In the squalid tenements of the East Side there is beauty in embryo and the figures of Venus are barely hidden by cheap calico wrappers.
Where the Poles are settled, voluptuous women are wedded to weak, undersized men, and the result is either very good or very bad, according to the domination of the sex. Very beautiful flowers often grow and bloom in loathsome places, and many a handsome woman who rides in state along the avenue wouldn’t care to have her antecedents known to the world.
There is such a thing as pre-natal influence, and a throwback, taking on the good or bad characteristics of a previous generation, is an accepted fact.
And now we will introduce the lady as she sits in the courtroom, smiling as though she hadn’t a care or responsibility in the world. She has the innocent face of a child and the manner of a cherub, if you know what that is. If an artist were to paint her portrait in one of her moments of relaxation he might be justified if he called it “Innocence.”
“She’s a peach, all right,” remarks a court officer, and that means a lot when it comes from such a source.
She has the blonde hair and the fair complexion of the Teuton, and the black eyes of the Slav—a rare combination, if you’ll take my word for it. She’s coy, and winning and demure, but with a brain so active that nothing to her is impossible.
Two generations ago a dashing, handsome young lieutenant of the German army fell in love with a sloe-eyed girl who had been born of Slav blood.
He was brilliant but discreditable.
His romances and intrigues were many, and his expenses were about four times what his income warranted. One day he forged a check, and when he skipped over the border to escape arrest he left the woman and a baby girl in a cheap room with not enough money to keep them a week. He forgot them as utterly as if they had never existed, so in the course of time she who gave up honor added to that her life.
She died in the hospital of a disease that is not mentioned in the medical books, and the youngster was shipped to a charitable institution. At the age of nineteen this waif, orphaned, and stolid of character, with not even good looks to recommend her, had by dint of hard work and frugal living, saved up enough money to take a ship for America, the land of gold, where fortunes were made by simply wishing for them.