want for anything. My wife's got all my dresses
at her lodgings. I told her not to part with
'em. Very handsome dresses, if you'd like to
see 'em."

There is always something touching in the
enthusiasm of the poor fellow when he talks
about his professional costume. He goes over
the several items, and dwells in imagination on
the contents of a certain chest which he supposes
to have been kept inviolable under the
pressure of want; and as he mentally reviews
the tinsel, he is carried back to the scenes of his
youth, and is once more surrounded by brilliant
lights and laughing faces, and is receiving the
welcome incense of applause.

One very severe day our poor acrobat was
shivering with cold; while the rug was being
adjusted across his shoulders, a great-coat was
observed at his bed's head, and he was asked
if he would have it spread over him?

"No, thank you; it's a great deal too good.
That's my own coat, not the workhouse dress."

"Too good to keep you warm! I think I
should take care of myself first, and of my coat
afterwards."

"Ha, ha, ha, quite right!" This, from a great
rough, brown face peering out from a blue pocket-
handkerchief, which was wrapped round the head
of a patient in the next bed. A tall and a
merry-faced man he was, the occupant of that
bed.

"I like to make myself comfortable, I do, and
make the best o' things. I have been a baker
by trade, and I always did make the best of
things."

"Quite right. You might be much worse off
than you are here."

"You may well say that. It's a blessed place
of refuge for many a poor soul, and ye may be
very happy here if ye like."

"I'm glad to see you bearing your 'time of
adversity' in such a cheery spirit."

"Why not? What's the use of fretting? It
wouldn't help this hand, or that bad foot."

A cheerful spirit indeed he had. He was
pleased with his bed, his food, his nurse, his
companions; pleased with his books and with
the chaplain's visits; pleased with the thought
that his foot (crippled by a scrofulous affection)
might possibly get better, and that he might
perhaps go out and look at the world again;
pleased with the thought that if it did not, and
if he never saw the outside of those walls, yet he
had a "blessed place of refuge," where he could
make himself happy to live or to die.

A strange contrast to this man's state of mind
was presented by a neighbour on the opposite
side of the ward, whose sad and wistful looks
made one wish to know his history, and whose
bent posture led to the inquiry:

"Are you not lying uncomfortably? Could
not these pillows be better placed."

"No, thank you, this way suits me. 'Tis my
back that wants support, not my head. I have
paralysis of the spine, and it makes me entirely
helpless. Two years have I been lying in this
state, unable to raise myself, or to turn in the
bed without help. It's hard to be struck down
so, in the prime of life, as one may say, and
when I was earning a good living as a waiter.
But I wasn't brought up to that. I was a hand-
loom weaver at Nottingham, and I came up to
town, like everybody else, in 1851, to see the
Great Exhibition. I came up with no thought
of staying here, but I happened upon a situation,
and as there was a great talk at the time about
the power-looms taking the place of hand-looms, I
thought I might as well try for it, instead of
going back to Nottingham and being thrown out
of work. So I sent back for the rest of my
things, and stayed in London from that day to
this, with plenty of work and good wages. But
in the midst of it all, what happens? Why, all
of a minute, I'm cut down with this stroke; and
then, what do I do? Why, I stop in a lodging
of my own for a twelvemonth, and spend all my
savings upon doctors, and then I come in here;
and what a life this is! Not able to move! No
one to speak to! No prospect of ever being any
better in this world! If any one had told me
that I should ever come to this!"

The man looked round with a bitter, painful
smile, his eye wandering from bed to bed, and
from end to end of the long ward, as if to take
in the full extent of his misery. His contempt
for the workhouse and its belongings was evident,
and formed a striking contrast to the satisfied
and grateful air of his opposite neighbour. But
the baker had resources in his religious spirit,
and in a naturally blithesome disposition which
the other did not possess. Besides, his case
was not so utterly hopeless, and he did not look
back, like his companion, on a time of brief
excitement and prosperity, such as the life of a
busy and popular waiter would present. The
man must have been a handsome waiter, too, in
his time, for even under all this suffering he had
not lost the brightness of eyes, and clearness of
complexion, which, with tolerable features, will
always constitute a certain kind of beauty. His
case was a melancholy and difficult one to deal
with. Unsubdued as yet by his affliction, without
friends or relatives, averse to the only
subject capable of affording real consolation,
holding himself apart from his fellow-sufferers,
despising their contentment, complaining of the
nurses' treatment, and generally bewailing his
condition as a workhouse inmate, the unhappy
man deprived us of the means of comforting
him, and closed his eyes to every ray of hope.
But a little patient observation enabled it
to be discovered that even this forlorn being
was accessible in one point, and capable of
one pleasure. He was approached at last
through his snuff-box. An empty canister
at his side first suggested the thought. "Perhaps
some of this irritability is caused by the
absence of a stimulant which the poor fellow has
enjoyed for years, and has no means of getting
in the workhouse." And so it proved. A well-
filled canister had a wonderful effect on his
views of mankind in general, and of his own
case in particular.

And this is an instance of the many ways called