"Ah, you are a real Christian--you are now," said the honest Joliet,
polishing his eyeball with his coat-cuff. "The good woman holds by
them, it is true. Holy Virgin! it's she that has raised them, and I
may say brooded over them in the coop. The eggs were for our salad
when we had nothing better than nettles and sorrel. But, day in and
night in, we have no other lodging than our wagon, and the wife is
promising to give me a dolly; and if we don't take out the cage, where
will the cradle go, sir?"

[Illustration: THE PRESENT.]

The calculation appeared reasonable. I received the birds, and they
were the heroes, in their boudoir under the piano, of that night's
conversazione.

[Illustration: THE CONVALESCENT.]

[Illustration: THE DIVIDED BURDEN.]

How hard it is for a life cast upon the crowded shores of the Old
World to regain the place once lost is shown by the history of my
honest friend Joliet. Born in 1812, of an excellent family living
twenty miles from Versailles, the little fellow lost his mother before
he could talk to her. When he was ten years old, his father, who had
failed after some land speculations, and had turned all he had into
money, tossed him up to the lintel of the doorway, kissed him, put a
twenty-franc gold-piece into his little pocket, and went away to
seek his fortune in Louisiana: the son never heard of him more. The
lady-president of a charitable society, Mademoiselle Marx, took pity
on the abandoned child: she fed him on bones and occasionally beat