eps at the corner of Silver
and Third streets, odd place for a throne, but one commanding a fine
view of the inhabitants, their dwellings, and their activities. The
activities in plain sight were somewhat limited in variety, but the
signs sported the names of nearly every nation upon the earth. The
Shubeners, Levis, Ezekiels and Appels were generally in tailoring or
secondhand furniture and clothing, while the Raffertys, O'Flanagans and
McDougalls dispensed liquor. All the most desirable sites were occupied
by saloons, for it was practically impossible to quench the thirst of
the neighborhood, though many were engaged in a valiant effort to do so.
There were also in evidence, barbers, joiners, plumbers, grocers,
fruit-sellers, bakers and venders of small wares, and there was the
largest and most splendidly recruited army of do-nothings that the sun
ever shone upon. These forever-out-of-workers, leaning against every
lamp post, fence picket, corner house, and barber pole in the vicinity,
were all male, but they were mostly mated to women fully worthy of them,
their wives doing nothing with equal assiduity in the back streets hard
by.--Stay, they did one thing, they added copiously to the world's
population; and indeed it seemed as if the families in the community
that ought to have had few children, or none at all, (for their
country's good) had the strongest prejudice to race suicide. Well, there
was the kingdom and there were the dwellers therein, and the lucky
person on the steps was a girl. She did not know at first that it was a
kingdom, and the kingdom never at any time would have recognized itself
under that name, for it was anything but a sentimental neighborhood. The
girl was somewhat too young for the work she was going to do, and
considerably too inexperienced, but she had a kindergarten diploma in
her pocket, and being an ardent follower of Froebel she thought a good
many roses might blossom in the desert of Tar Flat, the rather
uneuphonious name of the kingdom.

Here the discreet anonymity of the third person must be cast aside and
the regrettable egotism of the first person allowed to enter, for I was
a girl, and the modest chronicle of my early educational and
philanthropic adventures must be told after the manner of other
chronicles.

The building in Silver Street which was to be the scene of such
beautiful and inspiring doings (I hoped) as had been seldom observed on
this planet, was pleasant and commo