Hello and welcome to the lecture on graph traversal algorithm implementation using breadth first search algorithm. In this lecture we will be discussing about implementation of graph traversal using breadth first search approach using C programming language. The learning outcome of this video lecture is that the student is able to develop graph traversal using breadth first search algorithm using C programming language. Here the complete implementation or I can say programming I will be dividing into modules. Module 1 is the representation of graph using adjacency matrix and module 2 is a graph traversal of graph using breadth first search algorithm. Input in the module 1 is the number of nodes in the graph, second input is the label for each node and the third input will be the edges present between two nodes or not. The edges present user will enter one value and zero for the no edge between two nodes. Output of module 1 is the adjacency matrix of given graph which will be the input for the module 2. In module 2 set the status of each node to 1 initialize Q data structure and implement its operations like NQ, DQ, checking Q is empty or not and then follow the BFS algorithm. Let's start with the module 1. For a given graph G to represent or to store the information about the graph G we need input number of nodes and labels for each node. So here in variable declaration section we have declared N to store number of nodes information and array labels to store label for each node. To store graph information in adjacency matrix graph G is declared with size 10 by 10 and variable i and j declared for row index and column index. Now to read number of nodes from messages displayed and scan up statement to read N value. Just to read labels for each node using for loop construct in labels array within this loop we have set status array value to all elements to 1. This initialization of status is required to start with breadth first search algorithm. So in the same loop we are setting the status of all nodes to 1. As shown here in the stable labels array storing label for A, B, C, D, E nodes and status array value is set to 1 for each node. Here the flush all function is used to clear all buffers associated with input stream. So we can read the node information correctly. Now next is read age information in a graph and store in adjacency matrix G. And adjacency matrix is used to represent the nodes that are adjacent to one another that we have already discussed in previous videos. In adjacency matrix the rows and columns are labeled by graph vertices and entry in the adjacency matrix G will contain one at the ith row and jth column if there is a age present between these two nodes. As shown here now to read value in matrix G nested for loop is used in which the first loop is for a row index and second loop is for column index. Now you can see here printf statement is given here to ask the user and age information between two nodes. Here nodes label information is taken from the label in the label array and then next scanf statement to scan value and store at sale G of ij that is node at ith row and jth column. Now in undirected graph we are using here undirected graph if there is an age between node A to node B then there is an age from node B to node A also. So the value at cell G of ij is 1 it means the value at cell G of ji is also 1. So here we can add one condition so we can avoid one step of scanning from getting the information from user and to check that there is an age means the value 1 at G of ji then there is no age and then else you can have the ji value set to 1. If there is no age means 0 will be there and if there is age means we can set the value directly to 1 at the cell G of ij. Now here we are displaying the adjacency matrix for given graph so as we know in two-dimensional array how we can display the two-dimensional array using nested for loop the same way we are displaying the adjacency matrix here. Now in module 2 in which the given graph will be traversed using the by following the BFS algorithm here input to this module is an adjacency matrix representation of graph status array and queue data structure. First variable declaration related to the queue data structure that is character array queue with size 10 by 10 we are maintaining one more queue here that is index queue which is an integer array with the same size 10 and the queue is also with the size 1-dimensional array. We will discuss why index queue is required here in the next coming slide. Index queue front and rear is declared and initialized with 0 and one more variable is declared here is the index which is initialized to 1. Now queue operations are n queue d queue and checking queue is empty and full. Let us discuss implementation of queue operation here n queue function is defined in this slide. Here n queue operation is defined to perform n queue operation on a queue means inserting a new element in the queue with parameters character node and integer node index i node. In queue operation we need to check queue is full or not. So condition here is to check the queue is full or not rare reaches max size means then queue is full accordingly if condition is specified and if it queue is not full then we can insert the index information into the queue and similarly we can insert the node information into the index queue. After n queue operation increment the rear by 1 to point to the next location. So we are very much familiar with the queue operation. So now let us discuss the implementation of d queue operation that is a removing element from the queue. Here d queue function is defined which returns the character removed from the queue along with the index position. While d queue operation we need to check queue is empty or not. So condition here is if front is equal to rear then queue is empty. So we are not able to remove the any element from the queue. So accordingly this message is displayed here. And if queue is not empty then we are removing the node information from the queue and similarly we are removing the index that nodes index information from the index queue. So this we require index information we require to get the label information about that node. So that's why we are maintaining the index queue separately. There might be a different approach to have the node information and index information in the structure format also. After d queue operation increment front by 1 to point to the next location and update index queue's values to minus 1 value. Now let us discuss the implementation of checking queue is empty or not. Here is empty function is defined to check queue is empty or not. So if front is equal to rear then queue is empty. Now we will discuss the BFS algorithm by following this flow chart. Here you can pause the video for some time and write a c code by following BFS algorithm flow chart and using the functions and variables discussed in previous slides. Now we will see the implementation part. The first step in the BFS algorithm is set status 1 for each node in the g. So that we already finished when we are scanning the labels for each node. So we have set the status to 1 for each node in the array status. Then next step is enqueuing the starting node into the queue and update its status to 2. So that's why we are calling here enqueue function by passing the first node information and its index information. So these two will be enqueued into the queue and the index queue. And the status of the first node is updated to 2. Next step we are checking is queue is empty or not. So this while loop is the same and what it is checking the queue is empty or not. If it is not empty the block of code will be written here and if it is empty then it will be terminated. The program will stop here it will come out of the loop. So next step in the algorithm if queue is not empty dequeue a node and process it and set its status to 3. So we are calling here dequeue function. So character written by that we are displaying here as a visited or processed node. And index information what we are retrieving after this dequeue operation. So using that information the status of that node is updated to 3. Next one is enqueue all the neighbors of the node n which we have dequeued. The neighbors whose status is 1 and then set the status to 2. So for that using this index information we are checking this nodes neighbors that is at this column from 0 to n. If that is a neighboring node means the value in the adjacency matrix is 1 and the status is 1 then enqueue that node information and the index information into the queue and update that node status to 2. So this we are doing repeatedly for all the neighboring nodes of the node which we have just now dequeued from the queue. So this will be repeated and once you find the queue is empty your program will come out of the loop. So this is the implementation of the BSS algorithm. So let us see the execution till now whatever we have discussed the modules in this implementation part of the BSS let us see the execution part of that particular program. So here enqueue variable declaration enqueue function then dequeue function what we have discussed just now is empty function main function with the variable declaration reading number of nodes, read a node labels, reading the inch information between the nodes here the prong message to ask is there is a h between these two nodes then scan F to scan the value in the adjacency matrix then displaying the adjacency matrix information and then here from here your BFS implementation starts enqueuing on state first node then the value. So let us execute this particular program first compile then run. So here we are following the same example with the fine nodes A, B, C, D and E then we are asking for the age information there is no h between A to A nodes so 0 is entered there is a h between A to B, A to C so there is one values entered similarly the age information between different nodes as taken from the user. So here you can see when once we are asking for A to B there is no further prong message to ask from the age between B to A so it is considered if there is a h from A to B means there is a h from B to A this is the adjacency matrix after getting the information about the all ages and then the BFS by following the BFS node this is a node is displayed here A, B, C, D, E, A, B, C, E, D sorry. So this is the output of the program thank you for watching this video.


