Bellefonte, Pa., Dec. 21, 1894.
as ae Sree =
DRAWING NEAR. .
It's getting close to Christmas; across the
hills and dells ¢
You can almost hear the chiming and the
rhyming of the bells: ; :
But the skies are clear and candid, with no
clouds that dream of snow.
And you hear in dark and daylightall the
Elfin bugles blow!
It’s getting close to Christmas; there's a
something in the air
That seems to breathe of Bethlehem and all
the glory there;
And sweet the bells and bugles
through our dreams of rest—
Ring bells, y our sweetest music! and bugles
blow your best !
sound
It’s getting close to Christmas. Oh, time of
eace and joy!
And o to be once more, once more, a wake-
ful watchful boy,
With the stockings in the corner for old Santa
Claus to fill!
But we still thank God for Christmas,
we're boys in memory still!
— Atlanta Constitution.
and
IT ————————
ONE OF THESE LITTLE ONES.
BY ISA CARRINGTON CABELL.
The Doctor was on his last rounds.
He was a poor man for New York, and
one of his jokes used to be that his
servants knew what to expect when he
engaged them—hard work and poor
pay—hut they served him because he
always managed to keep them well
and, of course, since sin was sickness,
good. He promised that when he
died each should have a legacy, how-
ever, though no one was very clear as
to what sort of legacy it was to be. He
was very fond of his coachman Jahn,
who did many unrecorded services for
his sake, even condescending to
breaches of etiquette like being his own
stable-boy, apologizing for it by the re-
mark that he “wasn’t any better than
the Doctor.” Bat the Doctor had boy-
ish blue eyes and a winning way with
him. He had gotten well into the
forties—which is to be translated liter-
ally, for there had been a time when he
had not been well—and perhaps his
power over hig patients might in a
measure have been explained by his
kind “I know all about it.”
The last round caught him at nine
o'clock on the eastside near Zachariah
Square, and when he eaw the Jew girls
in Primrose Street running out of thé
shops, entreating, wheedling, coaxing
the throng of people to come in and
buy their feather boas, and hats trim-
med with roses, and pearl necklaces,
and every other beautiful and useful
article in the market, be leaned out
and told John to drive slowly. One
curly-headed girl with a large waist
and black eyes had got holdof a
ghaky, shabby old man, and was urg-
ing and threatenirg him to buy an im-
itation lace scarf or a pair of nickel,
plated ear-rings. What was stranger
the old man looked at them hesitating-
ly, longingly, avd at last selected the
earrings, and paid for them with five
coppers begged at the corner. A closer
inspection, and the Doctor found it an
epidemic; everybody was buying. The
meanest, poorest, most degraded people
were either coming out of the shops or
goisg in, and each had a package.
The eight of the throng of people,
just the multitude itself, without in-
dividuality,without personality, smote
his heart, and a strange feehng of pity
crept over him just to see them there.
“I should think,” he said to himself,
“if this was my birthday they were all
keeping, giving gifts in my name,
though they do not krow me, giving
gifts with money earned by privation,
labor, sin, I'd be sorry for them and I'd
try to help them.”
At that moment John drew up. The
Doctor could not move for the people
who pressed against him,
“Beg pardon, sore.” A burly figure
in blue put his head in the carriage.
“There's been a bit of a row at the top
Zachariah Squareand the man’s to the
hospital. God belp him! He's dead
an hour or so, and the young docthers
are afther getting ready for a lesson on
him. But the widdie is a dacent body
and a Christian woman, and it was
geein’ her man all over blood like
that.”
“What's the number, O'Farell?”
said the Doctor to the policeman, tak-
ing out his watch. “The woman or
the man, one, have appendicitis ver-
miformis, you know, because there is an
epidemicof the disease; but I'll go to
the woman, because the boys have got
hold of the man.
O'Farrel laughed good-humoredly.
He was used to the Doctor’s jokes and
he laughed the londer when he didn’t
understand.
