Year: 1877

We belonged to the surplus popula- tion, Jim andiI, but we did not know it. The big world into which we came was crowded to overffowing with just such puny, unwashed, ill-fed little wretches as we were; but we didn't know it, and so we came unconscious into the sunless, teeming alley, where countless others like ourselves herded. We didn't know we were problem, Jim and I; we didn't know that we and our kind were bafiing the wisdom of statesmen, Jim and I ] but if we had not known all about it, I doubt if we could have occupied the situation more philosophically We slept as quietly in the underground cellar down whose oozy steps the rain and ruin of years made slippery passage, or bestowed ourselyes-as naturally, if need be under some standard wayside cart, as if it were precisely the thing heaven had adapted us for from the beginning.

 Jim was older and bigger than l.; a tall, likely lad; fifteen of these hard ening and toughening years had made him keen and sharp as a terrier, and just the lad to look after forlorn waif of little girl like myself And Jim, after he had blacked boots all day, or sold newspapers of an afternoon, was sure to look after me, and we took sup per together out of the same bowl of porridge. .5ss -e <. Jim wasn't my brother, oh no! z I used to wish he was my brother though sometimes, just because was so proud of him. eafll eusir. .jar The old man that kept the cellar, you see had picked me up from somewhere when my folks died, and so we had sowehow fallen together all alone.

 Just down beyond the jog of our alley, where it turned a sort of gray corner, and was darker and dirtie1 than ever-just there stood an old gray church, with a clock in the tower-an old, old messy church, and an old, old clock that had passed it's withered hands over it's wizened face, and looked sleepily through them down into ou1 alley, on one side, and into a busy noisy thoroughfare on the other. The old clock had dozed there till it's heaG was all on one side, and you couldn' be sure whether it told the right story or not; but of d summer afternoon wher it was getting quite dusk down in oul alley, red ray from the setting SUI used to settle for minute right dowI on the face of the sleepy old clock then it would seem to rouse up out of ; pleasant dream, and. strike the hour A need be, and then I knew it was tim tolook out for Jim. I'd see him turl the corner with his old straw hat on and patched shoes, or barefoot, maybe for that matter, and we'd set off for

 stroll together-a stroll to the wharves

 We generally hunted the wharves Jim and l, when we went a-pleasuring They were grand, the wharves; so busy so altogether different from our, alley with the ships crowded round then and the futtering flags here and ther on the masts, and the busy sailors get ting in freights. Sometimes Jim woul get a job for half an hour, and leav me lurking among the cotton bales, C sitting solitary in some safe corner ii he came back. He always came bacl And then sometimes we would linge about there till nightfall. Then tf wharf was solemn and silent, and yo could hear the water rushing up again the great beams underneath, and se here and there a light gleaming frol some lone lantern among the shroud and the gray water stretching beyon we knew not whither; and if Jim an had owned it all, we could not hay loved it better.

 But one day Jim got a job that Taste longer than usual, and I grew scare and uneasy as night came on, and | didn't come back. Wandering frol the place where he had set me, shy an fearsome as water-rat, but as dete mined, looked for him ieFerywher but in vain; then went back to m post, for hadn't he said, as he alwa,

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