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THE PAWNBROKER'S SHOP.

'Tis Saturday night, and the chill rain and sleet

Is swept by the wind down the long dreary street;
The lamps in the windows flicker and blink,

As the wild gale whistles through cranny and chink;
But round yon door huddles a shivering crowd

Of wretches, by pain and by penury bowed;

And oaths are muttered, and curses drop

From their lips as they stand by the pawnbroker's shop.

Visages, hardened and scarred by sin;

Faces, bloated and pimpled with gin;

Crime, with its plunder, by poverty's side;

Beauty in ruins, and broken-down pride.

Modesty's cheek crimsoned deeply with shame,
Youth's active form, age's fast-falling frame,

Have come forth from street, lane, alley—and stop,
Heart-sick, weary, and worn, at the pawnbroker's shop.
With the rain and the biting wind chilled to the bone,
Oh! how they gaze on the splendor, and groan!
Around them, above them, wherever they gaze,
There are jewels to dazzle and gold to amaze;
Velvets, that tricked out some beautiful form;
Furs, that had shielded from winter and storm;
Crowded with “pledges" from bottom to top

Are the chests and the shelves of the pawnbroker's sh
There's a tear in the eye of yon beautiful girl

As she parts with a trinket of ruby and pearl;

Once as red were her lips, and as pure was her brow;
But there came a destroyer, and what is she now?
Lured by liquor, she bartered the gem of her fame,
And abandoned by virtue, forsaken by shame,
With no heart to pity, no kind hand to prop,
She finds her last friend in the pawnbroker's shop.

The spendthrift, for gold that to-morrow will fly;
The naked, to eke out a meagre supply;

The houseless, to rake up sufficient to keep

His head from the stones through the season of sleep:
The robber, his booty to turn into gold;

The shrinking, the timid, the bashful, the bold;
The penniless drunkard, to get "one more drop,"
All seek a resource in the pawnbroker's shop.

'Tis a record of ruin,-a temple whose stones
Are cemented with blood, and whose music is groans;
Its pilgrims are children of want and despair;
Alike grief and guilt to its portals repair.

Oh! we need not seek fiction for records of woe;
Such are written too plainly wherever we go;
And sad lessons of life may be learned as we stop
'Neath the three golden balls of a pawnbroker's shop.

THE FIREMAN'S PRAYER.-RUSSELL H. CONWELL.

It was in the gray of the early morning, in the season of Lent. Broad street, from Fort Hill to State street, was crowded with hastening worshipers, attendants on early mass. Maidens, matrons, boys, and men jostled and hurried on toward the churches: some with countenances sincerely sad, others with apparent attempts to appear in accord with the sombre season; while many thoughtless and careless ones joked and chatted, laughed and scuffled along in the hurrying multitude. Suddenly a passer-by noticed tiny wreaths and puffs of smoke starting from the shingles of the roof upon a large warehouse. The great structure stood upon the corner, silent, bolted, and tenantless; and all the windows, save a small round light in the upper story, were closely and securely covered with heavy shutters. Scarcely had the smoke been seen by one, when others of the crowd looked up in the same direction, and detected the unusual occurrence. Then others joined them, and still others followed, until a swelling multitude gazed upward to the roof over which the smoke soon hung like a fog; while from eaves and shutter of the upper story little jets of black smoke burst suddenly out into the clear morning air. Then came a flash, like the lightning's glare, through the frame of the little gable window, and then another, brighter, ghastlier, and more prolonged. "Fire!" "Fire!" screamed the throng, as, moved by a single impulse, they pointed with excited gestures toward the window. Quicker than the time it takes to tell, the cry reached the corner, and was flashed on messenger wires to tower and steeple, engine and hosehouse, over the then half-sleeping city. Great bells with pon

derous tongues repeated the cry with logy strokes, little bells with sharp and spiteful clicks recited the news; while halfconscious firemen, watching through the long night, leaped upon engines and hose-carriages, and rattled into the street. Soon the roof of the burning warehouse was drenched with floods of water, poured upon it from the hose of many engines; while the surging multitude in Broad street had grown to thousands of excited spectators. The engines puffed and hooted, the engineers shouted, the hook-andladder boys clambered upon roof and cornice, shattered the shutters, and burst in the doors, making way for the rescuers of merchandise, and for the surging nozzles of available hose-pipes. But the wooden structure was a seething furnace throughout all its upper portion; while the water and ventilation seemed only to increase its power and fury.

"Come down! Come down! Off that roof! Come out of that building!" shouted an excited man in the crowd, struggling with all his power in the meshes of the solid mass of men, women, and children in the street. "Come down! For God's sake, come down! The rear store is filled with barrels of powder!"

