if I could, for she knew
nobody.

On our way I tried to cheer her up by pointing out some of the children
of the Great Mother before alluded to, but she only shut her eyes as we
rolled down the long avenues, and murmured, "Oh, these cruel, cruel
distances!"

At last we reached the locality, a negro quarter, yet clean and neat in
appearance. I saw the poor girl shudder slightly as we stopped at the
door of a low, two-story frame house, from which the unwonted spectacle
of a carriage brought a crowd of half-naked children and a comely,
cleanly, kind-faced mulatto woman.

Yes, this was the house. He was upstairs, rather poorly, but asleep,
she thought.

We went upstairs. In the first chamber, clean, though poorly
furnished, lay Dobbs. On a pine table near his bed were letters and
memorials to the various departments, and on the bed-quilt, unfinished,
but just as the weary fingers had relaxed their grasp upon it, lay a
letter to the Tape Department.

As we entered the room he lifted himself on his elbow. "Fanny!" he
said, quickly, and a shade of disappointment crossed his face. "I
thought it was a message from the secretary," he added, apologetically.

The poor woman had suffered too much already to shrink from this last
crushing blow. But she walked quietly to his side without a word or
cry, knelt, placed her loving arms around him, and I left them so
together.

When I called again in the evening he was better; so much better that,
against the doctor's orders, he had talked to her quite cheerfully and
hopefully for an hour, until suddenly raising her bowed head in his two
hands, he said, "Do you know, dear, that in looking for help and
influence there was one, dear, I had forgotten; one who is very potent
with kings and councilors, and I think, love, I shall ask Him to
interest Himself in my behalf. It is not too late yet, darling, and I
shall seek Him to-morrow."

And before the morrow came he had sought and found Him, and I doubt not
got a good place.

A SLEEPING-CAR EXPERIENCE

It was in a Pullman sleeping-car on a Western road. After that first
plunge into unconsciousness which the weary traveler takes on getting
into his berth, I awakened to the dreadful revelation that I had been
asleep only two hours. The greater part of a long winter night was
before me to face with staring eyes.

Finding it impossible to sleep, I lay there wondering a number of
things: why, for instance, the Pullman s