' Out of the restaurants there float delicious odors of
cooking meats, making her hungrier still. Her eyes rest, with a look
half wild and desperate, on the painted women who pass, in rustling
silks, and wearing the _semblance_ of happiness. At least they are
fed--they are clothed--they can sit in bright parlors, though they sit
with sin. It is easy to yield to temptation. So many do! You little
know how many. In Paris, she might perhaps go and throw herself into
the Seine. In New York, such suicides are not common; but there is a
moral suicide, which is common. Thousands on thousands of poor girls
have thrown themselves into this stream, in the last agony of
desperation; sinking down in the dark current of sin, to be heard of no
more.
But this poor wanderer has memories of a home, and a mother, under
whose protection she had been taught to shudder at sin. She cannot
plunge into this ghastly river with wide-open eyes--at least, not yet.
She walks on.
Her ear is caught by sounds of music and laughter, songs and bursts of
applause, that come up out of these basement-haunting concert saloons.
She has heard of the 'pretty waiter girls'--the fine clothes they wear,
the gay lives they lead, their only labor to wait upon the patrons of
the saloon, and chat with them as they sit about the tables listening
to the music. 'It is a life of Paradise,' she murmurs, 'to this life I
lead!' At least, she thinks, there is no actual sin in being a waiter
girl.
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