utive coat. His father
had died, and the mother had got the boy a message-lad's place in some
office. A long-worn suit that one; rusty and threadbare before it was
laid aside, but clean and free from soil to the last. Poor woman! We
could imagine her assumed cheerfulness over the scanty meal, and the
refusal of her own small portion, that her hungry boy might have enough.
Her constant anxiety for his welfare, her pride in his growth mingled
sometimes with the thought, almost too acute to bear, that as he grew to
be a man his old affection might cool, old kindnesses fade from his mind,
and old promises be forgotten--the sharp pain that even then a careless
word or a cold look would give her--all crowded on our thoughts as
vividly as if the very scene were passing before us.

These things happen every hour, and we all know it; and yet we felt as
much sorrow when we saw, or fancied we saw--it makes no difference
which--the change that began to take place now, as if we had just
conceived the bare possibility of such a thing for the first time. The
next suit, smart but slovenly; meant to be gay, and yet not half so
decent as the threadbare apparel; redolent of the idle lounge, and the
blackguard companions, told us, we thought, that the widow's comfort had
rapidly faded away. We could imagine that coat--imagine! we could see
it; we _had_ seen it a hundred times--sauntering in company with three or
four other coats of the same cut, about some place of profligate resort
at night.

We dressed, from the same shop-window in an instant, half a dozen boys of
from fifteen to twenty; and putting cigars into their mouths, and their
hands into their pockets, watched them as they sauntered down the street,
and lingered at the corner, with the obscene jest, and the oft-repeated
oath. We never lost sight of them, till they had cocked their hats a
little more on one side, and swaggered into the public-house; and then we
entered the desolate home, where the mother sat late in the night, alone;
we watched her, as she paced the room in feverish anxiety, and every now
and then opened the door, looked wistfully into the dark and empty
street, and again returned, to be again and again disappointed. We
beheld the look of patience with which she bore the brutish threat, nay,
even the drunken blow; and we heard the agony of tears that gushed from
her very heart, as she sank upon her knees in her solitary and wretched
apartment.

A long p