You have wept at that old drama, that old eternal scene which is recounted every day--yet not so old, it is renewed also every day:--the bare chamber, no better than a loft--the truckle-bed--the broken pitcher--the heap of straw--the sentimental lithographist will not forget the guttering candle stuck into the neck of a bottle. Thus much for the accessories, then for the persons of the scene; a workman, the father who expects to die in the hospital--his four children--always four--who have not broken their fast that day--and the mother is lying-in with her fifth--and it is winter, for these poor people choose winter always for their lying-in. Oh! all this is very true and piteous--I weep with you at the cry of those suffering children--at the sobs of their mother. Yet there is another poverty which you know not, which it is never intended that you should know. A silent poverty that goes dressed in its black coat, polished, it is true, where polish should not come, and with a slaty hue--produced by the frequent application of ink to its threadbare surface. It is a courageous poverty which resists all aid--even from that fictitious fund, a debt--which dresses itself as you would dress, if your coat were ten years old--which invites no sympathy--which may be seen in the sombre evening stopping a moment before the baker's shop, or the wired windows of the money-changer, but passing on again without a sigh heard. Oh, this poverty in a black coat! And then it enters into its cold and solitary chamber, without even the sad consolation of weeping with another. No Lady Bountiful comes here. In the picture just now described, she would be seen in the background, entering in at the door, her servant behind loaded with raiment and provisions. What should she here? What brings you here, madam? Who could have sent you here? We are rich! If we were poor should we not sell these books?--all these books are ours; madam, we want nothing. Carry your amiable charity elsewhere.