in a copy-book.

'Well, ma'am, how do YOU do?'

Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentlemen, sweetly. Charmingly,
charmingly. And overjoyed to see us!

'Why, this is a strange time for this boy to be writing his copy.
In the middle of the night!'

'So it is, dear gentlemen, Heaven bless your welcome faces and send
ye prosperous, but he has been to the Play with a young friend for
his diversion, and he combinates his improvement with
entertainment, by doing his school-writing afterwards, God be good
to ye!'

The copy admonished human nature to subjugate the fire of every
fierce desire. One might have thought it recommended stirring the
fire, the old lady so approved it. There she sat, rosily beaming
at the copy-book and the boy, and invoking showers of blessings on
our heads, when we left her in the middle of the night, waiting for
Jack.

Later still in the night, we came to a nauseous room with an earth
floor, into which the refuse scum of an alley trickled. The stench
of this habitation was abominable; the seeming poverty of it,
diseased and dire. Yet, here again, was visitor or lodger--a man
sitting before the fire, like the rest of them elsewhere, and
apparently not distasteful to the mistress's niece, who was also
before the fire. The mistress herself had the misfortune of being