took off her winter clothes, and it come on brilin' hot in the city, and in
goin' about from store to store the heat and hard work overcome her and she
fell down in a sort of faintin' fit and wuz called drunk and dragged off to
a police court by a man who wuz a animal in human shape. And he misused her
in such a way that she never got over the horror of what befell her when
she come to to find herself at the mercy of a brute in a man's shape. She
went into a melancholy madness and wuz sent to the asylum."

I sithed a long and mournful sithe and sot silent agin for quite a spell.
But thinkin' I must be sociable I sez:

"Your aunt Cassandra is well, I spoze?"

"She is moulderin' in jail," sez she.

"In jail? Cassandra in jail!"

"Yes, in jail." And Serepta's tone wuz now like worm-wood and gall.

"You know she owns a big property in tenement houses and other buildings
where she lives. Of course her taxes wuz awful high, and she didn't expect
to have any voice in tellin' how that money, a part of her own property
that she earned herself in a store, should be used. But she had been
taxed high for new sidewalks in front of some of her buildin's. And then
another man come into power in that ward, and he naterally wanted to make
some money out of her, so he ordered her to build new sidewalks. And she
wouldn't tear up a good sidewalk to please him or anybody else, so she wuz
put to jail for refusin' to comply with the law."

Thinkses I, I don't believe the law would have been so hard on her if she