The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1899-06-23
Selr&t Misrrlluuu.
'Melia Ann Meigs.
BY FRANK HIRD.

| met Mella Ann Mlggs at three
eliminating points in her history.
Her name was callous injustice which
many people suffer at the hands OF
their godfathers and godmothers in
their baptism; and at our first meeting
it struck me as being oddly out of
keeping with the anger and defiance
that lent pathetic dignity to the girls
short, squat figure.
'Melia Ann and l met in Arcadia
street, narrow thoroughfare of two
storied houses, a street of dirty pave
ments and Uttered cutters, street of
unwashed windows and unwashed in
habitants; gray street above which
the strip of East End sky seemed al
ways Touring, heavy with dank clouds
and sodden with smoke. Arcadia
street enjoyed an existence of undis-
turbed quiet, except when one of the
four families inhabiting each of its
small houses indulged in frank criti-
cism, direct recrimination, or open
warfare with its neighbors; it prided
itself upon the fact-to which the own
ers of twenty tousled heads peeping
from twenty windows bore voluble evil
dence-that the policeman had been
seen to yawn seven times within week
during his passage through the little
thoroughfare; and Arcadia street,
which regarded the bearing of the
policeman as social barometer, placed
itself in the seat of the Pharisee and
deemed itself of intense respectability
CHANGING to pass through this meri-
torious thoroughfare one dreary Novem-
Der afternoon, and knowing tue repu-
tation of the Arcadian, was surprised
to find these blameless people in the
throes of enjoying what a little urchin,
who was vehemently persuading others
of his kind to leave the prospective
"finds" Of sundry buckets and boxes
placed for the convenience of the dust
man upon the edge Of the curb, de-
scribed as "a good Gle beano."
A surging crowd was gathered in
the middle of the street, and, above the
cries of draggled women and shouts of
men, | heard shrill voice, nasal,
American, and undoubtedly feminine:
Touch him, We coyotes, an I'll let
daylight into your brain-pans!''
There was scufile, 4 howl, then
sudden silence. The crowd parted,
and a man, holding his head with both
hands, was led to the curbstone, where
he sat down, moaning stupidity. The
owner OF the voice had evidently full
filled her threat.
The crowd was impressed, and,
standing upon window-sill, | looked
over their heads. All could see was
4 girl with reddish hair and blazing
eyes, her arms bare to the elbow and
white with -four, whirling a rolling pin
round her head She saw me at the
same moment, and, with a pathos and
appeal not to be withstood, cried out:
"They're jest KILN him! Say, you
there, come right here an help me!''
"Blimey, 'erc's tori a-comin' ter
sive yer, 'Meliarann," yelled a coster
on the outskirts of the crowd, as the
people fell back. lie gave the shrill
cat-call of the "gallery-boys." "Strike
me. It's like bloomin' plye"
'Melia Ann was still defantlv waving
her rolling-pin; at her feet was man,
senseless, blood oozing from
an ugly cash across his forehead
"W hat is the matter?' | asked.
A babel of voices in answer gave me
the tactic acknowledgement that the
crowd had made me master of the stu
alton.
son! Cenelman, please, senelman,
listen to me'-a ragged little girl pulled
at my sleeve "Farfer's 'ad no work,
an e borreyed money from ina
contemptuous finger pointed at the
PROSTATE man-"im as keeps the
grocer shop rarand the Garner. An
'e's been an sold us up, an some more
in our street. An they say eve done
EN- brarn. Far.er it i'm on the cad.