“No. I am not as easily influenced as you are, dear. This woman lived up six flights of the dirtiest stairs I ever saw. I wondered at the time why she didn’t ask the landlord to have an elevator put in; probably she hadn’t thought of it. She lived in two rooms, and you never saw such awful poverty in your life. I thought, as she was so awfully poor, she couldn’t have much feeling, so I told her plainly that she could never expect her children to love and honor her if she did not at once give them each a hot bath, and put up fresh curtains and a pot or two of flowers in the windows. Everybody knows how cheap curtains are nowadays—not the real lace ones, of course, but—”
“Tamboured muslin and all that,” said the president. “Was she grateful for your interest in her?”
“I fear not. She looked at me, earnestly, and said: ‘You’ve been to one of them, haven’t you? I’ve always wanted to see somebody that had!’”
“I was afraid so, and I began to back out of the door, when she called, ‘Mary Ellen! oh, Mary Ellen! come right in here this minute! Here is a lady who has been to one of them there beauty doctors we was talking about yesterday! She must be awful old, for she’s brought up a lot of children; and come here to teach me how to raise mine; and if that beauty doctor ain’t fixed her up so she looks real young!’”
“And did Mary Ellen come?” asked the girl with the dimple in her chin, sympathetically.
“I don’t know. I didn’t wait; but I am almost sure I heard several people laughing as I came down-stairs. After this, I shall devote my energies to foreign missions or something like that. If the heathens are not grateful for my efforts in their behalf, they at least express themselves in a tongue I don’t understand; and they are too far away for me to hear them, even if I could understand!”
“Their ingratitude is awful,” wailed the president. “Well, I’m glad you have told me all this. Otherwise, I never could have had courage to tell you my last experience with visiting the dwellers in the slums as a member of the ‘Society for Procuring Better Ventilation in Other People’s Bedrooms!’ I called on one woman, who really seemed impressed by my arguments; she was quite polite, and never took her eyes off my bonnet all the time I was talking to her. I was so pleased with her that I gave her my address, and told her I would let her have a lot of pamphlets on the subject, if she would send for them. I knew I could not get one of my maids to carry them into that district, and besides her husband could easily come for them. He was a street paver, and no doubt would be glad to get the exercise.”
“Of course,” said the blue-eyed girl. “Did he come?”
“No. But she herself walked in on my reception day a few weeks later. She wore a bonnet which was a perfect caricature of mine. She said she hoped I would forgive her for delaying the returning of my call so long; and didn’t I think my reception-room was too warm to be quite healthy?”