They were on a corner, and the little
Irishman who kept the saloon there
stepped out at this juncture onseeing
the Doctor,leaving his tremendous sales
to an inferior. The Doctor greeted him
civilly, and when he handed him a
glass of eggnog with a ‘by your leave,
sorr,” he got a “thank you,” and]
“mind, Mike, you put as good whiskey !
as this in what yoa serve to those poor |
wretches who are going into your |
place.”
The publican said be always served
good whickey, for there wasn't any bad;
but he had heard what they were talk-
ing about, and would the Doctor see
the widow. ‘She's adacent Christian
body, dying among the Jews, and not
a mass for her soul.”
Neither Mike Dolan nor the police-
man was sure of the number, however,
80 it was decided that John ehould
keep the carriage at Mike's saloon and
the Doctor walk over. Both the po-
liceman and the barkeeper offered their
society, and he accepted it, and walked
along between the two in friendly con-
verse for several blocks before they
turned into Zachariah Square.
“It's this way, ye honor,” said little
Mike, “O'Farrell, don’t be hangin’
ye head like a lily-of-the valley; the
Docther knows it es he knows us all ;
but it’s the trnth, ye honor, the b's
afraid of his own beat, God help him,
an’ it's two weeks the Sunday since he
put hie head out of his house. An’
mighty glad be is of ye company now,
They'll be behavin’ theirselves, the
blargards, so they will, in ye prisince,
an’ it's myself will go wit’ ye to bring
O’Farrel back safe to Mrs. O'Farrel,
honest woman, and the childer.
Mike's wit was keenly enjoyed by
the big man. His beat was a pretty
tough one; every other door a bar-
room, from which drunken men were
iesuing; but O’Farrel had a post like
that held by the man the football
players have chosen to seethat the
rules are obeyed; and as one man can’t
watch twenty-two, so O'Farrel couldn’
watch arthousand. Theresult was the
game in both cases—a violation of de-
cency and order.
But presently a scuffle just in front
of them made the three men rush for-
ward. A woman, bareheaded, the
blood streaming over her face, came
running out of a wretched cellar, a
man following her with a knife. The
place whence they came was filled
with men and women, but O'Far-
ell and Mike rushed in. The Doctor
followed when he had got the man
with the knife by the collar ; he stop-
ped a minute to sound with his big
cane on the pavement, and we may be
sure he gave the proper call, as the
heroine of a famous etory failed to do
on a similar occasion, for it was not
more than two minutes before three
policemen were there to help O'Farell
clear the place.
It was a dreadful place, dark dirty,
evil smelling; the woman with the
blood running down her face had come
back whimperingand crying, not for
her wound, you may be sure, but be-
cause the Bobbies had run in on her
Jake. She was not the only woman.
Three or four others were lying about ;
a lot of glass was smashed ; there was
a queer evil smell—the Doctor knew
it, as it seemed he had to know every
sin—of opium. He held the man with
his firm grasp.
“Q’Farell,” be said, “summon me
for a witness to-morrow morning in
the precinct police court, and summon
Mike Dolan. I'll have every bottle of
liquor smashed in this place, and
every ounce of this devilish opium
thrown away. And you, sir,” to the
proprietor, “shall go to jail to the ex-
tent of the law. Take him, O'Farell,
and have him locked ap as soon as
you can get him to the station. You.
evil pernicicus rascal,” he cried out,
his eyes blazing, “you ought to be put
in a cell and kept there the rest of
your bad life. Look at the bodies you
are ruining with your iniquitous
stuff I"
The woman, trying to etanch her
blood, rushed up to him ' at these
words.
“Oh, Doctor, Doctor I'" she screamed,
and you eo good to everybody and
belpin’ us, and now to give him to the
law. Oh, Doctor, ’tain’t you to give
him to the law,
“Will you take her along, Docther?”
asked O'Farell respectfully.
The Doctor looked down at her.
She was ragged and dirty and cold
and bungry.
