between this and their wedding day! She resisted his importunity until he found 'twas no avail, and then he swore he would upset her little store in the gutter, if she did not give him the money. What could she do? She would not call an officer to take him away. No, she could not do that, he was her husband. She could not resist him, could not have an altercation in the street, that would draw an idle crowd around her, spoil her trade, and worse than that, let the world know that this bloated, ill-looking, miserable remnant of a man, was her husband. Shame did what persuasion or fear could not: she gave him the shilling, and he started to cross the crowded street. He heeded little of danger--he had often crossed when more drunk than now--he heeded not the tripartite crush of carriages coming up and going down these streets, all meeting in a sort of vortex at that point. He heard, or heeded not, the drivers, "hi, hi, hi, get out of the way, you drunken son of a----," and down he went among the horses' clattering feet, upon the slippery stones, and the wheels passed over him, crushing bones--human bones, and mangling flesh, and mixing human blood with street dirt. The omnibuses turned aside, the passengers shuddered as the poor wretch was lifted up, covered with blood and dirt, and inquired, "Is he dead?" The drivers looked down coolly from their high seats, with a consoling remark, that, "it's nothing but a drunken man," yet, that drunken man was that woman's husband; him who, fourteen years ago, walked the streets as well dressed, as proud, as sober as any in the crowd who now gaze carelessly upon his bruised form, and hear the remark, that he, "is nothing but a drunken man." Fourteen years ago--yes, this very night--that woman walked this very street, arm in arm, with that man, and heard him, for the first time, call her wife. It was a happy time then, and "all was merry as the marriage bell." Little thought they then--less thought they a year afterwards, while rocking the cradle in their own happy home, that the time would come when he would raise his hand in anger to strike that loving wife, or that child would be driven, with kicks and curses, into the streets, or that he would lie bleeding upon the pavement he had so often and so proudly trod before, a poor mangled drunkard. Oh how those words--joyous words--first rung in that happy mother's ears, when the proud father said:-- "Have you got a baby?" "Yes, Willie, _we_ have got a baby." How these words have rung like electric sparks through many a happy heart.