Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 December 1879 — The Child on the Door-Step. [ARTICLE]

The Child on the Door-Step.

" Did she leave any children?” "Yes, this bit of a child.” “ And who’ll take her?” "I don’t know. We arc all very poor around here, sir, but wo must find her a place somewhere. God help the little girl, for she’s all alone now!” The sexton had called at an old tenement house on Lafayette street east to take a body lo a pauper’s field—the body of one whose life hail been worn out in the tread-mill of hunger and despair. Nobody knew that the mother was dead—hardly suspected that she was ill, until one morning this child appeared at a neighbor’s door and quietly said: "Would you be afraid to come over to my house, for nia is dead and I'm keeping awful still, and I’m afraid to talk to her when she won’t answer.” The mother had been dead four hours. Long enough before day came the flame of life had burned low and died out, and that child, hardly seven years old, had been with the corpse through the long hours, clasping the cold hand, kissing the white face, and calling for life to return. When they asked if she had any friends she shook her head. When they told her she was alone in the great world she looked out of the old window* on the bleak November day and answered: “ I can make three kinds of dresses for doll-babies, build fires and carry in wood, and I’ll work ever so hard if somebody will let me live with them!” There was no funeral. There was no need of a sermon there. The lines of sorrow around the dead woman’s mouth counted for more in Heaven than any eulogy man pould deliver. There was no crape. In place of it three or four honest-hearted women let their tears fall upon the white face and whispered: "Poor mother—poor child!” The child’s big blue eyes were full of tears, but there was hardly a tremor in her voice as she nestled her warm cheek against the lips stilled forever and said: “Good-bye, ma—you’ll come down from Heaven every night at dark, won’t you, and you’ll take me up there just as soon as you can, won’t you?” The landlord locked up the house, and the child went home with ono of the women. When night came she stole out of the house and w r ent aw r ay from those who sought to comfort her, and going back to the old house she sat down on the door-step, having no company but the darkness. An officer passed that way, and leaning over the gate he .peered through the darkness at something on the step and called out: " Is anybody there P” " Nobody but a little girl!” came the answer. "Whois it?” “ It’s a little girl whose ma was buried to-day!” He opened the gate and went closer, and as he made out her little bai’e head and innocent face, he said: "Why, child, aren’t you afraid?” "I was afraid a little while ago,” she said, "but just as soon as I asked ma not to let anybody hurt me I got right ovm* it. Would anybody dare hurt a littrc girl whose mais dead? They could be tooken up,'couldn’t they?” He offered to go with her to the house where she was to have a home for a few days, and taking his big hand with the utmost confidence she talked beside him and said: “ I ain’t going to cry much till I get to bed, where folks can’t see me!” "I hope every one will be good to you,” he remarked, as he put his hand over her curly head. "If they don’t be, they’ll never go to Heaven, will they?” she queried. " No.” There was a long pause, and then she said: ‘ ‘ But I guess they will be. I can make a doll out of a clothes-pin and a piece of calico, and I guess somebody will be glad to let me live with ’cri. If you see me over oh> the step some other night yon needn’t be a bit afraid, for I ain’t big enough to hurt anybody, even if I didn’t want to cry all the time!”— Detroit Free Press.