"He could read his title clear to Mansions with all the modern
improvements."

He and The Little Maid wuz safe. The world looked further off to him,
the woes, and wants, and crimes of our poor humanity seemed quite a
considerable distance away from him.

Onclouded prosperity had hardened Elnathan's heart--it will
sometimes--hard as Pharo's.

But he wuz a visitor and one of the relations on his side, and I done
well by him, killed a duck and made quite a fuss.

The business of settlin' the estate took quite a spell, but he didn't
hurry any.

He said "the nurse wuz good as gold, she would take good care of The
Little Maid. She wrote to him every day;" and so she did, the hussy, all
through that dretful time to come.

Oh dear me! oh dear suz!

The nurse, Jean, had a sister who had come over from England with a
cargo of trouble and children--after Jean had come on to California.

And Elnathan, good-natured when he wuz a mind to be, had listened to
Jean's story of her sister's woes, with poverty, hungery children, and a
drunken husband, and had given this sister two small rooms in one of his
tenement housen, and asked so little for them, that they wuz livin'
quite comfortable, if anybody could live comfortable, in such a