t spoke of rooms shared by six families at
once.

Mr. Parsons had not taken the cue unknowing of what he should find in it;
he said nothing, and looked as simple and cheerful as if his life were
not to be a daily course of heroism. His wife gave one long, stifled
sigh, and looked furtively upon him with her loving eyes, in something of
anxious fear, but with far more of exultation.

Yet it was in no dispirited tone that she asked after the respectable
poor--there surely must be some employed in small trades, or about the
warehouses. She was answered that these were not many in proportion, and
that not only had pew-rents kept them out of church, but that they had
little disposition to go there. They did send their children to the old
endowed charity schools, but as these children grew up, wave after wave
lapsed into a smooth, respectable heathen life of Sunday pleasuring. The
more religious became dissenters, because the earnest inner life did not
approve itself to them in Church teaching as presented to them; the worse
sort, by far the most numerous, fell lower and lower, and hovered
scarcely above the depths of sin and misery. Drinking was the universal
vice, and dragged many a seemingly steady character into every stage of
degradation. Men and women alike fell under the temptation, and soon
hastened down the descent of corruption and crime.

'Ah!' said Mrs. Parsons, 'I observed gin palaces at the corner of every
street.'

There was a pause. Neither her husband nor Honor made any reply. If
they had done so, neither of the young Fulmorts would have perceived any
connection between the gin palaces and their father's profession; but the
silence caused both to raise their eyes. Phoebe, judging by her sisters'
code of the becoming, fancied that their friends supposed their feelings
might be hurt by alluding to the distillery, as a trade, and cast about
for some cheerful observations, which she could not find.

Robert had received a new idea, one that must be put aside till he had
time to look at it.

There was a ring at the door. Honor's face lighted up at the tread on
the marble pavement of the hall, and without other announcement, a young
man entered the room, and as she sprang up to meet him, bent down his
lofty head, and kissed her with half-filial, half-coaxing tenderness.

'Yes, here I am. They told me I should find you here. Ah! Phoebe, I'm
glad to see you. Fulmort, how are you?' and a well-bred s