An Anarchist Woman

Me

nearly rejects, practically, all social institutions and forms of conduct and morality. He is very sweet, and very gentle, loves children and is tender to every felt relation. There is a wistful lo

me of the members of his family had become fairly successful in the ways of the world. Terry might easily have taken his place in comfortable bourgeois so

rhaps an uncommon bond, but even she in

ldhood, I had my reason for existence, just the same. Everything is meaningless and transitory, except to be prepared. And I finally became prepared for anything and everything. My life was and is a preparation-for what? For social crucifixion, I suppose, for I belong to those baffled beings who are compelled to unfold within because there is no place for them without. I am a remaining product of the slums, consciously desiring to be there. I know its few heights and many depths. There have I seen unsurpassed devo

the effect it made upon his great sensibility was far from ordinary. I

looking my home, to pass the night of my damnation in sight of the lost paradise. I never had any reason, or I would have lost it. Let me hope that I am guided b

ineffectiveness, my impotence, my stupidity, my crudeness, and my despair. I have always felt lop-sided, physically, especially in youth. My awkwardness became, too, a state of mind at the mercy of any spark of suggestion. My subjectively big head I tried to compress into a little hat, my objectively large hands concealed themselves in subjective pockets, my poor generous feet went the way of the author of Pilgrim's Progress. The result is a lop-sided mind, developed monstrously in certain sensitive directions, otherwise not at all. A born stumbler in this world, I naturally lurched up against society-but, as often happens I have lost the thread of my thought: my thoughts, at the critical moment, frequently desert me, as my fami

ty. But the toiling sphinx, who has time only to ask terrible questions, will some day formulate an articulate reply to its own question, and then once more we shall see that our foundations are of sand-sand that will be washed away, by b

a heavy weight in its grasp. The human being, rocking to and fro with his little grief, must give way in depth of meaning to him who is rocked with the grief of generations past, present, and to come. It is then that lo

d society, but not the ideal. Rather, as he dropped the one, he embraced more fervently the other. He had consorted with thieves, prostitutes, with all

touch of sullenness and hatred. She was working at the time in the house of one of Terry's brothers. Katie, too, was employed there; although she lived with Nick, her husband, she sti

lothes in the yard. He was at once attracted to her, and entered into conversation. He was deeply pleased; so was t

the pace of life with me. I had early formed a contempt for the matrimonial relation. Five years I had nursed my rebellion and waited for a chance to use it. As soon as I met Marie I felt I had met one of my own kind. It was partly the fierce charm o

then invited him into her house to meet the girl. There he began to go frequently and the intimacy grew. Nick warned Terry against the girl on account of her loose character. "I have often found her," he said, "misconductin

onfirm Terry in his interest in Marie. Terry answered him laconically:

ne of them, Marie went off with Terry to his family flat, where he was living alone at the time-to "have a fish dinner," telling the relenting Katie that she would return in the evening. But she stayed there with Terry all that night, for the first time. In the morning Katie

and her attitude toward this strange man, so different from every other

s ready to marry anybody who offered me food and shelter, and I had even thought of prostitution as a means of escape from domestic drudgery. I had not the slightest idea of what prostitution in its accepted sense meant. I knew in a vague way that women sold their bodies to men for money, that they lived luxurious lives, went to th

little virtue left to her. She was quite willing to sell herself: she had done enough for love, she said, marriage was now an impossibility, and she might as well realise on her commercial value. To these ideas I ag

le at home where I continually quarrelled with my moth

ha M. Clay and E. D. E. N. Southworth. Some rich man, young and charming, possibly the owner of the factory I was working in, would fall passionately in love with me, marry me and carry me away to his palace! Gradually,

of my parents and of all society. He showed me that marriage such as I had contemplated was a bad form of prostitution, and he told me why. Of course, I did not grasp all the things he told me at once, but I listened and felt comforted; I began to feel that perhaps I might amount to something, might have some life of my own, and that my rebellion was perhaps justifiable. I began to understand why work was so objectionable to me and why I rebelled against the authority of my parents. My conceptions of free

and art and literature. This, too, of course, came little by little, but do you wonder I loved a man who showed me a new world and who taught

k. I have tried doing without work for many years, it is much easier than it seems.' Nevertheless I got a job in a bicycle factory, but I only stayed a few days. It seemed l

had thought, after I gave up work, that Terry might offer me marriage, but he told me quite frankly that it was against his principles to marry anybody. I

d of prostitution which you plan is very terrible practically. It generally leads to frightful diseases which will waste your bodies and perhaps injure your minds. The girls you envy are not always as happy, gay, and careless as they seem. It is part of their business to seem so, but they are not, or only so for a very sho

ife under our social organisation, but he did not make it seem attractive; nor did he make the life of the domestic servant or factory-gir

bout it all that day and night; and Gertrude decided to have a try at it, while I was undecided. I was somewhat piqued at Terry's attitude. I had expected him to oppose my plan, to do all in his

rted a bad house, and had done so in the flat belonging to his family, who were in the country at the time. These stories reached my mother's ears, and also were told to Terry's mother and sisters, and the mischief beg

ear Chicago, and presented to them his philosophy of life; also his determination not to give up Marie, and not to marry her. It was then that the last rung was put in

to the flat, where I went only to get Marie and clear out for God knows where, I found her gone, and no apparent way of finding her address. I went to see her mother, and h

oo, she realised what must happen, if she drove her away. Yet she did drive her daughter away. From her own point of view, it was diabolical to do so. Her anger, her exasperation and her outraged desire to rule drove her to

experiment, in company with Gertrude, "in one of the socia

nditions and certain social considerations and individual truths may be illustrated thereby. Consequently, I shall not pause, though I ask the reader to do so, in order to point a moral in any extended way. In return for the readers' courtesy and tolerance,

est, he felt an even stronger social interest in her. To live with a girl like that was unconscious propaganda. This passion, as he calls it, was now more deeply stirred than

ed her as a social victim and in addition a vigorous and life-loving personality, an excellent companion for a life-long protest against things as they are. He saw she had th

uring the two weeks or so before he found her,

and ordered two cups of coffee. The negro waiter knew what they were, and offered them a nice steak, at his expense. Nor did he try to 'ring in,' to make their acquaintance. He treated them with great respect. They went there several times afterward, and a

hing it with a certain pathetic attempt to conceal the one episode in her life about which, to me, she was perhaps unreasonably reticent. She did not say that she and Gertrude were separated from Terry for a time, but she wanted

wn, and hired a furnished room. We managed to live a week on this capital, and then Terry pawned his watch, which gave us five dollars. Gertrude soon disappeared with an old rouê and

y led, and I was determined not to go back to it, happen what might. I should probably have gone much farther than I did, had it not been for my love for Terry, which made me feel that I did not want to throw

. For years he had lived, for the most part with his family, a quiet, studious life, the life of contemplation; and now he was suddenly plunged into the roar and din, with an ignorant and disreputable girl on his hands wh

ork for a political organisation was to him great degradation. He did it for my sake, for the thirty-five dollars a week, so that I could be free to live as I wanted. I did not realise at the time how much h

really would be ashamed to tell you of the things I did. I had affairs with all sorts of men, many of whom I did not know whether I liked or hated-seeking always excitement, oblivion. I frequented cafés where the women and men of the town were to be foun

l family. My health had broken down. I weighed only a hundred pounds, although three months earlier I had weighed one hundred and forty. My beautiful, healthy body had wasted away. Ah! how

he hospital, the result of her excesses, during which time Terry was the only one to care for her, from which pl