the child would have to be buried by the city, since they
had no money for a funeral; and at this the poor woman
almost went out of her senses, wringing her hands and
screaming with grief and despair. Her child to be buried
in a pauper's grave! And her stepdaughter to stand by
and hear it said without protesting! It was enough to
make Ona's father rise up out of his grave to rebuke her!
If it had come to this, they might as well give up at once,
and be buried all of them together!... In the end
Marija said that she would help with ten dollars; and
Jurgis being still obdurate, Elzbieta went in tears and
begged the money from the neighbors, and so little Kristo~
foras had a mass and a hearse with white plumes on it,
and a tiny plot in a graveyard with a wooden cross to
mark the place. The poor mother was not the same for
months after that; the mere sight of the floor where little
Kristoforas had crawled about would make her weep.
He had never had a fair chance, poor little fellow, she
would say. He had been handicapped from his birth. If
only she had heard about it in time, so that she might
have had that great doctor to cure him of his lameness!
...Some time ago, Elzbieta was told, a Chicago billion~
naire had paid a fortune to bring a great European surgeon
over to cure his little daughter of the same disease
from which Kristoforas had suffered. And because this
surgeon had to have bodies to demonstrate upon, he an~
nounced that he would treat the children of the poor, a
piece of magnanimity over which the papers became quite
eloquent. Elzbieta, alas, did not read the papers, and no
one had told her; but perhaps it was as well, for just then
they would not have had the car-fare to spare to go every
day to wait upon the surgeon, nor for that matter any~
body with the time to take the child.

All this while that he was seeking for work, there was a
dark shadow hanging over Jurgis; as if a savage beast were
lurking somewhere in the pathway of his life, and he knew
it, and yet could not help approaching the place. There
are all stages of being out of work in Packingtown, and

[[151]]

p150 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p151w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p152

v?