united industry of the family, every
one of which was now well clad, cheerful, and in active employment.
As for Mr. Gardiner, his health has improved, instead of being
injured by light employment. Cheerful, self-approving thoughts, and
useful labor, have temporarily renovated a fast sinking
constitution.

Mr. Prescott's way of helping the poor is the right way. They must
be taught to help themselves. Mere alms-giving is but a temporary
aid, and takes away, instead of giving, that basis of
self-dependence, on which all should rest. Help a man up, and teach
him to use his feet, so that he can walk alone. This is true
benevolence.

COMMON PEOPLE.

"ARE you going to call upon Mrs. Clayton and her daughters, Mrs.
Marygold?" asked a neighbor, alluding to a family that had just
moved into Sycamore Row.

"No, indeed, Mrs. Lemmington, that I am not. I don't visit
everybody."

"I thought the Claytons were a very respectable family," remarked
Mrs. Lemmington.

"Respectable! Everybody is getting respectable now-a-days. If they
are respectable, it is very lately that they have become so. What is
Mr. Clayton, I wonder, but a school-master! It's too bad that such
people will come crowding themselves into genteel neighborhoods. The
time was when to live in Sycamore Row was guarantee enough for any
one--but, now, all kinds of people have come into it."

"I have never met Mrs. Clayton," remarked Mrs. Lemmington, "but I
have been told that she is a most estimable woman, and that her
daughters have been educated with great care. Indeed, they are
represented as being highly accomplished girls."

"Well, I don't care what they are represented to be. I'm not going
to keep company with a schoolmaster's wife and daughters, that's
certain."

"Is there anything disgraceful in keeping a school?"

"No, nor in making shoes, either. But, then, that's no reason why I
should keep company with my shoemaker's wife, is it? Let common
people associate together--that's my doctrine."

"But what do you mean by common people, Mrs. Marygold?"

"Why, I mean common people. Poor people. People who have not come of
a respectable family. That's what I mean."

"I am not sure that I comprehend your explanation much better than I
do your classification. If you mean, as you say, poor people, your
objection will not apply with full force to the Claytons, for they
are now in tolerably easy circumstances. As to the family of Mr.
Clayton, I belie