t it come to them as it will.
There is another class on whom it presses with still heavier power--the
generous, the decent, the self-respecting, who have struggled with their
lot in silence, "bearing all things, hoping all things," and willing to
endure all things, rather than breathe a word of complaint, or to
acknowledge, even to themselves, that their own efforts will not be
sufficient for their own necessities.

Pause with me a while at the door of yonder room, whose small window
overlooks a little court below. It is inhabited by a widow and her
daughter, dependent entirely on the labors of the needle, and those
other slight and precarious resources, which are all that remain to
woman when left to struggle her way through the world alone. It contains
all their small earthly store, and there is scarce an article of its
little stock of furniture that has not been thought of, and toiled for,
and its price calculated over and over again, before every thing could
be made right for its purchase. Every article is arranged with the
utmost neatness and care; nor is the most costly furniture of a
fashionable parlor more sedulously guarded from a scratch or a rub, than
is that brightly-varnished bureau, and that neat cherry tea table and
bedstead. The floor, too, boasted once a carpet; but old Time has been
busy with it, picking a hole here, and making a thin place there; and
though the old fellow has been followed up by the most indefatigable
zeal in darning, the marks of his mischievous fingers are too plain to
be mistaken. It is true, a kindly neighbor has given a bit of faded
baize, which has been neatly clipped and bound, and spread down over an
entirely unmanageable hole in front of the fireplace; and other places
have been repaired with pieces of different colors; and yet, after all,
it is evident that the poor carpet is not long for this world.

But the best face is put upon every thing. The little cupboard in the
corner, that contains a few china cups, and one or two antiquated silver
spoons, relics of better days, is arranged with jealous neatness, and
the white muslin window curtain, albeit the muslin be old, has been
carefully whitened and starched, and smoothly ironed, and put up with
exact precision; and on the bureau, covered by a snowy cloth, are
arranged a few books and other memorials of former times, and a faded
miniature, which, though it have little about it to interest a stranger,
is more precious to the