Mrs. O'Donnell,” he said, “you've
bad harp times,”
At thisfor of address the woman
hung her head and instinctively tried
to pull the rags together to cover her
poor expozed body.
“And you've not always been like
this. I've known Mre. O'Donnell,” he
gaid, in a loud voice, so that the
roughs and the brazen, painted unfor-
tunates might hear every word of the
story they had never believed when
Jake's Jinny boasted as she did some-
times, that she had known better
days, “for a Jong time. Once she had
a good home and a busband and two
pretty children. She lost them all, no
matter how, but I koow the children
died of diphtheria, not through her
fault but the fault of the sanitary com-
mission. They tell me to lose a child
is a heavy sorrow.”
At this the poor excitable creatures
about her began to cry, and there were
moans and such words as “Poor dar-
lint, the Lord love ye,” wherea mo-
ment before there bad been jibes and
laughter. Bat the Doctor went on.
“Ag for that scoundrel,” he said, point-
ing to Jake, **who sells you stuff that
will eat up your bodies ani the bodies
of the children you bring in the world
for him and others like him, I'll have
the law of you whenever I can.
You'll never soften me with any such
talk as that. I'm here to see thelaw's
carried out,” he added, opening his
coat and showing his badge as an offi-
cer of the Society for the Prevention
of Crime.
Mike Dolan stepped up at that mo-
ment. “It's a bit of a place, but it’s to
my house you can go for the night,
Mrs. O'Donnell. I have lost a child
or two meself , and as the Dother has
said, it’s a sorrow. I thank God I am
prospered with a good business, an’ I
will see you through the throuble.”
“God bless you, Mike,” said the
Doctor. He said it instinctively as
the warmest form of gratitude he could
think of.
“I said thrue, ye honor,” replied
the little barkeeper, walking off with a
strut. “I mintioned the b’ys would be
afther behavin’ theirselves in your
prisince, an’ now it's asy as lyin’, him
seeing how paceable an’ quoit it is
since, to be coaxin’ O'Farell to put his
foot on his beat.”
His companions having parted with
him, the Doctor went on his way
alone. He soon turned into Zachariah
Sqaure. The lights everywhere made
it almost as bright as day.
Poultry stalls were more frequent
than butcher shops. The Doctor did
not know the world had been disburtl -
ened of so many geese. They hung
there as dead as last week's mot that
had gone its rounds. The vender of
geese feathers in the cellar beneath
one of these poultry chops was gener-
ally a large dark woman in a nonde-
script dress and a wig, and about her
unwashed neck was a gold chain. The
men, as a class, were steeped and black-
bearded and blear-eyed. They wore
black skull caps, and on either.side a
corkscrew curl, and they were the hus-
bands of the virtuous wives who sacri
ficed their tresses at the altar.
Atter a little the Doctor knew he
a
had found the place he was looking |
for ; there was a little excitement, and
the crowd here was greater than the
crowd he had hitherto encountered. A
single gaslight flared at the dark
simian faces, stunted, swarthy, with
high cheek-bones and dark, deep-set
eyes in which was burning the racial
resentment for their centuries of
wrongs. He knew the Russian Jews
by their shaggy beards, pointed heads
covered with fur caps, and their long
sweeping coats. The Polish Jews had
refined, supercilious, vain faces. The
Doctor looked at their long thin fin-
gers and sensitive mouths. He saw
the artist and the musician hidden
from the careless eye, and again his
heart was moved, He looked at the
women, mothers of American citizens
—here and there a rosy girl, the rest
witchlike ugliness, = weird, old-world
features, dirty, bedraggled, and all—
from the woman with the scrawny
baby at her breast, half covered by a
withered ehawl, to the supercilious
gaunt, staring Reader in the syna-
gogue, with the phylacteries bound on
his brow, looking down with contemp-
tuous scorn on the infidel, the ac-
cursed.
A few words disclosed the fact that
the woman he had come to see was
dead or dying. A woman in an an-
cient black silk and a brown wig, her
hands covered with thick gold rings—
for she carried her business on her per-
son—told him the story, of which the
following narration gives an idea of
her manner of speech.
