She didn't know that there wuz such things in the world. Her lips wuz quiverin'--her big, earnest eyes full of tears, as she started to go down the broken old stairs. And her heart full of desires to help 'em, so we spoze. But her tears blinded her. Half way down she stumbled and fell. The nurse jumped down to help her. She wuz hefty--two hundred wuz her weight; the stairs, jest hangin' together by links of planked rotteness, fell under 'em--down, down they went, down into the depths below. The nurse was stunted--not hurt, only stunted. But The Little Maid, they thought she wuz dead, as they lifted her out. Ivory white wuz the perfect little face, with the long golden hair hangin' back from it, ivory white the little hand and arm hangin' limp at her side. She wuz carried into Katy's room, a doctor wuz soon called. Her arm wuz broken, but he said, after she roused from her faintin' fit, and her arm wuz set--he said she would git well, but she mustn't be moved for several days. Jean, wild with fright and remorse, thought she would conceal her sin, and git her back to the hotel before she telegrafted to her father. Jest as you thought when you eat cloves the other night, and jest as I thought when I laid the Bible over the hole in the table-cover, when I see the minister a-comin'. Wall, the little arm got along all right, or would, if that had been all, but the poisonous air wuz what killed the little creeter. For five days she lay, not sufferin' so much in body, but stifled, choked with the putrid air, and each day the red in her cheeks deepened, and the little pulse beat faster and faster. And on the fifth day she got delerious, and she talked wild. She talked about cool, beautiful parks bein' made down in the stiflin', crowded, horrible courts and byways of the cities-- With great trees under which the children could play, and look up into the blue sky, and breathe the sweet air--she talked about fresh dewey grass on which they might lay their little hollow cheeks, and which would cool the fever in them. She talked about a fountain of pure water down where now wuz filth too horrible to mention. She talked _very_ wild--for she talked about them terrible slantin' old housen bein' torn down to make room for this Paradise of the future. Had she been older, words might have fallen from her feverish lips of how the woes, and evils, and crimes of the lower classes always react upon the upper. She might have pictured in her dreams the drama that is ever bein' enacted on the pages of history--of the sorely oppressed masses turnin' on the oppressors, and drivin' them, with themselves, out to ruin. Pages smeared with blood might have passed before her, and she might have dreamed--for she wuz _very_ delerious--she might have dreamed of the time when our statesmen and lawgivers would pause awhile from their hard task of punishin' crime, and bend their energies upon avertin' it--