on enough, and well fitted to increase the stock of
manuscript sermons, of which there must be a fearful quantity already in
the world. Mr. ----, however, is probably one of the best and most
useful of his class, because no suspicion of the necessity of his
profession, constituted as it now is, to mankind, and of his own
usefulness and success in it, has hitherto disturbed him; and therefore
he labors with faith and confidence, as ministers did a hundred years
ago.

After the visitors were gone, I sat at the gallery window, looking down
the avenue, and soon there appeared an elderly woman,--a homely, decent
old matron, dressed in a dark gown, and with what seemed a manuscript
book under her arm. The wind sported with her gown, and blew her veil
across her face, and seemed to make game of her, though on a nearer view
she looked like a sad old creature, with a pale, thin countenance, and
somewhat of a wild and wandering expression. She had a singular gait,
reeling, as it were, and yet not quite reeling, from one side of the
path to the other; going onward as if it were not much matter whether
she went straight or crooked. Such were my observations as she
approached through the scattered sunshine and shade of our long avenue,
until, reaching the door, she gave a knock, and inquired for the lady of
the house. Her manuscript contained a certificate, stating that the old
woman was a widow from a foreign land, who had recently lost her son,
and was now utterly destitute of friends and kindred, and without means
of support. Appended to the certificate there was a list of names of
people who had bestowed charity on her, with the amounts of their
several donations,--none, as I recollect, higher than twenty-five cents.
Here is a strange life, and a character fit for romance and poetry. All
the early part of her life, I suppose, and much of her widowhood were
spent in the quiet of a home, with kinsfolk around her, and children,
and the life-long gossiping acquaintances that some women always create
about them. But in her decline she has wandered away from all these, and
from her native country itself, and is a vagrant, yet with something of
the homeliness and decency of aspect belonging to one who has been a
wife and mother, and has had a roof of her own above her head,--and,
with all this, a wildness proper to her present life. I have a liking
for vagrants of all sorts, and never, that I know of, refused my mite to
a wandering beg