TWENTY TALES BY Twenty Women From Real Life in Chicago ANONYMOUS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED FOR SALE ONLY BY NOVELTY PUBLISHING CO. CHICAGO, ILL. COPYRIGHT, 1903 BY NOVELTY PUBLISHING CO. CONTENTS. PAGE PREFACE 3 INTRODUCTION 5 A WOMAN’S ANGUISH 13 TALE ONE—The Diary of a Chicago Girl 17 TALE TWO—The Life Story of a Southern Widow 33 TALE THREE—A Story of the Chicago Ghetto 53 TALE FOUR—A Woman of Thirty-eight 71 TALE FIVE—A Forecast 89 TALE SIX—A Daughter of Proud Kentucky 103 TALE SEVEN—My Lover’s Bequest 129 TALE EIGHT—The Victim of a Drug 145 TALE NINE—What Happened to a Girl Who Flirted 163 TALE TEN—Sold at a Fixed Price 173 TALE ELEVEN—A Story of Suicide Bridge 181 TALE TWELVE—Two Babes and Two Mothers 193 TALE THIRTEEN—Not Guilty 205 TALE FOURTEEN—My Lover’s Daughter 215 TALE FIFTEEN—As Told to a Clergyman 221 TALE SIXTEEN—A Story of Stage Life 231 TALE SEVENTEEN—A Trip Across the Lake 261 TALE EIGHTEEN—One Woman’s Way 269 TALE NINETEEN—A Story of the Levee 291 TALE TWENTY—A Scientific Phenomenon 305 PREFACE. “It may be weeds I’ve gathered, too; But even weeds may be as fragrant, With some sweet memory. As the fairest flower.” Without apology this book goes forth. If it is productive of some good, it will have fulfilled its mission. In presenting this work it is with a feeling of restitution. If I have digressed from, or stormed the barricaded citadel of formal literature, I have done so without hesitation, simply complying with an obeisance to civility toward my fellow men. I have pictured life as a man of the world is sometimes forced to see it, and not altogether as angels would transcribe it. If the manner in which the subjects are hereinafter treated and woven into stories, meets the approval of the public, the work will have served to indicate the power and simplicity of truth.—THE AUTHOR. “All truth is precious, if not divine, And what dilates the pow’rs must needs refine.”