The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras

A MODERN HERO

It was a very humble house. Only a flat of three rooms on the third floor of a tall tenement-house in a back street near the river. A bedroom, a tiny parlor and a kitchen, which was also an eating-room, made up the suite. The Briggses did all their daylight living in the last-named apartment. The floor was painted yellow; the walls were whitewashed; the furniture was homely, substantial and well-kept.

Everything was shining clean, and both windows were full of plants, many of them in flower. Mrs. Briggs was fully persuaded in her own mind that no other woman in the city had such a tale of daily mercies as herself. Among them were the southern exposure of those windows and the circumstance that a gap in the buildings back of them let in the sunshine freely. Her nasturtiums blossomed there all winter; from a pot she had suspended by strings from the top of the casing, sweet alysseum flowed do