situations, communicate with him on his sad the instant, did he, in his best and boldest caliprospects, exaggerate his fears, by dwelling on graphy, inscribe certain cards:-MRS. JAMES, the probability of his wife's accouchment before MILLINER AND DRESS MAKER, to be distributed anything might occur to improve them, and finish in the humble circle of their landlady's acquaintby telling him that he would certainly give a re- ance. But, as 1 before said, it was mid-winter commendation to any one who might call upon him (a season by no means calculated for the for that purpose, but upon second consideration commencement of business of any description), he determined in no instance ever to write one, a and as half a dozen such intimations might be seen decision that at once rendered the case nugatory; in an equal number of windows in the same street, for besides that ship owners are not in the habit of only a portion of the custom could of course fall running half over the town in search of a man's to her share; so that when a few dresses were made, character, Captain Westport was only once a fort- two or three cloaks remodeled, and a few of the night in London, and then his stay never exceeded last year's cardinals turned, her part in the prepathree days, so that it would be almost miraculous if ration for the season was completed; and, except he happened to be on the spot exactly at the time he an occasional cap, or an odd bonnet to be altered, was wanted. The only motive this man could have the poor girl had nothing more to do. One had, in tampering with the hopes of the other, was to thing, however, let me say in justice, and reproof, feast his malice with the sight of his distress, to watch in the course of this humble patronage no loss was his thin features and wasted frame, weekly declin- incurred, no credit required, every article was paid ing in vigour as the means of support became for on its receipt and if her earnings were small more straitened, and the flame of hope within they were certain, she knew exactly what she him flickered so feebly as to seem almost extin- might calculate on receiving at the end of the week, guished. At length they moved from their quiet, and there was no anxious doubt, as she sat toiling comfortable lodgings, to less expensive ones at hour by hour over her employment, as to the proDeptford; and now the utility of poor Lizzy's bability of its not being paid for when completed; practical education began to develope itself, and but as I was saying, cloaks and gowns achieved, that knowledge that had seemed so superfluous to this resource was exhausted, and another had to herself, and (if we must confess it) so derogatory in be found. The outfitting warehouses appeared the eyes of her husband, became the means-the the most likely places to obtain employment, and sole means of procuring their daily bread. It was thither the persevering wife determined to go. mid-winter, yet every morning, as soon as the poor, Paying for an omnibus was out of the question, behalf sufficient breakfast was swallowed, the young sides a walk would do her so much good. Poor soul! man would carefully brush his coat and hat, draw on a walk of several miles, with scarcely a morsel of his scrupulously polished boots, (after having first food within her lips during the day, and within a narrowly examined round them) kiss his uncom-week or two of being a mother. Let it not be supplaining wife, and set off to walk from Deptford to the London docks on his daily search for employment. Sometimes old friends would meet him, and, ignorant of the real misery of his situation, from mere cordiality of feeling press him to dine with them; and oh! the by-play of another engagement, or want of time, that the proud poor man would get up between them and his half-famished stomach, lest they should guess his poverty, and know his appetite was hunger. Round those wide docks might he (ay and many others) be daily seen, wandering from ship to ship, making fruitless enquiries of super-cargoes and riggers, and all the other functionaries of such places, his coat growing more shabby, his hat less bright, his muscular frame more attenuated, his step less elastic, while a dull careful look began to concentrate about the eyes and mouth, all distinctive of the failing means and energies of the man. Then the enquiring look with which his wife would read the fate of each succeeding day, as she answered his knock herself, and the hopeless "no better news, dear!" with which he closed the door, as if the act shut out from others in the house, the knowledge of the suffering poverty within their apartment; yet with a smiling face, Lizzy would spread forth the morsel left from the preceding meal, though its very existence proved that, in his absence, she had not thought of her own wants. And then (by way of employing the evening) how carefully and scientifically (as if there was no choking sensation of old prejudices) lifting his heart to his very throat at

posed that I am writing from imagination, these are simple facts, gathered from the lips of the parties who suffered them: humanity has bitter experiences enough, without the aid of morbid fancy. The snow lay thickly on the ground, but it froze hard, and with her arm tightly pressed in that of her husband, she stepped lightly out into the bracing air, that for several weeks she had scarcely breathed, and as one invariably feels in a healthy elastic atmosphere, her spirits grew elevated, her heart lightened by the change, and filled with fresh hope, she kept calculating on the likelihood of her success, with a certainty that too often ends in disappointment.

The establishment to which the poor girl had been recommended lay in the very heart of the city, and as they had desired it was evening before they got there, (for your decent poverty is strangely shame-faced, and instead of proclaiming its necessities, oddly enough endeavours to conceal them, under the screen of night, or in the solitude of their own dwellings) and never did mortal sheme burn a deeper hectic on the cheek of man or woman, than suffused poor Lizzy James's, as she drew her arm rapidly from her husband's, and pulling her bonnet closely over her face, walked up to the only unoccupied female she perceived in the shop.

