Billy has learned his letters and he knows a lot of stories, especially Bible stories out of a book that is full of pictures. He is awful funny. He was showing me the book the other day, and he come to an old man with long whiskers and I said, "Who is that old guy, Billy?" and he looked at me so shocked and said, "Why, aunt Nannie, where have you been? That is Moses," and he told me all about him and the Israelites which is another name for Jews. I said if he has got anything to do with Jews, I orter know something about them, cause there ain't much else in New York, yet they ain't much in my line, as I just naturally hit the Irish.

Do you remember Rosie O'Grady who got married about three years ago? Well, she is only twenty years old now. She has got a kid and supporting it herself. That fellow she married was a coke fiend, and she fired him, and she is doing real well. Her brother is a driver at McCreey's, and between them they hire a little flat down on 20th Street and her mother takes care of the baby and they are real happy. I went down to see her the other night. A lot of women live there who scrub offices or go out washing or do any kind of day work they can get. Most every one of them support a drunken husband. One woman next door to Rosie has both her husband and her brother on her hands, and her brother has been full for three months and that poor woman goes out washing to give these good-for-nothing men their food. I'd let their stomachs grow to their back bone before I'd feed them. You see an awful lot of drink down around Eighth Avenue, and it seems like it is done by the men that most need the money. Yet I suppose when they are out on the wagon all day in the cold and the wet, that a saloon looks awful nice and warm and the free lunch tastes mighty good. They can't afford to go to the restaurants, even cheap ones, so they go to the saloon and drink that rotten whiskey that drives them crazy. That is one thing I never saw no fun in, and I must say for you, Kate, that with all the rotten crowd you run with, you didn't take to booze nor dope. If you hadn't just naturally not known the difference between what belonged to you and what belonged to the other man, you might have been a pretty respectable member of society. I tell you I am watching Billy mighty close to see that he don't have too small fingers. By the looks of him now, the way he is growing, his hands are going to be like hams, and if he ever got them in another man's pocket, he would never get them out again.

I can't send you no money. I tell you I am absolutely flat strapped. I hocked my two rings and I even sold my dancing slippers. I ain't paid Mrs. Smith for Billy's board in most a month, and I know they need the money. Cheer up, old girl, you only have a short time now. I keep a trying to think what you can do when you come out, but I don't seem to light on nothing you would like. Anyway, you know I am thinking of you.

Yours,
Nan.

XIV

Dear Kate:

I am worried to death. I don't know what to do and my hand don't seem to get well. I haven't got a cent to my name, I owe Mrs. Smith six weeks' board money for Billy, and I have been eating off her for three weeks. She can't afford to feed me, and every mouthfull I take chokes me. I know they are hard up, cause I caught her crying the other day. Her husband is awful nice, but he ain't got much sense and his business in life is teaching not trying to raise vegetables. She says she won't hear me going back to dancing, but I don't see what else I can do. My hand don't affect my feet. I was over town the other day and saw my old dancing partner, Fred Keeney. He said we can get a job at the Cafe Boulevard and I am crazy to try it. Yet if I could work, I would cut the whole thing out, cause Mrs. Smith is right when she says that dancing ain't bad, just the bum crowd you have got to go with. And I am up against it more than most of the girls, cause nearly all of them have homes, but everybody seems to know or finds out mighty sudden that I am your sister, and it ain't up to me then to go in for the heavy respectable. Gee, Kate you have got a reputation! You must have had a lot of newspaper advertising. Nobody ever says I am Nan Lane, they just say I am Kate Lane's sister. Then they look at me as if I was going to take a bite out of them. That is why it is more comfortable for me to keep with the old crowd, cause they don't throw a fit every time your name is mentioned.

Oh, I am sure distracted. I've walked the floor nights till I wore a path in the carpet. What with my hand aching and me wondering what in the world I ought to do, I can't sleep. I go out in the afternoon and lie down in the woods and if I knew something to pray to, I would sure get right down on my knees and ask it to tell me which way to turn. I have been in Mrs. Smith's room twice when they have what they call family worship. It didn't seem to do me much good but I bowed my head as I saw them do. Why, if they wanted to stand on their heads and meow like cats, I would bark an accompaniment cause I like them so.

Mrs. Smith cries every time I speak of the dancing, but I can't live on charity for the rest of my life and I am pestered to death for money. When I was coming out of Kelley's the other day, I saw father and of course, he give me a touch. He never shows up unless he wants something. Oh, I hate him, Kate. When I saw his shifty old eyes I just turned sick. Every time I see him I think of the kicks and the cuffs we kids got whenever he come round, which, thank goodness, wasn't often. Do you remember how happy we was when we went down to court and heard him get that seven years' stretch? That was the finest present the judge could give us, and when we got back to the room I remember we just hugged each other and danced round and round and made up a song with the chorus, "Pa's got seven years, we ain't glad, oh, no." You gave a party that night, and we almost got pulled for being so noisy. I wonder what mother was like. What kind of a woman she could have been to have seen anything in him. You must be something like her, cause you stick to Jim and you know what I think of him. I suppose being married to a man does something to a woman because I know a lot of nice women that stick to good-for-nothing bums because they are married to them. As for me, I don't suppose I ever will be married cause none of the crowd I know now for mine and I don't have much chance to meet the Henry Van Dykes or the John T. Wanamakers.