oy plunges into the life that surges around him; the girl only feels
the touch of its waves as they break upon the embankments of home. The
boy gets more of the father; the girl gets more of the mother. This may
explain their relative superiority. The school for girls was started on
condition that it should be free, the proposed teacher refusing all
compensation. That part of the arrangement was a failure, for at the end
of the first month every little girl brought a handful of money, and
laid it on the teacher's desk. It must have been a concerted matter.
That quiet, unselfish woman had suddenly become a money-maker in spite
of herself. (Use was found for the coin in the course of events.) The
school was opened with a Psalm, a prayer, and a little song in which the
sweet voices of the little Jewish, Spanish, German, Irish, and American
maidens united heartily. Dear children! they are scattered now. Some of
them have died, and some of them have met with what is worse than death.
There was one bright Spanish girl, slender, graceful as a willow, with
the fresh Castilian blood mantling her cheeks, her bright eyes beaming
with mischief and affection. She was a beautiful child, and her winning
ways made her a pet in the little school. But surrounded as the bright,
beautiful girl was, Satan had a mortgage on her from her birth, and her
fate was too dark and sad to be told in these pages. She inherited evil
condition, and perhaps evil blood, and her evil life seemed to be
inevitable. Poor child of sin, whose very beauty was thy curse, let the
curtain fall upon thy fate and name; we leave thee in the hands of the
pitying Christ, who hath said, "Where little is given little will be
required." Little was given thee in the way of opportunity, for it was a
mother's hand that bound thee with the chains of evil.
Among the children that came to that remarkable academy on the hill was
little Mary Kinneth, a thin, delicate child, with mild blue eyes, flaxen
hair, a peach complexion, and the blue veins on her temples that are so
often the sign of delicacy of organization and the presage of early
death. Mike Kinneth,--her father, was a drinking Irishman, a
good-hearted fellow when sober, but pugnacious and disposed to beat his
wife when drunk. The poor woman came over to see me one day. She had
been crying, and there was an ugly bruise on her cheek.
"Your riverence will excuse me," she said, curtseying, "but I wish you
would come over a
|