Samantha at the Worlds Fair | Page 9

shiftlessness, and viciousness of the class I wuz a-talkin' about.
And then I sez--"How is anybody a-goin' to live pattern lives, when they are a-starvin' to death? And how is anybody a-goin' to enjoy religion when they are a-chokin'?"
And then he threw some more statisticks at me, dry and hard ones too; and agin he see they didn't hit me, and then he kinder laughed agin, and assumed something of a jokelar air--such as men will when they are a-talkin' to wimmen--dretful exasperatin', too--and sez he--
"You are a Philosopher, Cousin Samantha, and you must know such housen as you are a-talkin' about are advantageous in one way, if in no other--they help to reduce the surplus population. If it wuzn't for such places, and for the electric wires, and bomb cranks, and accidents, etc., the world would git too full to stand up in."
"Help to reduce the surplus population!" sez I, and my voice shook with indignation as I said it. Sez I--
"Elnathan Allen, you had better stop a-pilin' up your statisticks, for a spell, and come down onto the level of humanity and human brotherhood."
Sez I, "Spozen you should take it to yourself for a spell, imagine how it would be with you if you had been born there onbeknown to yourself." Sez I, "If you wuz a-livin' down there in them horrible pits of disease and death--if you wuz a-standin' over the dyin' bed of wife or mother, or other dear one, and felt that if you could bring one fresh, sweet breath of air to the dear one, dyin' for the want of it, you would almost barter your hopes of eternity--
"If you stood there in that black, chokin' atmosphere, reekin' with all pestilental and moral death, and see the one you loved best a-slippin' away from you--borne out of your sight, borne away into the onknown, on them dead waves of poisinous, deathly air--I guess you wouldn't talk about reducin' the Surplus Population."
I had been real eloquent, and I knew it, for I felt deeply what I said.
But Elnathan looked cheerful under all my talk. It didn't impress him a mite, I could see.
He felt safe. He wuz sure the squalor and sufferin' never would or could touch him. He thought, in the words of the Him slightly changed, that: "He could read his title clear to Mansions with all the modern improvements."
He and The Little Maid wuz safe. The world looked further off to him, the woes, and wants, and crimes of our poor humanity seemed quite a considerable distance away from him.
Onclouded prosperity had hardened Elnathan's heart--it will sometimes--hard as Pharo's.
But he wuz a visitor and one of the relations on his side, and I done well by him, killed a duck and made quite a fuss.
The business of settlin' the estate took quite a spell, but he didn't hurry any.
He said "the nurse wuz good as gold, she would take good care of The Little Maid. She wrote to him every day;" and so she did, the hussy, all through that dretful time to come.
Oh dear me! oh dear suz!
The nurse, Jean, had a sister who had come over from England with a cargo of trouble and children--after Jean had come on to California.
And Elnathan, good-natured when he wuz a mind to be, had listened to Jean's story of her sister's woes, with poverty, hungery children, and a drunken husband, and had given this sister two small rooms in one of his tenement housen, and asked so little for them, that they wuz livin' quite comfortable, if anybody could live comfortable, in such a stiflin', nasty spot.
Their rooms wuz on top of the house, and wuz kept clean, and so high up that they could get a breath of air now and then.
But the way up to 'em led over a crazy pair of stairs, so broken and rotten that even the Agent wuz disgusted with 'em and had wrote a letter to Elnathan asking for new stairs, and new sanitary arrangements, as the deaths wuz so frequent in that particular tenement, that the Agent wuz frightened, for fear they would be complained of by the City Fathers--though them old fathers can stand a good deal without complainin'.
Wall, the Agent wrote, but Elnathan wuz at that time buildin' a new orchid house (he had more'n a dozen of 'em before) for The Little Maid; she loved these half-human blossoms.
And he wuz buildin' a high palm house, and a new fountain, and a veranda covered with carved lattice-work around The Little Maid's apartments. And a stained-glass gallery, leading from the conservatory to the greenhouses, and these other houses I have mentioned, so that The Little Maid could walk out to 'em on too sunny days, or when it misted some.
And so he wrote back to