Miss Meechim had one tellin' of
dretful doin's in her old home.

We'd heard that there had been a great labor strike out in California,
but little did we know how severe it had struck. Rev. Mr. Weakdew had
writ to Miss Meechim how some of the rebellious workmen had riz up
against his son in his absence. He told how wickedly they wuz actin'
and how impossible it wuz in his opinion to make them act genteel, but
he said in his letter that his son had been telegrafted to to come
home at once. He said Mudd-Weakdew always had been successful in
quelling these rebellious workmen down, and making them keep their
place, and he thought he would now as soon as he arrived there.

I know Arvilly and Miss Meechim had words about it when she read the
letter. Miss Meechim deplored the state of affairs, and resented
Arvilly's talk; she said it was so wicked to help array one class
aginst another.

"They be arrayed now," sez Arvilly. "Selfishness and Greed are arrayed
aginst Justice and Humanity, and the baby Peace is bein' trompled on
and run over, and haggard Want and Famine prowl on the bare fields of
Poverty, waitin' for victims, and the cries of the perishin' fill the
air."

Arvilly turned real eloquent. I mistrusted mebby she'd catched it from
me, but Miss Meechim turned up her nose and acted dretful high-headed
and said there was nothing genteel in such actions and she wouldn't
gin in a mite till that day in Vienna she had a letter that brought
her nose down where it belonged, and she acted different after readin'
it and didn't talk any more about gentility or the onbroken prosperity
of the Mudd-Weakdews, and I wuz shocked myself to hear what wuz writ.

As I say, Miss Meechim read it and grew pale, the letter dropped in
her lap and she trembled like a popple leaf, for it told of a dretful
tragedy. It wuz writ by a friend in Sacramento and the tragedy wuz
concernin' the Mudd-Weakdews. On hearin' of the strike, the
Mudd-Weakdews had hurried home from their trip abroad and he had tried
to quell the strike, but found it wouldn't quell. He had been shot at
but not killed; the shot went through his eyes, and he would be blind
for life. A deadly fever had broke out in the tenements on the street
back of his palace, caused, the doctors said, by the terrible
onsanitary surroundings, and helped on by want and starvation. The
families of his workmen had died off like dead leaves fallin' from
rotten trees in the fall. The tenements wuz