view we have nothing to do; it had neither support
nor denial from the inmates, who certainly were most concerned. They
lived out their little remnant of life, crept into graves neatly
numbered, and were succeeded by other old men as like them as could be
desired by the Adversary of Peace. If the Home was a place of punishment
for the sin of unthrift the veteran offenders sought justice with a
persistence that attested the sincerity of their penitence. It is to one
of these that the reader's attention is now invited.

In the matter of attire this person was not altogether engaging. But for
this season, which was midwinter, a careless observer might have looked
upon him as a clever device of the husbandman indisposed to share the
fruits of his toil with the crows that toil not, neither spin--an error
that might not have been dispelled without longer and closer observation
than he seemed to court; for his progress up Abersush Street, toward the
Home in the gloom of the winter evening, was not visibly faster than
what might have been expected of a scarecrow blessed with youth, health,
and discontent. The man was indisputably ill-clad, yet not without a
certain fitness and good taste, withal; for he was obviously an
applicant for admittance to the Home, where poverty was a qualification.
In the army of indigence the uniform is rags; they serve to distinguish
the rank and file from the recruiting officers.

As the old man, entering the gate of the grounds, shuffled up the broad
walk, already white with the fast-falling snow, which from time to time
he feebly shook from its various coigns of vantage on his person, he
came under inspection of the large globe lamp that burned always by
night over the great door of the building. As if unwilling to incur its
revealing beams, he turned to the left and, passing a considerable
distance along the face of the building, rang at a smaller door emitting
a dimmer ray that came from within, through the fanlight, and expended
itself incuriously overhead. The door was opened by no less a personage
than the great Mr. Tilbody himself. Observing his visitor, who at once
uncovered, and somewhat shortened the radius of the permanent curvature
of his back, the great man gave visible token of neither surprise nor
displeasure. Mr. Tilbody was, indeed, in an uncommonly good humor, a
phenomenon ascribable doubtless to the cheerful influence of the season;
for this was Christmas Eve, and the morrow wou