honorable sacrifices of personal vanity and social pride, to the
calamity that was upon them. Silks and satins, laces and gauzes,
trinkets, unnecessary bonnets and veils, were all cheerfully parted
with; and it was on such occasions that our friend the _Cannie Soogah_
became absolutely a kind of public benefactor. He acted not only in the
character of a pedlar, but in that of a broker; and so generally known
were his discretion and integrity throughout the country, that such
matters were disposed of to him at a far less amount of shame and
suffering than they could have been in any other way.

The family in question consisted of the father, his wife, four
daughters, and three sons; the eldest daughter had been, for some
months, discharging the duty of governess in a family of rank; the
eldest son had just got an appointment as usher in a school near
the metropolis; two circumstances which filled the hearts of this
affectionate family with a satisfaction that was proportionately
heightened by their sufferings.

About this period they expected a letter from their daughter; and on the
morning in question their father had dispatched one of his boys to the
post-office, with a hope of receiving it. The male portion of the family
were the younger, with the exception of the eldest son, who was their
third child. Their position was as follows: the old man sat at the end
of a plain table, with his bible open before him--for they had just
concluded prayer: his wife, a younger-looking woman, and faded more
by affliction than by age, sat beside him, holding on her breast their
third daughter--she who had been once the star of their hearth, and who
reclined there in mute sorrow, her pale cheek and wasted hands giving
those fatal indications of consumption in its last stage, which so
severely tries the heart of parent or relative to witness. The other two