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"Powder! Powder!" screamed the engineer through his trumpet. "Powder" shouted the hosemen. "Powder called the brave boys on roof and cornice. "Powder!"' answered the trumpet of the chief. Powder!" "Powder!" "Powder!" echoed the men in the burning pile; and from ladder, casement, window, roof, and cornice, leaped terrified firemen with pale faces and terror-stricken limbs. "Push back the crowd!" shouted the engineer. "Run for your lives! Run! Run! Run!" roared the trumpets. But, alas! the crowd was dense, and spread so far through cross streets and alleys, that away on the outskirts, through the shouts of men, the whistling of the engines, and the roar of the heaven-piercing flames, the orders could not be heard. The frantic beings in front, understanding their danger, pressed wildly back. The firemen pushed their engines and their carriages against the breasts of the crowd; but the throng moved not. So densely packed was street and square, and so various and deafening the noises, that the army of excited spectators in the rear still pressed for

ward with irresistible force, unconscious of danger, and regarding any outcry as a mere ruse to disperse them for convenience' sake. The great mass swayed and heaved like the waves of the sea; but beyond the terrible surging of those in front, whose heart-rending screams half drowned the whistles, there was no sign of retreat. As far as one could see, the streets were crowded with living human flesh and blood.

"My God!

My God!" said the engineer in despair. "What can be done? Lord have mercy on us all! What can be done?"

"What can be done? I'll tell you what can be done," said one of Boston's firemen, whose hair was not yet sprinkled with gray. "Yes, bring out that powder! And I'm the man to do it. Better one man perish than perish all. Follow me with the water, and, if God lets me live long enough, I'll have it out."

Perhaps, as the hero rushed into the burning pile, into a darkness of smoke and a withering heat, he thought of the wife and children at home, of the cheeks he had kissed in the evening, of the cheerful good-by of the prattling ones, and the laugh as he gave the "last tag;" for as he rushed from the hoseman who tied the handkerchief over his mouth, he muttered, " God care for my little ones when I am gone." Away up through smoke and flame and cloud to the heights of Heaven's throne, ascended that prayer, "God care for my little ones when I am gone," and the mighty Father and the loving Son heard the fireman's petition.

Into the flame of the rear store rushed the hero, and groping to the barrels, rolled them speedily into the alley, where surged the stream from the engines; rushing back and forth with power superhuman, in the deepest smoke, when even the hoops that bound the powder-barrels had already parted with fire, while deadly harpoons loaded to pierce the whales of the Arctic seas began to explode, and while iron darts flashed by him in all directions, penetrating the walls and piercing the adjacent buildings. But as if his heroic soul was an armor-proof, or a charm impenetrable, neither harpoon nor bomb, crumbling timbers nor showers of flaming brands, did him aught of injury, beyond

the scorching of his hair and eyebrows, and the blistering of his hands and face. 'Twas a heroic deed. Did ever field of battle, wreck, or martyrdom, show a braver? No act in all the list of song and story, no self-sacrifice in the history of the rise and fall of empires, was nobler than that, save one, and then the Son of God himself hung bleeding on the

'ross.

TOO MUCH NOSE.

Kind friends, at your call, I'm come here to sing

Or rather to talk of my woes;

Though small's the delight to you I can bring,
The subject's concerning my nose.

Some noses are large, and others are small,
For nature's vagaries are such,

To some folks, I'm told, she gives no nose at all,
But to me she has given too much.

Oh, dear! lack-a-daisy me!

My cause of complaint, and the worst of my woes,
Is because I have got such a shocking long nose.
Some insult or other, each day I do meet,

And by joking, my friends are all foes;
And the boys every day, as go through the street,
All bellow out, "There goes a nose!"

A woman, with matches, one day I came near,
Who, just as I tried to get by her,

Shoved me rudely aside, and asked, with a leer,
If I wanted to set her afire?

Oh, dear! lack-a-daisy me!

Each rascal, each day, some innuendo throws,
As, "My nose isn't mine, I belongs to my nose."

I once went a-courting a wealthy old maid,
To be married we were, the next day,

But an accident happened, the marriage delayed,
My nose got too much in the way.

For the night before marriage, entranced with my bliss,

In love, e'er some torment occurs,―

I screwed up my lips, just to give her a kiss,
My nose slipped, and rubbed against hers!

Oh, dear! lack-a-daisy me!

The ring that I gave, at my head soon she throws,
And another tipped me, 'twas a w-ring on the nose.

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