he woman, and then a scream
from the baby. Thereupon Diamond thought it time that somebody did
something, and as himself was the only somebody at hand, he must go and
see whether he could not do something. So he got up and put on part of
his clothes, and went down the stair, for the cabman's room did not open
upon their stair, and he had to go out into the yard, and in at the next
door. This, fortunately, the cabman, being drunk, had left open. By
the time he reached their stair, all was still except the voice of the
crying baby, which guided him to the right door. He opened it softly,
and peeped in. There, leaning back in a chair, with his arms hanging
down by his sides, and his legs stretched out before him and supported
on his heels, sat the drunken cabman. His wife lay in her clothes upon
the bed, sobbing, and the baby was wailing in the cradle. It was very
miserable altogether.

Now the way most people do when they see anything very miserable is to
turn away from the sight, and try to forget it. But Diamond began as
usual to try to destroy the misery. The little boy was just as much one
of God's messengers as if he had been an angel with a flaming sword,
going out to fight the devil. The devil he had to fight just then
was Misery. And the way he fought him was the very best. Like a wise
soldier, he attacked him first in his weakest point--that was the baby;
for Misery can never get such a hold of a baby as of a grown person.
Diamond was knowing in babies, and he knew he could do something to make
the baby, happy; for although he had only known one baby as yet, and
although not one baby is the same as another, yet they are so very much
alike in some things, and he knew that one baby so thoroughly, that he
had good reason to believe he could do something for any other. I have
known people who would have begun to fight the devil in a very different
and a very stupid way. They would have begun by scolding the idiotic
cabman; and next they would make his wife angry by saying it must be her
fault as well as his, and by leaving ill-bred though well-meant shabby
little books for them to read, which they were sure to hate the sight
of; while all the time they would not have put out a finger to touch the
wailing baby. But Diamond had him out of the cradle in a moment, set
him up on his knee, and told him to look at the light. Now all the light
there was came only from a lamp in the yard, and it was a very dingy and
yellow li