e division. Once I
purposely threw a large bunch of grapes to the poor little mute, and only
a few plums to the others. I am sorry to say that voiceless Carl ate all
his grapes himself; but not a selfish or discontented look could I see on
the faces of the others,--they all smiled and beamed up at me like suns.

It is Anton who creates and sustains this rare atmosphere. The wife is
only a common and stupid woman; he is educating her, as he is the
children. She is very thin and worn and hungry-looking, but always smiles.
Being Anton's wife, she could not do otherwise.

Sometimes I see people passing the house, who give a careless glance of
contemptuous pity at Anton's window of mallows and nasturtiums. Then I
remember that an apostle wrote:--

"There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of
them is without signification.

"Therefore, if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him
that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto
me."

And I long to call after them, as they go groping their way down the
beautiful street,--

"Oh, ye barbarians, blind and deaf! How dare you think you can pity Anton?
His soul would melt in compassion for you, if he were able to comprehend
that lives could be so poor as yours. He is the rich man, and you are
poor. Eating only the husks on which you feed, he would starve to death."

English Lodging-Houses.

Somebody who has written stories (is it Dickens?) has given us very wrong
ideas of the English lodging-house. What good American does not go into
London with the distinct impression that, whatever else he does or does
not do, he will upon no account live in lodgings? That he will even be
content with the comfortless coffee-room of a second-rate hotel, and
fraternize with commercial travellers from all quarters of the globe,
rather than come into relations with that mixture of vulgarity and
dishonesty, the lodging-house keeper?

It was with more than such misgiving that I first crossed the threshold of
Mrs. ----'s house in Bedford Place, Bloomsbury. At this distance I smile
to remember how welcome would have been any alternative rather than the
remaining under her roof for a month; how persistently for several days I
doubted and resisted the evidence of all my senses, and set myself at work
to find the discomforts and shortcomings which I believed must belong to
that mode of life. To confess the stupidity and o