"It must have been well after seven o'clock when I found myself on Montgomery Avenue and not very far from North Beach. My! but I was faint, although I'd had a good meal at the hospital at noon, but you know a nursing mother needs plenty of nourishing food and often. I saw a light in a little notion shop, and went in and asked the woman if she could spare me a bite to eat. Bless her kind heart, she gave me a big bowl full of bread and milk, and warmed some stew, and helped me make Jack clean and comfortable, but she had no place for me to sleep, which she told me sorrowfully. Her family was large, and she did not have a bit of extra bedding, besides she was poor. I was feeling better now and more cheerful. My! 'tis wonderful what a good meal can do for you when you're hungry, isn't it? I thanked her kindly and told her I'd soon find friends; then went out on the street and began to watch the faces. At last I stepped up to an elderly laboring man, told him I had lost my way, was broke, a stranger, and a widow, and asked him if he could direct me to a respectable lodging-house, which he did (bless his kind heart!) and paid the woman for a night's lodging, she asking no questions; and soon I was in a clean little bed with my Jack. I don't think my head had hardly touched the pillow when I was fast asleep, all of my troubles forgotten. "Morning came all too soon. And now what was I to do? I dressed, then made baby as comfortable as I could under the circumstances, went down the stairs, meeting no one as I passed out of the house into the street. Pretty soon I'd made up my mind. I'd walk down to Meigg's wharf (not far away) and with my darling would drop quietly off the end of it into the bay; and I was soon looking into the nice quiet water, just about to fall in when I heard a voice, for sure I did, Mother Roberts, saying, 'Don't Mary.' Maybe you don't think I was scared as I looked all around and could see no one nearer than a block and a half away, and that was a man piling up some lumber on a wagon; besides, the voice I heard was a woman's, not a man's. I began to back away from the water, wondering if I'd heard an angel speak.... "Yes; I admit I am naturally superstitious, but don't you think in a case like this, it's a good thing?" "Yes; I do, Mary, but go on, dear, I'm anxious to hear what became of you." [Illustration: MARY.] "I went back to the woman who gave me my supper, and she gave me my breakfast, then advised me to put my baby with the sisters of Mount St. Joseph. _But I never could do that, could you?_ I said good-by to my kind friend and started out for where, I did not know. All of a sudden I said to myself, 'I'll go back to the hospital and offer to scrub and do chores; anything, so they'll take me and my baby in.' It took me till nearly one o'clock to reach there. Every time I sat down to rest and a policeman came along, I'd get up quickly and walk on, for fear he might arrest me as a suspicious character.