two or three more rows of bricks would be required, carrying a correspondent diminution of air and light. It is one of the punishments overtaking those who wrong their neighbors, that not only do they feel more keenly than others any injury done to themselves, but they take many things for injuries that do not belong to the category. It was but a matter of a few shillings at the most, but the man who did not scruple to charge the less careful of his customers for undelivered ounces, gathering to pounds and pounds of meat, resented bitterly the necessity of the outlay. He knew, or ought to have known, that he had but to acquaint the minister with the fact, to have the thing set right at once; but the minister had found him out, and he therefore much preferred the possession of his grievance to its removal. To his friends he regretted that a minister of the gospel should be so corrupted by the mammon of unrighteousness as to use it against members of his own church: that, he said, was not the way to make friends with it. But on the pretense of a Christian spirit, he avoided showing Mr. Drake any sign of his resentment; for the face of his neighbors shames a man whose heart condemns him but shames him not. He restricted himself to grumbling, and brooded to counterplot the mischiefs of the minister. What right had he to injure him for the sake of the poor? Was it not written in the Bible: Thou shall not favor the poor man in his cause? Was it not written also: For every man shall bear his own burden? That was common sense! He did his share in supporting the poor that were church-members, but was he to suffer for improvements on Drake's property for the sake of a pack of roughs! Let him be charitable at his own cost! etc., etc. Self is prolific in argument. It suited Mr. Drake well, notwithstanding his church republican theories, against which, in the abstract, I could ill object, seeing the whole current of Bible teaching is toward the God-inspired ideal commonwealth--it suited a man like Mr. Drake well, I say, to be an autocrat, and was a most happy thing for his tenants, for certainly no other system of government than a wise autocracy will serve in regard to the dwellings of the poor. And already, I repeat, he had effected not a little. Several new cottages had been built, and one incorrigible old one pulled down. But it had dawned upon him that, however desirable it might be on a dry hill-side, on such a foundation as this a cottage was the worst form of human dwelling that could be built. For when the whole soil was in time of rain like a full sponge, every room upon it was little better than a hollow in a cloud, and the right thing must be to reduce contact with the soil as much as possible. One high house, therefore, with many stories, and stone feet to stand upon, must be the proper kind of building for such a situation. He must lift the first house from the water, and set as many more houses as convenient upon it.