The day went on, and went out, its short autumnal brightness quenched¹ in a chilly² fog. All along the Widdiehill, the gas was alight in the low-browed dingy³ shops. To the well-to-do citizen hastening home to the topmost business of the day, his dinner, these looked the abodes⁴ of unlovely poverty and mean struggle. Even to those behind their counters, in their back parlours, and in their rooms above, everything about them looked common, to most of them, save the owners, wearisome. But to yon pale-faced student, gliding⁵ in the glow of his red gown, through the grey mist back to his lodging⁶, and peeping in at every open door as he passes, they are so full of mystery, that gladly would he yield all he has gathered from books, for one genuine glance of insight into the vital movement of the hearts and households of which those open shops are the sole outward and visible signs. Each house is to him a nest of human birds, over which brood the eternal wings of love and purpose. Only such different birds are hatched from the same nest! And what a nest was then the city itself!—with its university, its schools, its churches, its hospitals, its missions; its homes, its lodging-houses, its hotels, its drinking shops, its houses viler⁷ still; its factories, its ships, its great steamers; and the same humanity busy in all!—here the sickly lady walking in the panoply⁸ of love unharmed through the horrors of vicious suffering; there the strong mother cursing her own child along half a street with an intensity⁹ and vileness¹⁰ of

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