no longer, had for several days been lying on a bed of sickness; and that night they had—oh! God can it be true?—gone dinnerless and supperless to bed. Until within a few days Stanhope had breasted the storm with unshrinking firmness, although, at times, when he looked upon his angelic wife and little ones, suffering the full horrors of poverty, his resolution had almost given way. But even he could not withstand the accumulated miseries which now beat so bitterly upon his unsheltered head. Let it not be thought that we exaggerate his misfortunes. God forbid! Even in our boasted city, and at this day, too, when _charity has become fashionable_, more than a dozen die annually from sheer starvation. Stanhope saw nothing but this before them. He could not seek employment in other places, for how would his family subsist in his absence?—nor could he take them with him, for alas! he had not the money to transport them. Broken in spirits and maddened with despair, the thoughts which rushed through his mind as he gazed around the room can be easier imagined than described. In that moment his whole life passed before him as in a panorama. He thought of his happy boyhood; of the bright hopes of his youth; of his first sanguine love for Ellen; of the bitter disappointment which followed; of the hopes, and fears of their separation, and the joy of their first meeting afterward; of the tumult of feelings, all, however extatic, with which he welcomed the houseless wanderer to his own humble home; of the three bright and happy years which, like a dream of heaven, followed their union; and finally of the series of misfortunes, heaped one upon another, and growing daily more and more intense, which had closed the whole, and brought him down to abject poverty. Had he been alone in the world he could have borne it all without a murmur. But to see his darling uncomplaining Ellen, his little Henry, his innocent babe, starving before his eyes! Oh! it was too much. Frenzied with agony he started from his seat, placed his hand to his brow, and gazing a moment wildly around the room, rushed from the house.