Excerpt from The Straight Road: A Novel Founded on the Play of the Same Name Situated near the Bowery in Houston street, a settle ment house, established by the humanitarian impulses of the beautiful and wealthy Ruth Thompson, stood e serene and cozy structure, doing the sentinel work of sweet charity amidst the vice and squalor of its sur roundings. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.