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Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been arrested after he was convicted in a corruption case. What does this mean for the crisis hit country? Human rights organizations have called for a probe into a migrant boat disaster that led to 82 deaths in the Mediterranean Sea. But will this have any impact on this terrible trend? This is the weekend episode of Daily Deep Brief and we'll be looking into these issues. But before that, please do hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Our first story is from Pakistan where a trial court has convicted and sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan to three years in prison. Subsequently he was arrested on Saturday. Khan was on trial in a corruption case related to the alleged sale of official gifts. Now this case was one prong in a huge battle between the former Prime Minister and the Pakistani political establishment. The current Pakistani government which comprises the two major political parties has been desperately trying to prevent him from contesting in the upcoming elections. As of now it's unclear what the result of this verdict will be. The last time Khan was arrested that's a few months ago, massive protests took place in Pakistan. For an analysis, we go to Taimur Rahman, the general secretary of the Mazdoor Kisan Party. Taimur, thank you so much for joining us and first of all, could you maybe take us through what the specifics of this particular case are, the case under which Imran Khan has been convicted and sentenced and how does this affect his political chances as per the law? As you may have heard, Pakistan is once again in the international news because the former Prime Minister Imran Khan has been sentenced to three years imprisonment and a hundred thousand rupees fine in the Toshakhana case. The Toshakhana case is that heads of state or heads of government may receive gifts from other governments or other people. But those gifts have to be put in a special place or with a special department called the Toshakhana department. And if the Prime Minister wants, as long as the Prime Minister is serving, the Prime Minister can take those gifts, those watches or suits or cufflings or whatever they may be and use them for the evening. If the Prime Minister wants, the Prime Minister can also purchase those gifts from the Toshakhana at a significantly reduced amount. So there's a certain percentage that you have to work out. If something is worth a hundred rupees, you pay a certain percentage of that and the gift is yours to own as private property. That is what Imran Khan in fact did. He was gifted some very expensive, he was gifted a very expensive watch and some other expensive things and he purchased those from the Toshakhana and sold them on the market and pocketed the difference. Now, the issue was that the amount of money he paid to the Toshakhana does not cover the necessary amount to get that thing from the Toshakhana. So that constitutes a violation of the law under which those gifts were taken by Imran Khan. That case of course went to court and in the final days of the trial, Imran Khan's lawyer in fact stopped appearing in court because he said that the case was heavily biased and this morning the court basically decided that Imran Khan was in fact guilty of corruption because he had given the Toshakhana less money than was its due according to that particular process. And now the result is that about 30 minutes after the decision was announced the Punjab police has gone and arrested Imran Khan. This time around there were no big riots etc and this is because on May 9th there was a huge riot in Pakistan and the army really went after that you know after the crowd and after the organizers of that. Nearly a hundred people were then pushed into the what is called the army courts which are basically military courts. They were not even in the civilian courts and many others were in civilian courts and there was a lot of pressure on PTI politicians to renounce Imran Khan and to give up the party and in fact a lot of people did exactly that. Right so I also wanted to talk about the fact that Imran Khan in the Pakistani political establishment they've been fighting this legal and political battle for over a year now especially after Imran Khan was overthrown. So does this conviction mark like a decisive moment what are his chances for appeal and you know how is that going to work out. Now this sentence has been you know delivered and I think the public opinion will be and my opinion personally also is that on the scale of the different kinds of corruption that we've seen in Pakistan this is not one of the you know a scandal of the scale and magnitude that we have seen in the past. It is a scandal precisely because Imran Khan always claimed to be absolutely clean pristine and pure but it isn't a scandal that has you know altered economic policy in any fundamental way. So the fact that the court has given the maximum penalty they could have given up to three years they could have given a year they could have given two years they could have given six months but they gave the maximum penalty also signals that in fact the real purpose of this entire case as well as of this conviction was to knock out Imran Khan from politics that is of course what the establishment has wanted and that is also what the current government wants. They want Imran Khan to be completely knocked out of the race because they are unable to really compete with his very aggressive rhetoric much of which is not necessarily true. I'm not saying that it's true but it is effective in the sense that it has managed to attract a substantive section of the population. So what seems to be happening right now is given the reforms of the International Monetary Fund given the conditions they've imposed there's going to be a high there is already and will continue to be a high rate of inflation a low rate of growth which is causing unemployment. For the PDM to go into elections which are due in October under these circumstances where they have not been able to revive the economy would spell disaster for them. For that reason I think they are knocking out Imran Khan from the race so that they are able to win almost unopposed. And what this means there's two things that this implies firstly that to to convict a prime minister is not a small matter. Unfortunately this has happened many times in Pakistan's history Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was even hanged. Other prime ministers have also been convicted including me and Nawaz Sharif and now again Mr Imran Khan. But it sets a very negative precedent because clearly these convictions are done with the intent of political victimization. Whenever one or another party falls foul of the military establishment such convictions follow and the result I think the conclusion that it will bring people to is that really there isn't much of a democratic process in Pakistan. The military pre-selects those people that are going to stand in election and those politicians who for that particular period in history have a very decidedly anti-establishmentarian position or anti-military position will be completely knocked out of the race through various legal and other means. That's what's happened in Imran Khan. So this is a very clear case in my opinion of gerrymandering the coming election. This is not to say that Imran Khan is not guilty of these things. I believe that the case there is also equally black and white that he is guilty of not paying the necessary dues in the Toshakhana case. I think that evidence is also clear but I think the particular conviction that has taken place, the timing of the conviction, everything that's been surrounding it the way his government was displaced and both of no confidence and so on so forth shows that the military has lost trust in Imran Khan and now after May 9th especially has really decided that they want to finish the Pakistan Tehriki in saaf. And finally one last question we know that the Pakistani National Assembly is said to be dissolved in a few days that's what the report says as well. So what lies ahead considering elections are probably going to be scheduled soon the political climate will definitely heat up so what lies ahead for Pakistan? It's sad to see that the parties that signed the Charter of Democracy that is the Pakistan People's Party as well as the Muslim League and the Charter of Democracy of course was signed much earlier in 2005 if I'm not mistaken and its purpose was to come to an agreement that political parties will not use the military establishment against each other they will not use unconstitutional means to destroy each other's government and they will not persecute each other when out of power and that sort of thing. Now it seems ironic that the parties that came together on this particular foundation that they would not persecute they would not use the military against each other they would not persecute each other are doing exactly that to their opponent which is the Pakistan Tehriki in saaf. In a sense we've come full circle the parties that were anti-establishment at one time have become the establishment and the party that was the establishment that is the PTI has is now seems to be anti-establishment of course none of these political parties are anti-establishment in the long run of things but they may have certain issues in the short run with the establishment they're not anti- establishment in a ideological sense or in a theoretical sense but they do disagree with one another policy here or there or have a falling out going to which you see these sorts of musical chairs. So what will happen next I believe that we are going to see an election very soon in which Imran Khan obviously having been convicted will not be able to participate and that through that means the establishment as well as the current government will try to ensure that they win the coming election that is what seems is going on in Pakistan thank you. Thank you Taimur very important reflection at a time when Pakistan is definitely going through both the political and economic crisis thank you so much we'll get back to you soon. On this show daily debrief and on people's dispatch we have consistently covered what is called the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean. Over the past many years thousands of people from conflicted zones in Asia and Africa have been trying to escape to safer places in Europe. Now this involves crossing the Mediterranean Sea but as many of them are poor they often travel in ramshackled boats and they of course don't have visas so they're considered illegal migrants. Now European policies towards these migrants are very harsh their coast guards often ill treat them and there have been a number of cases of migrant boat sinking. This year has been especially deadly in the central Mediterranean region alone four 40-watt migrants were reported either dead or missing between January 1st and March 31st. One such incident took place in June when over 80 asylum seekers died after they boat capsized and sank off the Greek coast. Even at that time the response of the Greek coast guard was criticized. Now rights organizations after a study have demanded an independent and impartial probe. We go to Anish for more. Anish thank you so much for joining us we're taking you out of your usual beat today but to talk about something which is a disaster which also has really global implications in every sense of the word I think there was a lot of shock in June when the accident when the migrant boat tragedy took place as they call it migrant boat tragedy. About 82 people died you know and there were a lot of allegations about the insensitivity of the Greek authorities but as we have talked about many times on people's dispatch this is not a one-off incident this is actually part of a trend. 