Saturday evening is a busy time in the Bowery. So many little things wanted at the close of the week. A pair of new shoes for Robert, a tippet for Sally, a pair of gloves for Johnny, and a stick of candy to bribe the baby to keep the peace while mamma goes to “meetin” on Sunday. What a heap of people! What a job it must be to take the census in New York. Servant girls and their beaux, country folks and city folks, big boys and little boys, ladies and women, puppies and men! There’s a poor laboring man with his market basket on one arm, and his wife on the other. He knows that he can get his Sunday dinner cheaper by purchasing it late on Saturday night, when the butchers are not quite sure that their stock will “keep” till Monday. And then it is quite a treat for his wife, when little Johnny is asleep, to get out to catch a bit of fresh air, and a sight of the pretty things in the shop windows, even if she cannot have them; but the little feminine diplomatist knows that husbands always feel clever of a Saturday night, and that then’s the time “_just to stop and look_” at a new ribbon or collar. See that party of country folks, going to the “National” to see “Uncle Tom.” Those pests, the bouquet sellers, are offering them their stereotyped, cabbage-looking bunches of flowers with, “Please buy one for your lady, sir.” Jonathan don’t understand dodging such appeals; beside, he would scorn to begrudge a “quarter” for _his lady_! So he buys the nuisance, and scraping out his hind foot, presents it, with a bow, to Araminta, who “walks on thrones” the remainder of the evening. There’s a hand organ, and a poor, tired little girl, sleepily playing the tambourine. All the little ragged urchins in the neighborhood are grouped on that door step, listening. The connoisseur might criticise the performance, but no Cathedral _Te Deum_ could be grander to that unsophisticated little audience. There is one little girl, who spite of her rags, is beautiful enough for a seraph. _Poor and beautiful!_ God help her. WHOM DOES IT CONCERN? “Stitch--stitch--stitch! Will this _never_ end?” said a young girl, leaning her head wearily against the casement, and dropping her small hands hopelessly in her lap. “Stitch--stitch--stitch! from dawn till dark, and yet I scarce keep soul and body together;” and she drew her thin shawl more closely over her shivering shoulders.