"And you don't know it all, Mr. Manager, not you. Your
clown-criminal don't jump into the ring because he's so full of
fun he can't stay out. He goes in for the same reason the real
clown does--because he gets hungry and thirsty and sleepy and
tired like other men, and he's got to fill his stomach and cover
his back and get a place to sleep. And it's because your kind
gets too much, that my kind gets so little it has to piece it out
with this sort of thing. No, you don't know it quite all.

"There's a girl named Nancy Olden that could tell you a lot,
smart as you are. She could show you the inside of the Cruelty,
where she was put so young she never knew that children had
mothers and fathers, till a red-haired girl named Mag Monahan
told her; and then she was mighty glad she hadn't any. She
thought that all little girls were bloodless and dirty, and all
little boys were filthy and had black purple marks where their
fathers had tried to gouge out their eyes. She thought all women
were like the matron who came with a visitor up to the bare room,
where we played without toys--the new, dirty, newly-bruised ones
of us, and the old, clean, healing ones of us--and said, `Here,
chicks, is a lady who's come to see you. Tell her how happy you
are here.' Then Mag's freckled little face, her finger in her
mouth, looked up like this. She was always afraid it might be her
mother come for her. And the crippled boy jerked himself this
way--I used to mimic him, and he'd laugh with the rest of
them--over the bare floor. He always hoped for a penny. Sometimes
he even got it.

"And the boy with the gouged eye--he would hold his pants up