It was her house—God have mercy
on it, who looketh on the heart, not
the treasure—and a week ago two
Swedes, a man and wife, had come
there. She had given them the room
on which they were about to enter,
God forgive her, for the worth of a
clothes-brush. The man who was as
well as a woman has a right to expect,
was coming down the street that after-
noon when the scaffolding of the house
next door fellon him and killed him.
The wife was standing in the doorway
—God be thanked that none
of the speaker’s children or her
children’s children had bandy legs!
—she fell down in a heap; and
though they had put cobwebs over her
eves and anonted her with goose-flesh
oil—so the mother hath taken the
bread out of the mouth of her children
and fed it to the stranger—she had
grown worse, and now was as_dead as
the (ried flsh they had ate at Passover.
The Most High is good.
When she opened the door the Doc-
tor turned from her tanned aquiline
face, decorated with its wig and its
huge gold ear-rings, and went to the
body. It was a cellar room, white-
washed, bare looking. The wotian
lay on a feather bed. The high man-
tel was decorated with a light green
fringe and two china dogs. There was
also a table and a chest—an immi-
grant’s chest. The woman lying there
had penetrated all the mysteries of the
Mishna and Gomorrah, the germ
theory and the outcome of socialism.
The Doctor looked at her still face, as
he had looked at so many dead faces,
with reverence as well as curiosity. Ah,
how much she knew! She had paid
dearly for her knowledge, but how
much she knew, and how ignorant an
hour ago!
She was a fair young woman, 1n su-
perb physical health. She looked like
his idea of a Scandinavian princess of
the olden time, for death had dignified
her with the look of race. The child
lying in swaddling-clothes at her side
cried lustily ; the Doctor picked it up
and examined it carefully. The child
of honest parents, with a heritage of
good blood, hard labor, honest living,
And in all that great city there was not
one voice to bid him welcome-
“Where are her keys?’ he asked,
and then the Jewess opened the chest.
There were a Bible and a simple record;
the names, baptismal and marriage
certificates of the young man and his
wife ; and a recommendation from the
pastor of their village; a sum of gold
—about fifty dollars (enough for their
decent burial, the Doctor mentally
noted)—weas tied in a handkerchief
against an evil day. It seemed to
have come
The Doctor stood over the dead wo-
man a moment and thought. He
bent down and felt her strong young
body with gentle hands. Here-read the
simple record of honest lives.
“] will give you five dollars,” he
said presently, “to let this body stay
here till morning. and five more dol-
lars to tend the child.”
The Jewess wrinkled the skin of her
black neck till it lay in serpents’ folds.
“[ will keep him,” she said, ‘“‘over-
night—the Almighty look blindfolded
on my sin—but not longer; for he is a
Shagetz (Christian,) and if I keep him
till sundown he will be sitting on my
head, and in a month he will eat
triphameat out ot butter plates and the
judgement of God will come,”
As the Doctor walked out, the la-
ment, that grew into a wail, followed
him. Ouly ten dollars to tend that
child of a Gentile and a heathen
corpse. He heard the pawnbrokeress
condemn herself and call on her ances-
tors to witness that she had a cat's
head and was not fit to buy business
for her marriageable daughters. But
as he lingered an instant on the
threshold he heard the key turn in the
death chamber, and the child crying
vigorously in the warm kitchen, then
a sudden cessation of the noise. She
had not killed it, so he knew she had
given it food.
When he got to the rendezvous
where John waited him, the Doctor's
face had grown sternly resolute. He
got in, and to the query, “Madison
Avenue ?’ bowed his head and did pot
litt it from his breast. When the car-
riage stopped, he looked at the great
brown-stone palace as if he had never
seen it before. It seemed to him it
wag the largest, most desolate house in
the world.
The servant waiting in the hall open-
ed the door as quickly as possible. The
Doctor looked about him a moment—
at the great superb rooms opening one
on the other, the rich furniture, and
vistas of rooms beyond where fragrant |
flowers bloomed. There were pictures
on the walls—speaking things, people
called thbem—but they did not speak,
nor hunger nor thirst.
