The night after the news had come I took my camera
and flashlight and made the round of the dens, photographing them
all with their crowds. Of the negatives I had lantern-slides made,
and with these under my arm knocked at the doors of the Academy
of Medicine, demanding to be let in. That was the place for that
discussion, it seemed to me, for the doctors knew the real extent
of the peril we were then facing. Typhus is no respecter of persons,
and it is impossible to guard against it as against the smallpox.
They let me in, and that night's doings gave the cause of decency
a big push. I think that was the first time I told the real story
of my dog. I had always got around it somehow; it choked me even
then, twenty years after and more, anger boiled up in me so at the
recollection.
We pleaded merely for the execution of a law that had been on the
statute-books six years and over, permitting the city authorities
to establish a decent lodging-house; but though the police, the
health officials, the grand jury, the charitable societies, and
about everybody of any influence in the community fell in behind
the medical profession in denouncing the evils that were, we pleaded
in vain.
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