“If I had twice my wealth, I believe I should spend half of it in the South. I would engage a few thousand of the best of our ‘surplus’ women of New England and scatter them through the length and breadth of this Southern land, and set them at work doing some of the things which so need to be done. “As it is, I have picked out certain strategic places where I shall put a few at work, and for the boy or girl who is willing to study and not afraid of manual labor, I have made a good education possible. “That is the most that can be done. Putting the right persons in the right places is the best that I can do, and then they must do the rest. “As you know, I have never felt inclined to put my money into building new institutions, thinking it best to work in other ways, or to help sustain those institutions already established. But in these last months my heart has gone out to the thousands of neglected little colored children of the South who are orphans, and who in many places have not even a county poorhouse to shelter them. “I am thinking of establishing an orphanage in every one of the Southern states similar to the one at Chattanooga which I have recently visited. I could talk to you for hours about that brave Northern woman, Mrs. Steele, who has so nobly been giving her life to this work. “At first persecuted, ostracized, and despised, her building erected at her own cost burned by incendiaries, she has gone unflinchingly on, until now she has won the respect and has the aid of the best society in Chattanooga. “She has rescued hundreds of poor little orphan waifs from the chain-gang where they were put for petty offenses, and from the street where they roamed, with no bed but the sidewalk and gutter. She has clothed them, fed them, taught them, mothered them, and saved them. In all the South I can hear of but one other colored orphanage, for I find that the people for the most part are not yet ready to tax themselves for the support of ‘little nigger brats.’” I did not see Mildred until February. She had telegraphed me to meet her in New York, saying in her message that she and Ralph were about to go abroad for four years. By this time I had thrown away my crutch and was myself again, and I hastened to meet her, as she had appointed, at our old rooms at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. She was out when I arrived, and I watched eagerly from the window for her coming. Presently I saw her,—how vividly I recall the picture,—her hand on her husband’s arm, tripping along briskly in the winter air, the roses in her cheeks, her tall, slight figure clad in a trim suit of dark green, her head surmounted by a soft toque of the same color, trimmed with rich green holly-leaves and red berries. How beautiful she was! More beautiful than ever, I thought, as in glancing up she caught a glimpse of me waiting, breathless, and threw me a kiss with girlish glee. In a moment we were in each other’s arms.