2023 has been a really bad year as you as we were just talking about so first of all maybe could you take us through what these organizations is in this case I believe it's Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch what have they specifically said regarding this tragedy. Also important I think to note because often once this once an incident of this sort happens there's condemnation for one or two days and after that then things go back to normal in some ways so it's very useful I think to sort of go back and see what happened that's also important and what do these organizations say. Yes so right now the problem that has been raised and the primary problem that has been raised is the fact that the Greek authorities are actually taking a position that is untenable with the sort of evidence that exists already out in public right now which includes apart from testimonies from you know various survivors there are also high witness accounts and this and there is also the fact that the manner in which the ship was wrecked also clearly indicates that there was a great deal of at the best at its best carelessness on the part of the Greek coast guard when they tried to tow this overwhelmingly you know this overwhelmingly populated boat but at the same and at the best it was a very clear sign of them just trying to sink the boat in a procedure that they knew would actually sink it down to the two what 15,000 feet of depth in the Mediterranean. This is definitely what is what is a part here because there is definitely a very what we don't know very well is apart from Greece there are multiple countries in Europe especially in the Mediterranean so I'm a very clear send the boat back sort of policy which essentially you know bases its entire methodology on just attacking any kind of migrant boats that come their way or come to their approach and pretty much that risks that put actual number of people at greater risk than they already are in. Obviously we're talking about a boat the capsized boat itself do not know the number of people the clear number of people because SQE is varying from about 500 to 750,000 sorry 750 people and that could and most of them are missing we only have about less than a hundred survivors and about 80 or 82 or so people about dead bodies were found a lot of them are missing and presumed dead by now with this point in time. So this is a massive boat tragedy obviously like calling it a boat tragedy at this point has made it you know a kind of numb of any kind of sensitivity at this point because this has become such a routine thing and you see the usual suspect because that's you know either taking you know very kind of dangerous maneuvers around the boats which maybe makes you in this case it was a very small cruise ship but in several cases there they actually travel in makeshift boats and very often they cannot really handle you know very you know troubled waters and so making dangerous maneuvers can also sink these boats, stowing and sink these boats so they know the kind of methods that can actually put these migrants or as we should actually call them asylum seekers at risk of you know at risk in a very dangerous area not but really we're talking about high seas at this point and this is something that is that the Greek authorities are trying to you know completely start with any kind of investigation into those parts they have not taken any kind of witness testimonies so far especially from the survivors who have stated that like multiple of them are very clearly associated that the authorities try to prove the boat and they are refusing to take that these testimonies into account in the current investigation and the investigation is only happening primarily because there are Greek people protesting against the they protested at the time when it happened in June and you know multiple media reports at the time actually reported very clearly documented the fact that the authorities were you know where to be blamed for the kind of the capsizing of the boat actually and the fact that they are dispensing all of this they're saying that they try to you know protect an already sinking boat that's their narrative at this point and which does not really you know fit well with the kind of evidence that we have is the reason why such a demand exists that they need a credible investigation now the question is what can be critical at this point because obviously Greek authorities are definitely not going to give you a very credible evidence or a credible investigation maybe European authorities in the EU can actually intervene but we do know like a significant section within the EU right now are quite conservative dominated and do not support any guy or do not have any sympathies for asylum seekers asylum seekers that we like it might go into a different trajectory but asylum seekers are there primarily because of the kind of interventions military interventions they've conducted in the across the Mediterranean especially in Libya and so and you need to also look at the larger picture because it's not just Greece as well it's pretty much almost everyone at this point doing pretty much the exact the same thing exactly the same thing of you know targeting boats targeting migrant boats and not caring whether or not it actually sinks them as long as they're just happy as long as they just do not have as many people coming into their territory right Anish it's important you mentioned the larger European context I think two or three points to note here one is the fact that of course if the migrants or asylum seekers do reach some of these countries their situation is really really bad often they're treated very badly in fact I believe Greece has an extremely poor record of what is called processing some of these asylum seekers which leads many people to actually dread you know being being captured by the Greeks in one way that's one point I think the other point of course like you said is that there is a European initiative by all the EU members in Italy is at the forefront of this also important to mention Italy here to actually restrict migration in various ways there's already a deal with Libya now they're trying to sign a similar deal with they have signed a similar deal with Tunisia as well they are offering millions of at least over a hundred million dollars dollars at least to actually curb what is migration Tunisia also taking a very strong right-wing shift so what you're saying is also I think equally you know it's worrying because the fact that everyone involved the countries from where these migrants are leaving the countries where the migrants want to go all of them are taking such a belligerent attitude towards those who are just escaping war escaping conflict yes exactly at this point this is a situation it's not even like we can't even use the kind of popular terms that we use like cash medical situation it's not really that it's pretty much them being stuck in one hellish place and trying to escape into another one and as you rightly pointed out like we is definitely like the whole processing system itself and the fact that you have to wait in scholar in like very slum-like conditions independently exposed and just being attacked there is pretty much no security or safety for them they are actually attacked by races we have reported on our platform itself about several multiple fires on you know refugee asylum seekers camps and in various instances and that actually you know makes them extremely unsafe to live there it's like it becomes very close to uninhabitable for many of these migrants as well and so as you pointed out like many of them do try to avoid getting into the hands of the authorities and sometimes rare cases some of these boats also have situations where they try to sink themselves just so that they do not get into the hands of coast guards who put them under you know even worse conditions so it's a very you know overall terrible situation and even when they when these countries like even the European Union when they may deals with countries like Asia with Libya they're not really you know giving them money to actually absorb them absorb these like Libya did at one point under the coffee where they did absorb these migrants who are escaping war in regions like Sahel and so on and you know giving them jobs giving them livelihoods allowing them to settle down in these territories and obviously none of these countries are doing that they just they're just using even worse more but not belligerent clearly violent methods to actually prevent these migrants from even coming into their territory let alone the process or you know gain any kind of work likelihood in those regions so this is a very terrible situation that we have to go through it's pretty much outsourcing the violence at this point and at this level that we're looking at it's actually creating a massive humanitarian situation right now you have to remember the numbers like ever since the invasion of Libya by NATO we have seen the numbers being in thousands annually in 2016 about 5,000 more than 5,600 people died or went missing like missing essentially also equals death because we do not get their bodies we do not know where they are and they're presumed that at this point have died on the Mediterranean and since then we have thousands and thousands every year you know being reported death and these are only documented cases we do not know how many of them like smaller ports smaller refugee groups have tried and failed and probably you know went missing in the Mediterranean as well because that the level of data that we have is still not that vigorous enough so these are just UNHRC reports and that itself shows a very grim picture at this point in time and that and pretty much everybody involved is guilty at this point of creating this humanitarian tragedy that pretty much rivals any other tragedy at this point on earth right now but thank you so much Anish for talking to us like you said I think the issue of refugees issue of migrants of asylum seekers it's there in Latin America it's there in many parts of Asia but definitely the Mediterranean region emerging as one of the hot spots so to speak and I think this poses a question not just to you know individual governments or coast guards but to the all of humanity in terms of how do we deal with such a vast section of our population which is which is undergoing substantial suffering trying to escape that and then you have this kind of treatment towards them thank you so much for shedding some light on this and that's all we have time for in this weekend episode will be back on Monday with more stories from across the world more experts giving their analysis of some of the key processes of our time some of the key developments of our time and how they impact the future so see you on Monday and please do hit that subscribe button


He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil's Row, who were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him. His infantile countenance was livid with fury. His small body was writhing in the delivery of great crimson oaths. Run, Jimmy, run, they'll getches screamed a retreating Rum Alley child. Nah, responded Jimmy, with a valiant roar. There's me mix, can't make me run. Howls of renewed wrath went up from Devil's Row throats, tattered gammons on the right, made a furious assault on the gravel heap. On their small convulsed faces there shone the grins of true assassins. As they charged they threw stones and cursed in shrill chorus. The little champion of Rum Alley stumbled precipitately down the other side. His coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle and his hat was gone.  His wane features wore a look of a tiny, insane demon. On the ground children from Devil's Row closed in on their antagonist. He crooked his left arm defensively about his head and fought with cursing fury. The little boys ran to and fro dodging, hurling stones and swearing in barbaric trebles.  Some labourers unloading a scow at a dock at the river, paused for a moment and regarded the fight. The engineer of a passive tugboat hung lazily to a railing and watched. Over on the island a worm of yellow convicts came from the shadow of a grey, ominous building and crawled slowly along the river's bank. As stone had smashed into Jimmy's mouth blood was bubbling over his chin and down upon his ragged shirt. Tears made furrows on his dirt stone cheeks. His thin legs had begun to tremble and turn weak, causing his small body to reel. His roaring curses at the first part of the fight had changed to a blasphemous chatter. In the yells of the whirling mob of devil-throw children there were notes of joy like songs of triumph savagery.  