It required a little watching, and urging, and admonition, on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Prescott, to keep the Gardiners moving on steadily, in the right way.  Old habits and inclinations had gained too much power easily to be broken; and but for this watchfulness on their part, idleness and want would again have entered the poor man’s dwelling.

The reader will hardly feel surprise, when told, that in three or four years from the time Mr. Prescott so wisely met the case of the indigent Gardiners, they were living in a snug little house of their own, nearly paid for out of the united industry of the family, every one of which was now well clad, cheerful, and in active employment.  As for Mr. Gardiner, his health has improved, instead of being injured by light employment.  Cheerful, self-approving thoughts, and useful labor, have temporarily renovated a fast sinking constitution.

Mr. Prescott’s way of helping the poor is the right way.  They must be taught to help themselves.  Mere alms-giving is but a temporary aid, and takes away, instead of giving, that basis of self-dependence, on which all should rest.  Help a man up, and teach him to use his feet, so that he can walk alone.  This is true benevolence.

COMMON PEOPLE.

“ARE you going to call upon Mrs. Clayton and her daughters, Mrs. Marygold?” asked a neighbor, alluding to a family that had just moved into Sycamore Row.

“No, indeed, Mrs. Lemmington, that I am not.  I don’t visit everybody.”

“I thought the Claytons were a very respectable family,” remarked Mrs. Lemmington.

“Respectable!  Everybody is getting respectable now-a-days.  If they are respectable, it is very lately that they have become so.  What is Mr. Clayton, I wonder, but a school-master!  It’s too bad that such people will come crowding themselves into genteel neighborhoods.  The time was when to live in Sycamore Row was guarantee enough for any one—­but, now, all kinds of people have come into it.”

“I have never met Mrs. Clayton,” remarked Mrs. Lemmington, “but I have been told that she is a most estimable woman, and that her daughters have been educated with great care.  Indeed, they are represented as being highly accomplished girls.”

“Well, I don’t care what they are represented to be.  I’m not going to keep company with a schoolmaster’s wife and daughters, that’s certain.”

“Is there anything disgraceful in keeping a school?”

“No, nor in making shoes, either.  But, then, that’s no reason why I should keep company with my shoemaker’s wife, is it?  Let common people associate together—­that’s my doctrine.”

“But what do you mean by common people, Mrs. Marygold?”

“Why, I mean common people.  Poor people.  People who have not come of a respectable family.  That’s what I mean.”

“I am not sure that I comprehend your explanation much better than I do your classification.  If you mean, as you say, poor people, your objection will not apply with full force to the Claytons, for they are now in tolerably easy circumstances.  As to the family of Mr. Clayton, I believe his father was a man of integrity, though not rich.  And Mrs. Clayton’s family I know to be without reproach of any kind.”