A SLUM GIRL | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Jul 26, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 30.

A SLUM GIRL.

SHE was a child of the slums, a ragged, unkempt, forlorn little girl about ten years of age. Some one had given her a penny, and she had hurried away to the penny store and there purchased a stick of striped red-and-white candy. She was running along the streets, proud and happy in her new and rare possession, when I saw her. Suddenly another little girl, equally ragged and forlorn looking, came limping out of the dark hallway of a dilapidated old rookery of a tenement house. She was very lame, and had evidently suffered much in her short life. Her face had a drawn and permaturely old look, such as one is always sorry to see in the face of children.

The two little girls met, and the one with the candy held it aloft, exclaiming, " See what I've got! Just see what I've got!"

"Where'd you get it, Janie?"

"Bought it."

"Where'd you get the money?"

"A man gave it to me for scooting after his hat when the wind blowed it off."

"Gimme some of it, won't you, Janie? Please do."

There was a wistful, eager, hungry look in the drawn little face.

Janie hesitated. Evidently sticks of candy came rarely to her. She looked longingly at the candy and then at the girl. Suddenly she rushed forward eagerly, joyously: " You take it all, Maggie; you take it all. You can't scoot after gentlemen's hats and earn pennies, and I can. So you take it all; and if I git a chance to earn another penny I'll give it to you to buy anything you want to with it."

Generous little heart, in which love of self had not yet found an abiding place! What a lesson it teaches to the grasping and self-centered, who care not for the wants, the weakness, or the woes of others!—Young People.