the new day. But, oh, my erring but beloved country! why ortn't we to
expect it as long as you keep the mills a-goin' that turns out such
black, ghastly shadders by the thousands and thousands all the time,
all the time, to enwrap your children.

Dorothy never knowed it--what wuz the use of cloudin' her bright young
life with the awful shadder? But then, as I told Robert, that black,
dretful pall hangs over every home and every heart in our country and
is liable to fall anywhere and at any time, no palace ruff is too high
and no hovel ruff is too low to be agonized and darkened by its sombry
folds.

But he said it would make Dorothy too wretched, and he could not have
her told, and I agreed to it, but of course I told my pardner and his
heart wuz wrung and his bandanna wet as sop in consequence on't. And
he told Miss Meechim, too, that mornin', and her complaisant belief in
genteel drinkin' and her conservative belief in the Poor Man's Club,
wuz shook hard--how hard I didn't know until afterwards. Oh, how she,
too, loved Aronette! The children when they wuz told on't mourned
because we did, and on their own account too, for they sot store by
her what little they had seen of her--for nobody could see her without
loving her.

As for Arvilly, her ideas on intemperance couldn't be added to or
diminished by anything, but she wep' and cried for days.

* * * * *

Well, I spoze you all want to know the peticulars. Robert Strong wuz
the first one that left the tarven in the mornin'. He had to see a man
very early on business. He went out by the ladies' entrance. And there
crouched on the cold stun steps, waitin' we spozed to ketch another
glimpse of Dorothy, and mebby to ask for help, for she wuz almost
naked, and her plump little limbs almost skin and bone, dead and cold,
frozen and starved, so we spozed, lay Aronette. Pretty, happy little
girl, dearly beloved, thrown by Christian America to the wild beasts
just as sure as Nero ever did, only while he threw his human victims
to be torn and killed for fun, America throws her human victims, her
choicest, brightest youth, down to ruin and death, for greed. Which
looks the Worst in God's sight? I d'no nor Josiah don't.

Well, Robert called a ambulance, had the poor boney, ragged victim
took to a hospital, but all efforts wuz vain to resuscitate her. She
had gone to give in her evidence against America's license laws,
aginst Army Ca