that my efforts wuz
not bein' throwed away. So I hurriedly laid holt of another true
incident that I thought on, and hauled it up in front of him.

"Think of the case of the pretty Chinese girl of twelve years--jest the
age of our Tirzah Ann, when you used to be a-holdin' her on your knee,
and learnin' her the Sunday-school lesson, and both on us a-kissin' her,
and a-brushin' back her hair from her sweet May-day face, and a-pettin'
her, and a-holdin' her safe in our heart of hearts.

"Jest think of that little girl bein' sold for a slave by her rich male
father, and brought to San Francisco, the home of the brave and the
free, and there put into a place which she thought wuz fur worse than
the bottomless pit--for that she considered wuz jest clean brimstone,
and despair, and vapory demons.

"But this child, with five or six other wimmen, wuz put into a sickenin'
den polluted with every crime, and subject to the brutal passions of a
crowd of live, dirty human devils.

"And when, half dead from her dreadful life, she ran away at the peril
of her life, and wuz taken in by a charitable woman, and nursed back to
life and sanity agin.

"The law took that baby out of that safe refuge, and give her back into
the hands of her brutal master--took her back, knowin' the life she
would be compelled to lead.

"Think if it wuz our Tirzah Ann, Josiah Allen!"

"Dum the dum fools!" sez he, a chokin' some, and then he pulled out his
bandanna handkerchief and busted right out a-cryin' onto it.

[Illustration: "Dum 'em, I say!"]

"Dum 'em, I say!" sez he, out of its red and yeller depths. "I'd love to
skin the hull on 'em, Judge and Jury."

And I sez meanin'ly, "Now, do you want to go and be intimate with them
law-makers, Josiah Allen?"

"No," sez he, a-wipin' his eyes and a-lookin' mad, "no, I don't! I want
sunthin' to eat!"

And I riz up imegatly, and got a good dinner--a extra good one. And he
never said another word about goin' to Washington, D.C.

CHAPTER VI.

There wuz sights and sights of talk in Jonesville and the adjacent and
surroundin' world about the World's Fair bein' open on Sundays.

There wuz sights and sights of fightin' back and forth about the rights
and the wrongs of it.

And there wuz some talk about the saloons bein' open too, bein' open
week days and Sundays.

But, of course, there wuzn't so much talk about that; it seemed to be
all settled from the very first on't that the saloons wuz a