day, as if a constituent of the glad light of heaven in which we then live and move? A cursory reading of the countenance of each passer by will at this hour give the poorest physiognomist no inaccurate notion of the complexion of his domestic lot; and, selecting an individual from the homeward-wending crowd, I often form my speculation as to the scene that awaits him, follow him in the freedom of all-privileged and all-pervading thought across the threshold of his abode, conjure up the circumstances of his reception, glance through the perspective of his evening arrangements, and, as I find them agreeable or the reverse, extend or curtail my domiciliary inspection. During a recent winter, on one of its most cheerless evenings, I was thus exercising my discernment and my fancy in a long homeward walk through the centre of the city, and mentally apportioning to each that attracted my eye the share of satisfaction or discomfort that lay before him--my own mind subject to the lights and shadows, the glow and chill, which in various degrees were suggested as the lot of each. It was precisely the evening to lend the keenest zest to the happiness of the light-hearted, and a more poignant bitterness to the misery of the unfortunate. A cold icy wind whistled shrilly through every narrow street and entry as I passed it, and swept more boldly down the wider spaces, bearing, occasionally, slanting showers of sleet, which a glance at the dun and overcharged canopy of snow-clouds and of smoke above showed to be but premonitory intimations of a heavy and continuous fall. For the most part, all below was impatient motion and occupied expectation, because almost all had a goal in view to which they hastened, the fierce inclemency of the weather impelling alike the mirthful and the melancholy onward. The well-fed, well-defended passenger, with muffled neck and arms thrust to the elbow in the pockets of his dreadnought, rubbed shoulders with the half-paralyzed and shivering wretch that shuffled amid the hurrying throng, often apparently without other object than that of joining in the stream of fellow-creatures, whom he could resemble in no other way. Carriage after carriage rolled past, the children of affluence for their tenants, interchanging careless comments, or looking with languid and heedless gaze upon the squalid, the impoverished, the abandoned, the degraded, that, alas! met the eye so often as to account for, and almost justify, the indifference displayed.