"And begin with myself, too, for I was country raised. Father and mother both died when I was young, and I brought myself up, you might say. I come down here when I was nineteen years old, and it wasn't more 'n a year 'fore I found myself numbered with the outcasts on this earth--all my own fault too. I 've always shouldered the blame, for a woman as has common sense knows better, say what you 've a mind to; but the knowledge of that only makes green apples sourer, I can tell you. "I mind the night in December, thirty years ago, when I found myself in the street, too proud to beg, too good to steal. There was n't nothing left--nothing but the river; there 's always enough of that and to spare. So I took a bee line for one of the piers, and crouched down by a mooring-post. I 'd made up my mind to end it all; it did n't cost me much neither. I only remember growing dizzy looking down at the foam whirling and heaving under me, and kinder letting go a rope I 'd somehow got hold of... "The next thing I knew I was hearing a woman say: "'You leave her to me; she'll be as quiet as a lamb now.' She put her arms around me. 'You poor child,' she said, 'you come along with me.' And I went. "Well, that woman mothered me. She took in washing and ironing in two rooms on Tenth Avenue. She never left me night or day for a week running till my baby come. And all she 'd say to me, when I got sort of wild and out of my head, was: "'You ain't going to be the grave of your child, be you?' And that always brought me to myself. I was so afraid of murdering the child that was coming. That's what she kept saying: "'You ain't going to be so mean as not to give that innercent baby a chance to live! Just you wait till it comes and you 'll see what life 's for. 'T ain't so bad as you think, and some folks make out; and that child has a right to this world. You give it the right, and then die if you think it's best.' So she kept at me till my baby come, and then--why, I got just fierce to live for its sweet little sake. "'Bout six months after that I got religion--never mind how I got it; I got it, that's the point, and I 've held on to it ever since. And when I 'd got it, the first thing I did was to take my baby in my arms and go down to that pier, clear out to the mooring-post, and kneel right down there in the dark and vow a vow to the living God that I 'd give my life to saving of them of His poor children who 'd missed their footing, and trying to help 'em on to their feet again. "And I 've kept it; brought my girl right up to it too. She 's been my mainstay through it all these last ten years. I took in washing and ironing in the basement of this very house,--my saving angel helped me to work,--and when it was done, late at night between eleven and twelve, I 'd go down to the rivers, sometimes one, sometimes t' other, and watch and wait, ready to do what come in my way.