licate, consumptive-looking being, wearing that
rusty mourning which speaks sadly at once of heart-bereavement and
material poverty.

My usual course is to turn such cases over to Mrs. Crowfield; and it is
to be confessed that this worthy woman spends a large portion of her
time and wears out an extraordinary amount of shoe-leather in performing
the duties of a self-constituted intelligence-office.

Talk of giving money to the poor!--what is that, compared to giving
sympathy, thought, time, taking their burdens upon you, sharing their
perplexities? They who are able to buy off every application at the door
of their heart with a five or ten dollar bill are those who free
themselves at least expense.

My wife had communicated to our friend, in the gentlest tones and in the
blandest manner, that her poor little pieces, however interesting to her
own household circle, had nothing in them wherewith to enable her to
make her way in the thronged and crowded thoroughfare of letters,--that
they had no more strength or adaptation to win bread for her than a
broken-winged butterfly to draw a plough; and it took some resolution in
the background of her tenderness to make the poor applicant entirely
certain of this. In cases like this, absolute certainty is the very
greatest, the only true kindness.

It was grievous, my wife said, to see the discouraged shade which passed
over her thin, tremulous features, when this certainty forced itself
upon her. It is hard, when sinking in the waves, to see the frail bush
at which the hand clutches uprooted; hard, when alone in the crowded
thoroughfare of travel, to have one's last bank-note declared a
counterfeit. I knew I should not be able to see her face, under the
shade of this disappointment; and so, coward that I was, I turned this
trouble, where I have turned so many others, upon my wife.

"Well, what shall we do with her?" said I.

"I really don't know," said my wife, musingly.

"Do you think we could get that school in Taunton for her?"

"Impossible; Mr. Herbert told me he had already twelve applicants for
it."

"Couldn't you get her plain sewing? Is she handy with her needle?"

"She has tried that, but it brings on a pain in her side, and cough; and
the Doctor has told her it will not do for her to confine herself."

"How is her handwriting? Does she write a good hand?"

"Only passable."

"Because," said I, "I was thinking if I could get Steele and Simpson to
give her