"To the poorest, Mr. Eden?"

"Brava! she has guessed it," cried the Reverend Frank triumphantly;
for he had been more anxious she should answer right than she had
herself. "Young lady, I have friends with their heads full of Latin
and Greek who could not have answered that so quickly as you; one
proof more how goodness brightens intelligence," added he in
soliloquy. "Here's a cottage."

"Yes, sir, I was going to take you into this one, if you please."

They found in the cottage a rheumatic old man, one of those we alluded
to as full of his own complaints. Mr. Eden heard these with patience,
and then, after a few words of kind sympathy and acquiescence, for he
was none of those hard humbugs who tell a man that old age, rheumatism
and poverty are strokes with a feather, he said quietly:

"And now for the other side; now tell me what you have to be grateful
for."

The old man was taken aback and his fluency deserted him. On the
question being repeated, he began to say that he had many mercies to
be thankful for. Then he higgled and hammered and fumbled for the said
mercies, and tried to enumerate them, but in phrases conventional and
derived from tracts and sermons; whereas his statement of grievances
had been idiomatic.

"There, that will do," said Mr. Eden smiling, "say nothing you don't
feel; what is the use? May I ask you a few questions," added he,
courteously; then, without waiting for permission, he dived skillfully