en snow, and
starched and stiff as the best pearl gloss cap make it. The cape of
this cute little bonnet shades a round white throat, and the strings
are tied beneath the chin in a ravishing bow that stands guard over a
dimple. She has been married quite ten years, and they say that the
two little children who were cradled for a few happy months on her soft
breast are waiting and watching for her coming the other side of the
river of death. He is a matter-of-fact looking man, with a resolute
face and a constant smile in his eyes. He always carries a
lunch-basket in one hand and with the other guides the steps of the
faithful little woman who accompanies him part way on the march of his
daily grind. He works downtown in a big warehouse and he makes hardly
enough money each week to keep you in cigars, my good friend, or your
wife in novels. Though it rain, or though it shine, though the winds
blow or the winds are low, whatever betide of chance, or change, or
weather, there is not a morning that he goes to work that she does not
walk with him as far as the corner, and in the face of men and angels,
grip car conductors and clerks, shop girls and grimacing urchins, kiss
him good-bye. She stands and watches until he is well on his way, then
waves him a final farewell, and trips back home in the serene shadow of
her little bonnet. Now you may ridicule that love and call it "spoony"
and "silly," but, I tell you, a legacy of gold or a hatful of diamonds
could not begin to outvalue such love in a man's home. God bless the
two, say I, and roll round the joyful day when love and its free and
beautiful demonstration shall shine athwart the heresies of
conventionality as April suns dispel the winter's fog with the splendor
of their broadcast shining.

LXII.

"UNTO ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE."

I was riding up-town in a cable car not long ago late at night. The
moon was at its full and all the ugliness of the city was shrouded,
like a homely woman in a bridal veil of shimmering lace. We skimmed
along on a smooth and unobstructed track, like a sloop with every sail
set, heading for the open sea. There were no idle chatterers aboard,
and from the stalwart gripman at his post of duty, to the shrinking
little girl passenger, who was half afraid and half delighted to be
abroad so late alone, everybody and everything was in harmony with the
hour and scene. Suddenly there fluttered into the car a snowy moth,
astray fro