nd he himself told me so many stories about her bein' so good to the
poor, and sacrificin' her little comforts for 'em--at her age, too--that
I thought to myself, I wonder why you don't take some of them object
lessons to heart--why you don't set down at her feet, and learn of
her--and I wonder too where she took her sweet charity from, but spoze
it wuz from her mother. Her mother had been a beautiful woman, so I had
been told. She wuz a Devereaux--nobody that I ever knew, or Josiah.
Celeste Devereaux.

The little girl wuz named for her mother. But they always called her The
Little Maid.

Wall, to resoom, and to hitch my horse in front of the wagon agin.
(Allegory.)

Elnathan had left The Little Maid and her nurse in that Eastern city
where he owned so much property, and had come on to pay a flyin' visit
to Jonesville, not forgittin' Loontown, you may be sure, where a
deceased Aunt had jest died and left her property to him.

He wuz close.

He had left The Little Maid in the finest hotel in the city, so he said.
He had looked over more'n a dozen, so I hearn, before he could git one
he thought wuz healthy enough and splendid enough for her. At last he
selected one, standin' on a considerable rise of ground, with big, high,
gorgeous rooms, and prices higher than the very topmost cupalo, and
loftiest chimbly pot.

Here he got two big rooms for The Little Maid, and one for the nurse. He
got the two rooms for the child so's the air could circulate through
'em.

[Illustration: Here he got two big rooms.]

He wuz very particular about her havin' air of the very purest and best
kind there wuz made, and the same with vittles and clothes, etc., etc.,
etc.

Wall, while he wuz a-goin' on so about pure air and the values and
necessities of it, I couldn't help thinkin' of what Barzelia had told me
about that big property of hisen in the Eastern city where he had left
The Little Maid.

Here, in the very lowest part of the city, he owned hull streets of
tenement housen, miserable old rotten affairs, down in stiflin' alleys,
and courts, breeders of disease, and crime, and death.

At first some on 'em fell into his hands by a exchange of property, and
he found they paid so well, that he directed his agent to buy up a lot
of 'em.

Barzelia had told me all about 'em, she was jest as enthusiastick about
what she didn't like as what she did; she said the money got in that
way, by housin' the poor in such horrible pestilental