Charitably Inclined

While a benevolenUookmg oíd gentleman was waiting for a car, a giil a.ed about ten years. carrying a small Un bucket in her hand and crying bitterly, approached him and wailed : 'I lo ost my te-en cents down the cra-ack." "Don't cry, my dear," said the oíd gentleman ; "here is another ten cents ; go and do your errand." The i ld gentleman turned around the córner afterperformingthis benevolent act, and no sooner had he done so than the gni set up a freah yell, ran towarda an approaehing newspaper man and cried out: "I lo O3t my te-en cents down the cra-ack." "Which crack?" asked the wary newspaperman, rememberng astory recently pubiished in a New York paper about a little boy losing a dime in a crack in the sidewalk regularly at the approach of a passer. "Down the cra-ack," repeated the little hussy. The newspapsr man cxamined the side-walk for a space of twenty feet each way from the point at which Uie girl liad accosted him. There was not a crack into which a dime could have dropped. "I am sorry, little girl," he said, "but you must go home and get another ten ceutB from your mother." "I lost my ten cents dowu the er - Just then the ld gentleman turned the corner. "Lost another ten cents down the crack, did ye; ye little rapscallion ?" he said in a rage, shaking his stick at the culprit. The girl ran away around the corner into an alley, and while the old gentleman was discousring to the newspaper man on the total depravity, the girl, accoinpained by an old Italian hag, peered around the corner from the alley. "There she is, there she is again," said the old man, "and withher the old she-fox that put her up tp it," and he raised his cane and started for the alley ; but just then the car carne along and he boarded it, declarlng that the pólice ought to be informed of this miserable swindle on the charitably inelined.