his cheeks, and he
said, "God bless you, sir, but I don't know what to say."

"I'm very glad of it," said the gentleman, smiling; "because I don't
want you to say anything; only go home and bring your wife and baby,
because there is a nice parlor and bed-room overhead, and I want to see
how they look in it."

Well, the amount of it was, that the poor tailor's wife was as crazy as
the tailor himself; the baby crowed, and the little terrier dog barked;
and, altogether, they had a _moving_ time of it, that day.

I can't tell you the kind gentleman's name, because he never does a
charity to have it published; but, sure I am, the recording angel has
written it in the "Book of Life."

BETSEY'S DREAM.

It was very weary, lying there so long. Betsey had counted all the
squares, and three-cornered pieces, and circles, in the patch-work
quilt upon her bed; she knew there were six more red than green ones,
and that one of the circles was pieced seven times.

Yes, poor lame Betsey was very tired; not that she was unused to lying
there, day after day, while her mother went out washing; but, somehow,
_this_ day had seemed longer and more tedious than any which had gone
before. To be sure she had last year's almanac, and a torn newspaper,
but she knew them both by heart. Betsey wished she "only had a little
book," but she knew mother couldn't buy books, when she had not money
enough for bread; so she twisted and turned, and rubbed her lame foot,
and lay and looked at the mantel with its pewter lamp, and the shelf
with its two earthen bowls, and its wooden spoons and platters, and the
bench with her mother's wash tub on it and a square of brown soap, and
the brown jug full of starch, and the old worn-out broom and mop.
Betsey could have seen them just as well had her eyes been shut, she
had looked at them so many times.

Did I tell you Betsey was "alone?" Oh no--there were four or five
families in the some entry. There was Mrs. O'Flanigan with her six
red-headed, quarrelsome children and a drunken husband, who beat her
everyday till she screamed with pain; and then the six little Flanigans
all screamed, too, till Betsey would put her fingers in her ears to
shut out the dreadful sounds.

Then, there was Mrs. Doherty, who had twin babies and one room, and
took boarders in the corners. Then, there was black Dinah, who got her
living by scraping the gutters, and came home every night with a great
tow-cloth bag upon her ba