We'd heard that there had been a great labor strike out in California, but little did we know how severe it had struck. Rev. Mr. Weakdew had writ to Miss Meechim how some of the rebellious workmen had riz up against his son in his absence. He told how wickedly they wuz actin' and how impossible it wuz in his opinion to make them act genteel, but he said in his letter that his son had been telegrafted to to come home at once. He said Mudd-Weakdew always had been successful in quelling these rebellious workmen down, and making them keep their place, and he thought he would now as soon as he arrived there. I know Arvilly and Miss Meechim had words about it when she read the letter. Miss Meechim deplored the state of affairs, and resented Arvilly's talk; she said it was so wicked to help array one class aginst another. "They be arrayed now," sez Arvilly. "Selfishness and Greed are arrayed aginst Justice and Humanity, and the baby Peace is bein' trompled on and run over, and haggard Want and Famine prowl on the bare fields of Poverty, waitin' for victims, and the cries of the perishin' fill the air." Arvilly turned real eloquent. I mistrusted mebby she'd catched it from me, but Miss Meechim turned up her nose and acted dretful high-headed and said there was nothing genteel in such actions and she wouldn't gin in a mite till that day in Vienna she had a letter that brought her nose down where it belonged, and she acted different after readin' it and didn't talk any more about gentility or the onbroken prosperity of the Mudd-Weakdews, and I wuz shocked myself to hear what wuz writ. As I say, Miss Meechim read it and grew pale, the letter dropped in her lap and she trembled like a popple leaf, for it told of a dretful tragedy. It wuz writ by a friend in Sacramento and the tragedy wuz concernin' the Mudd-Weakdews. On hearin' of the strike, the Mudd-Weakdews had hurried home from their trip abroad and he had tried to quell the strike, but found it wouldn't quell. He had been shot at but not killed; the shot went through his eyes, and he would be blind for life. A deadly fever had broke out in the tenements on the street back of his palace, caused, the doctors said, by the terrible onsanitary surroundings, and helped on by want and starvation. The families of his workmen had died off like dead leaves fallin' from rotten trees in the fall. The tenements wuz not fur from the Mudd-Weakdew garden where Dorris loved to stay, who had stayed at home with a governess and a genteel relative during her parents' absence. The garden wuz full of trees, blossoms and flowering shrubs, a fountain dashed up its clear water into the air and tall white statutes stood guard over Dorris in her happy play. But some deadly germ wuz wafted from that filthy, ghastly place, over the roses and lilies and pure waters, and sweet Dorris wuz the victim.