Wall, the little arm got along all right, or would, if that had been all, but the poisonous air wuz what killed the little creeter.
For five days she lay, not sufferin' so much in body, but stifled, choked with the putrid air, and each day the red in her cheeks deepened, and the little pulse beat faster and faster.
And on the fifth day she got delerious, and she talked wild.
She talked about cool, beautiful parks bein' made down in the stiflin', crowded, horrible courts and byways of the cities—
With great trees under which the children could play, and look up into the blue sky, and breathe the sweet air—she talked about fresh dewey grass on which they might lay their little hollow cheeks, and which would cool the fever in them.
She talked about a fountain of pure water down where now wuz filth too horrible to mention.
She talked very wild—for she talked about them terrible slantin' old housen bein' torn down to make room for this Paradise of the future.
Had she been older, words might have fallen from her feverish lips of how the woes, and evils, and crimes of the lower classes always react upon the upper.
She might have pictured in her dreams the drama that is ever bein' enacted on the pages of history—of the sorely oppressed masses turnin' on the oppressors, and drivin' them, with themselves, out to ruin.
Pages smeared with blood might have passed before her, and she might have dreamed—for she wuz very delerious—she might have dreamed of the time when our statesmen and lawgivers would pause awhile from their hard task of punishin' crime, and bend their energies upon avertin' it—