"A city damsel, whose ideas had been _Arcadianized_ by the perusal of pastorals, having once made an excursion to a distance of twenty miles from London, wandered into the fields, in the hope of discovering a _bona-fide_ live 'shepherd.' To her great delight, she at length encountered one, under a green hedge, with his dog by his side, his 'crook' in his hand, and his sheep round about him, just as if he were sitting to be modeled in China for a chimney-ornament. To be sure, he did not exhibit the blue jacket, jessamine vest, pink inexpressibles, and peach-colored stockings of those faithful portraitures. This was mortifying: still more so was it, that he was neither particularly young nor cleanly; but most of all, that he wanted the indispensable accompaniment of a pastoral reed, in order that he might beguile his solitude with the charms of music. Touched with pity at this privation, and lapsing unconsciously into poetical language, the damsel exclaimed: "'Ah, gentle shepherd! tell me, where's your pipe?' "'I left it at home, miss,' replied the clown, scratching his head, 'cause I haint got no 'baccy!'" The "sentiment" was satisfied at once in this case, as it was in the other, which is thus presented: "A benevolent committee-man of the Society for superseding the necessity of climbing chimney-sweep boys, seeing a sooty urchin weeping bitterly at the corner of a street, asked him the cause of his distress; to which the boy replied: "'Master has been using me shamefully: he has been letting Jim Hudson go up the chimney at Number Nine, when it was _my_ turn. He said it was too high and too dangerous for me; but I'll go up a chimney with Jim Hudson any day in the year; that's what I will; and he knows it, and master knows it too!'" Sympathy _was_ rather thrown away in _this_ case, that's quite certain. * * * * * Winter is upon us; the biting winds rattle our window-shutters and howl down our chimneys. "Poor naked wretches" tremble in the fierce cold; and homeless, houseless women and children huddle in the alleys and hiding-places of the city. GOD help the poor! Now is the time to remember them. Let the rich recall "poor old Lear," when deprived of his kingdom, and reduced to want, the cold rains beat pitilessly upon his white head, he was forced to exclaim, remembering what he _might_ have done when he had the power, "We have ta'en too little care of this!" Let no disappointment, such as is most forcibly expressed in these lines, add an additional drop to the cup of bitterness which is commended to the lips of the poor of our city: