Helpin' the poor to better lives, helpin' them to justice. Takin' the
small hands of the children, and leadin' them away from the overcrowded
prisons and penitentaries toward better lives--
When Charity (a good creeter, too, Charity is) but when she would step
aside and let Justice and True Wisdom go ahead for a spell--
When co-operative business would equalize wealth to a greater
degree--when the government would control the great enterprises, needed
by all, but addin' riches to but few--when comfort would nourish
self-respect, and starved vice retreat before the dawnin' light of
happiness.
Had she been older she might have babbled of all this as she lay there,
a victim of wrong inflicted on the low--a martyr to the folly of the
rich, and their injustice toward the poor.
But as it wuz, she talked only with her little fever-parched lips of the
lovely, cool garden.
Oh, they wuz wild dreams, flittin', flittin', in little vague, tangled
idees through the childish brain!
But the talk wuz always about the green, beautiful garden, and the
crowds of little children walkin' there.
And on the seventh day (that wuz after Elnathan got there, and me and
Josiah, bein' telegrafted to)--
On the seventh day she begun to talk about a Form she saw a-walkin' in
the garden--a Presence beautiful and divine, we thought from her words.
He smiled as he saw the happiness of the children. He smiled upon her,
he wuz reachin' out his arms to her.
And about evenin' she looked up into her father's face and knew him--and
she said somethin' about lovin' him so--and somethin' about the
beautiful garden, and the happy children there, and then she looked away
from us all with a smile, and I spozed, and I always shall spoze, that
the Divine One a-walkin' in the cool of the evenin' in the garden, the
benign Presence she saw there, happy in the children's happiness, drew
nearer to her, and took her in his arms--for it says--
"He shall carry the lambs in His bosom."
That wuz two years ago. Elnathan Allen is a changed man, a changed man.
I hain't mentioned the word surplus population to him. No, I hadn't the
heart to.
Poor creeter, I wuz good to him as I could be all through it, and so wuz
Josiah.
His hair got white as a old man's in less than two months.
But with the same energy he brought to bear in makin' money he brought
to bear on makin' The Little Maid's dream come true.
He said it wuz a vision.
And, poor creeter, a-doin' it all under a mournin' weed; and if ever a
weed wuz deep, and if ever a man mourned deep, it is that man.
Yes, Elnathan has done well; I have writ to him to that effect.
He tore down them crazy, slantin', rotten old housen, and made a park of
that filthy hole, a lovely little park, with fresh green grass, a
fountain of pure water, where the birds come to slake their little
thirsts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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