A little, petted, becurled, and berib-
boned spitz dog ran under his feet, the
footman picked it up respectfully and
laid it on a sofa cushion. The lights
were dim, but he saw, looking down
the length of the rooms, two bent and
stricken figures. “Oh, so much room !”’
the Doctor said to himself; “room,
room, more than he can take up in all
his life.”
At the sound of his step the two
figures moved toward him. They had
never lost faith in his omnipotence for
one moment ; their faith in their Doe-
tor was supreme ; it was superb. Tears
welled up in his eyes, so great was their
faith. Then he pulled himself together.
Tt was a self-limited disease—typhoid
fever—and the great, strong, manly
fellow hadn’t the stamina to pull
through. If that treatment failed a
miracle couldn’t have saved him. The
Doctor set his teeth. Had typhoid
fever been too much for him ?
“She bore the baby’s funeral very
well,” he heard the old man say, with
an effort at cheerfulness; “but it is
strange how much more she has been
prostrated by this than the other.”
His wife laid her hand on his. “Oh,
you can’t understand ; you can’t un-
derstand. The Doctor even can’t un-
derstand,” she said, as if she had Jimi-
ted the omniscience of Providence.
“She is bereaved ; she has nothing
in all the world to live for.”
“She has you and me and all this,”
said the father, almost icdignantly. Bat
the Doctor saw the salf-abnegation of
the mother in the desolation of the
other.
“You can’t understand it,” he said
to the old man. “One never can ex-
plain intuitions,” he added, a little re-
gretfully. “I think, however, children
and dear simple souls like her”’—he
pressed the woman's hand—“have the
gift of sight.” And then again he look-
ed about him. The great beautiful
empty house—that was nothing; the
parents who were watching her every
breath with the intense silent passion
expended on an only child—they were
nothing.
“I will go up,” he said, “and see her
a moment.” They looked at him with
gratitude. He wondered how much
more intensely they would believe in
his omnipotence if she were to die;
and he decided by the time he got up
the stairs that if he took them word, in
ten minutes she was with her child!and
husband, they would thank God that
she had bad the Doctor to the very
last. :
The fact was that this young widow,
whose only child had been buried that
afternoon, and whom he was going to
gee in order to reconcile her to her
common lot in life, was almost like a
child to him. He was the family doc-
tor, and he bad known her all her life.
He had seen her with croup and chick-
en-pox, and crying with a red flannel
rag around her neck because he had
kept her at home from a dance when
she had sore throat. He had heard her
stamp her feet and call him an ugly
mean old thing, ob, a hundred times,
and once he had been called in to talk
to her seriously about going on the
stage ; for she bad vowed she couldn’t
bear it a single minute if those tyrants
wouldn't let her study medicine, and
would make her learn a whole lot of
stupid history and French every day
of her life ; she was going to be some-
body in spite of them ; she was going
to be an actress at the Bell Theatre,
like Miss Polly Carp.
As he stood on the threshold of her
door all that time came back. He re-
membered how her mother had writ:
ten the letter about the stage in the
most diplomatic way she knew how ;
it wasn't very subtle, after all ; and the
Doctor saw the girl was probably too
much indulged. But he went. He
found her a small, dark fiery creature,
all nerves, full of impulse, and with no
more self-restraint than a tiger cat.
He acquiesced in her proposal that
he go to see Mr. Jacob May, the man-
ager, at once, though the mother was
rather horrified ; she had stood in si-
lence when he made the girl go to the
end of the hall, while they stood in the
door-way, and she prepared to recite
one of her pieces which was to give her
Mies Carp’s enviel place. The mother
was dreadfully frightened, and whisper-
ed that the girl had a great deal of ta-
lent ; perhaps they never could get her
to give it up after this ; but the Doctor
nodded and smiled. Her selection was
the well. known “Curfew Must Not
Ring To-night.” The stanzae are pretty
long, and the girl had flamed up at
the second, when she should have at
least got into the twentieth before she
began to tear her clothes, At the fifth
her mother said. “A little louder,”
and then they both saw the gestures,
but heard no sound.
