree, a familiarity with the Art.