Down the avenue came, boastfully, sauntering a lad of sixteen years, although the chronic sneer of an ideal manhood already sat upon his lips. His hat was tipped with an air of challenge over his eye. Between his teeth a cigar stump was tilted at the angle of defiance. He walked with a certain swing at the shoulders which appalled the timid. He glanced over into the vacant lot in which the little rabing boys from devil-throw sieved about the shrieking and tearful child from rum alley. Gee! he murmured with interest. A scrap! Gee! He strode over to the cursing circle, swinging his shoulders in a manner which denoted that he held victory in his fists. He approached at the back of one of the most deeply engaged of the devil-throw children. Ah! what the hell! he said, and smote the deeply engaged one on the back of the head. The little boy fell to the ground and gave a horse tremendous howl. He scrambled to his feet, and perceiving evidently the size of his assailant ran quickly off, shouting alarms. The entire devil-throw party followed him. They came to a stand a short distance away and yelled, taunting oaths at the boy with the chronic sneer. The latter momentarily paid no attention to them.  Jimmy wiped his blood wet features with his sleeve. Well, it was this way, Pete.  Some rum alley children now came forward. The party stood for a moment, exchanging vain glorious remarks with devil-throw. A few stones were thrown at long distances, and words of challenge passed between small warriors. Then the rum alley contingent turned slowly in the direction of their home street. They began to give, each to each, distorted versions of the fight. Causes of retreat, in particular, cases were magnified. Blows dealt in the fight were enlarged to catapultian power, and stones thrown were alleged to have hurtle with infinite accuracy. Vallow grew strong again, and the little boys began to swear with great spirit.  Little Jimmy was striving to stanch the flow of blood from his cut lips. Scowling, he turned upon the speaker. Ah, where the hell was ya when I was doin' all the fighting? he demanded. Use kids makes me tired. Ah, go on, replied the other argumentedly. Jimmy replied with heavy contempt. Ah, you's can't fight, Blue Billy, I can lick ya with one hand. Ah, go on, replied Billy again. Ah, said Jimmy threateningly. Ah, said the other in the same tone. They struck at each other, clinched and rolled over on the cobbled stones. Kick the damned guts out of him, yelled Peter, the lad with the chronic sneer, in tones of delight. The small combatants, pounded and kicked, scratched and tore. They began to weep, and their curses struggled in their throats with sobs.  They formed a bobbing circle about the pair. A tiny spectator was suddenly agitated. Cheez it, Jimmy, cheez it, he comes your father, he yelled. The circle of little boys instantly parted. They drew away and waited in ecstatic awe for that which was about to happen. The two little boys fighting in the modes of four thousand years ago did not hear the warning. Up the avenue they plotted slowly a man with sullen eyes. He was carrying a dinner pail and smoking an apple wood pipe. As he neared the spot where the little boys drove, he regarded them listlessly. But suddenly he ruled an oath and advanced upon the rolling fighters. Here you, Jim, get up now.  He began to kick into the chaotic mass on the ground. Poor Billy felt a heavy boot stroke his head. He made a furious effort and disentangled himself from Jimmy. He tottered away, damning. Jimmy arose painfully from the ground and confronting his father began to curse him. His parent kicked him. Come home now, he cried.  They departed. The man paced pleasantly along with the apple wood emblem of serenity between his teeth. The boy followed a dozen feet in the rear. He swore luridly that he felt that it was degradation for one who aimed to be some vague soldier or a man of blood with a sort of sublime license to be taken home by a father. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of Maggie, A Girl of the Streets This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane Chapter 2 Eventually they entered into a dark region where, from a careening building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the street and the gutter. A wind of early autumn raised yellow dust from cobbles and swirled it against and hundred windows. Long streamers of garments flooded from fire escapes. In all unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags and bottles. In the street infants played or fought with other infants or sat stupidly in the way of vehicles. Feminable women with uncombed hair and disordered dress gossiped while leaning on railings Screamed in frantic quarrels, withered persons in curious postures of submission to something set smoking pipes in obscure corners. A thousand orders of cooking food came forth to the street. The building quivered and creaked from the weight of humanity stamping about in its bowels. A small ragged girl dragged a red, balling infant along the crowded ways. He was hanging back, babylike, bracing his wrinkle bare legs.  She jerked the baby's arm impatiently. He fell on his face, roaring.  With the obstinacy of his order he protested against being dragged in a chosen direction. He made heroic endeavours to keep on his legs, denounce his sister and consume a bit of orange peeling, which he chewed between the times of his infantile or rations. As the sullen eyed man followed by the blood-covered boy drew near, the little girl burst into reproachful cries. Ah Jimmy, you've been fighting again. The urchins swelled disdainfully.  The little girl upbraided him.  Ain't it like we'll all get a pounding.    As his sister continued her lamentations he suddenly swore and struck her. The little girl reeled and, recovering herself, burst into tears and quaveringly cursed him. As she slowly retreated, her brother advanced, dealing her cups. The father heard and turned about. Stop that, Jim, dear. Leave your sister alone on the street.  The urchin raised his voice in defiance to his parent and continued his attacks. The babe bawled tremendously, protesting with great violence. During his sister's hasty maneuvers he was dragged by the arm. Finally the procession plunged into one at the gruesome doorways. They crawled up dark stairways and along cold gloomy halls. At last the father pushed open a door and they entered a lighted room in which a large woman was rampant. She stopped in a career from receiving stove to a pan-covered table. As the father and children filed in she peered at them. Ah, what you been fighting again by God? She threw herself upon Jimmy. The urchin tried to dart behind the others and in the scuffle the babe, Tommy, was knocked down. He protested with his usual vehemence because they had bruised his tender shins against a table leg. The mother's massive shoulders teemed with anger grasping the urchin by the neck and shoulders she shook him until he rattled. She dragged him to an unholy sink and soaking a rag in water began to scrub his laterated face with it. Jimmy screamed in pain and tried to twist his shoulders out of the clasp of the huge arms. The babe sat on the floor watching the scene, his face in contortions like that of a woman at a tragedy. The father with a newly laden pipe in his mouth crouched on a backless chair near the stove. Jimmy's cries annoyed him. He turned about and bellowed at his wife.  You're always pounding him. When I come nights I can't get no rest because you're always pounding a kid. Let up, dear. Don't be always pounding a kid. The woman's operations on the urchin instantly increased in violence. At last she tossed him to a corner where he limply lay cursing and weeping. The wife put her immense hands on her hips and with a cheap tan like stride approached her husband. Hope, she said, with a great grunt of contempt. And what in the devil are you sticking your nose for? The babe crawled under the table and, turning, peered out cautiously. The ragged girl retreated and the urchin in the corner drew his legs carefully beneath him. The man puffed his pipe calmly and put his great mudded boots on the back part of the stove. Go to help, he murmured tranquilly. The woman screamed and shook her fists before her husband's eyes. The rough yellow of her face and neck flared suddenly crimson. She began to howl. He puffed impertibly at his pipe for a time, but finally arose and began to look out at the window into the darkened chaos of backyards. You'd been drinking, Mary, he said. You'd better let up on the bot, old woman, or you'll get done.  I ain't had a drop, she ruled in reply. They had a lurid altercation in which they damned each other's souls with frequency. The babe was staring out from under the table, his small face working in his excitement. The ragged girl went stealthily over to the corner where the urchin lay. I was hurted much, Jimmy, she whispered timidly.  Will I wash the blood? Nah, will I? When I catch that Riley kid I'll break his face. That's right, see? He turned his face to the wall as if resolved to grimly bide his time. In the quarrel between husband and wife, the woman was victor. The man grabbed his hat and rushed from the room, apparently determined upon a vengeful drunk. She followed to the door and thundered at him as he made his way downstairs. She returned and stirred up the room until her children were bobbing about like bubbles. Get out the way, she persistently bawled, waving feet with their dishevelled shoes near the heads of her children. She shrouded herself, puffing and snorting, in a cloud of steam at the stove, and eventually extracted a frying pan full of potatoes that hissed. She flourished it. Come to your sufferers now, she cried, with sudden exasperation. Hurry up now, or I'll help you. The children scrambled hastily. With prodigious clutter they arranged themselves at table. The babe sat with his feet dangling high from a precarious infant chair, and gorged his small stomach. Jimmy forced, with feverish rapidity, the grease enveloped pieces between his wounded lips. Maggie, with side glances of fear of interruption, ate like a small, pursued tyress. The mother sat blinking at them. She delivered reproaches, swallowed potatoes, and drunk from a yellow-brown bottle. After a time her mood changed, and she wept as she carried little Tommy into another room and laid him to sleep, with his fists doubled in an old quilt of faded red and green grandeur. Then she came and moaned by the stove.  The little girl plotted between the table and the chair with a dishpan on it. She tottered on her small legs beneath burdens of dishes. Jimmy sat nursing his various wombs. He cast furtive glances at his mother. His practised eye perceived her gradually emerge from a muddled mist of sentiment, until her brain burned in drunken heat. He sat breathless. Maggie broke a plate. The mother started to her feet as it propelled. Good God! she howled, her eyes glittered on her child with sudden hatred. The fervent red of her face turned almost to purple. The little boy ran to the halls, shrieking like a monk in an earthquake. He floundered about in darkness, until he found the stairs. He stumbled, panic-stricken, to the next floor. An old woman opened the door, a light behind her through a flare on the urchin's quivering face. Ah, good child! What is it this time?  End of Chapter 2 Jimmy and the old woman listened long in the hall. Above the muffled roar of conversation, the dismal wailings of babies at night, the thumping of feet in unseen corridors and rooms, mingled with the sound of a varied horse shouting in the street, and the rattling of wheels over cowels.  The old woman was a gnarled and leathery personage who could don at will an expression of great virtue. She possessed a small music box capable of one tune, and a collection of god-blessers pitched in assorted keys of fervency. Each day she took a position upon the stones of Fifth Avenue, where she crooked her legs under her and crouched immovable and hideous, like an idol. She received a daily small sum and pennies. It was contributed, for the most part, by persons who did not make their homes in that vicinity. Once when a lady had dropped her purse on the sidewalk, the gnarled woman had grabbed it and smuggled it with great dexterity beneath her cloak. When she was arrested, she had cursed the lady into a partial swoon, and with her aged limbs, twisted from rheumatism, had almost kicked the stomach out of a huge policeman whose conduct upon that occasion she referred to when she said, The police, damm'em. Hey, Jimmy, it's cursed shame, she said.   