five-dollar bill back in her purse. She clutched the other bill in
her left hand, picked up a pencil, and began to write. She headed
the petition: "To all who know and love the mountains," and she told
the story with the simpleness of one speaking from the heart, and
the directness of one who speaks to those sure to understand. "And
so I found her here by the Denver paper," she said, after she had
stated the tragic facts, "because it was the closest she could come
to the mountains. Her heart is not breaking because she is going
blind. It is breaking because she may never again look with seeing
eyes upon those great hills which rise up about her home. We must do
it for her simply because we would wish that, under like
circumstances, someone would do it for us. She belongs to us because
we understand.

"If you can only give fifty cents, please do not hold it back
because it seems but little. Fifty cents will take her twenty miles
nearer home--twenty miles closer to the things upon which she longs
that her last seeing glance may fall."

After she had written it she rose, and, the five-dollar bill in one
hand, the sheets of yellow paper in the other, walked down the long
room to the desk at which one of the librarians sat. The girl's
cheeks were very red, her eyes shining as she poured out the story.
They mingled their tears, for the girl at the desk was herself young
and far from home, and then they walked back to the Denver paper and
pinned the sheets of yellow paper just above the file. At the bottom
of the petition the librarian wrote: "Leave your money at the desk
in this room. It will be properly attended to." The girl from
Colorado then turned over her five-dollar bill and passed out into
the gathering night.