A noisy cheer greeted this announcement.

“Is it true?” asked several voices.

“Yes, it is true,” she responded, “and if you will be quiet, I will read it to you.”  And she began as follows: 

“THE STORY OF ANGEL WAY.”

“Her name was Angelica, but her little school friends called her ‘Angie,’ and those who loved her, ‘Angel.’  This last pet term of a fond mother, seemed not ill applied, when one looked at the serene face, and the drooping violet eyes, with the prophetic shadow of her fate in their earnest, haunting depths.  Indeed, the meaning of Angelica, in the flower world, is ‘Inspiration,’ and I think Angel’s must have come from God.  When you looked at her, she seemed like one set apart for some special work, like those ‘chosen ones’ we love to read of.  Truly, as has been so gracefully said, ‘to bear, and love and live,’ is a woman’s patient lot.  Yes, to suffer pain, to bear uncomplainingly through weary years, a load of grief and shame for others, though she herself may have sinned not, till at last it grows too great for her feeble strength, and Death comes, not as the ‘King of Terrors,’ but a welcome messenger, for whose coming the weary woman has waited and longed, ever since hope died out, and she knew life held for her nothing but wretchedness and woe.

“This little girl, I am going to tell you about, lived in the very heart of a great city, up dismal flights of stairs, at the very top of a huge brick building, where a great many poor people congregated together and called it home.

“There were four of them, Mr. and Mrs. Way, and Angel, and the baby whom they called Mary.  There had been another member of the little family, but God had taken her, and Grandma Way’s placid face was no longer seen bending over the old family Bible, in the chimney corner.  It was very evident to everybody but the one who should have been the first to observe a change, that the hard-working wife and mother would soon follow her.  Toil, and care and sorrow, were surely wearing out her life, but there were none to pity her but little Angel, and she was only a child.

“She was shy and bashful, too, and afraid almost of her own shadow, but every night she knelt down and prayed to God to show her how she could be useful to those she loved.  And the time was surely coming when all her little strength would be tried to the uttermost.

“One night little Angel was aroused from her sleep by shrieks, and groans and curses, and the sound of a heavy blow, and she sprang from her little bed, to find her mother stretched senseless upon the floor, with the blood trickling from a wound in her head, and a group of uncouth, neighboring women gathered about her.

“‘Lord save us!’ they ejaculated, ’there’s the child, we’d clean forgot her.’

“‘Mamma, mamma!’ wailed the little creature, ‘is she dead?’

“‘There, there, dearie, don’t take on so,’ said good-natured Mrs. Maloney.  ’It’s not dead she is at all.  You see, the father came home, after bein’ on a bit of a spree, with a touch of delirium, and raised a good deal of a fuss, and they took him away where he’ll have to behave himself till the whisky gets out of his head.’