One of the happiest men that I ever knew—one whose serenity was unassailable, whose cheerfulness was constant, and from whose heart a perennial spring of sympathy and love bubbled up—was a man against whom all the powers of misfortune were centered. He belonged to the tailors—those cross-legged candidates for consumption. He was miserably poor. Fly as fast as it could through the endless pieces of broadcloth, his hand could not always win crusts for his children. But he walked on and on; his thin white fingers faltered bravely through their tasks as the hours slipped away, and his serene white face bended forward over the tedious cloth into which, stitch after stitch, he was working his life—and, with once in a while a wistful look at the gleaming sunshine and the floating clouds, he breathed heavily and painfully of the poisoned air of his work-room, from which a score of stronger lungs had sucked all the oxygen. And when, at night, he would go home, and find that there were just crusts enough for the little ones to eat, the capricious old fellow would dream that he was not hungry; and when pressed to eat of the scanty store by his sad and patient wife, would with an air of smartness pretend a sacred lie—that he had dined with a friend—and then, with a heart that swelled almost to bursting, turn away to hide his glistening eyes. Hungry? Of course he was, time and again. As weak as his body was, as faltering as was the little fountain that sent the life-blood from his heart—as meagre as were his necessities, I doubt if there was a time in all the long years when he was not hungry. Did you ever think of how many people have died out of this world through starvation. Thousands! Not recorded in the books as having died of starvation,—ah, no? Sometimes it is a thin and watery sort of apoplexy—sometimes it is dyspepsia, and often consumption. These terms read better. But there are thousands of them, sensitive, shy gentlemen—too proud to beg and too honest to steal—too straightforward to scheme or maneuver—too refined to fill the public with their griefs—too heroic to whine—that lock their sorrows up in their own hearts, and go on starving in silence, weakening day after day from the lack of proper food—the blood running slower and slower through their veins—their pulse faltering as they pass through the various stages of inanition, until at last, worn out, apathetic, exhausted, they are struck by some casual illness, and lose their hold upon life as easily and as naturally as the autumn leaf, juiceless, withered and dry, parts from the bough to which it has clung, and floats down the vast silence of the forest.