“I'd love to have you speak up, Josiah Allen, and tell me how wimmen would go to work to get any lower in the opinion of men; how they could get into any lower grade of society than they are minglin' with now. They are ranked now by the laws of the United States, and the will of men, with idiots, lunatics, and criminals. And how pretty it looks for you men to try to scare us, and make us think there is a lower class we could get into! _There hain't any lower class that we can get into_ than the ones we are in now; and you know it, Josiah Allen. And you sha'n't scare Cicely by tryin' to make her think there is.” He quailed. He knew there wuzn't. He knew he had said it to scare us, Cicely and me, and he felt considerable meachin' to think he had got found out in it. But he went on in ruther of a meek tone,-- “It would be apt to make talk, Cicely.” “What do I care for talk?” says she. “What do I care for honor, or praise, or blame? I only want to try to save my boy.” [Illustration: CICELY AND HER PEERS.] And she kep' right on with her tender, earnest voice, and her eyes a shinin' like stars,-- “Have I not a right to help him? Is he not _my_ child? Did not God give me a _right_ to him, when I went down into the darkness with God alone, and a soul was given into my hands? Did I not suffer for him? Have I not been blessed in him? Why, his little hands held me back from the gates of death. By all the rights of heavenliest joy and deepest agony--is he not _mine_? Have I not a _right_ to help him in his future? “Now I hold him in my arms, my flesh, my blood, my life. I hold him on my heart now: he is _mine_. I can shield him from danger: if he should fall into the flames, I could reach in after him, and die with him, or save him. God and man give me that right now: I do not have to ask for it. “But in a few years he will go out from me, carrying my own life with him, my heart will go with him, to joy or to death. He will go out into dangers a thousand-fold worse than death,--dangers made respectable and legal,--and I can't help him. “_I_ his mother, who would die for him any hour--I must stand with my eyes open, but my hands bound, and see him rushing headlong into flames tenfold hotter than fire; see him on the brink of earthly and eternal ruin, and can't reach out my hand to hold him back. My _boy!_ My _own!_ Is it right? Is it just?” And she got up, and walked the room back and forth, and says,-- “How can I bear the thought of it? How can I live and endure it? And how can I die, and leave the boy?” And her eyes looked so big and bright, and that spot of red would look so bright on her white cheeks, that I would get skairt. And I'd try to sooth her down, and talk gentle to her. And I says,-- “All things are possible with God, and you must wait and hope.” But she says, “What will hope do for me when my boy is lost? I want to save him now.”