rticular be thanked, as if anybody in particular had asked for
anything? She did not say this, or think it; she simply did not
think about it at all.

And Uncle Oldways--again--liked it.

There! I shall not try, now, to tell you any more; their
experiences, their difficulties, their encouragements, would make
large material for a much larger book. I want you to know of the
idea, and the attempt. If they fail, partly,--if drunken fathers
steal the shoes, and the innocent have to forfeit for the
guilty,--if the bad words still come to the lips often, though Hazel
tells them they are not "nice,"--and beginning at the outside, they
are in a fair way of learning the niceness of being nice,--if some
children come once or twice, and get dressed up, and then go off
and live in the gutters again until the clothes are gone,--are these
real failures? There is a bright, pure place down there in Neighbor
Street, and twice a week some little children have there a bright,
pure time. Will this be lost in the world? In the great Ledger of
God will it always stand unbalanced on the debit side?

If you are afraid it will fail,--will be swallowed up in the great
sink of vice and misery, like a single sweet, fresh drop, sweet only
while it is falling,--go and do likewise; rain down more; make the
work larger, stronger; pour the sweetness in faster, till the wide,
grand time of full refreshing shall have come from the presence of
the Lord!

Ada Geoffrey went down and helped. Miss Craydocke is going to knit
scarlet stockings all winter for them; Mr. Geoffrey has put a
regular bath-room in for Luclarion, with half partitions, and three
separate tubs; Mrs. Geoffrey has furnished a dormitory, where little
homeless ones can be kept to sleep. Luclarion has her hands full,
and has taken in a girl to help her, whose board and wages Rachel
Froke and Asenath Scherman pay. A thing like that spreads every way;
you have only to be among, and one of--Real Folks.

* * * * *

Desire, besides her work in Neighbor Street, has gone into the
Normal School. She wants to make herself fit for any teaching; she
wants also to know and to become a companion of earnest, working
girls.

She told Uncle Titus this, after she had been with him a month, and
had thought it over; and Uncle Titus agreed, quite as if it were no
real concern of his, but a very proper and unobjectionable plan for
her, if she liked it.

One day, though,