CHAPTER X
Her Friend (A Chronicle of the Tombs)
Bridget, alias “The Rummager” (rummager means thief, pickpocket), was incorrigible; had always been so, and there were many reasons for it, such as heredity, environment, opportunity, habit. Bridget had been in the “Pen” (Penitentiary), the work-house, the Tombs. “Had been,” for “The Rummager” was free. She was just leaving the latter prison on the afternoon of Monday, February 24, 1902. There was money in her pocket. She had worked in the laundry doing washing for the aristocrats and millionaires over in the men’s prison.
Freedom and money! This had always before meant a celebration, but to-day Bridget kept on her way towards Chinatown, passing for the first time the side doors of the saloons which had been best loved and most patronized. She did what she had never done before under such circumstances—she hurried home. Bridget was welcomed, was invited to make an occasion of the event. She declined. This behavior caused consternation and criticism in “The Barracks.” Bridget hurried away to the “Bend.” There she haggled with Isaac over the price of a dress—a black dress. Finally it was hers, but it took her last penny—and all her other bills and coins.
Bridget disappeared. This was no novelty, such occurrences were not unusual. No one worried about it. Some hours afterward they learned that she was working. They jeered at and reviled the joker who brought the news. That afternoon, for the first time in her life, Bridget earned an honest dollar. It was perhaps the first money not spent in dissipation.
The next morning was the first time she had ever bought flowers. “The Rummager” laid them upon the coffin of her friend—“The Tombs Angel.”
[Note.—Mrs. Salome C. Foster, of blessed memory, for many years devoted herself to the unfortunates confined in the city prisons. This valuable and beautiful life was lost in the Park Avenue Hotel fire, February 22, 1902.]