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Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn, 1810-1865

"Mary Barton"

"
He flung her, trembling, sinking, fainting, from him, and strode
away. She fell with a feeble scream against the lamp-post, and lay
there in her weakness, unable to rise. A policeman came up in time
to see the close of these occurrences, and concluding from Esther's
unsteady, reeling fall, that she was tipsy, he took her in her half-
unconscious state to the lock-ups for the night. The superintendent
of that abode of vice and misery was roused from his dozing watch
through the dark hours, by half-delirious wails and moanings, which
he reported as arising from intoxication. If he had listened, he
would have heard these words, repeated in various forms, but always
in the same anxious, muttering way--
"He would not listen to me; what can I do? He would not listen to
me, and I wanted to warn him! Oh, what shall I do to save Mary's
child! What shall I do? How can I keep her from being such a one
as I am; such a wretched, loathsome creature! She was listening
just as I listened, and loving just as I loved, and the end will be
just like my end.


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