INASMUCH AS UNTO THE LEAST.
A BLIND and crippled old man sat at the edge of the icy stone pavement grinding out his few tunes on a wheezy old organ, and holding in one hand a tin cup for pennies. The cold wind blew thru his rags, and he was indeed a very pitiable object. Yet few of the passers-by seemed to pity him. They were all in a hurry, and it was too cold to stop and hunt for pennies in pockets and purses. A sudden gust of wind blew the old man's cap off. It fell by the side of the pavement, a few feet distant. He felt around for it with his bare, red hands, and then with his cane, but he could not find it, and finally he began playing again, bareheaded, with his scanty gray locks tossed about in the wind. People came and went—happy, well-dressed men and women, in silks and velvets and sealskins, in warm overcoats and gloves and mufflers; but none of them paid any attention to the old man. By and by a woman came out of an alley—an old woman, in rags and tatters, with a great bundle of sticks and boards on her bent back. Some of the boards were so long that they were dragging on the ground behind her; and it had evidently taken her a long time to tie all the boards together on her back. She came along, bending low under her burden, until she was within a few feet of the old organ-grinder. She saw him sitting there bareheaded and his cap lying a little distance away, close by the pavement. She stopped, untied the rope which bound the bundle to her back, and in a moment the boards were lying on the ground. Then she picked up the cap, put it on the old man's head, and tied it down with a ragged string of a handkerchief taken from her own neck. “Cold, hain't it?” she said. He nodded. “Hain't gitting much to-day?” were her next words. He shook his head again. She fumbled in her ragged skirts for a moment and finally brought forth a copper. She dropped it into his little cup, hoisted the great bundle on her back, and went on her way.—Selected.