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MISS BARTON'S LETTER

A TOUCHING INCIDENT VERY TOUCHINGLY RELATED.

                          RED CROSS RELIEF STEAMER, "JOSH V. THROOP,"
                                    OFF SHAWNEETOWN, ILLINOIS,
                                        OHIO RIVER, _March 18, 1884_,
  MR. M.E. CAMP, Editor of the Erie _Dispatch_:

  At length, I have the happiness to inform you that I have placed the
  contribution of the brave Little Six to my own satisfaction, and, as
  I believe, to the satisfaction of the little donors and the friends
  interested in them as well. Your letter inclosing the touching
  article describing their pretty thought and act, and the check for
  the sum donated by them to the sufferers from the floods, came
  during the early days of hurry and confused activity. The entire
  matter was too beautiful and withal unique, to meet only a common
  fate in its results. I could not, for a moment, think to mingle the
  gift of the little dramatists with the common fund for general
  distribution, and sought through all these weeks for a fitting
  disposition to make of it, where it would all go in some special
  manner to relieve some special necessity. I wanted it to benefit
  some children who had "wept on the banks" of the river which in its
  madness had devoured their home. I watched carefully all the way
  down on this trip, and tried, last Sunday, at Smithland on our
  return to make a little "foundation" for a children's help and
  instruction at that town which had suffered so terribly; but I could
  not satisfy myself, and after telling the pretty story to the best
  people of the town assembled on our boat, I still declined to leave
  the appropriation, waiting in confidence for the real opportunity
  to present and which we have met in the last hour. As we neared that
  picturesque spot on the Illinois side of the Ohio, known as
  "Cave-in-Rock," we were hailed by a woman and her young daughter.
  The boat "rounded to" and made the landing and they came on b