Beautiful but Poor — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

reeds A cee CHAPTER I. HATTIE’S LETTER. Fancy a dingy old brick house on B—— street, New York city—dusty outside and moldy in all its ragged, papered walls inside—a dreary house with small, poorly ventilated rooms— these rooms wretchedly furnished, and I have made you at home in ‘‘Miss Scrimp’s Boarding-House for ladies only—no gentlemen boarded, lodged, or admitted.” For this was the inscription on a faded tin sign nailed over the front door. And in this building existed—I will not say lived -—most of the time, between thirty and fifty work- ing girls, attracted there by the cheapness of board, which enabled them to make ends meet on the wretched wages due to “‘hard times,’’ or hard- hearted employers, or perhaps to a medium between the two. Miss Scrimp, a maiden lady, who acknowledged herself to be forty five—one of the vldest boarders said that had been her age for over ten years—only charged four dollars a week for boarders in her best, lower rooms, and it ran as low as two dollars anda bak valine Fa ee e FD ABRAM Age I ea Oe Re ae \- . -) a oy Pad ed ‘ iy 4) “ ees - wt 4, Kay hh ji "hid « . ry wi teem : {2 - ‘ > Gomicbooks mi €o