r
afternoon. A New York train was going out; and all sorts of people--from
the well-to-do, portly gentleman of business, with his good coat
buttoned comfortably to his chin, his tickets bought, his wallet lined
with bank notes for his journey, and secretly stowed beyond the reach
(if there be such a thing) of pickpockets, and the _Mishaumok Journal_,
Evening Edition, damp from the press, unfolded in his fingers, to the
care-for-naught, dare-devil little newsboy who had sold it to him, and
who now saunters off, varying his monotonous cry with:

"_Jour-nal_, gentlemen! Eve-nin' 'dition! Georgy out!"

("What's that?" exclaims an inconsiderate.)

"Georgy out! (Little brother o' mine. Seen him anywhere?) Eve-nin'
'dition! _Jour-nal_, gentleman!" and the shivering little candy girl,
threading her way with a silent imploringness among the throng--were
bustling up and down, in waiting rooms, and on the platforms, till one
would think, assuredly, that the center of all the world's activity, at
this moment, lay here; and that everybody _not_ going in this particular
express train to New York, must be utterly devoid of any aim or object
in life, whatever.

So we do, always, carry our center about with us. A little while ago all
the world was buying dolls and tin horses. Horizons shift and ring
themselves about us, and we, ourselves, stand always in the middle.

By and by, however, the last call was heard.

"Passengers for New York! Train ready! All aboard!"

And with the ringing of the bell, and the mighty gasping of the
impatient engine, and a scuffle and scurry of a minute, in which
carpetbags and babies were gathered up and shouldered indiscriminately,
the rooms and the platforms were suddenly cleared of all but a few
stragglers, and half a dozen women with Christmas bundles, who sat
waiting for trains to way stations.

Two little pinched faces, purple with the bitter cold, looked in at the
door.

"It's good and warm in there. Less' go!"

And the older drew the younger into the room, toward the glowing stove.

They looked as if they had been wandering about in the dreary streets
till the chill had touched their very bones. The larger of the two, a
boy--torn hopelessly as to his trousers, dilapidated to the last degree
as to his fragment of a hat--knees and elbows making their way out into
the world with the faintest shadow of opposition--had, perhaps from
this, a certain look of pushing knowingness that set itself,