See him double, and turn, and twist, like a rabbit in a wood, while that word of command flies from one clerk’s lip to another. Poor, demented little Cash! Where _is_ your anxious maternal? Who finds you in patience and shoe leather? Does your pillow ever suggest anything to your weary brain but pillarless quarters, and crossed sixpences, and faded bank bills? When do you find time, you poor little victim, to comb your hair, digest your victuals, and say your catechise? Do you ever look back with a sigh to the days of peppermints, peanuts and pinafores? Or forward, in the dim distance, to a vision of a long-tailed coat, a high-standing dickey, and no more “_Cash_,” save in your pantaloons’ pocket? Don’t you ever catch yourself wishing that a certain rib of Adam’s had never been subtracted from his paradisiacal side? Poor, miserable little Cash! you have my everlasting sympathy! I should go shopping twenty times, where I now go once, didn’t it harrow up my feelings to see you driven on so, like a locomotive! “Here’s hoping” you may soon be made sensible of more than _one_ meaning to the word CHANGE! [A] The boy employed in stores to fetch and carry change. ONLY A CHILD. “Who is to be buried here?” said I to the sexton. “Only a child, ma’am.” _Only_ a child! Oh! had you ever been a mother--had you nightly pillowed that little golden head--had you slept the sweeter for that little velvet hand upon your breast--had you waited for the first intelligent glance from those blue eyes--had you watched its cradle slumbers, tracing the features of him who stole your girlish heart away--had you wept a widow’s tears over its unconscious head--had your desolate, timid heart gained courage from that little piping voice, to wrestle with the jostling crowd for daily bread--had its loving smiles and prattling words been sweet recompense for such sad exposure--had the lonely future been brightened by the hope of that young arm to lean upon, that bright eye for your guiding star--had you never framed a plan, or known a hope or fear, of which that child was not a part;--if there was naught else on earth left for you to love--if disease came, and its eye grew dim; and food, and rest, and sleep were forgotten in your anxious fears--if you paced the floor, hour by hour, with that fragile burden, when your very touch seemed to give comfort and healing to that little quivering frame--had the star of hope set at last--had you hung over its dying pillow, when the strong breast you should have wept on was in the grave, where your child was hastening--had you caught _alone_ its last faint cry for the “_help_” you could not give--had its last fluttering sigh been breathed out on _your_ breast--Oh! could you have said--“’Tis _only_ a child?” MR. PIPKIN’S IDEAS OF FAMILY RETRENCHMENT.