"No, dear. Men over twenty-one are the only persons entitled to vote. Steve and Joe and I voted. And it's too bad, but John can't put in his vote for President this fall."
"The mayor governs the city, and the governor, the State. What does the President do?"
Her father explained the most important duties to her, and that a President was elected every four years. That was the highest office in the country.
"And who is going to be our President?" She was getting to be a party woman already.
"Well, it looks as if Henry Clay would. We shall all work for him."
If it only wouldn't come bedtime so soon!
The little girl studied and played with a will. She could skip rope like a little fairy, but it had been quite a task to drive her hoop straight. She was unconsciously inclined to make "the line of beauty." I don't know that it was always graceful, either.
Some new people moved in the block. Just opposite there was a tall thin woman who swept and dusted and scrubbed until Steve said "he was afraid there wouldn't be enough dirt left to bury her with." She wore faded morning-gowns and ragged checked aprons, and had her head tied up with something like a turban, only it was grayish and not pretty. She did not always get dressed up by afternoon. Oh, how desperately clean she was! Even her sidewalk had a shiny look, and as for her door brasses, they outdid the sun.
She had one boy, about twelve perhaps. And his name was John Robert Charles Reed. He was fair, well dressed, and so immaculately clean that Jim said he'd give a dollar, if he could ever get so much money together, just to roll him in the dirt. His mother always gave him his full name. He went to a select school, but when he was starting away in the morning his mother would call two or three times to know if he had all of his books, if he had a clean handkerchief, and if he was sure his shoes were tied, and his clothes brushed.
And one day a curious sort of carriage went by, a chair on wheels, and a man was pushing it while a lady walked beside it. In the chair was a most beautiful girl or child, fair as a lily, with long light curls and the whitest of hands. Hanny watched in amazement, and then went in to tell her mother. "She looks awful pale and sick," said Hanny.