Samantha at the Worlds Fair | Page 8

cheeks as pink as the hearts of the roses that climbed all Winter round her winder--and the sweetest, daintiest ways--and so good to everybody, them that wuz poor and sufferin' most of all.
Barzeel wuz always most too enthusiastick to suit me, but I got the idee from what she said that she wuz a oncommon lovely child.
Good land! Elnathan couldn't talk about anything else--like little babblin' brooks runnin' towards the sea, all his talk, every anecdote he told, and every idee he sot forth, jest led up to and ended with that child. Jest like creeks.
He worshipped her.
And he himself told me so many stories about her bein' so good to the poor, and sacrificin' her little comforts for 'em--at her age, too--that I thought to myself, I wonder why you don't take some of them object lessons to heart--why you don't set down at her feet, and learn of her--and I wonder too where she took her sweet charity from, but spoze it wuz from her mother. Her mother had been a beautiful woman, so I had been told. She wuz a Devereaux--nobody that I ever knew, or Josiah. Celeste Devereaux.
The little girl wuz named for her mother. But they always called her The Little Maid.
Wall, to resoom, and to hitch my horse in front of the wagon agin. (Allegory.)
Elnathan had left The Little Maid and her nurse in that Eastern city where he owned so much property, and had come on to pay a flyin' visit to Jonesville, not forgittin' Loontown, you may be sure, where a deceased Aunt had jest died and left her property to him.
He wuz close.
He had left The Little Maid in the finest hotel in the city, so he said. He had looked over more'n a dozen, so I hearn, before he could git one he thought wuz healthy enough and splendid enough for her. At last he selected one, standin' on a considerable rise of ground, with big, high, gorgeous rooms, and prices higher than the very topmost cupalo, and loftiest chimbly pot.
Here he got two big rooms for The Little Maid, and one for the nurse. He got the two rooms for the child so's the air could circulate through 'em.
[Illustration: Here he got two big rooms.]
He wuz very particular about her havin' air of the very purest and best kind there wuz made, and the same with vittles and clothes, etc., etc., etc.
Wall, while he wuz a-goin' on so about pure air and the values and necessities of it, I couldn't help thinkin' of what Barzelia had told me about that big property of hisen in the Eastern city where he had left The Little Maid.
Here, in the very lowest part of the city, he owned hull streets of tenement housen, miserable old rotten affairs, down in stiflin' alleys, and courts, breeders of disease, and crime, and death.
At first some on 'em fell into his hands by a exchange of property, and he found they paid so well, that he directed his agent to buy up a lot of 'em.
Barzelia had told me all about 'em, she was jest as enthusiastick about what she didn't like as what she did; she said the money got in that way, by housin' the poor in such horrible pestilental places, seemed jest like makin' a bargain with Death. Rentin' housen to him to make carnival in.
And while he wuz talkin' to such great length, and with such a satisfied and comfortable look onto his face, about the vital necessities of pure air and beautiful surroundin's, in order to make children well and happy, my thoughts kept a-roamin', and I couldn't help it. Down from the lovely spot where The Little Maid wuz, down, down, into the dretful places that Barzelia had told me about. Where squalor, and crime, and disease, and death walked hand in hand, gatherin' new victims at every step, and where the children wuz a-droppin' down in the poisinous air like dead leaves in a swamp.
I kep a-thinkin' of this, and finally I tackled Elnathan about it, and he laughed, Elnathan did, and begun to talk about the swarms and herds of useless and criminal humanity a-cumberin' the ground, and he threw a lot of statisticks at me. But they didn't hit me. Good land! I wuzn't afraid on 'em, nor I didn't care anything about 'em, and I gin him to understand that I didn't.
And in the cause of duty I kep on a-tacklin' him about them housen of hisen, and advisin' him to tear 'em down, and build wholesome ones, and in the place of the worst ones, to help make some little open breathin' places for the poor creeters down there, with a green tree now and then.
And then agin he brung up the utter worthlessness, and