Miss Josie’s saloon is a raucous place, as wild and confusing as the portside bustle. It is in fact a fancy-house, which is what they call a brothel in these parts. Miss Josie pays me nothing. For my tiny cave in the cellar and scraps to eat, I work from dawn until dark. I undertake all manner of chores. The laundry and mending. The chamber pots. I sometimes work in the kitchen, but the cook is from China and I cannot understand what he’s saying and he scolds all the time, clucking and shooing like a wet hen.

In between the scrubbing and the laundry, I am charged with taking the rubbish to the bins at the bottom of Fenton Hill, where the refuse is barged out to sea. An execrable task, yet in the wake of sending my entire dead family into eternity one by one, the harshness of all else is muted. In fact, I discovered a nearby field and shore teeming with birds and wild-growing plant life. The renewal of springtime renewed my soul. From the depths of winter, the world is made all over again. With my drawing, I capture these moments to remind myself that I must go on.

For half a day on Sunday, I’m given leave to attend Mass. And though I may burn in the fires of eternity for my sin—I never go. Instead I take myself out to the wild fresh air and I draw. In my mean circumstances, I make do with discarded paper and charcoal pencil, losing myself as I create images of the world around me.

Most passersby pay me little notice, but one day I met a man named Billy who lingered to watch me draw. I had tired of reading the Examiner, a tedious compilation of the news of the day. I had spied an interesting pair of mallard ducks and was making sketches directly on the newsprint. The bold strokes of my charcoal obscured the columns of print as I created the scene. The stranger asked me why I covered the printed news with my sketch, and, blunt as a paddle, I admitted as how the facts and statistics struck me as tiresome. The newspaper was better suited to drawing than to reading.

He guffawed and slapped his knee, declaring my review more honest than his entire editorial board. “Oh no,” he said, “I am the owner of this paper and I aim to make it thrive. What would keep your interest, then?”

I had never met a person of such import. I confessed that I am more drawn to stories of dramatic human struggles, humorous poems, or the sharp and brilliant writings that bring the world to life in the mind’s eye.

“I must cater to the reader,” he declared. “Not to sophisticates and historians.”