Printed by T. Booker, at the Metropolitan Catholic Printing Office,

9, Rupert Street, Leicester Square.

LIBERALITY;

OR,

The Benevolent Merchant.

Blessed is the man that considers the needy and the poor, in the evil day our Lord will deliver him.-Psalm xl.

T was towards the close of a dark afternoon

in the month of November, that a young girl accompanied by a boy about thirteen years of age, whose appearance betokened them to be raised far above the class to which the casual observer might have thought them to belong from the scantiness and meanness of their clothing, threaded with hurried steps one of the dark and narrow streets with which that part of the metropolis, east of London, abounds. The natural gloominess of the season had for the last half hour been increased, by a thick drizzling rain, with which the thin dress of the

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female wayfarer had been for some time drenched. They suddenly stopped, however, before one of the meanest houses in the street, whose worn out and faded curtains, and uncleaned windows, told that its inmates had long ceased to care for appearances, or were too much buried in poverty and woe to heed exterior signs of discomfort. A low wailing sound as of a young child in great grief struck upon the ear, and ever and anon the moan of a person evidently in bodily anguish. The gentle knock the young girl had given was not heard; and again she raised her hand to strike, and as she did so signed to the boy beside her to be still, for a long and loud sob had burst from him, for until that moment he had been weeping in silence. The next instant the door was opened by a tall thin woman, about forty-five years of age, whose still fine countenance showed that she had once been very beautiful, but poverty and care had there stamped a seal of such deep suffering, and yet withal an expression of such patient resignation as never might be effaced.

"Rose," she said, as she admitted the young girl into the passage, "tell me whether your errand has been of any avail."

'Yes, yes," answered the girl, "I have that which will provide him with fire and food for

the present; but let me go to him, mama," she added, “I have walked very fast lest he should even die before my return," and as she spoke, she hurried up the narrow staircase and passed into the room from whence the sounds still proceeded. But what a scene of suffering was there. On a miserable flock bed, extended on the ground, lay a man still in the prime of life, but disease and want had reduced his once fine and manly form to that of a mere skeleton, and his sunken eye and hollow cheek betokened him the victim of decline, and beside the bed knelt a child, who still gave utterance to the low wailing sounds which had been heard in the street.

"My dear little Marian," said the girl, raising the child from her knees and fondly kissing her as she spoke, "do not weep so loudly; see, you disturb poor papa."

"As she uttered these words the dying man endeavoured to raise his head from the pillow and signed to his daughter to approach him ; but the effort was too great, for even in that moment his countenance was convulsed with

the agonies of death. Rose saw that the last moment was at hand, and whispered to the child to call her mother immediately, but at that moment she entered, followed by the boy, who was loaded with the materials for a fire. One glance was sufficient to tell the truth to the wretched wife. Rose still knelt beside the couch, supporting her father's head and wiping the heavy dews from his face. Twice he essayed to address them, but the power of speech was gone; but they knew him still conscious of their presence by the pressure of the hand. The next moment, however, his head sank heavily on the shoulder of his daughter, and the close grasp of his wife's hand was relaxed, and a long and loud sigh announced to his wretched family that all was over.

But pass we from the chamber of death in which Rose and her mother fulfilled the last sad duties to the departed, having nothing wherewith to pay the hireling's services, to give our young readers a brief account of the distressed family to whom we have introduced them.

what the

Edmund Leslie had truly been world calls an unfortunate man. He had