It was an affair of a moment, as the
surgeons say when they are going to
make an incision in a vital point. She
burst into tears, and rushed out of the
room, slamming the door after her.
Her mother tried to thank the Doctor,
but her mild eyes blazed. He had been
very kind ; oh, the dear, talented thing,
cut to the heart in that dreadful way !
The Doctor said there were a great
many other talents ; the girl certainly
had oneor two atthe least, so had
everybody ; and then he bowed him-
gelf out. He was not called there
again,
The next time he saw her was a
year or two or three afterward, wheo
he had stepped into a horse show for a
| ive minutes’ look at the horses and
| the people and what it all was like. He
, never was quite able to have a feeling
of belonging to these things, and he
i felt the lonesomeness of non-participa-
"tion. But in crowds women are apt to |
| faint, orsomebody get jostled, and then,
| he didn’t know bow, but he did feel as
if he hadn't neglected his fixed duties.
She was in a box, and looked very
smart and well rigged in a knowing
little hat and a gentlemanly cravat and
tie an a waist of about eighteen inches
roun?, So her boyishoess was nct
radical after all. The talk about the
horses was #0 professional that the
Doctor couldn’t quite make out what
beast they were describing, though he
had been accused of a lack of dignity
due to himself as a member of the City
Medical Society because he had often
been seen doing a vet. surgeon’s busi-
ness in the most fashionable avenue of |
the city, where, indeed, it was most |
needed.
The clean, rather
that overcoat with a Watteau pleat in
the back and the two capes thrown
wide open exposing his chest, was a
net-work of trained muscles, which
were in such perfection that he had
kicked 2 goal on the 6th of last No-
vember that had saved his university
and thousands of its alumni from
shame and disgrace.
The Doctor exchanged a word or
two with the party, and asked the ath-
lete if he were quite well, looking at
him with kind serious eyes, at which
the girl laughed his answer out of
hearing.
fashionable young doctor, ‘and cutting
him, her old friend. Her mother im-
mediately looked humble, and her
eyes asked forgiveness, but the girl was
genuinely surprised too.
“Why, Doctor, how could you know?
I have never told anybody. I went
there at night, alone” (here everybody
laughed at the absurd exaggeration),
“and you've found we out. You area
sorcerer, a magician, just as you al
ways were, I never could fool you.”
The Doctor showed his white teeth
in one of his sympathetic smiles that
made people feel fellowship with him.
“No, you never did fool me,” he
said, rising to go; “but in my char-
acter of magician I will ay I've found
out one must keep nature's laws, and
all other right laws, if one wants to be
beautiful and happy.”
The intense, sallow, litle face, the
small nervous form, turned from him.
He knew she was hurt, perhaps of
fended ; but that was his luck, some-
how. [He felt lonesome,
But wedding-cards followed quickly
after that chance meeting, and theo
the typhoid fever, when the young and
fashionable doctor, poor soul, was rel-
egated to a temperature-taker, and the
real angel of mercy and healing called
in. It was a disastrous record—an
overirained athlete dead at twenty-
four, a blue baby—no heart action
from the very first—and that prostrate
form, that deathlike face.
These memories passed rapidly
through his mind. This was not the
first time he had recalled them. Then
he gave a gentle knock. No reply. But
he went in.
The room was furnished in blue and
gray, A bride's room, and all the
lovely wedding gifts, the water-colors,
the favorite books, the crystal and
silver and ivory, the thousands luxu-
ries of a child of fortune shown in the
tint of the coloring of the wall-paper,
the depth and softness of the lounge,
the down pillows, the writing-desk with
its trays aud bottles, the rugs and
silken hangings. The next room, open-
ing on it, had a different look, some-
how—an empty look. The Doctor
glanced into it a moment ; wo, every-
thing was there, except what he had
always looked for first, the cradle, the
soft blankets, the fire on the hearth.
