d Cross, with an account of the entertainment given by "The Little
Six."

The entire matter was too beautiful and withal unique, to meet only a
common fate in its results. I could not, for a moment, think to mingle
the gift of the little dramatists with the common fund for general
distribution, and sought through all these weeks for a fitting
disposition to make of it, where it would all go in some special manner
to relieve some special necessity. I wanted it to benefit some children
who had "wept on the banks" of the river, which in its madness had
devoured their home.

As we neared that picturesque spot on the Illinois side of the Ohio,
known as "Cave-in Rock," we were hailed by a woman and her young
daughter. The boat "rounded to" and made the landing and they came on
board--a tall, thin, worn woman in tattered clothes, with a good but
inexpressibly sad face, who wished to tell us that a package which we
had left for her at the town on our way down had never reached her. She
was a widow--Mrs. Plew--whose husband, a good river pilot, had died from
overwork on a hard trip to New Orleans in the floods of the Mississippi
two years before, leaving her with six children dependent upon her, the
eldest a lad in his "teens," the youngest a little baby girl. They owned
their home, just on the brink of the river, a little "farm" of two or
three acres, two horses, three cows, thirty hogs, and a half hundred
fowls, and in spite of the bereavement, they had gone on bravely,
winning the esteem and commendation of all who knew them for thrift and
honest endeavor. Last year the floods came heavily upon them, driving
them from their home, and the two horses were lost. Next the cholera
came among the hogs and all but three died. Still they worked on; and
held the home. This spring came the third flood. The water climbed up
the bank, crept in at the door, and filled the lower story of the house.
They had nowhere to remove their household goods, and stored them in the
garret carefully packed, and went out to find a shelter in an old log
house near by, used for a corn-crib. Day by day they watched the house,
hailed passing boats for news of the rise and fall of the water above,
always trusting the house would stand--"and it would," the mother said,
"for it was a good, strong house, but for the storm." The winds came,
and the terrible gale that swept the valley like a tornado, with the
water at its height, leveling whole towns, descended