Explore "Of the Slums" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Red-faced as old carousal, and with eyes / A hard, hot blue; her hair a frowsy flame, / Bold, dowdy-bosomed, from her widow-frame / She leans, her mouth all insult and all lies. / Or slattern-slippered and in sluttish gown, / With ribald mirth and words too vile to name, / A new Doll Tearsheet, glorying in her shame, / Armed with her Falstaff now she takes the town. / The flaring lights of alley-way saloons, / The reek of hideous gutters and black oaths / Of drunkenness from vice-infested dens, / Are to her senses what the silvery moon's / Chaste splendor is, and what the blossoming growths / Of earth and bird-song are to innocence.