An Eye for an Eye by Clarence Darrow — Read

You know I was born in Chicago and never was out of it but once until the night it happened. I don't know anything about my father and mother except what my aunt told me. You know she raised me, and I can't make any complaint about the way she done it. I was real small when I went to live with her. She stayed all alone down on the canal. I guess you knew me when I was livin' with her. She worked hard, but, of course, ladies of that kind don't get much. She used to go over to the south side to do washin' and to clean houses, and things like that, and sometimes when I was small she took me along. They were awful nice houses where we went. That's how I got to know so much about the way rich people live. When I got bigger, she used to send me to school. I was pretty steady in school and got clear up to the sixth grade. I know it must have been awful hard for her to send me the way she earnt her money, but she seemed to think as much of me as if I'd been her own boy.

She could have got along better, but every time she got five or ten dollars laid up it seemed as if there was a funeral of some of the neighbors and she had to club in and hire a carriage, and that took her money almost as fast as she could earn it.