Jimmy took a tendered tin pail and seven pennies and departed. He passed into the side door of a saloon and went to the bar. Straining up on his toes, he raised the pail and pennies as high as his arms would let him. He saw two hands thrust down and take them. Directly the same hands let down the filled pail and he left. In front of the gruesome doorway he met a lurching figure. It was his father, swaying about on uncertain legs. Give me the can, see? said the man, threateningly. Ah, come off, I got this can for that old woman, and it'd be dirt to swipe it, see? cried Jimmy. The father wrenched the pail from the urchin. He grasped it in both hands and lifted it to his mouth. He glued his lips to the under-edge and tilted his head. His hairy throat swelled until it seemed to grow near his chin. There was a tremendous gulping movement and the beer was gone. The man caught his breath and laughed. He hid his son on the head with the empty pail. As it rolled, clanging into the street, Jimmy began to scream and kick repeatedly at his father's shins. Look at the dirt, what you've done me, he yelled. The old woman will be raised in hell. He retreated to the middle of the street, but the man did not pursue. He staggered toward the door.  He shouted and disappeared.  Why do I come and drink whiskey here this way, cause home, regular live-in hell? Jimmy waited a long time in the street and then crept warily up through the building. He passed with great caution the door of the gnarled woman and finally stopped outside his home and listened. He could hear his mother moving heavily about among the furniture of the room. She was chanting in a mournful voice, occasionally interjecting bursts of volcanic wrath at the father, who Jimmy judged, had sunk down on the floor or in a corner. Why the blazes don't you try to keep Jim from fighting? I'll break her jaw, she suddenly bellowed. The man mumbled with drunken indifference.  What's odds? Because he tears his clothes.  The husband seemed to become aroused.  There was a crash against the door and something broke into a clattering fragments. Jimmy partially suppressed the howl and darted down the stairway. Below he paused and listened. He heard howls and curses, groans and shrieks, confusingly in chorus as if a battle were raging. With all was the crash of splintering furniture. The eyes of the urchin glared in fear that one of them would discover him. Curious faces appeared in doorways and whispered comments passed to and fro. Well, Johnson's raisin' howl again. Jimmy stood until the noises ceased and the other inhabitants of the tenement had all yawned and shut their doors. Then he crawled upstairs with the caution of an invader of a panther den. Sounds of labored breathing came through the broken door panels. He pushed the door open and entered, quaking. A glow from the fire threw red hues over the bare floor, the cracked and soiled plastering and the overturned and broken furniture. In the middle of the floor lay his mother asleep. In one corner of the room his father, his limp body, hung across the seat of a chair. The urchin stole forward. He began to shiver in dread of awakening his parents. His mother's great chest was heaving painfully. Jimmy paused and looked down at her. Her face was inflamed and swollen from drinking. Her yellow brows shaded eyelids that had brown blue. Her tangled hair tossed in waves over her forehead. Her mouth was set in the same lines of vindictive hatred that it had perhaps borne during the fight. Her bare red arms were thrown out above her head in the positions of exhaustion. Something may happen like those of a sated villain. The urchin bended over his mother. He was fearful, lest she should open her eyes and the dread within him was so strong that he could not prepare to stare, but hung as if fascinated over the woman's grim face. Suddenly her eyes opened. The urchin found himself looking straight into that expression which it would seem had the power to change his blood to salt. He followed piercingly and fell backward. The woman floundered for a moment, tossed her arms about her head as if in combat, and again began to snore. Jimmy crawled back in the shadows and waited. A noise in the next room had followed his cry at the discovery that his mother was awake. He groveled in the gloom. The eyes from out his drawn face riveted upon the intervening door. He heard it creak. No voice came to him. Jimmy! Jimmy! Are you there? It whispered. The urchin started. The thin white face of his sister looked at him from the doorway of the other room. She crept to him across the floor. The father had not moved, but lay in the same death-like sleep. The mother writhed in uneasy slumber, her chest wheezing as if she were in the agonies of strangulation. Out at the window the floret moon was peering over dark roofs, and in the distance the waters of a river glimmered pallidly. The small frame of the ragged girl was quivering. Her features were haggard from weeping, and her eyes gleamed from fear. She grasped the urchin's arm in her little trembling hands, and they huddled in a corner. The eyes of both were drawn by some force to stare at the woman's face, but she need only to awake and all fiends would come from below. They crouched until the ghost mists of dawn appeared at the window, drawing close to the panes, and looking in at the prostrate heaving body of the mother. End of chapter 3 Chapter 4 of Maggie, A Girl of the Streets This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org recording by Ernie Bob. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane Chapter 4 The babe Tommy died. He went away in a white, insignificant coffin. His small waxen hand clutching a flower that the girl, Maggie, had stolen from an Italian. He and Jimmy lived. The inexperienced fibers of the boy's eyes were hardened at an early age. He became a young man of leather. He lived some red years without laboring. During that time, his sneer became chronic. He studied human nature in the gutter and found it no worse than he thought he had reason to believe it. He never conceived a respect for the world because he had begun with no idols that it had smashed. He clad his soul in armor by means of happening hilariously in at a mission church where a man composed his sermons of use. While they got warm at the stove, he told his hearers just where he calculated they stood with the Lord. Many of the sinners were impatient over the pictured depths of their degradation. They were waiting for soup tickets. A reader of words of wind demons might have been able to see the portions of dialogue passed to him between the Exoter and his hearers. You are damned! said the preacher. And the reader of sounds might have seen the reply go forth from the ragged people. Where's our soup? Jimmy and a companion sat in the rare seat and commented upon the things that didn't concern them with all the freedom of English gentlemen. When they grew thirsty and went out, their minds confused the speaker with Christ. Momentarily, Jimmy was sullen with thoughts of a hopeless altitude where grew fruit. His companion said that if he should ever meet God, he would ask for a million dollars and a bottle of beer. Jimmy's occupation for a long time was to stand on street corners and watch the world go by. Dreaming blood-red dreams at the passing of pretty women. He menaced mankind at the intersections of streets. On the corners, he was in life and off life. The world was going on and he was there to perceive it. He maintained a belligerent attitude toward all welder's men. To him, fine raiment was allied to weakness and all good courts covered faint hearts. He and his order were kings, to a certain extent, over the men of untarnished clothes because these latter dreaded perhaps to be either killed or laughed at. Above all things, he despised obvious Christians and ciphers with the chrysanthemums of aristocracy in their buttonholes. He considered himself above both of these classes. He was afraid of neither the devil nor the leader of society. When he had a dollar in his pocket, his satisfaction with existence was the greatest thing in the world. So, eventually, he felt obliged to work. His father died and his mother's years were divided up into periods of 30 days. He became a truck driver. He was given the charge of a painstaking pair of horses in a large, rattling truck. He invaded the turmoil and tumble of the downtown streets and learned to breathe melodic tree defiance at the police occasional used to climb up, drag him from his perch and beat him. In the lower part of the city, he daily involved himself in hideous tangles. If he and his team chanced to be in the rear, he preserved a demeanor of serenity, crossing his legs and bursting forth into yells when foot passengers took dangerous dives beneath the noses of his champion horses. He smoked his pipe calmly for he knew that his pay was marching on. If in the front of the chaos, he entered terrifically into the quarrel that was raging to and for among the drivers on the high seats and sometimes roared out and violently got himself arrested.  He became so sharp that he believed in nothing. To him the police were always actuated by malignant impulses and the rest of the world was composed, for the moist part, of the creatures who were all trying to take advantage of him and with whom in defense he was obliged to quarrel on all possible occasions. He himself occupied a downtrodden position that had a private but distinct element of grandeur in his isolation.  At first his tongue strove with these beings as if he was superior. He became immured like an African cow.  He fell into the habit when starting on a long journey of fixing his eye on high and distant object, commanding his horses to begin and then going into a sort of trance of observation. Multitude of drivers might howl in his rare and his passengers might arrive with oppribrium. But he would not awaken unless some blue policeman turned red and began to frenziedly tear bridles and beat the soft noises of the responsible horses. When he paused to contemplate the attitude of the police toward himself and his fellows, he believed that they were the only men in the city who had no rights. When driving about he felt that he was held liable by the police for anything that might occur in the streets and was a common prey of all energetic officials. In revenge he resolved never to move out of the way of anything until formed of circumstances or a much larger man than himself forced into it.  