lor and vice.

She had never seen anything of the kind before in her guarded,
love-watched life.

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