I rather doubted his story, but let him go. Soon afterwards, he requested me to let him go again, and I did so, going myself, soon after he left me, and took a position near the door, after the gong had summoned the boarders to dinner. On emerging from the dining room after dinner, I asked him where the son of the lawyer was. He said that he was in the dining hall. I told him that I would like an introduction to him. His cheeks were naturally as red as a rose, but my unexpected presence, and request for an introduction to the lawyer’s son, made his face as pale as a ghost’s, and I saw that he had stolen his dinner, which he slowly acknowledged, and admitted that he had dined twice at the Astor without an intention to pay for his dinners, and that he knew no son of a lawyer residing at the Astor House. I violently upbraided him, and told him that he would ultimately become the tenant of a prison, and perhaps die on the scaffold, if he did not check his thievish propensities. He said that I observed small things, which so provoked me, that I told him I must abandon him,—that he was in the bud and blossom of the precarious Spring, and easily blighted for ever by a frost or tempest,—that even the mighty oak, that has defied the storms of centuries, is felled to the earth by a blast of lightning,—and that the towering avalanche, which is formed from silent and solitary flakes of snow, could bury the largest city of the globe. He evinced great sorrow, and cried bitterly, and assured me that he would never steal another meal. I then paid for both dinners, and left the Astor, and kept a close guard over his movements. In about three weeks, he was arrested for an attempt to rifle a man’s pocket in Wall street. The gentleman did not appear against him, and he was discharged. I then went to an actor to ascertain in what part of the country his aunt was, and immediately wrote to her, and she came to the city, and I surrendered the thievish boy to her future protection. She got him a boarding place, and left the city to fulfil her theatrical engagement. He urged me afterwards to give him a recommendation to the extensive wholesale dry goods firm of Fearing & Hall, in Exchange Place. I told him that I would do them great injustice, as he might steal, and then they would hold me responsible. But he said his aunt had not sent him money for a long time, and that he had nowhere to live, and wept aloud, in Chatham street, and so wrought upon my feelings, that I consented to recommend him. During my interview with Mr. Fearing, (who was the senior partner of the firm,) he said that out of one hundred responses to his advertisement for a clerk, he had chosen my young friend, because he was pleased with his appearance and address, and that he was the only boy out of the one hundred who had removed his hat on entering his counting room. I had a year previous told the boy to always remove his hat when he entered the presence of