"What may I have the pleasure of showing you ma'am?" was enquired with the most persuasive civility, and complaisant expression of countenance.

"Are you in want of work women?" hurriedly whispered the poor girl, seating herself mechanically, or rather instinctively, for she felt as if about to fall.

The smile passed from the lips, the sweetness from the tone of the young shopwoman, (who was vexed at her own want of discernment, in mistaking for a lady a young person in want of work) and she replied with a sudden gathering up of herself, and rather a severe air, "That they were not, they always employed their own people, and there were so many applicants just then." It happened, however, that another of these persons at an opposite counter had been observing what passed, and from curiosity came round, when she perceived the supposed lady was not a purchaser, and the evident situation and wan look of the poor girl, for fatigue had nearly exhausted her, roused the sympathy of her nature, and she asked in a kind voice, and under-toned, what description of article she would undertake.

Of course she was told that understanding needlework thoroughly, it mattered little what description, so long as she could be employed, for her spirits rose with the prospect of obtaining occupation, and at the moment, all sorts of sewing were the same to her. But alas! not so easily is work obtained.

"It is necessary before we employ you," said her new friend, "to see a specimen of your work, and you will also be required to leave a deposit for the goods you take away; and I must tell you, the price given is very low, I am afraid not worth your while.

"How much must I leave as a security?" enquired the pennyless woman.

"Oh! that will be according to the value of the work you receive; half a sovereign at least," replied the girl.

Mrs. James rose up, holding the counter for support, as she murmured "Thank you! thank you!" and passed out of the shop.

sixpence would have paid for her conveyance, they had not between the two of them that sum. Oh! how little can wealth or competence know of the privations and trials of poverty! Not the professing poverty, that flutters its rags as so many banners of its craft, and makes its very abjectness a source of support; nor the born squalor that, content with "shreds and patches," lives on regardless of every thing but the animal wants of its existence; but the necessity that modestly conceals itself in a decent garb, and blushes to be discovered-that, retaining the better feelings of better days, endures the shafts of misery, as Indian fakirs do their beds of spikes, with a smiling countenance and an uncomplaining voice.

"Dear ine, ma'am," said Mrs. Gibbs, as she opened the door to them, and held up the flaming candle in the face of the poor girl; " dear me, ma'am, how bad you are looking: had'nt you better come into my room, and rest yourself a bit, before you go up-stairs?"

"No, thank you," answered the other faintly, "I am afraid if I sit down I shall not be able to get up again; so I will go up stairs at once;" but fatigue and cold together had so stiffened her limbs, that it was only with her husband's and Mrs. Gibbs' assistance she was enabled to reach her room.

"That's true," said the homely but kindhearted landlady, stirring into a bright flame the fire she had kindled in anticipation of the poor girl's half frozen state; "there's a letter for you down stairs; shall I go bring it to you?" But at the first intimation of a letter James bounded down stairs, and in a moment he returned with it in his hand.

""Tis from your mother, Lizzy," he said, as she hastily broke the seal, and almost immediately handed it back to him, lifting her clasped hands, and bursting into tears; the brow of the young man lightened as he read on, his eyes grew bright, and an expression of gratitude and pleasure gradually filled his face, and then, without a word, he pressed her hand, and bent down and kissed her.

"God is better to us than we thought," murmured the girl as soon as she found voice to speak. My poor kind mother!"

For a moment after she regained her husband's side, she did not speak, but he saw at once the defeat of her purpose, and being by this time perfectly stoical on the subject of disappointment, heard without surprise the failure of every hope" from such a source. But oh! how altered was "God bless her!" whispered her husband; her step from what it had been on their outward and then, with the air and habit of thought pecujourney, with scarcely strength to drag herself liar to his profession, he added-" Dear Liz, the through the crowded streets, even with her hus- tide always turns at the lowest ebb." Better, band's support; drooping and spiritless, she moved indeed, than all our fears is that watchful Provirather in accordance with his volition than her own; dence that, just at the point where fainting hope and by the time the Tunnel was reached, all power merges in despair, raises her up by some interto proceed seemed to have left her, and willingly posing mercy, and tempts not the suffering spirit could she have passed the night on one of its beyond what it is able to bear. This letter from numerous steps, rather than attempt to ascend Mrs. Bygrave enclosed a sum sufficient to ensure them; one moment he persuaded, the next endea- the necessary comforts, and attendance to her child voured to rally her into exertion, but as the gas- in her approaching necessity; for, though ignorant light fell on her pallid features, disclosing to him of their absolute want, she knew from the time the exhaustion under which she laboured, he felt James had been unemployed, things must be going almost heart-broken at the thought of her situation, pretty hard with them; and providential indeed and could only whisper her, for the sake of their was its arrival, for the poor girl never rose up unborn child, to strive against the debility that would again till she had given birth to her puny baby. soon render it out of their power to reach home. Carriages of all sorts-from the rapid mail to the lumbering omnibus-had passed them; but though

Nurse and doctor paid, but little remained of the kind mother's remittance; and this little, though husbanded as only the initiated in such

hearted affair he, in disgust and disappointment, had believed it.

