g patchwork, with a doll in the cradle between them.
The house is always clean, the children are well and rosy, and play
about a good deal, and Christine last year earned thirty dollars. Her
mother puts half the money she earns in the bank for her
marriage-portion. I was so glad it wasn't in Yerbury Bank! You wouldn't
believe, that, though she is not quite sixteen, she has almost a hundred
dollars saved up. And I must tell you, also, there was a most savory
smell of the supper cooking. Altogether, it was so tidy and thrifty,
with the clean, bright, and not unpretty faces, that I thought it would
make a charming 'interior,' if only some Dutch artist could do justice
to it in his minute, pains-taking way. Then I went to the Coles, who
live around in the next street. The gate was off its hinges, and the two
big boys were firing stones from the street at a post in the yard. They
were ragged and dirty. I went in the house, and found the mother and the
two girls in the sitting-room. I do not believe there was a piece of
furniture whole, and every thing was dusty and shabby, with that close
smell some people always have in their houses. Mrs. Cole sat by the
window, in a listless manner, doing nothing. Martha had her baby on her
lap, asleep, in a soiled and ragged dress, while she was reading; the
little girl, who is about twelve, was cutting up some pretty pieces of
silk into nothing, that I could see, but a general litter over the
table. The kitchen looked dreadful. I had some baby-dresses for Martha,
that Mrs. Kent gave me: so I unrolled my bundle, and displayed them.
'Oh,' said she, 'they are long, aren't they! and I've just put my baby
in short dresses.' If you could have heard the kind of helpless,
dissatisfied tone in which it was uttered! I had half a mind to bundle
them up, and take them back. 'You can shorten them,' I answered, 'and
some of them will make two dresses.' 'Yes,' she answered reluctantly,
'only I should want something for yokes and sleeves.' Then her mother
came to inspect them, and she was rather more gracious. But I could not
help contrasting the two families. Mr. Cole is a carpenter, and has
earned very good wages. Martha ran a machine in the shoe-shop, bought a
melodeon, and took two or three quarters' music-lessons; purchased a
very handsome set of amethyst jewelry and two pretty silk dresses when
she was married. And in the two years of her married life, her husband
has done next to nothing, although