WIDE-AWAKE 64 THE FIRST TREE PLANTED BY AN ORNAMENTAL TREE SOCIETY 75 THE ROYAL CARPENTER OF AMSTERDAM 77 OUR GABRIELLE 94 THE VEILED MIRROR 96 SUMMER HOURS 115 THE PRIZE PAINTING 118 THE CHILD OF THE STREET 152 LOST AND FOUND 156 GERALDINE 203 THE CHRISTMAS GIFT 205 MY PICTURE 224 GOTTFRIED THE SCHOLAR 227 INNOCENCE 240 PETER PLUNKETT’S ADVENTURE 242 LITTLE FLOY; OR, HOW A MISER WAS RECLAIMED. Of all the houses which Martin Kendrick owned, he used the oldest and meanest for his own habitation. It was an old tumble-down building, on a narrow street, which had already lived out more than its appointed term of service, and was no longer fit to “cumber the ground.” But the owner still clung to it, the more, perhaps, because, as it stood there in its desolation, unsightly and weather-beaten, it was no unfit emblem of himself. Martin the miser! Years of voluntary privation, such as in most cases follow only in the train of the extremest penury, had given him a claim to the appellation. It might be somewhat inconsistent with his natural character, that, with the exception of the one room which he occupied, the remainder of the large house was left tenantless. After all, it was not so difficult to account for. He could not bear the idea of having immediate neighbors. Who knows but they might seize the opportunity afforded by his absence, and rob him of the gains of many years, which, distrusting banks and other places of deposit, he kept in a strong box under his own immediate charge? Martin had not always been a miser. No one ever becomes so at once; though doubtless the propensity to it is stronger in some than in others. Years ago,—so many that at this time the recollection only came to him dimly, like the faint sound of an almost-forgotten tune,—years ago, when the blood of youth poured its impetuous current through his veins, he married a fair girl, whose life he had shortened by his dissipated habits; and the indifference, and even cruelty, to which they led.