"But this child, with five or six other wimmen, wuz put into a sickenin' den polluted with every crime, and subject to the brutal passions of a crowd of live, dirty human devils.
"And when, half dead from her dreadful life, she ran away at the peril of her life, and wuz taken in by a charitable woman, and nursed back to life and sanity agin.
"The law took that baby out of that safe refuge, and give her back into the hands of her brutal master—took her back, knowin' the life she would be compelled to lead.
"Think if it wuz our Tirzah Ann, Josiah Allen!"
"Dum the dum fools!" sez he, a chokin' some, and then he pulled out his bandanna handkerchief and busted right out a-cryin' onto it.
"Dum 'em, I say!"
"Dum 'em, I say!" sez he, out of its red and yeller depths. "I'd love to skin the hull on 'em, Judge and Jury."
And I sez meanin'ly, "Now, do you want to go and be intimate with them law-makers, Josiah Allen?"