I was now too shabby
to get work, even if there had been any to get. I had letters still
to friends of my family in New York who might have helped me, but
hunger and want had not conquered my pride. I would come to them,
if at all, as their equal, and, lest I fall into temptation, I
destroyed the letters. So, having burned my bridges behind me, I was
finally and utterly alone in the city, with the winter approaching
and every shivering night in the streets reminding me that a time
was rapidly coming when such a life as I led could no longer be
endured.
Not in a thousand years would I be likely to forget the night when
it came. It had rained all day, a cold October storm, and night
found me, with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River,
soaked through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn
and discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling
rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far
it seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between the "castle"
with its refined ways, between her in her dainty girlhood and me
sitting there, numbed with the cold that was slowly stealing away my
senses with my courage.
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