He could not conceive their maniacal desires to cross the streets. Their madness moist him with eternal amazement. He was continually storming at them from his throne. He sat aloft and denounced their frantic leaps, plunges, dives, and straddles. When they were thrust at or perried the noises of his champion horses, making them swing their heads and move their feet, disturbing a solid dreamy repose, he swore at the men as fools for he himself could perceive that providence had caused it clearly to be written that he and his team had an inlinable right to stand in the proper path of the sun-chariot and, if they so minded, obstructed its mission or take a wheel off. And perhaps if the God-driver had ungovernable desire to step down, put up his flame-colored fists and manfully dispute the right-of-way, he would have probably been immediately opposed by a scowling mortal with two sets of very hard knuckles. It is possible, perhaps, that this young man would have derided, in an axle-wide alley, the approach of a flying ferry-boat. Yet, he achieved a respect for a fire engine. As one charged toward his truck, he would fearfully drive upon a sidewalk, threatening untold people with annihilation. When an engine would strike a mass of blocked trucks, splitting it into fragments as a blow annihilates a cake of ice, Jimmy's team could usually be served high and safe, with whole wheels, on the sidewalk. The fearful coming of the engine could break up the most intricate muddle of heavy vehicles, at which the police had been swearing for the half of an hour. Our fire engine was enshrined in his heart as an appalling thing that he loved with a distant, dog-like devotion. They had been known to overturn street cars. Those leaping horses, striking sparks from the cobbles of forward lunch were creatures to be ineffably admired. The clang of the gong pierced his breast like a noise of remembered war. When Jimmy was a little boy, he began to be arrested. Before he reached a great age, he had a fair record. He developed too great a tendency to climb down from his truck and fight with other drivers. He had been in quite a number of miscellaneous fights, in some general baroom rows that had become known to the police. Once he had been arrested for assaulting a Chinaman. Two women in different parts of the city, entirely unknown to each other, caused him considerable annoyance by breaking forth, simultaneously, at fateful intervals, into valings about marriage and support and infants. Nevertheless, he had, on a certain style at evening, said wanderingly and quite reverently. Demoon looks like hell, don't it? End of chapter 4 Recording by Ernie Bob Chapter 5 Of Maggie, a girl of the streets This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Shwenderman Maggie, a girl of the streets by Stephen Crane Chapter 5 The girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle. She grew to be a most rare and wonderful production of a tenement district. A pretty girl. None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins. The philosophers upstairs, downstairs, and on the same floor puzzled over it. The child, playing and fighting with gammons in the street, dirt disguised her. Attired in tatters and grime, she went unseen. There came a time, however, when the young men of the vicinity said, that Johnson-goyle is a pretty good looker. About this period, her brother remarked to her, Mag, I'll tell you this, see, you've either got to go to hell or go to work. Whereupon she went to work, having the feminine version of going to hell. By chance, she got a position in an establishment, where they made collars and cuffs. She received a stool and a machine in a room where sat twenty girls of various shades of yellow discontent. She perched on the stool and treadled at her machine all day, turning out collars. The name of whose brand could be noted in relevancy to anything in connection with collars. At night, she returned home to her mother. Jimmy grew large enough to take the vague position of head of the family. As incumbent of that office, he stumbled upstairs late at night as his father had done before him. He reeled about the room swearing at his relations or went to sleep on the floor. The mother had gradually arisen to that degree of fame that she could bandy words with her acquaintances among the police. Justices. Court officials called her by her first name. When she appeared, they pursued a course which had been theirs for months. They invariably grinned and cried out, �Hello, Mary, you here again?� Her gray head wagged in many a court. She always besieged a bench with valuable excuses, explanations, apologies, and prayers. Her flaming face and rolling eyes were a sort of familiar sight on the island. She measured time by means of sprees and was eternally swollen and disheveled. One day the young man, Pete, who as a lad had smitten the devil's row urchin in the back of the head and put to flight the antagonists of his friend Jimmy strutted upon the scene. He met Jimmy one day on the street, promised to take him to a boxing match in Williamsburg and called for him in the evening. Maggie observed Pete. He sat on a table in the Johnson home and dangled his checked legs with an enticing nonchalance. His hair was curled down over his forehead in an oiled bang. His rather pug nose seemed to revolt from contact with a bristling mustache of short, wire-like hairs. His blue double-breasted coat edged with black braid buttoned close to a red-puff tie, and his patent leather shoes looked like murder-fitted weapons. His mannerism stamped him as a man who had a correct sense of his personal superiority. There was valor and contempt for circumstances in the glance of his eye. He waved his hands like a man of the world, who dismisses religion and philosophy and says fudge. He had certainly seen everything, and with each curl of his lip he declared that it amounted to nothing. Maggie thought he must be a very elegant and graceful bartender. He was telling tales to Jimmy. Maggie watched him furtively with half-closed eyes, lit with a vague interest. Holy G, they makes me tired, he said. Today some farmer comes in and tries to run the shop, see? But they get trod right out. I jolt them right out in the street before they know where they is, see? Sure, said Jimmy. There was a mug come into place the other day with an idea he was going to own the place. Holy G, he was going to own the place? I see he had a still on, and I didn't want to give him no stuff. So I says, get the hell out of here, and don't make no trouble. I says like that, see?   See? Jimmy nodded understandingly. Over his features played an eager desire to state the amount of his valor in a similar crisis, but the narrator proceeded. Well, the blokey he says, he ain't looking for no scrap, he says. See? But he says, I'm a spectable citizen, and I want to drink and pretty damn soon, too, see?   Don't make no trouble, I says. Like that. Don't make no trouble, see? Then the mug he squared off and said he was fine as silk with his duke, see?  That's what he said, see? Sure, repeated, Jimmy. Pete continued. Say, I just jumped the bar and the way I plunked, that blokey was great, see? That's right, in the jar, see? Holy gee. He throwed a spittoon through the front windy. Say, I thought I'd dropped dead. But the boss, he comes in after and he says, Pete, he has done just right. You've got to keep order, and it's all right, see? It's all right, he says. That's what he said. The two held a technical discussion. That bloke was a dandy, said Pete, in conclusion. But he hadn't know it and made no trouble. That's what I says to them. Don't come in here and make no trouble, I says, like that. Don't make no trouble, see? As Jimmy and his friend exchanged tales descriptive of their prowess, Maggie leaned back in the shadow. Her eyes dwelt wonderingly and rather wistfully upon Pete's face. The broken furniture, grimy walls and general disorder and dirt of her home of a sudden appeared before her and began to take a potential aspect. Pete's aristocratic person looked as if it might soil. She looked keenly at him, occasionally wondering if he was feeling contempt. But Pete seemed to be enveloped in reminiscence. Holy gee, said he. Those mugs can't faze me. They knows I can wipe up the street with any tree of them. When he said, Ah, what the hell? His voice was burdened with disdain for the inevitable and contempt for anything that fate might compel him to endure. Maggie perceived that here was the bow-ideal of a man. Her dim thoughts were often searching faraway lands where, as God says, the little hills sing together in the morning. Under the trees of her dream gardens there had always walked a lover. End of Chapter 5 Recording by Jack Schwenderman, Flemington, New Jersey Chapter 6 Of Maggie, a girl of the streets This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Maggie, a girl of the streets by Stephen Crane Chapter 6 Pete took note of Maggie. Say, Meg, I'm stuck on your shape. It's out of sight. He said, parenthetically, with an affable grin. As he became aware that she was listening closely, he grew still more eloquent in his descriptions of various happenings in his career. It appeared that he was invincible in fights. Why, he said, referring to a man with whom he had had a misunderstanding.  Dat's right, he was dead easy. See? He thought he was a scrapper, but he found out different. Holy gee! He walked to and fro in the small room, which seemed then to grow even smaller and unfit to hold his dignity, the attribute of a supreme warrior. Dat swing of the shoulders that had frozen the timid when he was but a lad, had increased with his growth in education at the ratio of ten to one. It, combined with the sneer upon his mouth, told mankind that there was nothing in space which could appall him. Maggie marveled at him and surrounded him with greatness. He went to calculate the altitude of the pinnacle from which he must have looked down upon her. I met a chump the other day way up into city, he said. I was going to see a friend of mine. When I was across in the street the chump run'd plump into me and then he turns round and says you're insolent ruffian. He says like Dat. Oh gee! I says. Oh gee!  Like Dat, see?  Then the bloke he got wild. He says I was a contemptible scoundrel or something like Dat, and he says I was doomed to ever less in petition and all like Dat. Gee, I says.   And then I slugged him, see? With Jimmy and his company he started in a sort of a blaze of glory from the Johnson home. Maggie, leaning from the window watched him as he walked down the street. Here was a formidable man who disdained the strength of a world full of fists. Here was one who had contempt for brass-clothed power, one whose knuckles could defiantly ring against the granite of law. He was a knight. The two men went from under the glimmering streetlamp into shadows. Turning, Maggie contemplated the dark, dust-stained walls and the scant and crude furniture of her home. A clock in a splintered and battered oblong box of varnished wood she suddenly regarded as an abomination. She noted that it ticked raspingly. The almost vanished flowers in the carpet pattern she conceived to be newly hideous. Some faint attempts she had made to freshen the appearance of a dingy curtain she now saw to be piteous. She wondered what Pete dined on. She reflected upon the collar and cuff factory. It began to appear to her mind as a dreary place of endless grinding. Pete's elegant occupation brought him, no doubt, into contact with people who had money and manners. It was probable that he had a large acquaintance of pretty girls. He must have great sums of money to spend. To her the earth was composed of hardships and insults. She felt instant admiration for a man who openly defied it. She thought that if the grim angel of death should clutch his heart, Pete would shrug his shoulders and say, Oh, everything goes. She anticipated that he would come again shortly. She spent some of her weeks' pay in the purchase of flowered creton in the Lamberkin. She made it with infinite care and hung it to the slightly careening mantel over the stove in the kitchen. She studied it with painful anxiety from different points in the room. She wanted it to look well on Sunday night when, perhaps, Jimmy's friend would come. On Sunday night, however, Pete did not appear. Afterward the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation. She was now convinced that he was superior to admiration for Lamberkins. A few evenings later, Pete entered with fascinating innovations in his apparel. As she had seen him twice and he had different suits on each time, Maggie had a dim impression that his wardrobe was prodigiously extensive. Say, Meg, he said, Put on your best duds Friday night and I'll take you to the show, see? He spent a few moments in flourishing his clothes and then vanished without having glanced at the Lamberkin. Over the eternal collars and cuffs in the factory, Maggie spent the most of three days in making imaginary sketches of Pete and his daily environment. She imagined some half-dozen women in love with him and thought he must lean dangerously toward an indefinite one, whom she pictured with great charms of person but with an altogether acceptable disposition. She thought he must live in a blare of pleasure. He had friends and people who were afraid of him. She saw the golden glitter of the place where Pete was to take her, an entertainment of many hues and many melodies where she was afraid she might appear small and mouse-colored. Her mother drank whiskey all Friday morning. With lurid face and tossing hair all Friday afternoon. When Maggie came home at half past six, her mother lay asleep amidst the wreck of chairs and a table. Fragments of various household utensils were scattered about the floor. She had vented some phase of drunken fury upon the Lamberkin. It lay in a bedraggled heap in the corner. Ha! She snorted, sitting up suddenly.   