A few years ago, there lived in the great city a little girl, so small that no one would ever have thought her nine years old. Yet she had passed nine sad years on earth. She lived with a couple who had a cellar of their own at the Five Points. They were coarse, brutal people, and spent the greater part of their time in drinking and fighting. Little Nellie, for so we shall call her, went in rags, and was frequently beaten with severity by those who called themselves her parents, though no one knew whether she was their child or not. In the long winters she almost perished with the cold, and was nearly half famished with hunger. It was a wonder how she managed to live; for in the coldest weather she was sent back and forth, through the freezing streets, by her so-called parents, her only protection being a ragged shawl, which she wrapped tightly around her head. Her little feet and legs were bare and frost-bitten, and often left red tracks on the pure white snow. At night her bed was a piece of old carpeting in a dark corner of the cellar, where she cried herself to sleep, and wished she could die. Young as she was, death was not terrible to her, for she regarded it as a release from her sufferings. Had she known how to pray, she would have prayed for it; but, in her ignorance she merely wished to die. Do not be shocked, reader, when we say she never prayed. The truth is that, with the exception of the constant blasphemy of the people with whom she lived, and of this she heard too much, she rarely heard of God. Once she went into a church, and heard a man talk about Him in a way she could not understand. When she heard the organ it sounded so sweet that she thought God must be up there, and tried to see him; but a great rough man put her out of the church, and told her it was no place for such as her, (alas! God's house no place for the poor!) and that if she ever came there again he would hand her over to the police. She went away feeling shocked and hurt, and fully convinced that God did not like beggars. Then she remembered how nice and warm the church was, and how fine the people were dressed, and she began to wonder why she had been made so poor and helpless. "Ah! me," she sighed, "I'm not God's child. He wouldn't notice me, I'm so poor, and dirty, and my feet are so frost-bitten." She had no one to tell her how much God cares for the poor, how he watches over them, and notes every good and bad deed done to them. She thought he was careless of her; and when some one told her he could do every thing, she wondered why he did not make her more comfortable, and give her nice warm clothes to wear. Finally, little Nellie began to think him a cruel, harsh God, and at last she came to hate him. Terribly depraved, you will say, dear reader; but, alack, was she to blame? God help us! there are many more like her in the great city.