Down comes the rain: had I taken my umbrella, not a drop would have fallen. “I ’spect” I was born on a Friday; but as that can’t be helped now, I’ll step into that book-store till the shower is over. The owner politely gives me a chair, and then hands me, for my edification, the _last fashion prints_! F-a-n-n-y F-e-r-n! can it be possible that you look so frivolous? Tracts and fashion prints, both offered you in one forenoon! Wonder if there’s a second-hand drab Quaker bonnet anywhere, that will subdue your “style?” See that little minstrel in front of the store, staggering under the weight of a hand-organ. What a crowd of little beggar-boys surround him, petitioning “for _just one tune_.” Now, I wonder if the rough school that boy has been in, has hardened his heart? Has he grown prematurely worldly-wise and selfish? Will he turn gruffly away from that penniless, Tom Thumb audience, or will he give them a _gratuitous_ tune? God be thanked, his childish heart yet beats warm and true under that tattered jacket. He smiles sweetly on the eager group, and strikes up “Lang Syne.” Other than mortal ears are listening! That deed, unnoticed by the hurrying Broadway throng, is noted by the Recording Angel. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto Me.” Sunshine again! dripping awnings and sloppy pavements. There’s a man preaching an out-door temperance sermon: what a bungling piece of work he makes of it! If he would lend me that pro tem barrel-pulpit I’d astonish _him_, and take the feather out of “Miss Lucy Stone’s” bonnet.