Gerhardt was helpless, and the consciousness of his precarious situation-the doctor's bill, the interest due upon the mortgage, together with the sums owed butcher and baker, who, through knowing him to be absolutely honest, had trusted him until they could trust no longer-all these perplexities weighed upon his mind and racked him so nervously as to delay his recovery. A few years were still to run on the mortgage, but times had been so bad that he had been forced to use up not only the little he had saved to pay off the principal, but the annual interest also. He had borrowed this money at a time when, having saved enough to buy the house, he desired to add three rooms and a porch, and so make it large enough for them to live in.
Their one mainstay was the home, which, barring a six–hundred–dollar mortgage, the father owned. The other children, George, aged fourteen Martha, twelve William ten, and Veronica, eight, were too young to do anything, and only made the problem of existence the more complicated. Genevieve, the oldest of the girls, was past eighteen, but had not as yet been trained to any special work. His oldest boy, Sebastian, or "Bass," as his associates transformed it, worked as an apprentice to a local freight–car builder, but received only four dollars a week. Having suffered the reverses so common in the lower walks of life, this man was forced to see his wife, his six children, and himself dependent for the necessaries of life upon whatever windfall of fortune the morning of each recurring day might bring. "She'll arrange with you about it."Ī succession of misfortunes, of which this little scene might have been called the tragic culmination, had taken place in the life and family of William Gerhardt, a glass–blower by trade. "Right through there"-pointing to a near–by door. "You go see the housekeeper," said the clerk, pleasantly, as he came back to the desk. "She might come this afternoon if she wants to. "Is that her daughter with her?" asked the housekeeper, who could see them from where she was standing. The main staircase and parlor hall were unswept because of the absence of the regular scrub–woman. "Wait a moment," he said and, stepping into a back office, he called the head housekeeper. The innocent helplessness of the daughter made their lot seem hard indeed. The clerk, manlike, was affected by the evidence of beauty in distress. The daughter, hearing the statement, turned uneasily, not because it irritated her to work, but because she hated people to guess at the poverty that made it necessary. "Maybe you have some cleaning or scrubbing," she replied, timidly. "What is it you would like to do?" he said. Together they presented so appealing a picture of honest necessity that even the clerk was affected. She was a product of the fancy, the feeling, the innate affection of the untutored but poetic mind of her mother combined with the gravity and poise which were characteristic of her father. Any one could see where the daughter behind her got the timidity and shamefacedness which now caused her to stand back and look indifferently away. Her eyes were large and patient, and in them dwelt such a shadow of distress as only those who have looked sympathetically into the countenances of the distraught and helpless poor know anything about. She was of a helpless, fleshy build, with a frank, open countenance and an innocent, diffident manner.
One morning, in the fall of 1880, a middle–aged woman, accompanied by a young girl of eighteen, presented herself at the clerk's desk of the principal hotel in Columbus, Ohio, and made inquiry as to whether there was anything about the place that she could do.
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