But as it wuz, she talked only with her little fever-parched lips of the lovely, cool garden.

Oh, they wuz wild dreams, flittin’, flittin’, in little vague, tangled idees through the childish brain!

But the talk wuz always about the green, beautiful garden, and the crowds of little children walkin’ there.

And on the seventh day (that wuz after Elnathan got there, and me and Josiah, bein’ telegrafted to)—­

On the seventh day she begun to talk about a Form she saw a-walkin’ in the garden—­a Presence beautiful and divine, we thought from her words.  He smiled as he saw the happiness of the children.  He smiled upon her, he wuz reachin’ out his arms to her.

And about evenin’ she looked up into her father’s face and knew him—­and she said somethin’ about lovin’ him so—­and somethin’ about the beautiful garden, and the happy children there, and then she looked away from us all with a smile, and I spozed, and I always shall spoze, that the Divine One a-walkin’ in the cool of the evenin’ in the garden, the benign Presence she saw there, happy in the children’s happiness, drew nearer to her, and took her in his arms—­for it says—­

“He shall carry the lambs in His bosom.”

That wuz two years ago.  Elnathan Allen is a changed man, a changed man.

I hain’t mentioned the word surplus population to him.  No, I hadn’t the heart to.

Poor creeter, I wuz good to him as I could be all through it, and so wuz
Josiah.

His hair got white as a old man’s in less than two months.

But with the same energy he brought to bear in makin’ money he brought to bear on makin’ The Little Maid’s dream come true.

He said it wuz a vision.

And, poor creeter, a-doin’ it all under a mournin’ weed; and if ever a weed wuz deep, and if ever a man mourned deep, it is that man.

Yes, Elnathan has done well; I have writ to him to that effect.

He tore down them crazy, slantin’, rotten old housen, and made a park of that filthy hole, a lovely little park, with fresh green grass, a fountain of pure water, where the birds come to slake their little thirsts.

He sot out big trees (money will move a four-foot ellum).  There is green, rustlin’ boughs for the birds to build their nests in.  Cool green leaves to wave over the heads of the children.

They lay their pale faces on the grass, they throw their happy little hearts onto the kind, patient heart of their first mother, Nature, and she soothes the fever in their little breasts, and gives ’em new and saner idees.

They hold their little hands under the crystal water droppin’ forever from the outspread wings of a dove.  They find insensibly the grime washed away by these pure drops, their hands are less inclined to clasp round murderous weepons and turn them towards the lofty abodes of the rich.

They do not hate the rich so badly, for it is a rich man who has done all this for them.