Been loafing round the streets. You're getting to be a regular devil. When Pete arrived, Maggie in a worn black dress was waiting for him in the midst of a floor strewn with wreckage. The curtain at the window had been pulled by a heavy hand and hung by one tack, dangling to and fro in the draft through the cracks at the sash. The knots of blue ribbons appeared like violated flowers. The fire in the stove had gone out. The displaced lids and open doors showed heaps of sullen gray ashes. The remnants of a meal ghastly, like dead flesh, lay in a corner. Maggie's red mother stretched on the floor, blasphemed and gave her daughter a bad name. End of chapter 6 Chapter 7 of Maggie A Girl of the Streets This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by B.G. Oxford Maggie, A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane Chapter 7 An orchestra of yellow silk women and bald-headed men on an elevated stage near the center of a great green-hued hall played a popular waltz. The place was crowded with people grouped about little tables. A battalion of waiters slid among the throng, carrying trays of beer glasses and making change from the inexhaustible vaults of their trouser pockets.  There was a low rumble of conversation and a subdued clinking of glasses. Clouds of tobacco smoke rolled and wavered high in air about the dull guilt of the chandeliers. The vast crowd had an air throughout of having just quitted labor. Men with calloused hands and attired in garments that showed the wear of an endless trudge for a living smoked their pipes contentedly and spent five, ten, or perhaps fifteen cents for a beer. There was a mere sprinkling of naked, gloved men who smoked cigars purchased elsewhere. The great body of the crowd was composed of people who showed that all day they strove with their hands. Quiet Germans, with maybe their wives and two or three children sat listening to the music with the expression of happy cows. An occasional party of sailors from a warship, their faces, pictures of sturdy health spent the earlier hours of the evening on small round tables. Very infrequent tipsy men swollen with the value of their opinions engaged their companions in earnest and confidential conversation. In the balcony and here and there below shown the impassive faces of women. The nationalities of the Bowery beamed upon the stage from all directions. Pete aggressively walked up a side aisle and took seats with Maggie at a table beneath the balcony. Two beers. Leaning back, he regarded with eyes of superiority the scene before them. This attitude affected Maggie strongly. A man who could regard such a sight with indifference must be accustomed to very great things. It was obvious that Pete had been to this place many times before and was very familiar with it. A knowledge of this fact made Maggie feel little and new. He was extremely gracious and attentive. He displayed the consideration of a cultured gentleman who knew what was due. Say, what the hell? Bring the lady a big glass.  Don't be fresh now, said the waiter with some warmth as he departed. Get off the cot, said Pete after the other's retreating form. Maggie perceived that Pete brought forth all his elegance and all his knowledge of high class customs for her benefit. She reflected upon his condescension. The orchestra of yellow silk women and bald-headed men gave vent to a few bars of anticipatory music and a girl in a pink dress with short skirts galloped upon the stage. She smiled upon the throng as if an acknowledgement of a warm welcome and began to walk to and fro making profuse gesticulations and singing in brazen soprano tones a song the words of which were inaudible. When she broke into the swift rattling measures of a chorus some half tipsy men near the stage joined in the rollicking refrain and glasses were pounded rhythmically upon the tables. People leaned forward to watch her and to try to catch the words of the song. When she vanished there were long rollings of applause. Obedient to more anticipatory bars she reappeared amidst the half suppressed cheering of the tipsy men. The orchestra plunged into dance music and the laces of the dancer fluttered and flew in the glare of gas jets. She divulged the fact that she was attired in some half dozen skirts. It was patent that any one of them would have proved adequate for the purpose for which skirts are intended. An occasional man bent forward intent upon the pink stockings. Maggie wondered at the splendor and lost herself in calculations of the cost of the silks and laces. The dancer's smile of stereotyped enthusiasm was turned for ten minutes upon the faces of her audience. In the finale she fell into some of those grotesque attitudes which were at the time popular among the dancers in the theater's uptown. Giving to the Bowery public the fantasies of the aristocratic theater-going public seats. Say Pete! said Maggie leaning forward. This is great! Sure, said Pete, with proper complacence. A ventriloquist followed the dancer. He held two fantastic dolls on his knees. He made them sing mournful ditties and say funny things about geography and Ireland. Do those little men talk? asked Maggie. Nah, said Pete.  Two girls on the bills of sisters came forth and sang a duet that is heard occasionally at concerts given under church auspices. They supplemented it with a dance which of course can never be seen at concerts given under church auspices. After the duetist had retired a woman of debatable age sang a negro melody. The chorus necessitated some grotesque waddlings supposed to be an imitation of a plantation darky under the influence probably of music and the moon. The audience was just enthusiastic enough over it to have her return and sing a sorrowful lay whose lines told of a mother's love and a sweetheart who waited and a young man who was lost at sea under the most harrowing circumstances. From the faces of a score or so in the crowd the self-contained look faded. Many heads were bent forward to witness and sympathy. As the last distressing sentiment of the piece was brought forth it was greeted by that kind of applause which rings as sincere. As a final effort the singer rendered some verses which described a vision of Britain being annihilated by America and Ireland bursting her bonds. A carefully prepared crisis was reached in the last line of the verse where the singer threw out her arms and cried in a far spangled banner. Instantly a great cheer swelled from the throats of the assemblage of the masses. There was a heavy rumble of booted feet thumping the floor. Eyes gleamed with sudden fire and calloused hands waved frantically in the air.  He began to roar a song and stamp back and forth in the light's wildly waving a glossy silk hat and throwing leers or smiles broadcast. He made his face into fantastic grimaces until he looked like a pictured devil on a Japanese kite. The crowd laughed gleefully.  He shouted and roared and bobbed his shock of red wig until the audience broke out and excited applause. When the orchestra crashed, finally they jostled their way to the sidewalk with the crowd. Pete took Maggie's arm and pushed away for her offering to fight with a man or two. They reached Maggie's home at a late hour in the early morning. In the early morning the orchestra gathered and began to sing a song. In the early morning they reached Maggie's home at a late hour and stood for a moment in front of the gruesome doorway. Say, Mag, said Pete, give us a kiss for taking you to the show, will ya? Maggie laughed as if startled and drew away from him. Nah, Pete, she said, that wasn't in it.  The girl retreated nervously.  She started into the hall and up the stairs. She turned and smiled at him then disappeared. Pete walked slowly down the street. He had something of an astonished expression upon his features. He paused under a lamppost and breathed a low breath of surprise. God, he said, I wonder if I've been played for a duffer. End of Chapter 7 Recording by B.G. Oxford December 2008 Chapter 8 of Maggie, A Girl of the Streets This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Maggie, A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane Chapter 8 As thoughts of Pete came to Maggie's mind, she began to have an intense dislike for all of her dresses.  What makes you be all as fixin' and fussin'? Good God! Her mother would frequently roar at her. She began to note with more interest the well-dressed women she met on the avenues. She envied elegance and soft palms. She craved those adornments of person which she saw every day on the street conceiving them to be allies of vast importance to women. Studying faces she thought many of the women and girls she chanced to meet smiled with serenity as though forever cherished and watched over by those they loved. The air in the collar and cuff establishment strangled her. She knew she was gradually and surely shriveling in the hot, stuffy room. The begrimed windows rattled incessantly from the passing of elevated trains. The place was filled with a whirl of noises and odours. She wondered as she regarded some of the grizzled women in the room. Mere mechanical contrivances sewing seams and grinding out with heads bendin' over their work. Tales of imagined or real girlhood happiness past drunks, the baby at home and unpaid wages. She speculated how long her youth would endure. She began to see the bloom upon her cheeks as valuable. She imagined herself in an exasperating future as a scrawny woman with an eternal grievance. Two, she thought Pete to be a very fastidious person concerning the appearance of women. She felt she would love to see somebody entangle their fingers in the oily beard of the fat foreigner who owned the establishment. He was a detestable creature. He wore white socks with low shoes. He sat all day delivering orations in the depths of a cushion chair. His pocketbook deprived them of the power of retort.  