“Mr. Haviland? you down here too? Or perhaps you come on the same errand?” And Gracie smiled frankly, as John looked up, puzzled, into her lovely face. “I am visiting some poor families, you know--for the Combined Charities----” “But surely,” he broke in, “you ought not to be down here alone, Miss Holyoke?” They were at Sixth Avenue by this time; and Gracie was looking for a car. “Usually my aunt lets me have the carriage,” said Gracie; “but Miss Livingstone needed it to-day. And I don’t like to drive quite up to the doors, even then. It seems so hard to drive up with one’s own carriage and horses, and then have to refuse them everything but a little work,” she added, smiling. “And Miss Brevier often goes with me.” “Do you mean that you come here often?” asked John; and she told him that she and Miss Brevier had each “taken” the people on one street; and were seeing that they got help when help was necessary, and that the undeserving had none wasted upon them. John put her safely in the car, and resumed his pedestrian voyage with something new to think of. This personal visiting by refined young ladies was doubtless an excellent thing on its poetic side; but it could not but seem to him that the danger and the exposure were out of proportion to the benefit. He had had much experience among the city poor, and was perhaps a little skeptical as to the advantages to be gained by such devotion. For, as is the way of things so often here below, the selfish, the fraudulent, the undeserving, find it easy to advertise themselves and solicit help; while the saddest cases of all are lost in some modest garret; there they suffer unseen, ashamed to cry for charity, and wear their lives out silently. Except this latter class, and cases of long illness, most of the poor in New York are poor from laziness, intemperance, or crime; and their moral attitude towards society is rather that of sullen and callous defiance, or covetous acquiescence, than repentance. We need to get a better breed of men, not coddle the present one overmuch. Life suits them well enough as it is, if they could only get a few of their neighbors’ goods; such goods as they desire and Mrs. Flossie desired, and not the _summum bonum_. If degraded, they do not mind their degradation, but are content with it; money always, clothing and food sometimes, they will derisively accept; but work they will evade and not perform. Amongst these, thought Haviland, there may be much squalor, even much suffering; but there is little real poverty. Had he told all this to Gracie she would have said that it made no difference; and that one should try all the more to find the true cases, where righteous-minded beings were sinking in the turmoil of the world; and that one such family helped and saved was worth a hundred of impostures. Moreover, Gracie had not a man’s fear of being taken in; had she thought of it at all, she would have scorned it; the odium of deception falls on the deceiver, not the