twenty-five cents.” There were evidently no purchasers at hand, for all except a white-haired old man, who was eagerly reading a frayed and tattered copy of “Pollok’s Course of Time” moved on. “Annything on the board for twenty-five cents,” repeated the salesman in stentorian tones, and then he marched up to the old fellow and frightened him into the middle of next week by saying in an injured way: “Look here, young fellar, anny one would think by the way you are pawing things around yer was going to buy a house and lot.”

The steamer Rhein from Bremen, which arrived the other day, brought among other passengers a German lass of scarcely twenty years—healthy, plump, intelligent, and emphatically pretty. My attention was attracted to her by her forlorn appearance and thoughtful, tearful face as she stood outside the gate at Castle Garden, in conversation with one of the clerks employed by the city, and who spoke her language. While the dialogue was in progress, quite a knot of loungers like myself gathered about. Among us was a long, lank Yankee, apparently thirty years of age, who, I have since learned, drives a dray for a firm on West Street. He manifested a lively interest in the case, and finally made bold to inquire:

“What’s the diffikilty, stranger?”

The interpreter replied that there was difficulty enough; the girl’s father had died on the voyage from Bremen, and had been buried at sea; she had landed heart-broken and friendless, and formed a new and hasty friendship with a man and woman who had promised to secure her a situation with a family on Third Avenue, but her friends had proved to be sharpers and had stolen her trunk. Thus she was thrust upon the cold charity of a strange city—in fine, the self-same story, with slight variation, that one may hear at Castle Garden three days in the week.

“That’s tew bad, I swan,” said the Yankee. “I kinder like the looks on her, and if you’re a mind ter, jest tell her, stranger, that I’ll take her home with me, and my old mother will kinder jack her up till she gits on her pins agin.”

The proposition was presented to the girl, but her recent experience rendered her loth to accept the offices of strangers, and she persistently declined the proffered succor.

“Well, darn my buttons,” said the good-natured fellow, “I’m rale sorry for her. What in thunder’ll a poor critter like her dew in a big town like this, without friends and no money? Let’s see—” and he scratched his head and looked puzzled.

Meantime the clerk was urging her to either accept the Yankee’s offer or go to the German Retreat, but she seemed not inclined to do either, and this was explained to those standing by.

“I hope the gal ain’t afeard to trust me?” queried the New Englander.

“I presume she is,” said the clerk. “Women are full of prejudices against men, the world over—their mothers teach them to be so pretty early in life—and she has been given away once since she landed, and she don’t care for any encores.”

This was a poser for the Yankee—too much logic for his simple mind, and he looked doleful enough. Presently, however, his face lighted up, and he blushed like a girl, as he said:

“Wall, naow, I don’t calerlate as I’m a pertickelarly uncommon hansum chap, but, if you want ter, tell her I’ll take her home to mother, up on Fifty-ninth Street, and see that she gits good fodder and tending, and—and—”

He stopped there and twirled his hat, which he had taken off, over and over, and looked at it bashfully. Then he abruptly added: