? How were these
hopes encouraged? What superstitions did the wife and daughters
believe? Give your opinion of the vicar and of each member of the
family.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

The School for Scandal--Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
She Stoops to Conquer--Oliver Goldsmith.
Life of Oliver Goldsmith--Washington Irving.
David Copperfield--Charles Dickens.
Barnaby Rudge--Charles Dickens.

Some have too much, yet still do crave;
I little have, and seek no more.
They are but poor, though much they have,
And I am rich with little store:
They poor, I rich; they beg, I give;
They lack, I leave; they pine, I live.

SIR EDWARD DYER.

THE LITTLE BOY IN THE BALCONY

My special amusement in New York is riding on the elevated railway. It
is curious to note how little one can see on the crowded sidewalks of
this city. It is simply a rush of the same people--hurrying this way or
that on the same errands, doing the same shopping or eating at the same
restaurants. It is a [v]kaleidoscope with infinite combinations but the
same effects. You see it to-day, and it is the same as yesterday.
Occasionally in the multitude you hit upon a [v]_genre_ specimen, or an
odd detail, such as a prim little dog that sits upright all day and
holds in its mouth a cup for pennies for its blind master, or an old
bookseller, with a grand head and the deliberate motions of a scholar,
moldering in a stall--but the general effect is one of sameness and soon
tires and bewilders.

Once on the elevated road, however, a new world is opened, full of the
most interesting objects. The cars sweep by the upper stories of the
houses, and, running never too swiftly to allow observation, disclose
the secrets of a thousand homes, and bring to view people and things
never dreamed of by the giddy, restless crowd that sends its impatient
murmur from the streets below. In a course of several months' pretty
steady riding from Twenty-third Street, which is the station for the
Fifth Avenue Hotel, to Rector, which overlooks Wall Street, I have made
many acquaintances along the route, and on reaching the city my first
curiosity is in their behalf.

One of these is a boy about six years of age--akin in his fragile body
and his serious mien--a youngster that is very precious to me. I first
saw this boy on a little balcony about three feet by four, projecting
from the window of a povert