16 Hearst's International
me if I didn't want the gas. I told him I had decided not to use it any more. . . .
"I have been up all night and still I can't go to sleep. It must be because I have such a habit. I'm so sick today. B. gave me some stuff and fixed me up for a while. The King is just out of the city workhouse and he came to see me. I knew what he wanted before I opened the door. . . .
"There is only one reason why any one of them ever comes around and that is to bum a shot. I was awful sorry, I told the King, but I could not stake him. It is against my policy to have the name of being the one to give a man the first shot when he has just been cured and looks so good and fat. He said he intended getting hooked up again anyway. Who he got it from or where he got it, he would have nobody but himself to blame. . . .
"I ran across two old editions of the encyclopedia in the wash-room. They were published in 1887, but that doesn't make no difference to me: I have always wanted a whole set. . . .
"I found Liz in the sitting-room performing before an audience, gaping wide-mouthed at her. It seemed that someone had sold her a capsule of C. and she thought they had given her something to kill her. She was going to get the police. I tried to tell her the hoosiers would point her out as a dopefiend, but the last I saw of her she was beating it up the street with her needle in her hand, holding it out at arm's length as though it would bite her. . . .
"Lizzie is gone out with my shoes again. I had to look through the ashcan for an old pair somebody threw there. They weren't much good. She went out that way and has been gone all night and all day. I thought for a while it was just the C. and that she wasn't responsible. Lately I have come to the conclusion that she has really lost her mind from that C. It's too bad. . . .
"I had to sweep the leaves up twice today from in front of the door. The tree they are falling from looks as though it hadn't started to shed. It's hard on me, feeling like I do. A friend of mine wanted to bum a shot from me. I told him I couldn't stake him, but he followed me in. If I would have had any to spare at all, it would have been different. . . .
"When he saw me take it and called me the name he did—he has one leg off, but it would be all the same to me if he had both off—he was placing himself in a real man's place and he had to take the results. I'm glad now I missed his head with the bottle I threw at him. I fixed his cuts up with iodine and peroxide. . . .
"I can't get it out of Lizzie's head that the room is all over spiders. . . .
"I am lost tonight. I can't keep still and everything I try to do don't seem right. I suppose it's the Xmas spirit everywhere we turn and our Xmas ain't much to what we could have. But life is what you make it and it is your own fault and the days are the same as they were six months ago, not a bit different. There are some things we will always remember out of this year. Negro Shack and Mildred have died from using too much C. And still we continue to use it. Perhaps next year things will be different and maybe we can make up for the past. Things are beginning to look much brighter. Lizzie ain't using so much, and I'm cutting down on M. But my air castles never stand long. . . .
"Lizzie met a young fellow over the street. He wanted to borrow a needle. She told him if he wanted to walk over to the room she would lend him mine. After a few minutes they recognized each other as kid playmates. He kept Liz's mind off the spiders and gave me a shot which I needed terrible. . . .
"It will soon be five months that we have lived in this dungeon, paying $3.50 a week. Liz was industrious this morning. She didn't go back to bed once after breakfast but cleaned up the place for the second time it has been cleaned since we came. . . .
"It is raining, a slow, steady, cold rain, the kind that lasts for days. Lizzie is pounding her ear and the only sound is rain beating down on the roof. It makes me think of the times I have laid in some old box-car with only a newspaper for my bed and my coat for a pillow. Those were the days before I knew what a hypo needle was, but they are gone like every day. . . . A year ago we were more respectable looking. Otherwise just the same. We did have a change of clothes more than we have now with my overcoat and pants in hock. . . .
"I wish Liz wouldn’t always say I have another girl. It isn't right. I'm afraid she really is going crazy. . . .
"It is cold. We took the oil stove over the street and got a dollar on it. We could build a fire in the coal stove but what money there is Liz needs for her C. She yells like mad if I don't give her all of it. . . .
"Poor Liz! I wonder how long we can last? . . ."
This is the solemn and terrible extremity of drug addiction
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C, Sooner or later all big dope pedlers do business at Eighth and Vine Streets, Philadelbhia. It is the biggest street curb in the country.
