in New Orleans remembers her by it, any more than
you think of your dearest sister by her full name; she is just Margaret.
This is her story, and it tells why people made a monument for her.

When Margaret was a tiny baby, her father and mother died, and she was
adopted by two young people as poor and as kind as her own parents. She
lived with them until she grew up. Then she married, and had a little
baby of her own. But very soon her husband died, and then the baby died,
too, and Margaret was all alone in the world. She was poor, but she was
strong, and knew how to work.

All day, from morning until evening, she ironed clothes in a laundry.
And every day, as she worked by the window, she saw the little
motherless children from the orphan asylum, near by, working and
playing about. After a while, there came a great sickness upon the city,
and so many mothers and fathers died that there were more orphans than
the asylum could possibly take care of. They needed a good friend, now.
You would hardly think, would you, that a poor woman who worked in a
laundry could be much of a friend to them? But Margaret was. She went
straight to the kind Sisters who had the asylum and told them she was
going to give them part of her wages and was going to work for them,
besides. 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