We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
IN FIVE Points, the melting-pot commxinity of a great American city, stood Dr. John Ruthledge's church, presided over by the man whom people called "The Good Samaritan." Quiet, gentle and forbearing, Dr. Ruthledge was the focal point of all Five Points' tangled and conflicting emotions and passions. Years ago, he took into his home Ned Holden, whose mother had deserted him. Ned grew up to love Mary, Dr. Ruthledge's daughter, and to dream of being a great novelist. A morbid hatred of the parents he had never known, however, shadowed Ned's otherwise happy personality with a fear that was to have its profound effect upon his later life.
Ned and Mary were planning to be married when Fredrika Lang, a middle-aged woman who had recently come to Five Points, was arrested for the murder of a man named Paul Burns. Only Dr. Ruthledge knew that Fredrika and Burns were in reality Ned's parents, and that Fredrika had committed the murder to silence Burns who was trying to extort money from her on the threat of revealing his identity to Ned. Fredrika refused to make any defense at her trial, and was sentenced to death. Under promise to her, Dr. Ruthledge was unable to make her motive public, but shortly before the day set for her execution he made a personal appeal to the Governor of the State and was able to secure a pardon.
Tragedy struck swiftly upon the heels of Fredrika's return to Five Points. On the evening before his wedding to Mary was to take place, Ned overheard a conversation between Fredrika and Dr. Ruthledge which told him that she was his mother and Paul Burns his father. Overwhelmed by the knowledge that what he had feared — a parentage tainted with murder and dishonesty — was true, Ned disappeared from Five Points. All of Dr. Ruthledge's and Fredrika's efforts to find him were futile, and Mary, though her habitual reserve kept her from showing her grief, was heartbroken.
Meanwhile, another group of people in Five Points were struggling for happiness. Rose Kransky, daughter of the pawnshop keeper, had left her family and taken an apartment of her own. Ambitious and headstrong, she was also innocent, and fell in love with her employer, Charles Cunningham, who promised to marry her as soon as a quiet divorce from his own wife could be arranged. His wife, however, brought suit against him, charging infidelity and naming Rose as co-respondent. Clinging desperately to her trust in Cunningham, against the advice of Dr. Ruthledge and of Ellis Smith, an artist who lived in Five Points and had always been her close friend. Rose allowed herself to be 30
^