filled that station for many years; it is not for me to say how
appropriately; and though calamity has overtaken me now, and I have
been familiar with necessity for so long a time, yet I feel that I am
a lady still. I may be reproached with poverty, and that I can bear;
but I trust I shall never be justly reproached with having fallen to
the level of my circumstances. I am grateful to you for the assistance
you so kindly render me; and I can express that sentiment, and feel it
deeply, too, without humiliation, because the aid you supply is as
voluntary on your part as its acceptance is necessary on mine.' When
our foreman had instinctively wrapped the donation awarded to her in a
quarter sheet of letter-paper, and presented her with it, she bent
with a dignified obeisance, and silently withdrew.

A third applicant, worthy of a passing notice, was a lady of a very
different stamp. Who or what she had been in former years, I could not
ascertain, but she appeared before us in the character of a
middle-aged mince-pie monomaniac, and jam-tart amateur. The poor
harmless creature was clad in the veriest shreds of dusky feminine
attire, which barely shielded her limbs from the inclemency of the
weather. She had a notion that she, too, was a lady, and that, being a
lady, she was bound to live by the consumption of pastry, and nothing
else. We were admonished by our custodian that whatever amount we
awarded her, whether it were much or little, would be forthwith
consigned to the confectioner, in exchange for mince-pies and tarts of
the very best quality; and I regret to say, that this announcement had
the effect of reducing considerably the sum she derived from the
charity of the ward, and effectually preventing the consummation of
any very formidable debauch with her favourite viands. But the poor
simpleton was as merry as she was innocent and harmless; and all
unsuspicious of the latent grudge which had lessened her gratuity,