Samantha at the Worlds Fair | Page 9

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 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