Undercover Reporting

I-"Studies in the Slums" - Helen Campbell - Lippincott's

"Water Street and Its Work"

1880-05-01

We may regard it is a temporary stage of development - a stage resulting from the inevitable doubt underlying thought and action in this mysterious nineteenth century, and which for a time holds with so firm and benumbing a grasp that escape seems neither possible nor desirable. The narrow minds settles easily and contentedly into the belief that everything is as bad as it can be, and that the majority fail to accept or recognize such fact gives us the sense of unique possession, filling the pessimistic sod with a satisfaction only less intense than that of his optimistic brother.

II-"Studies in the Slums" - Helen Campbell - Lippincott's

"Jerry"

1880-06-01

"My father was a counterfeiter, and ran away from justice before I ever I can remember him. There was a lot of us, an' me they put with me grandmother. She was old an' a devout Romanist, an' many's the time, she she was tellin' her beads an' kissin' the floors for penance, I'd shy thing at her, just to hear her curse an' swear at me, an' then back to her knees. I'd got well beyond her or anybody by the time I was thirteen. They let me run loose."

III-"Studies in the Slums" - Helen Campbell - Lippincott's

"Nan; Or, A Girl's Life"

1880-07-01

"Now, it'll seem to you like a bit of our the Police Gazette or those horrid story-papers, but, do you know, when she wasn't three Pete came home one night just drunk enough to be cunnin', an' he said, after he'd had his supper, he wanted to take the child a little way, only round the corner, to show her to some friends of his."

IV-"Studies in the Slums" - Helen Campbell - Lippincott's

"Jack"

1880-08-01

"I've never told the whole straight, ahead, ma'am. The Lord knows it all an' there've been times I couldn't ha' done it, an' wouldn't ha' done it if I could ha' helped it. For, you see, in spite of the deviltry I never quite got rid of the sense that God sat lookin' at me, an' that, I do suppose, come from what stuck to me, whether or no, in the school. An' you'd wonder that anything stuck or could."

V-"Studies in the Slums" - Helen Campbell - Lippincott's

"Diet and Its Doings"

1880-09-01

"It's Norah can cook equal to myself," Norah had said with pride as she emptied the black and smoking mass into a dish; and these methods certainly cannot be said to be difficult to follow.There is no conservatism like the conservatism of ignorance, yet in this case want of knowledge there certainly was not. Norah had lived for two years before her marriage with a family the mistress of which had taught her patiently and indefatigably till she became able to set a fairly-cooked meal upon the table, but the knowledge acquired then seemed to have been laid aside as having no connection with her own life.

VI-"Studies in the Slums" - Helen Campbell - Lippincott's

"Jan in the North"

1880-10-01

On the wall, near the small looking-glass, hung a round cap with hanging fox's tail - such a cap as the half-bloods of our north-western forests wear, and the peasants of the European North as well.Jan smiled as he saw my puzzled look. "It iss vy I say I will tell it all," he went on in his grave, steady voice. "Ven I see dat it iss to see de North. For, see, it vas not alvays I am in de city. No. It iss true I am many years in Stockholm, but I am not Swede: I am Finn - yes, true Finn - and as know my own tongue vell, and dat is vat some Finns will nefer do."