The Golden House

at was raking over the eighteenth century. This week Swift was to be arraigned. The last time when Edith was present it was Steele. The judgment, on the whole, had been favorable, and th

en, so exquisitely dressed, would have been concerning themselves about him. The function lasted two hours. Edith made a little calculation. In five minutes she could have got from the encyclopaedia all the facts in the essay, and while her maid was doing her hair she could have read five times as much of Steele as the essayist read. And, somehow, she was not stimulated, for the impression seemed to prevail

urn on the East Side, in company with a dispensary physician whose daily duty called her into the worst parts of the town. She had a habit of these tours before her marriage, and, though they were discouragingly small in direct results, she gained a knowledge of city life that was of immense service in her general charity work. Jack had suggested the danger of these excursions, but she had told hi

ring and deprivation, incapacity, ill-paid labor, the kindest spirit of sympathy and helpfulness of the poor for each other. Perhaps that which made the deepest impression on her was

good-naturedly and were strictly intent on their own affairs. No part of the town is more crowded or more industrious. If youth is the hope of the country, the sight was encouraging, for children were in the gutters, on the house steps, at all the windows. The houses seemed bursting with humanity, and in nearly every room of the packed tenements, whether the inmates were sick or hungry, some sort of industry was carried on. In the damp basements were junk-dealers, rag-pickers, goose-pickers. In one noisome cellar, off an alley, among those sorting rags, was an old woman of eighty-two, w

r. Was it altogether so melancholy as it might seem? Not everybody was hopelessly poor, for here were lawyers' signs and doctors' signs-doctors in whom the inhabitants had confidence because they charged all they could get for their services-and thriving pawnbrokers' shops. There were parish school

ouses, in the windows of which were stuffed the garments that would no longer hold together to adorn the person. Here an Italian girl and boy, with a guitar and violin, were recalling la bella Napoli, and a couple of pretty girls from the court were footing it as merrily as if it were the grape harvest. A woman opened a lower room door and sharply called to one of the dancing girls to come in, when Edith and the doctor appeared at the bot

fling rooms, smelling of the hot goose and steaming cloth, rooms where they worked, where the cooking was done, where they ate, and late at night, when overpowered with

f a room large enough to contain a bed, a cook-stove, a bureau, a rocking-chair, and two other chairs, and it had two small windows, which would have more freely admitted the southern sun if they had been washed, and a room adjoining, dark, and nearly filled by a big bed. On the walls of the living room were hung highly colored advertising chromos of steamships and palaces of industry, and on th

rs and a boy of eight, who were on the floor playing "store" with some blocks of wood, a few tacks, some lumps of coal, some scrap

n out, but the birds are a good deal of company." He spoke in German, and with effort. He was very thin and sallow, and his large feverish eyes added to the pitiful l

had got a job of cleaning that day; that would be fifty cents. Ally-she was twelve-was learning to sew. That was her

?" asked t

tal was probably the institution referred to-"ever so long now. I seen her there, me

en, and had been

they turn out singers. I made fifteen dollars last year. I hain't sold much lately. See

ore spring," said the doctor as they made their way down th

gave little light, for it opened upon a narrow well of high brick walls. In the only chair Aunt Margaret was seated close to the window. In front of her was a small work-table, with a kerosene lamp on it, but the side of the room towards which she looked was qui

old lady, cheerfully, when the do

s it?" asked

etty slack for two weeks now, but yesterday I got

. It used to be a good business b

then ten; now they don't pay but five

can you finish in

I work from six in the morning till twelve at night. I could do mor

n fifteen c

y. Sometimes there isn't any. And thing

lation that on a flush average of ninety cents a week earned, and allowing so many cents for coal and so many cents for

an't stir out. But the neighbors is real kind. The little boy next room goes over to the sho

s old soul's Christian resignation and cheerfulness! "For," said the doctor, "she has seen better days; she has moved in high society; her husban

es that Edith went to her dressing-room to