ones wear a famished look. There are three--the third an infant, put
to bed in what was once a baby carriage. The two from the street are
pulling it around to get the tree in range. The baby sees it, and
crows with delight. The boy shakes a branch, and the goldfish leaps
and sparkles in the candle-light.

"See, sister!" he pipes; "see Santa Claus!" And they clap their hands
in glee. The woman at the table wakes out of her stupor, gazes around
her, and bursts into a fit of maudlin weeping.

The door falls to. Five flights up, another opens upon a bare attic
room which a patient little woman is setting to rights. There are only
three chairs, a box, and a bedstead in the room, but they take a deal
of careful arranging. The bed hides the broken plaster in the wall
through which the wind came in; each chair-leg stands over a rat-hole,
at once to hide it and to keep the rats out. One is left; the box is
for that. The plaster of the ceiling is held up with pasteboard
patches. I know the story of that attic. It is one of cruel desertion.
The woman's husband is even now living in plenty with the creature for
whom he forsook her, not a dozen blocks away, while she "keeps the
home together for the childer." She sought justice, but the lawyer
demanded a retainer; so she gave it up, and went back to her little
ones. For this room that barely keeps the winter wind out she pays
four dollars a month, and is behind with the rent. There is scarce
bread in the house; but the spirit of Christmas has found her attic.
Against a broken wall is tacked a hemlock branch, the leavings of the
corner grocer's fitting-block; pink string from the packing-counter
hangs on it in festoons. A tallow dip on the box furnishes the
illumination. The children sit up in bed, and watch it with shining
eyes.

"We're having Christmas!" they say.

The lights of the Bowery glow like a myriad twinkling stars upon the
ceaseless flood of humanity that surges ever through the great highway
of the homeless. They shine upon long rows of lodging-houses, in which
hundreds of young men, cast helpless upon the reef of the strange
city, are learning their first lessons of utter loneliness; for what
desolation is there like that of the careless crowd when all the world
rejoices? They shine upon the tempter setting his snares there, and
upon the missionary and the Salvation Army lass, disputing his catch
with him; upon the police detective going his rounds with coldly
obs