Beautiful but Poor — page 39: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

30 BEAUTIFUL BUT POOR. you handed me a roll of money last night for that — purpose. I went on foot, for I like exercise ona sunny morning like this. Only a little way from here, in front of the drug store on the next avenue, I saw a young girl, a mere child of ten or eleven years, crying bitterly. Jasked her what was the matter, and learned, through her many sobs, that she had come with only seven cents, the last money she or her mother had in the world, to get medicine for that mother, who was sick. The medicine named in the prescription cost twenty cents, and the drug- gist would not let her have it without the money. I took the poor thing by the hand and went in and got the medicine for her, and in the meantime found out where she lived, in an alley only four blocks, dear father, from this rich home, in the basement of-one of the old tumble-down houses, which are a disgrace to the city. I don’t know but I did wrong, papa, but I couldn’t help it. -[ went home with that ttle girl and saw her poor mother, sick, with four children, actually starving, in an unfurnished cel- lar—no food, no _ fire—nothing but want and wretchedness to meet my view. Father, there is a fire there now, and plenty to eat. The sick woman is on a good bed, our doctor has taken her case in hand, and the children, in decent clothes, will go to school next week. But I have not been shopping. I found better use for my money.” “God bless my girl—my noble girl,’”’ said Mr. Le- gare, and tears came in his eyes as he spoke. “Frank, my boy, Lizzie has outstripped us both in good works, though we both may have done some > good; you in visiting and cheering up my invalid friend, and I—well, I, too, have had an adventure, and perhaps have been the indirect cause of better. comicbooks.cot aa