She was the eldest, and the busy, responsible one at this
poor counter. She was one of Nature's ladies, one of Nature's
goddesses--a queen! Of that I felt sure every time I passed her shop,
and shyly met her kind, frank, uncoquettish gaze. A time was approaching
when I should have to overcome my shyness, and tell her that she of all
women was the woman for me, and that it was indispensable, absolutely
indispensable, that we two should be made one--immediately! at
once! forever!
But before I could bring myself to this she married somebody else, and
we had never exchanged a single word!
If she is alive now she is an old woman--a good and beautiful old woman,
I feel sure, wherever she is, and whatever her rank in life. If she
should read this book, which is not very likely, may she accept this
small tribute from an unknown admirer; for whom, so many years ago, she
beautified and made poetical the hideous street that still bounds the
Middlesex House of Detention on its western side; and may she try to
think not the less of it because since then its writer has been on the
wrong side of that long, blank wall, of that dreary portal where the
agonized stone face looks down on the desolate slum:
"_Per me si va tra la perduta gente_ .
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