The figure extended on the bed was
so small and lightit looked like a
child’s form. The limbs were relaxed,
the face that lay on the pillow was as
expressionless as a blank sheet of
white paper. Somebody with a regard
to proprieties had put her in a black
robe. Hvery particle of beauty, life,
emotion, had gone out of her. She
might have been a mummy or a wax
figure. He sat down by her, and with-
out preamble began :
“You know, Evelyn, you cansay I
haven't any right tospeak to you about
all the dreadful business because I
haven't lost wife or child ; but I never
had either, and some day you'll see
that, too, is hard. But when I was
about your age, thirty-one or two, for
a woman is ten years oider than a man,
I suffered a great temptation, a great
sorrow, and a terrible wrong. Never
mind what it was, but 1t gave me the
right to say to anvbody in trouble or
temptation, ‘I know.” But you are not
exceptional in your losses. Your hus
band and child were victims to the vio-
lation of nature’s laws, and, “he added,
seriously, “I do not believe anything
outside a miracle, which she never per-
forms, could have saved Jack when I
first saw him. He was overtrained, and
hado’t anything to go on but those big
muscles.”
The Doctor made this statement
with conscientious precision, for he
believed with all his heart that he
could manage any typhoid fever case
provided it had not got three days’
start of him, The little boy with the
thermometer—well Ae had been a little
boy with a thermometer once, and so
he was a little sorry for him as for the
rest of them.
“Now, Evelyn, you have good food,
you despise it; a gnol home, you envy
the rag-picker in her crowded cellar;
and people who would gratify any
whim you have in the world. Listen
to me. I've been down the east side,
and I’ve seen a woman lying dead.
No, Evelyn, don’t envy Ler, because’
(for be knew her thoughts) “in a way
you've been appointed to a kingdom,
set a task. The woman's husband was
killed before her eyes, and she was
struck down there that minute—a
stranger, poor, bereaved. Her baby
was born, and she died just before I
got there. And this is how itis. The
man is dead, lying over there in the
Bellevue Hospital, the woman is dead
in a cellar in Zachariah Square, and
the baby” (the form on the bed quiver-
ed)—“the bady is in a pawnbroker's
kitchen, waiting for moraing, to be car-
ried to some foundling asylum.”
“Oh! oh! the poor little desolate
thing ! Oh, the little forsaken outcast !
Is it a little tender blue-eyed thing,
Doctor? Will it die before merning?”
aclemn-looking
voung man with her was a very promi- |
vent character. They said that under |
Then the Doctor told her |
that she was a very cruel girl, and had |
served him a sorry turn, sending fora |
“No, Evelyn, not that—not like your
poor little baby, Don't let it hurt you
too much, bat you have not lived the
life to have the child oi that healthy,
wholesome, natural peasant woman,
nor have your ancestors before you led
"her life. All you can do about that is
to fulfill a wish I have made for you
many times, and that is that what I
have taught yon, and, above all, what
you have Jearned by a common experi-
ence, you will tell other people, and
tell it so they will listen to you. And
in time''—the Doctor looked into space
with intense gaze—*"in time, 1f you
| and others, and others yet unborn go
| on telling, and go on being heeded, we
| will have a happy and a healthy worid.
| The child I saw to-night,” he said, “is
| strong and beautiful, There is no fault
to ind in him, except that nobody in
the world wants him, thongh it is such
a little place that he'd take.” He went
over to the door that opened on the
room whence its little occupants bad
been carried that afternoon. “What a
warm-looking place this is!" hesaid.
And that empty cradle there, and those
litile dresses and things!” He put his
hand on her head, and then looked at
her, but he did not say one word. Pres-
ently he went out. She heard in a daz-
ed sort of way the front door slam, then
the ramble of wheels. He had gone.
But she cauldn’t get his words out of
her head. That poor desolate liitle
creature ! She longed for morning.
