LAURA. And that happened, Mr. Grimes! It happened in the City of New York! I saw it with my own eyes!
GRIMES. Such things have been, ma'am.
LAURA. And you permit them.
GRIMES. I?
LAURA. You permit them
GRIMES. I can't attempt to discuss prostitution with a lady. Such things existed long before I was born.
LAURA. You could use your power to drive the traffic from the city.
GRIMES. Yes, ma'am; I suppose I could. But if I'd been that sort of a man, do you think I'd ever had the power?
LAURA. How neatly parried! What sort of a man are you, anyway?
GRIMES. [Looks at hey fixedly.] I'll tell you the sort of man I am, ma'am. [A pause.] I wasn't brought up in a beautiful, luxurious home. I was brought up with five brothers, in two rooms on the top floor of a rear tenement on Avenue B; I was a little street "mick," and then I was a prize "scrapper," and the leader of a gang. When a policeman chased me upstairs, my mother stood at the head and fought him off with a rolling-pin. That was the way we stood by our children, ma'am; and we looked to them to stand by us. Once, when I was older, my enemies tried to do me... they charged me with a murder that I never done, ma'am. But d'ye think my old father ever stopped to ask if I done it or not, ma'am? Not much. "Don't mention that, Bob, my boy," says he... "it's all part of the fight, an' we're wid yer." [A pause.] I looked about me at the world, ma'am, and I found it was full of all sorts of pleasant things, that I'd never had, and never stood a chance of havin'. They were for the rich... the people on top. And they looked on with scorn... I was poor and I was low, and I wasn't fit for anything. And so I set to climb, ma'am. I shouldered my way up. I met men that fought me; I fought them back, and I won out. That's the sort of man I am.