He led her up
the rickety ladder to the one room, where a flaring tallow-dip
threw a saffron glare into the darkness. A putrid odour met them
at the door. She drew back, trembling.
"Come here!" he said, fiercely, clutching her hand. "Women as
fair and pure as you have come into dens like this,--and never
gone away. Does it make your delicate breath faint? And you a
follower of the meek and lowly Jesus! Look here! and here!"
The room was swarming with human life. Women, idle trampers,
whiskey-bloated, filthy, lay half-asleep, or smoking, on the
floor, and set up a chorus of whining begging when they entered.
Half-naked children crawled about in rags. On the damp, mildewed
walls there was hung a picture of the Benicia Boy, and close by,
Pio Nono, crook in hand, with the usual inscription, "Feed my
sheep." The Doctor looked at it.
" `Tu es Petrus, et super hanc'---- Good God! what IS truth?" he
muttered, bitterly.
He dragged her closer to the women, through the darkness and foul
smell.
"Look in their faces," he whispered. "There is not one of them
that is not a living lie. Can they help it? Think of the
centuries of serfdom and superstition through which their blood
has crawled. Come closer,--here."
In the corner slept a heap of half-clothed blacks. Going on the
underground railroad to Canada. Stolid, sensual wretches, with
here and there a broad, melancholy brow, and desperate jaws. One
little pickaninny rubbed its sleepy eyes, and laughed at them.
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