It was one of those first bright mornings that Occur between the breaking up of winter and the beginning of spring-mornings that have no notion of concealment, but show the cracks in a man's boots, and the white seams in his coat, with uncompromising distinctness. Perhaps a consciousness of this latter fact prevented James from going out as usual; and, instead of taking advantage of the fine weather, he kept brushing his seedy habiliments as pertinaciously as if he thought by doing so to renew their brightness. Presently one of those sudden raps with which the myrmidons of the post-office shake houses and the expectant hearts within them, sent Mrs. Gibbs flying to the door, while the lodger in the second floor craned her head over the window-sill; and Lizzy James, with her hand pressed to her side, to still the au

stairs'-head for the announcement of the name.
"Captain James!" cried Mrs. Gibbs, handing
the letter to his wife.

"Once a captain always a captain," said the latter, as he calmly cut round a seal he did not remember to have seen before, and then turned over to the other side for the signature, of a hand-writing equally strange-to him. It was that of an old acquaintance, a former ship-master, in the same employ with himself, but who was now an owner, and who, hearing of his distress, wrote to offer him the command of one of his vessels, a fine barque, about to sail for Mobille. Need I say that even the long voyage did not interfere with its acceptance? And though the thought of a lengthened separation was a grievous one to Lizzy, it was with a deep sense of gratitude, she knelt down and thanked God for her husband's return to independence, and that position in life from which he had so suddenly fallen.

of hemming, sewing, running, felling, et cetera, in which consists the art of plain needlewook; so that by the time Mrs. Gibbs returned from her mission, Lizzy's specimen was ready. Once more she applied for employment, and as her work was faultless, and the deposit-money forthcoming, she had no difficulty in obtaining it. But oh, how little worth the measures it had cost! Well, indeed, might the conscientious shop-woman express her fears that the price given would not be worth her while, to an unemployed person the least profit is worth while; but when the occupation requires you to rise earlier, and sit up later, than you would otherwise have done, causing a consumption of fuel and candle that amounts to more than the price of that labour, then, indeed, it is not worth while; and as poor Lizzy James had learned the miserable secret, of saving food and firing by lying in bed half the day, under pretence of not disturbing her infant (when her hus-dible throbbing of her heart, stood listening on the band was out), the meal that became necessary at eight or nine o'clock, after having risen at seven, to put her household duties straight, and the fire to prepare it, as well as to keep her fingers from becoming numbed at her inactive employment, amounted to infinitely more than the fivepence, which, strive as hard as she could, from the winter morning's daylight till the long hours of the night, was the utmost she could earn-fivepence! for an item, the making of which (calculating the materials at the ordinary retail cost) is charged to the lady-purchaser at just five, and sometimes sixtimes that price! But to return to my humble heroine: there was a consistency in her conduct and disposition, worthy of better things than sempstress' work: and as the enterprise had been of her own projecting, she made no complaints of the injustice of the remuneration, nor the useless labour she had imposed on herself; but with "fingers weary and worn," went on with her ungrateful task-work. If, at times, the thought of her merry girlhood, of her dreamy and hopeful days of courtship occurred to her, the tears that involuntarily swelled her eyelids were suppressed on the fair cheek of her child; and as she hugged it to her bosom with the ineffable feelings of a mother, the painfulness passed away from the contrast, and neither comforts lost, nor defeated anticipations, woke regret, or weakened her power to endure even in that worst trial, when want of success brought her husband home, disheartened, hopeless, and morose; no dispiriting fears, no dejection of demeanour, added to his anguish ; but her patient smile and cheerful welcome, gave to the half-filled grate, and scanty meal, some of the holiest sweetnesses of home. But virtue will have her reward, or, as James would have phrased it, the "tide always changes at the lowest ebb;" and thus, at the very crisis of despair, when he began to walk out of the way of such of his fellow-men as had known him in the gay days of his bachelorship, when his capital spreads and claret breakfasts at St. Vincent and Jamaica had gained for him a sort of " good-fellow" reputation amongst them, the world, or rather that mercantile and aquatic portion of it by which his experience was bounded, proved not quite the hollow

BY

MRS.

THE REQUEST.
(A BALLAD.)

VALENTINE

BARTHOLOMEW.

The ruby and the emerald
Are gifts the world may prize,
But, from thy hand, a little rose

Were dearer to mine eyes;
Its bloom might fade, its scent might die,
Yet cherish'd it would fling
Around my careworn wintry heart
The cheerfulness of spring.

Thy costly gems I value not,

Although of worth untold;
That little rose to me would bring

More wealth than India's gold:
When friends grew false, and foes prevailed,
That treasured gift should be
A talisman-a star of hope,
To shed its light o'er me.