method of putting whole communities of citizens into the stocks at once.  All, feet warmers, pie-eaters, and those who sit in the red-velvet stocks, wear so exactly the same expression of vacuity and fatigue that they might almost be taken for one gigantic and unhappy family connection, on its way to what is called in newspapers “a sad event.”  The only wonder is that this stiffened, desiccated crowd retains vitality enough to remember the hours at which its several trains depart, and to rise up and shake itself alive and go on board.  One is haunted sometimes by the fancy that some day, when the air in the room is unusually bad and the trains are delayed, a curious phenomenon will be seen.  The petrifaction will be carried a little farther than usual, and, when the bell rings and the official calls out, “Train made up for Babel, Hinnom, and way stations?” no women will come forth from the “Ladies’ Room,” no eye will move, no muscle will stir.  Husbands and brothers will wait and search vainly for those who should have met them at the station, with bundles of the day’s shopping to be carried out; homes will be desolate; and the history of rare fossils and petrifactions will have a novel addition.  Or, again, that, if some sudden convulsion of Nature, like those which before now have buried wicked cities and the dwellers in them, were to-day to swallow up the great city of New Sodom in America, and keep it under ground for a few thousand years, nothing in all its circuit would so puzzle the learned archaeologists of A.D. 5873 as the position of the skeletons in these same waiting-rooms of railway stations.

Thinking such thoughts as these, sinking slowly and surely to the level of the place, I waited, on this bleak, rainy day, in just such a “Ladies’ Room” as I have described.  I sat in the red-velvet stocks, with my eyes fixed on the floor.

“Please, ma’am, won’t you buy a basket?” said a cheery little voice.  So near me, without my knowing it, had the little tradesman come that I was as startled as if the voice had spoken out of the air just above my head.

He was a sturdy little fellow, ten years old, Irish, dirty, ragged; but he had honest, kind gray eyes, and a smile which ought to have sold more baskets than he could carry.  A few kind words unsealed the fountain of his childish confidences.  There were four children younger than he; the mother took in washing, and the father, who was a cripple from rheumatism, made these baskets, which he carried about to sell.

“Where do you sell the most?”

“Round the depots.  That’s the best place.”

“But the baskets are rather clumsy to carry.  Almost everybody has his hands full, when he sets out on a journey.”

“Yis’m; but mostly they doesn’t take the baskets.  But they gives me a little change,” said he, with a smile; half roguish, half sad.

I watched him on in his pathetic pilgrimage round that dreary room, seeking help from that dreary circle of women.