Pretty soon she had worked so hard that she had some money saved from her wages.  With this, she bought two cows and a little delivery cart.  Then she carried her milk to her customers in the little cart every morning; and as she went, she begged the pieces of food left over from the hotels and rich houses, and brought it back in the cart to the hungry children in the asylum.  In the very hardest times that was often all the food the poor children had.

A part of the money Margaret earned went every week to the asylum, and after a few years that was made very much larger and better.  Margaret was so careful and so good at business that, in spite of her giving, she bought more cows and earned more money.  With this, she built a home for orphan babies; she called it her baby house.

After a time, Margaret had a chance to get a bakery, and then she became a bread-woman instead of a milk-woman.  She carried the bread just as she had carried the milk, in her cart.  And still she kept giving money to the asylum.  Then the great war came, the Civil War.  In all the trouble and sickness and fear of that time, Margaret drove her cart of bread; and somehow she had always enough to give the starving soldiers, and for her babies, beside what she sold.  And despite all this, she earned enough so that when the war was over she built a big steam factory for her bread.  By this time everybody in the city knew her.  The children all over the city loved her; the business men were proud of her; the poor people all came to her for advice.  She used to sit at the open door of her office, in a calico gown and a little shawl, and give a good word to everybody, rich or poor.

Then, by and by, one day, Margaret died.  And when it was time to read her will, the people found that, with all her giving, she had still saved a great deal of money, and that she had left every penny of it to the different orphan asylums of the city,—­each one of them was given something.  Whether they were for white children or black, for Jews, Catholics, or Protestants, made no difference; for Margaret always said, “They are all orphans alike.”  And just think, dears, that splendid, wise will was signed with a cross instead of a name, for Margaret had never learned to read or write!

When the people of New Orleans knew that Margaret was dead, they said, “She was a mother to the motherless; she was a friend to those who had no friends; she had wisdom greater than schools can teach; we will not let her memory go from us.”  So they made a statue of her, just as she used to look, sitting in her own office door, or driving in her own little cart.  And there it stands to-day, in memory of the great love and the great power of plain Margaret Haughery, of New Orleans.

THE DAGDA’S HARP