The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-03-20

srne women of the neighbornood salo rfnto was four years old. It was merely \ s.iess: but mother women are goou at such guessing. and their figure was ao- cepted as fact
 ft was not so easy to say who he was. R,acause he had no parents who covlo ceFar explanations on that point, al- though he must have had parents at sorne time in his career. Nor wass " irnovvn how his name had come to him, g,,rfhpr than from information furnish ed nv the kindly soul who had taken hi,u into her own brood of half dozen little ones Her testimony was 10 tne erect that when she had found him, a year before, in a wretched tenemeht' clinging about the wasted nech ol . dead woman, he had cried and said' .srinto wants mamma" Therefore, she had called him Tinto. and 50 her cnil- dren had, and the neighborhood accept cd him as Tinto. More than that seemed scarcely to be necessary, for Tfntos circie of acouaintance was not exacting' ana be had not yet reached an age when he must inscribe his name in fuii upon the poll books as free American ciu- gen. prepared to exercise his rgnts az euch under the constitution of the Unit sa states and the direction of the ward lender. It might be safely predicted that Tinto would have all the name that was reo,tisite when the time came.
 Tsinto was always dirty. There may hava heen moments when his face was aIr,ost clean after his foster mother had rrrubbed him, but his hands were all waye and ever grimy and sticky. fer- haps if his hands had been clean some times his face would have known longer intervals of cleanliness. But Tintos hIe had much in it to make him weep, and ,rfen he wept he stuffed his chubby, eofied knuckles into his wet eyes, an fhe airt loosened and slipped of, to Ind \ resting place on his unresisting face. Hut not all of the dirt. Oh, no; there were not near enough. even in Tinto's life. 10 wash those hands of his clean.
 Tinto did not have so much to eat that he could afford to waste any DOT tion of it. yet to see his mouth and cheeks was convincing evidence that he was extrayagant and had put as much of his feasting on the outside of himself as on the inside Besides, Tinto was such a stubby little pudge that if he had never eaten or wept he would be no whit cleaner, because he was so close 10 the ground that the gutter dirt trans ferred itself to his hands and face as the shortest and easiest way to get rid Of Itself.
 what Tinto's hands and face were al- ways and what his bare feet were in summer his raiment was too considerate to make ashamed by contrast, and Tinto: in all outward appearance of person and attire, was harmonious. Art may hold that there can be no harmony in dirt, but Tinto was not art; he was nature the nature of the slums.
 As his surroundings were, so he was. for Tinto was, before all things. adapta- ble. True. he had cried one day-that day when he was found with his dead ana had said. 'Tinto, wants mamma, " but the next day he was quite oontented among the strange brood inS which he had been placed and found his new moth- CT snf1icient for his wants.
 Unto never smiled, and although his small companions, no less dirty and hopeless than he, shouted and laughed he was stiII and his face was always in repose Perhaps he was afraid if he laughed he might crack the enamel of crusted dirt about his mouth and on i.As cheeks. say perhaps" for Tinto said nothing. and one's opinion, even of trifi- ing matters. cannot be fairly known Jin- less or until, he expresses it. Yet his face was not sad-onIy wistful and far away, with great blue eyes that had the septh of the sky in them, and the sil- ence.
 His home was low down in lofty ten- ement filled with some men and women and very many children. All about it were buildings not better than it was, and the street it looked upon was a rab- ble of boys and girls. and rickety wa- gons and ptIshcarts and rumbling trucks and street vendors shouting their wares in the unintelligibler jargon of their kind. The roadway was rough cobble- stone, fringed with black. i'll smelling wa- ter along the gutters; the sidewalks were narrow and uneven, broken necessarily by doorsteps and cellar entrances and railings, and at remoter intervals by numerous attractions set out in front of dingy little shops by enterprising deal- CTS within. Upward the widowed walls lowered from the confusion below