dreamy and stupid in the evening that he was left to doze quietly
in his chair. His family ascribed his condition to weariness and
reaction from his long strain of anxiety; and opium had already
so far produced its legitimate results that he connived at their
delusion if he did not confirm it by actual assertion. It is one
of the diabolical qualities of this habit that it soon weakens and
at last destroys all truth and honor in the soul, eating them out
with a corrosive power difficult to explain.

For the first week or two Belle was glad to rest in the evenings
from the intolerable weariness caused by standing all day, but
the adaptability of the human frame is wonderful, and many at last
become accustomed, and, in some sense, inured to that which was
torture at first. Belle was naturally strong and vigorous, and her
compact, healthful organism endured the cruel demand made upon it
far better than the majority of her companions. Nature had endowed
her with a very large appetite for fun. For a time her employment,
with its novelty, new associations, and small excitements,
furnished this, but now her duties were fading into prosaic work,
and the child was looking around for something enlivening. Where in
the great city could she find it? Before their poverty came there
were a score of pretty homes like her own in which she could visit
schoolmates; her church and Sabbath-school ties brought her into
relation with many of her own age; and either in her own home or
in those of her friends she took part in breezy little festivities
that gave full and healthful scope to her buoyant nature. She was
not over-fastidious now, but when occasionally she went home with
some of her companions at the shop, she returned dissatisfied. The
small quarters in which the girls lived rendered little confidential
chats--so dear to girls--impossible, and she was brought at once