“After an unhappy time at home—my father and I could not get on together; ever since my early childhood he had been trying to ‘reform’ me—I got a job on the socialist _Call_, a New York daily newspaper, at $—— a week. It was hard work all day, but I liked it and I didn’t drink—I didn’t want to—and lived on the money without borrowing. Later I went on the _Masses_, and there I was well off. [Then I went to Washington to picket for the suffragists and got a jail sentence, and when I returned the _Masses_ had been suspended.] It was at that time that I began to go with the Hudson Dusters [a gang of criminals] and to drink heavily. Greenwich Village seemed to think it was too good for me, or I too bad for it. Most of the women were afraid to associate with me. Only the Hudson Dusters, or people like them, seemed really human to me. I went, in a kind of despair, to the water-front, and staid three days and nights in the back room of a low saloon, where there were several old prostitutes. And I liked them. They seemed human, more so than other people. And in this place were working men. One man, with a wife and children, noticed I was going there and didn’t seem to belong to them, and he asked me to go home with him and live with his family; and he meant it, and meant it decently. “I want to know the down and outs,” said Margaret with quiet, almost fanatical intenseness. “I find kindness in the lowest places, and more than kindness sometimes—something, I don’t know what it is, that I want.”[40] 39. There came a day when my wife heard that there was an Atlantic City not far from Philadelphia. So I granted her wish and rented a nice room for her in a hotel there and sent her with the two children to that seashore.... The next summer I did not make out so well and could not afford to send my wife to the country, but she absolutely demanded to be sent even if I had to “hang and bring.” ... My protestations and explanations were of no avail. She went to Atlantic City and hired a room in the same hotel.... I took my wife’s behavior to heart and became ill. Some of my friends advised me to teach her a lesson and desert her, so that she would mend her ways in the future. They assured me that they would take care of my family, to keep them from starving. I was persuaded by them and left Philadelphia for a distant town. My wife in Atlantic City, seeing that I sent her no money, returned home. Upon learning what had happened, she promptly sold the furniture, which had cost $800, for almost nothing and went to New York. My friends notified me of all that had occurred in my absence, whereupon I came back.