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We do not now recollect what philosopher it was who said, “it’s no disgrace to be poor, but it’s often confoundedly unhandy!” But, we have little or no sympathy for poor folks, who, ashamed of their poverty, make as many and tortuous writhings to escape its inconveniences, as though it was “against the law” to be poor. It is the cause of incalculable human misery, to seem what we are not; to appear beyond want –yea, even in affluence and comfort, when the belly is robbed to clothe the back–the inner man crucified to make the outside lie you through the world, or into–genteel “society.” This, though abominable, is common, and leads to innumerable ups and downs, crime and fun, in this old world that we temporarily inhabit.

Choosing rather to give our life pictures a familiar and diverting–and certainly none the less instructive garb–than to hunt up misery, and depict the woeful tragics of our existence, we will give the facts of a case–not uncommon, we ween, either, that came to us from a friend of one of the parties.

In most cities–especially, perhaps, in Baltimore and Washington, are any quantity of decayed families; widows and orphans of men–who, while blessed with oxygen and hydrogen sufficient to keep them healthy and active–held offices, or such positions in the business world as enabled them and their families to carry pretty stiff necks, high heads, and go into what is called “good society;” meaning of course where good furniture garnishes good finished domiciles, good carpets, good rents, good dinners, and where good clothes are exhibited–but where good intentions, good manners and morals are mostly of no great importance. As, in most all such cases, when, by some fortuitous accident, the head of the family collapses, or dies,–the reckless regard for society having led to the squandering of the income, fast or faster than it came, the poor family is driven by the same society, so coveted, to hide away–move off, and by a thousand dodges of which wounded pride is capable, work their way through the world, under tissues of false pretences; at once ludicrous and pitiable. Such a family we have in view. Colonel Somebody held a lucrative office under government, in the city of Washington. Colonel Somebody, one day, very unexpectedly, died. There was nothing mysterious in that, but the Somebodies having always cut quite a swell in the “society” of the capital–which society, let us tell you, is of the most fluctuating, tin-foil and ephemeral character; it was by some considered strange, that as soon as Colonel Somebody had been decently buried in his grave, his family at once made a sale of their most expensive furniture–the horses, carriage, and man-servant disappeared, and the Somebodies apprized society that they were going north, to reside upon an estate of the Colonel’s in New York. And so they vanished. Whither they went or how they fared society did not know, and society did not care!

Mrs. Somebody had two daughters and a son, the eldest twenty-three, confessedly, and the youngest, the son, seventeen. Marriages, in such society, floating and changing as it does in Washington, are not frequent, and less happy or prosperous when effected; every body, inclined to become acquainted, or form matrimonial connections, are ever on the alert for something or somebody better than themselves; and under such circumstances, naturally enough, Miss Alice Somebody–though a pretty girl–talented, as the world goes, highly educated, too, as many hundreds beside her, was still a spinster at twenty-three. The fact was, Mrs. Somebody was a woman of experience in the world–indeed, a dozen years’ experience in life at Washington, had given her very definite ideas of expediency and diplomacy; and hence, as the means were cut off to live in their usual style and expensiveness–Mrs. Somebody packed up and retired to Baltimore. The son soon found an occupation in a store–the daughter, being a woman of taste and education, resorted to–as a matter of diversion –they could not think of earning a living, of course!–the needle–while Mrs. Somebody arranged a pair of neat apartments, for two “gentlemen of unexceptionable reference,” as boarders.