er hand to him.

"You made my Karl a man," she said.

"No," replied the preacher, soberly, "God made him."

THE PROBLEM OF THE WIDOW SALVINI

The mere mention of the widow Salvini always brings before me that other
widow who came to our settlement when her rascal husband was dead after
beating her black and blue through a lifetime in Poverty Gap, during which
he did his best to make ruffians of the boys and worse of the girls by
driving them out into the street to earn money to buy him rum whenever he
was not on the Island, which, happily, he was most of the time. I know I
had a hand in sending him there nineteen times, more shame to the judge
whom I finally had to threaten with public arraignment and the certainty
of being made an accessory to wife-murder unless he found a way of keeping
him there. He did then, and it was during his long term that the fellow
died. What I started to say was that, when all was over and he out of the
way, his widow came in and wanted our advice as to whether she ought to
wear mourning earrings in his memory. Without rhyme or reason the two are
associated in my mind, for they were as different as could be. The widow
of Poverty Gap was Irish and married to a brute. Mrs. Salvini was an
Italian; her husband was a hard-working fellow who had the misfortune to
be killed on the railway. The point of contact is in the earrings. The
widow Salvini did wear mourning earrings, a little piece of crape draped
over the gold bangles of her care-free girlhood, and it was not funny but
infinitely touching. It just shows how little things do twist one's mind.

Signor Salvini was one of a gang of trackmen employed by the New York
Central Railroad. He was killed when they had been in America two years,
and left his wife with two little children and one unborn. There was a
Workmen's Compensation Law at the time under which she would have been
entitled to recover a substantial sum, some $1800, upon proof that he was
not himself grossly to blame, and suit was brought in her name; but before
it came up the Court of Appeals declared the act unconstitutional. The
railway offered her a hundred dollars, but Mrs. Salvini's lawyer refused,
and the matter took its slow course through the courts. No doubt the
company considered that the business had been properly dealt with. It is
quite possible that its well-fed and entirely respectable directors went
home from the meeting at which counsel made his report wit