Research
I'm having trouble focusing today. Somehow I keep distracting myself from what I need to accomplish. I think I'm having trouble focusing because what I'm reading is depressing. I'm writing a paper on low-income housing in America 1850-1910.
Excerpt from Life in New York Tenement-Houses as Seen by a City Missionary by William Elsing.
"It frequently happens, however, that from the day of her marriage a girl begins to fade like a flower. In three or four years a bright young girl will degenerate into a careworn, ill-tempered, slovenly middle-aged woman, surrounded by two ro three pale, ragged, ungoverened children..."
Sad. I don't want to fade like a flower. I dont want to degenerate into a careworn, irritable hag with three bratty mongrels hanging off of me. Note to self: no marriage.
"..I was called to take charge of the funeral of a little child. I groped my way up the creaking, filthy stairs of a small, old-fashioned rear tenement. [Most tenements did not have any light in the hallways, so one had to grope the walls to know where they were going.] I knocked, but heard no response; I pushed the door open, but found no one in the room, yet this was the place-"Rear, top floor, left door." I made no mistake. I entered the room and found a dead baby wrapped in an old towel lying on a table. I learned from the neighbors that the father and mother had been out collecting money to bury the child and both had become beastly drunk. I returned to the dead child, read the burial service, and thanked God that the little one was out of its misery. A little later a man came and took the body to potter's Field. The parents had buried (it would be more accurate to say starved to death) six children before they were two years old."
What an upper. Unfortunately, the majority of the books that I need to read are full of stories like this.
Excerpt from Life in New York Tenement-Houses as Seen by a City Missionary by William Elsing.
"It frequently happens, however, that from the day of her marriage a girl begins to fade like a flower. In three or four years a bright young girl will degenerate into a careworn, ill-tempered, slovenly middle-aged woman, surrounded by two ro three pale, ragged, ungoverened children..."
Sad. I don't want to fade like a flower. I dont want to degenerate into a careworn, irritable hag with three bratty mongrels hanging off of me. Note to self: no marriage.
"..I was called to take charge of the funeral of a little child. I groped my way up the creaking, filthy stairs of a small, old-fashioned rear tenement. [Most tenements did not have any light in the hallways, so one had to grope the walls to know where they were going.] I knocked, but heard no response; I pushed the door open, but found no one in the room, yet this was the place-"Rear, top floor, left door." I made no mistake. I entered the room and found a dead baby wrapped in an old towel lying on a table. I learned from the neighbors that the father and mother had been out collecting money to bury the child and both had become beastly drunk. I returned to the dead child, read the burial service, and thanked God that the little one was out of its misery. A little later a man came and took the body to potter's Field. The parents had buried (it would be more accurate to say starved to death) six children before they were two years old."
What an upper. Unfortunately, the majority of the books that I need to read are full of stories like this.