Play? No, by dumb. Maggie was anxious for a friend to whom she could talk about Pete. She would have liked to discuss his admirable mannerisms with a reliable mutual friend. At home, she found her mother often drunk and always raving. It seems that the world had treated this woman very badly and she took a deep revenge upon such portions of it as came within her reach. She wrote furniture as if she were at last getting her rights. She swelled with virtuous and carried the lighter articles of household use one by one under the shadows of the three guilt balls where Hebrews chained them with chains of interest. Jimmy came when he was obliged to by circumstances of which he had no control. His well-trained legs brought him staggering home and put him to bed some nights when he would rather have gone elsewhere. Swaggering Pete loomed like a golden son to Maggie. He took her to a dime museum where rows of meek freaks astonished her. She contemplated their deformities with awe and thought them as sort of chosen tribe. Pete, raking his brains for amusement, discovered the central park menagerie in the Museum of Arts. Sunday afternoons would sometimes find them at these places. Pete did not appear to be particularly interested in what he saw. He stood around looking heavy while Maggie giggled in glee. Once at the menagerie he went into a trance of admiration before the spectacle of a very small monkey threatening to thrash a cage full because one of them had pulled his tail and he had not wheeled about quickly enough to discover who did it. Ever after, Pete knew that monkey by sight and winked at him trying to induce fight with other and larger monkeys. At the museum Maggie said this is that a sight. Oh hell, said Pete, wait till next summer and I'll take you to a picnic. While the girl wandered in the vaulted rooms, Pete occupied himself in returning stony stair for stony stair the appalling scrutiny of the watchdogs of the treasures. Occasionally he would remark in loud tones. Did Jay's got glass eyes and sentences of the sort. When he tired of this amusement he would go to the mummies and moralize over them. Usually he submitted with silent dignity to all which he had to go through but at times he was goaded into comment.  He demanded once look at all these little jugs 100 jugs in a row 10 rows in a case and about a thousand cases. What the blaze as use is then? Evening during the week he took her to see plays in which the brain clutching heroine was rescued from the palatial home of her guardian who was cruelly after her bonds by the hero with the beautiful sentiments. The latter spent most of his time out at soak in pale green snowstorms busy with a nickel-plated revolver rescuing aged strangers from villains. Maggie lost herself in sympathy with the wanderers swooning in snowstorms beneath happy huge church windows and a choir within singing Joy to the World. To Maggie and the rest of the audience this was transcendental realism. Joy always within and they like the actor inevitably without. Viewing it they hug themselves an ecstatic pity of their imagined or real condition. The girl thought the arrogance and granite heartedness of the magnate of the play was very accurately drawn. She echoed the maledictions that the occupants of the gallery showered on this individual when his lines compelled him to expose his extreme selfishness. Shady persons in the audience revolted from the pictured villainy at the drama. With untiring zeal they hissed vice and applauded virtue. Unmistakably bad men evinced an apparently sincere admiration for virtue. The loud gallery was overwhelmingly with the unfortunate and the oppressed. They encouraged the struggling hero with cries and jeered the villain hooting and calling to his whiskers. When anybody died in the pale green snowstorms the gallery mourned. They sought out the painted misery and hugged it as akin. In the hero's erratic march from poverty in the first act to wealth and triumph in the final one in which he forgives all the enemies that he has left he was assisted by the gallery which applauded his generous and noble sentiments and confounded the speeches of his opponents by making irrelevant but very sharp remarks. Those actors who were cursed with villainy parts were confronted at every turn by the gallery. If one of them rendered lines containing the most subtle distinctions between right and wrong the gallery was immediately aware if the actor meant wickedness and denounced him accordingly. The last act was a triumph of the hero, poor of the masses, the representative of the audience over the villain and the rich man his pockets stuffed with bonds and his heart packed with tyrannical purposes imperturbable amid suffering. Maggie always departed with raised spirits from the showing places of the melodrama. She rejoiced at the way in which the poor and virtuous eventually surmounted the wealthy the theatre made her think. She wondered if the culture and refinement she had seen imitated perhaps grotesquely by the heroine on the stage could be acquired by a girl who lived in a tenement house and worked in a shirt factory. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of Maggie A Girl of the Streets This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org this reading by Allison Hester of Athens, Georgia.  Maggie was pale from her eyes had been plucked all look of self reliance she leaned with the dependent Through woods companion was timid as if fearing his anger or displeasure waller, had grown upon him, until it threatened to bend his dimensions. He was indefinitely gracious to the girl. It was apparent to her that his condescension was a marvel. He could appear to strut even while sitting still, and he showed that he was a lion of lordly characteristics by the air of which he spat.  He leaned back and critically regarded the person of a girl with a straw-colored wig, who upon the stage was flinging her heels in somewhat awkward imitation of a well-known dancer's. At times Maggie told Pete long, confidential tales of her former home life, dwelling upon the escapades of the other members of the family, and the difficulties she had to combat, in order to obtain a degree of comfort. He responded in tones of philanthropy. He pressed her arm with an air of reassuring proprietorship. They was stem-j, he said, denouncing the mother and brother. The sound of the music, which, by the efforts of the frowsy-headed leader, drifted to her ears to the smoke-filled atmosphere, made the girl dream. She thought of her former Rome Alley environment, and turned to regard Pete strong, protecting fists. She thought of the color-and-cuff-manufactory, and the eternal moan of the proprietor.  Play, no pie-dump. She contemplated Pete's mensive-doing eyes, and noted that wells and prosperity were indicated by his clothes. She imagined the future, rose-tinted, because of its distance from all that she previously had experienced. As to the present, she perceived only vague reasons to be miserable. Her life was Pete's, and she considered him worthy of the charge. She would be disturbed by no particular apprehensions, so long as Pete adored her, as he now said he did. She did not feel like a bad woman. To her knowledge, she had never seen any better. At times, men at other tables regarded the girl furtively. Pete, aware of it, nodded at her, and grinned. He felt proud. Mac, your blue-man good-looker, he remarked, studying her face through the haze. The men made Maggie fear, but she blushed at Pete's words, as it became apparent to her that she was the apple of his eye.   Maggie considered she was not what they sought her. She confined her glances to Pete and the stage. The orchestra played negro melodies, a worse attire drama pounded, whacked, clattered, and scratched on a dozen machines to make noise. Those glances of the men, shuddered Maggie from under half-closed lids, made her tremble. She thought them all to be worse men than Pete. Come, let's go, she said. As they went out, Maggie perceived two women, seated at a table with some men. They were painted, and their cheeks had lost their roundness. As she passed them, the girl with the shrinking movement drew back her skirts. Chapter 13 of Maggie, A Girl of the Streets. Jimmy did not return home for a number of days after the fight with Pete in the saloon. When he did, he approached with extreme caution. He found his mother raving. Maggie had not returned home. The parent continually wondered how her daughter could come to such a pass. She had never considered Maggie as a pearl dropped unstained into rum alley from heaven, but she could not conceive how it was possible for her daughter to fall so low as to bring disgrace upon her family. She was terrific in denunciation of the girl's wickedness. The fact that the neighbors talked of it maddened her. When women came in, and in the course of their conversation casually asked, Where's Maggie these days?  In Waddall to bring an up she had, how could she? Moningly she asked of her son. Waddall to talk with her, I did, and to things I told her to remember. When a girl is bring up to way, I bring up Maggie. How can she go to the devil? Jimmy was transfixed by these questions. He could not conceive how, under the circumstances, his mother's daughter and his sister could have been so wicked. His mother took a drink from a squelchy bottle that sat on the table. She continued her lament. She had a bad heart that girl did, Jimmy. She was wicked to the heart, and we never noted. Jimmy nodded, admitting the fact. We lived in the same house with her, and I brought her up and we never know how bad she was. Jimmy nodded again.  One day Jimmy came home, sat down in a chair, and began to wriggle about with a new and strange nervousness. At last he spoke shame-facedly. Well, look a here. This ting queers us. See? We're queered. And maybe it be be better if I think I can look her up, and maybe it be better if I fetched her home, and the mother started from her chair, and broke forth into a storm of passionate anger. What? Let her come and sleep under the same roof with her mother again? Oh, yes, I will, won't I? Sure.  To your own mother.  I'd never taught. Sobs choked her and interrupted her approaches.  I only says it, but I'd be better if we keep this ting dark. See? It queers us. See? His mother laughed a laugh that seemed to ring through the city and be echoed and re-echoed by countless other laughs. Oh, yes, I will, won't I? Sure.  I didn't say we'd make her into a little tin angel, nor nothing. But the way it is now, she can queer us. Don't you see? I shall get tired of the laugh after a while, and then she'll be wanting to be coming home, won't she? The beast. I'll let her in then, won't I? Well, I didn't mean none of this prodigal business anyway, explained Jimmy.  It was prodigal son anyhow. I know that, said Jimmy. For a long time they sat in silence. The mother's eyes gloated on a scene her imagination could call before her. Her lips were set in a vindictive smile. I shall cry, won't she, and carry on, and tell how Pete, or some other fellow, beats her, and she'll say she sighed and all that, and she ain't happy, she ain't, and she wants to come home again, she does. With grim humor the mother imitated the possible wailing notes of the daughter's voice. Then I'll take her in, won't I, the beast?   Jimmy thought he had a great idea of women's frailty. But he could not understand why any of his kin should be victims. Damn her, he fervently said. Again he wondered vaguely if some of the women of his acquaintance had brothers. Nevertheless his mind did not, for an instant, confuse himself with those brothers nor his sister with theirs. After the mother had, with great difficulty, suppressed the neighbors, she went among them and proclaimed her grief. May God forgive that girl was her continual cry. To attend of ears she recited the whole length and breadth of her woes. I bring her up to wait a daughter ought to be bring up and this is how she served me. She went to the devil the first chance she got. May God forgive her. When arrested for drunkenness she used the story of her daughter's downfall with telling effect upon the police justices. Finally one of them said to her peering down over his spectacles, Mary the records of this and other courts show that you are the mother of forty-two daughters who have been ruined. The case is unparalleled in the annals of this court. And this court thinks the mother went through life shedding large tears of sorrow. Her red face was a picture of agony. Of course Jimmy publicly damned his sister that he might appear on a higher social plane, but arguing with himself, stumbling about in ways that he knew not, he once almost came to a conclusion that his sister would have been more firmly good had she better known why. However he felt that he could not hold such a view. He threw it hastily aside. End of chapter 13 recording by Alana Jordan in St. Louis, Missouri.