F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams
Chapter 87
were only too glad to get away from it. In most cases they were
homeless and neglected orphans; and knowing no better condition,
fell easy victims to the snares set for them.
"It was in this dark, cavern-like den--in this mysterious caldron of
precocious depravity, rioting unheeded in the very centre of a great
city, whose boasted wealth and civilization it might put to shame,
if indeed it were capable of shame, I first met the child of beauty,
Anna Bonard. Yes!--the Anna Bonard you now see at the house of Madame
Flamingo. At that time she was but seven years old--a child of
uncommon beauty and aptness, of delicate but well-proportioned
features, of middle stature, and a face that care might have made
charming beyond comparison. But vice hardens, corrodes, and gives a
false hue to the features. Anna said she was an orphan. How far
this was true I know not. A mystery shrouded the way in which she
fell into the hands of Hag Zogbaum. Hag Zogbaum said she got her of
an apple-woman; and the apple-woman kept a stand in West street, but
never would disclose how she came by Anna. And Mr. Tom Toddleworth,
who was the chronicle of the Points, and used to look into 'Scorpion
Cove' now and then, and inquire about Anna, as if he had a sort of
interest in her, they said knew all about her. But if he did, he
always kept it a secret between himself and Hag Zogbaum.
"She was always of a melancholy turn, used to say life was but a
burden to her-that she could see nothing in the future that did not
seem dark and tortuous. The lot into which she was cast of necessity
others might have mistaken for that which she had chosen. It was
not. The hard hand of necessity had forced her into this quicksand
of death; the indifference of a naturally generous community, robbed
her of the light of intelligence, and left her a helpless victim in
the hands of this cultivator of vice. How could she, orphan as she
was called, and unencouraged, come to be a noble and
generous-hearted woman? No one offered her the means to come up and
ornament her sex; but tyrannical society neither forgets her