ich
completed his entire outfit. "Please ma'am, mother says she'll send
Johnny to school if you'll give him a coat and some breeches." Alas,
there is neither on hand, nothing for the boy except a thin cotton
shirt, and a pair of thin overalls to make over, by a mother who is more
accustomed to the use of a hoe than a needle, and who has seven children
as ragged and miserable as poor Johnny.

A messenger rushes in without knocking. "Come quick--Mattie's baby
burnt!"

"Yes, I'll come. Wrap it in cotton and oil."

Away flies the messenger. I seize the bottle of morphine and a hat, and
follow to the child's home. The floor is strewn with fragments of burnt
clothing. A sickening odor of burnt flesh fills the room. The scorched
high chair, in which the child was tied and put before the open
fireplace, while the mother went to a neighbor's for milk, lay in a pool
of water, and beside it, the burnt whisk-broom that an older baby had
put in the fire, then dropped blazing under the baby's long clothes,
these told the whole sad story. They were all at the grandparent's house
next door--a crowd of screaming people. Upon the bed lay what was left
of the poor child, moaning in conscious agony. A drop of water
containing the precious anodyne which alone could ease it then, soon
brought blessed unconsciousness until death kindly bore the little soul
to God. But oh! the heart-rending grief of that poor mother! God grant
we may never witness such suffering again. We tried to comfort her with
our tearful sympathy and prayers, but God alone can ever heal her sore
heart.

A sad-faced man wants to see the minister. We know his pitiful story and
his errand before he speaks. A sick wife and six young children. The
desperate daily fight with the hunger-wolf at the door, spite of the
little lifts we try to give them. Now the wife is dead, and he comes to
ask for money to buy a coffin and a place to lay her away. He has tried
in vain elsewhere, so comes to us, and we cannot refuse. A few hours
after, the pitiful little procession passes by. The pine coffin in an
old cart, the husband and children, the minister and a few friends,
following on foot. Such calls are frequent. Does the money ever come
back? _Once_ it did.

So it goes on, day after day, twenty, thirty, sometimes forty calls, for
all these incidents are actual facts, and fair samples of our daily
experiences and only a small part of our work. There is a large
household to look af