"Charley Walters."

Something like a feeble interest is awakened.
I suppose Charley Walters had conversation
in him.

"He's dead!" says the piping old man.

Another old man, with one eye screwed
up, hastily displaces the piping old man, and
says:

"Yes! Charley Walters died in that bed,
and-- and--"

"Billy Stevens," persists the spectral old
man.

"No, no! and Johnny Rogers died in that
bed, and-- and-- they 're both on 'em dead--
and Sam'l Bowyer;" this seems very extraordinary to him;
"he went out!"

With this he subsides, and all the old men
(having had quite enough of it) subside, and
the spectral old man goes into his grave again,
and takes the shade of Billy Stevens with
him.

As we turn to go out at the door, another
previously invisible old man, a hoarse old man
in a flannel gown, is standing there, as if he
had just come up through the floor.

"I beg your pardon, Sir, could I take the
liberty of saying a word?"

"Yes; what is it?"

"I am greatly better in my health, Sir;
but what I want, to get me quite round," with
his hand on his throat, " is a little fresh air,
Sir. It has always done my complaint so
much good, Sir. The regular leave for going
out, comes round so seldom, that if the
gentlemen, next Friday, would give me leave to
go out walking, now and then-- for only an
hour or so, Sir!-- "

Who could wonder, looking through those
weary vistas of bed and infirmity, that it
should do him good to meet with some other
scenes, and assure himself that there was
something else on earth? Who could help
wondering why the old men lived on as they
did; what grasp they had on life; what crumbs
of interest or occupation they could pick up
from its bare board; whether Charley Walters
had ever described to them the days when he
kept company with some old pauper woman
in the bud, or Billy Stevens ever told them of
the time when he was a dweller in the far-off
foreign land called Home!

The morsel of burnt child, lying in another
room, so patiently, in bed, wrapped in lint,
and looking stedfastly at us with his bright
quiet eyes when we spoke to him kindly,
looked as if the knowledge of these things, and
of all the tender things there are to think
about, might have been in his mind-- as if he
thought, with us, that there was a fellow-
feeling in the pauper nurses which appeared to
make them more kind to their charges than the
race of common nurses in the hospitals-- as if
he mused upon the Future of some older
children lying around him in the same place,
and thought it best, perhaps, all things
considered, that he should die-- as if he knew,
without fear, of those many coffins, made and
unmade, piled up in the store below-- and of
his unknown friend, "the dropped child,"
calm upon the box-lid covered with a cloth.
But there was something wistful and appealing,
too, in his tiny face, as if, in the midst of
all the hard necessities and incongruities he
pondered on, he pleaded, in behalf of the
helpless and the aged poor, for a little more liberty
—and a little more bread.

THE "IRISH DIFFICULTY" SOLVED
BY CON MC NALE.

CON McNALE would have been summarily
repudiated as an Irishman by our farce-
writers and slashing novelists. He neither
drank, fought, nor swore; did not make many
blunders; and never addressed a friend either
as his 'honey' or his 'jewel.' His cotamore
was of stout frieze, and though Con had long
attained his full height, tlie tailor had left
him room to grow. The caubeen was not his
head-dress, for Con had arrived at the dignity
of a silk hat, which had been manufactured,
as the mark in the crown declared, by the
Saxons in the Borough of Southwark, which
locality Con believed to be in the neighbourhood
of England. The brogues were also
absent, but were favourably represented by
shoes of native manufacture laced with stout
thongs. In fact, Mr. Mc Nale was a fine
specimen of the finest pisantry in the world--
without the rags.

People have gone to the Highlands and
to Switzerland, and perhaps seen many
places not much more grand and picturesque
than the district where Con McNale had
made a patch of the desert to smile. A
long range of blue mountains rising irregularly
above each other, looked down on an
extensive plain, that lay along the shore of a
mighty lake, to the banks of which thick
plantations crowded so near that the old Irish
called the water Lough-glas, which signifies
waters of green. The districts where a short
but thick and sweet herbage sprung up among
the rocks, were certainly put to the use of feeding
cattle, and it was while employed there as a
herd-boy, that Con McNale determined to
become a farmer. His mind was made up.
His earnings were hardly enough to keep life
in him, and if he had tried to save the price
of a spade out of them to begin business with,
the chances are that he would have died
prematurely for want of food. But that didn't
matter much; he was determined to be a
farmer. This determination was then as
likely of fulfilment as that of Oliver Cromwell
to become Protector of the Realm, while
tending the vats at Huntingdon; or that
of Aladdin to become a prince, when he was
a ragged boy in the streets of Bagdad. To
show, however, what perseverance will do,
when I made acquaintance with Mr. Con
McNale he had actually got possession of a spade,
and was making good use of it in a ditch-- his
own ditch, on his own land. As he went on,