“It depends on whose lives they be.”
“Wall,” sez I, “it depends on whose lives they be. Now I know,” sez I, a-glancin’ at my pardner’s shinin’ bald head a-risin’ up like a full harvest moon from behind the pages of The World—
“I know one life that if it went down in darkness under them wheels, it would make the hull world black and empty. It would take all the happiness and hope and meanin’ out of this world, and change it into a funeral gloom.”
Sez I, “It would darken the world for all who love him.” And sez I, “Every one of them fifty that have gone down under them death chariots have left ’em who loved ’em. Hearts have ached and broken as they have looked at the mangled bodies and the emptiness of life faced ’em.” Sez I, “Them rollin’ billows of blackness have swept over the livin’ and the lovin’ every time them cruel wheels have ground a bright human life to death.
“They have mostly been children,” sez I, “and think of the anguish mother hearts have endured, and father love and pride—how it has been crushed down under the rollin’ wheels of death.
“Sometimes a father, who wuz the only prop of a family, has gone down. How cold the world is to ’em when the love that wropped ’em round has been tore from ’em! Sometimes a mother—what can take the place of mother love to the little ones left to suffer from hunger, and nakedness, and ignorance?”
“You’re imaginative, Cousin Samantha,” said he; but I kep’ right on onbeknown to me.
“Who will care for the destitute children left alone in the cold world with no one to care for ’em and help ’em?”
“I’ll give ’em some money,” said little Adrian, who’d been leanin’ up aginst my knee and listenin’ to our talk, with his big, earnest eyes fixed on our faces.
“I’ll give ’em the gold piece that papa gave me yesterday.”