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Will you come with me to one of our county hospitals this afternoon?
Soon we are kindly greeted by the matron, and almost the next words she utters after welcoming us are: "I'm especially glad to see you today, Mother Roberts, because in Ward X a girl who is dying has been asking if I knew where you were. You're none too soon. She can't last much longer, poor thing!" and she leads us to the bedside of the dying girl. I recognize her as Ruby ——, with whom I have more than once earnestly pleaded to forsake the wretched life she was living, warning her of the ultimate results of such a course. How changed she is as she lies there scarcely breathing! She opens her dying eyes at the sound of our footsteps. "Ruby dear, do you know me?" A barely perceptible nod. "I'm so glad Jesus sent us to you today, dear child. Won't you take him for your Savior right now?" In as few words as possible she is told of the dying thief on the cross. As she can not speak, we ask her to pray with her mind, whilst we kneel with her hand in ours, calling on Jesus for mercy, for pardon in this the "eleventh hour." The tears which she is too weak to wipe away are wetting her pillow, but we observe a look of peace stealing over her countenance. Soon we leave, believing that some day we shall meet her among that great throng of the blood-washed.
Following a mothers' meeting one day in a Northern town a care-worn-looking woman invited me home with her. Here she related another heartrending story of a lost girl, an only child, for whom she had toiled day and night at the wash-tub, so as to send her to school dressed as finely as the other girls. "I have had to work very hard as long as I can remember," the poor mother said, "and when I married, I made up my mind that if I ever had a daughter I would not teach her domestic duties, for fear she also would have to be a drudge all of her life." So she raised a lady (?). The girl grew to be very independent and disrespectful to her breadwinner, her mother, who was a deserted wife. At the age of sixteen Elsie, without even a note of farewell, left her comfortable little home and heart-broken mother, never to return. She had intimated her going, but the mother had attached no importance to these remarks, but she recalled them after her daughter's departure. Furthermore, Elsie carried away nearly every dollar of her mother's meager, hard-earned savings.
After a long look at a photograph I perceived that, because of a peculiar mark on the cheek, not removed by the retoucher, perhaps overlooked, I could readily recognize Elsie. Therefore, when visiting the slums, jails, and hospitals I kept a lookout for her as well as for others, and also notified some coworkers.
One day whilst visiting the old city and county hospital (where Mary's baby was born), I passed a cot where lay an apparently old woman; she looked to be fifty and appeared to be in the last stages of some dreadful form of tuberculosis. That identical mark was on her cheek, but surely this could not be twenty-three-year-old Elsie. Surely not. So I passed on to the next cot. The impression to return to the former one was so strong that it was acted upon. Stepping over to her, I softly said, "Don't be frightened, dear, but is your name Elsie?" The next moment I was quickly calling the nurse, for I feared the shock had killed the woman. The nurse came and administered some restorative and then advised me not to excite the patient further, for she was dying; but the girl had sufficiently recovered to be able to ask questions.
"Who told you?" she whispered.
[Illustration: POOR ELSIE]
"It won't hurt you if I tell you?" I asked.
"No; please."