A Cry in the Wilderness

by Mary E. Waller

These two books were my journal, my confidante, my most intimate companion for seven years. I had written in them intermittently only, and, as I turned a page here and there, my eye dwelt longest, not on the few high lights, as it were, in my uneventful life of work and struggle, but on the many shadows they deepened and emphasized.

Nov. 4, 1902. My first day in New York. I took a hack from the station to this house in the old "Chelsea district" they call it. My first hack-ride; it was pretty grand for me, but I was afraid to try the street cars after a horrid woman had tried her best to get me to go with her after I left the station—oh, it was awful! I never knew there could be such women before—not that kind. I shall look for work to-morrow.

Nov. 5. I have to pay a dollar and a half for this room in the attic. There isn't any heat, and there is no gas in it. I have to furnish it myself. My landlady is a queer little old woman, Mrs. Turtelot, who has kept lodgers here for thirty years. She has her house filled with the students from the Theological Seminary near by. It's lucky I have this place to come to. I wondered to-day how girls ever get on in this city, without having someone to go to they know is all right. She seems like a Frenchwoman, perhaps a French Canadian. I think she must be, for her mother used to work at Seth White's tavern up home; it was through his neighbors I got her address. She says the students have to furnish their own bed clothes and towels. I 'm glad I brought mine with me. It's awfully cold here to-night, but Mrs. Turtelot has given me a lamp, till I can get one, and that warms up some. Anyway, I feel safe here from that other kind. I 'll soon earn enough to fix up a little.

Nov. 6. I 've been tramping about all day answering advertisements. Mrs. Turtelot told me not to go into any strange place, like up stairs, and not to go over a door sill. I have n't found that so easy.

I 've been afraid all day of getting lost, but she told me to-night to ask every time for West Twenty-third Street and follow it to the river; then I could always find my way here.

I slept in her room on the sofa the first night; she says I can sleep with her for a few nights till I can get a cot. A student is leaving here in a few days and he will sell his second hand. But I don't want to sleep with her, and I asked her as a favor to let me have two pillows. She didn't have any extra ones, but let me have hers; so I have a good bed on the floor. Could n't find work.

Nov. 8. Mrs. T. told me to-day that it is a bad time of year to find work. It is late in the season and help is being turned off, and, besides, it is going to be a hard winter, so everybody says. What do the turned-off ones do, then, for a living?— No job yet! But I won't go out to service in a private family unless I have to. I 've had enough of that in the past.

Nov. 9. Since I came here I have answered fifty-two advertisements. I get the same answer every time: "You have n't been trained and you have n't had any experience." How am I to get training and experience if I don't have the chance? That's what I want to know.

Nov. 10. I 've bought the cot and the mattress. I paid four dollars for them. There is a small stove hole in the chimney on one side of my room; when I get to earning, I 'm going to have a little stove here and do my own cooking. Thank fortune, I can cook as well as chop wood if I have to! So far I 've heated my things on Mrs. T.'s stove. She lives, that is, cooks, eats, sleeps, and washes in her back basement; the front one she rents to a barber. He makes his living from the students round here and the professors at the Seminary. She says the students cook most of their meals in their rooms on their gas stoves. I wish I had one.

Nov. 13. A bad lot of a date! No work yet, and I 've tramped all day in the slush and snow. I dried my things down in Mrs. T.'s room. I did n't dare to spend any more in car fares, for I must have a stove.