st, his wife was got away from him--" Tom pauses and blushes, as
Madame Montford says: "His wife was got away from him?"

"Yes, Madame," returns Tom, with an expression of sincerity, "The Judge
got her away from him; and this morning he was arraigned before that
same Judge for examination, and Mr. Snivel was a principal witness, and
there was enough found against him to commit him for trial at the
Sessions." Discovering that this information is exciting her emotions,
Tom pauses, and contemplates her with steady gaze. She desires he will
be her guide to the Poor-House, and there assist her in searching for
Mag Munday, whom, report says, is confined in a cell. Tom having
expressed his readiness to serve her, they are soon on their way to that
establishment.

A low, squatty building, with a red, moss-covered roof, two lean
chimneys peeping out, the windows blockaded with dirt, and situated in
one of the by-lanes of the city, is our Poor-House, standing half hid
behind a crabbed old wall, and looking very like a much-neglected
Quaker church in vegetation. We boast much of our institutions, and
this being a sample of them, we hold it in great reverence. You may say
that nothing so forcibly illustrates a state of society as the character
of its institutions for the care of those unfortunate beings whom a
capricious nature has deprived of their reason. We agree with you. We
see our Poor-House crumbling to the ground with decay, yet imagine it,
or affect to imagine it, a very grand edifice, in every way suited to
the wants of such rough ends of humanity as are found in it. Like Satan,
we are brilliant believers in ourselves, not bad sophists, and
singularly clever in finding apologies for all great crimes.

At the door of the Poor-House stands a dilapidated hearse, to which an
old gray horse is attached. A number of buzzards have gathered about
him, turn their heads suspiciously now and then, and seem meditating a
descent upon his bones at no very distant day. Madame casts a glance at
the hearse, and the poor old horse, and the cawing buzzards, then
follows Tom, timidly, to the door. He has rung the bell, and soon there
stands before them, in the damp doorway, a fussy old man, with a very
broad, red face, and a very blunt nose, and two very dull, gray eyes,
which he fortifies with a fair of massive-framed spectacles, that have a
passion for getting upon the tip-end of his broad blunt nose.

"There, you want to see somebody!