What sort of foundling asylum would
it be ? She shuddered. She remembered
a dear lovely charity she subscribed to,
where a kind nurse in a blue gown tied
different colored ribbons on babies to
tell them apart when she washed them.
She had thought what a “cunning
idea.” Would any kind angel in Hea-
ven in a white dress have to tie a rib-
bon on her baby to tell it from the
others ? Oh, bow slowly the hours went
by! The Doctor had been gone such a
long time. She had as much time as
ghe had of everything else. What!
Had he come back ? The Doctor en-
tered. She was in the nursery passion-
ately kissing the small empty clothes,
the useless. undisturbed treasures.
“Do you think the woman will be
good to him until morning? Hasa’t he
got a friend in the world ? It isn’t pos-
gible he hasn't got anybody—everybody
has got somebody.”
The Doctor faced about and took her
by her hand and lifted her upon ber
feet. “Yes,” he said, ‘he has got some-
body. Evelyn, I told you a long time
ago that people are constructed with
individual properties, like light or heat,
if you will. I won't give them scientific
names, for the name doesn’t matter.
Your gift, or talent, or hereditary trait,
never mind what you call it or how it
was evolved, we will understand,” he
added, thoughttully, “when we get at
the root of selection—natural selection,
you koow ; but it’s there. It isn’t act
ing—it’s being, it's lovinz. I haven’t
been with you here all these months
without knowing that is your life. I
don’t ask you to keep this baby longer
than to-night if you find it is impossi-
ble.” He opened the door, and out of
John’s arms he lifted the little Christ
like child and laid it in hers.
She ehrank back instantly. “Oh,
my own baby, my little heart out there
in the graveyard!” But she did not let
this baby fall.
The Doctor lingered again on the
threshold ; it was the second time that
night he had stood and listened fora
token of its fate. Then he heard a
word that satisfied him, and he went
down stairs, Tne old couple etretched
out their hands to him; their faith in
their Doctor had taken the form ot
blind obedience.
When he passed through Fortieth
Street he heard the crash of bells and
the clear notes of the boy choristers,
and saw the stream of light pouring
out from the open door of a church
with the trinmphant strain, “Unto us
a Child is born, a Son is given.”
“Bless my soul,” he said, “it's
Christmas! I had entirely forgotton it
for the time. I thought at first it was
Easter, but I might have known by
the holly I saw in the windows, If it
had been Easter, there would have
been forced hlacs.”
He found the fire out in his rather
cheerless library, and he was too tired
to light it so he fell asleep in his arm-
chair, It seems to mel get mixed up
in things and make a lot of disturbance
in this world.” was his last waking
thought ; but I must do my work.”
A
Better Times Ahead.
Many Mills to Start Up After the First
of the Year.
New York, Dec. 16.--Atter the first
of the new year, the Pepperell Manu-
facturing Company, the Laconia Mill
Company, the Otis Company, the Colum-
bia Manufacturing Company, the Thorn-
dike Company, the Androscoggin Mills,
the Warner Cotton Mills, the Palmer
Mills, the Boston Duck Company and
the Cordis Mills are all expected to start
up on full time. Nearly all the mills
are now working on about half time.
The above mille, through their agents
here, will sell over $2,000,000 worth of
staples next Wednesday, cleaning out
all this season’s stock. This is one of the
largest of annual sales ever made. Ow-
ing to the dullness in trade the past year
the stock on hand amounts to 27,000
packages of goods. The sale will have
the effect of settling the price of staples
for the next year.
EE ————————S AOA,
His Annual Custom.
Spatts— Young Glim has broken with
Miss Thinly.
Bloobum per — His
cold, has it ?
Spatts—It isn’t that. He thinks he
can’t stand the expense of a Christmas
gift.
love has grown
How Progress Affects Old Kris.
The Santa Claus legend is being
scandalously exposed by the constant
supplanting of fireplaces and open
| hearths with hot air pipes and steam
radiators,— Chicago News.