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We speak of the poor-house that is made such by the hammer of the auctioneer. Paupers at the North, in public town-meeting of freemen, religious men, intelligent men, the husbands of delicate and refined lady-wives, the fathers of promising and gifted sons and daughters, men in business, men in office, men who read and think and pray, do sell their old poor and infirm fellow-citizens, BECAUSE THEY ARE POOR AND HELPLESS! TO THE LOWEST BIDDER! They sell them for so much a year -- and repeat the sale at the end of the time for another year -- growing no wiser, more thoughtful or merciful by the lapse of time, or the workings of the system. While slaves are sold, even the aged and infirm, to the highest bidder, as are cattle, horses, lands, goods, stocks -- these, the paupers, being destitute of value and having only souls, not bodies tit for toil or pleasure, are cast aside as useless, mere excrements on the great body of society, valuable only as they perish and so make room for others!

The work-houses, the colored homes, the orphan asylums, the lunatic asylums, the penitentiaries are places for the recovery of some and of hopeful labor in respect of most; or else they are the charity of the public and of individuals to relieve such as have some claim on them for the exercise of benevolence, distinct from that of mere pauperism. The hospital is not the poor-house. The alms-house is, in some sense, the modern improvement of the poor-house -- it is one form of improvement, and is peculiarly adapted to populous towns and cities. It is not always well conducted. But where this is not appropriate, there should be either a county farm, or town farm, with ample accommodations for healthful exercise, and opportunity for such and so much labor, as individual cases may require, with every degree of care to secure clean and well ventilated apartments for every person in the establishment, correct associations and familiarities; securing to the aged women, and infirm or delicate, warm, pleasant rooms, with easy seats and car- pets and curtains and lights, bibles and other books; to the children proper care and instruction, and to all that proper food, which every one of us, gentle readers! would, under similar circumstances, desire. If, under this kind and reasonable care, the lives of the paupers were lengthened out some five or ten years, and so the town might fear that an additional expense would arise from so keeping them, it must be replied that in all cases, or nearly so, where this system has been adopted, the paupers have work on the farm and premises more than enough to support the institution, (4) and so the town has actually derive from it a surplus revenue. At the same time, it should be to us a joyful consideration that the paupers are in this way brought up from a state of humiliation and degradation once more to the rank of comfortable citizenship -- in effect no longer slaves, or worse than slaves, they are where the benevolence of Christianity can reach them -- where society no longer casts on them her dark shadow of neglect.

But where is the widow Dodge? She comes not. Poor Henrietta sits a long hour with the widow Prescott, and wonders why Mrs. Dodge is not at home. Jims says she is better off somewhere. Mrs. Rice thinks she has found some old relation who has opened her doors to give her winter quarters, and Bill thinks she is old enough to take care of herself. Mrs. Prescott thinks it would be a pity if anything should happen to her in her old age, and as she looks on the cold snows of February, shakes her head, and says -- "I fear I shall dream bad things of her."

"Now, Miss Prescott," said Mag Davis, "you're a believer in dreams, are you?"

"I believe in them! of course I do. Didn't the people of God in old times ' dream dreams'?"

"Perhaps they did," said Mag, "but dreams now-a-days seem to me of mighty little consequence."

"Don't all dreams come from the Lord?" inquired Mrs. Prescott.

"No, I don't believe they do. How should He have anything to do with making your dream a thing that never comes to pass, hey?"

"There ain't such dreams!" said Bill.

"There ain't many I guess," said Mrs. Prescott, a little bewildered.

"They are as thick as beef soup," said Mag.

"Well now, name one," said the old lady Rice.

"Oh, that's very easy," said Mag, "I dreamed the other night that all the paupers of Crampton were put into a grand house, with carpets on the floors, and curtains to the windows, and good changes of clothes furnished them, and as good a home as they ever had, and victuals and drink of the very best kind. Now that's an instance. Every one of you knows that the Lord never gave any body such a dream as that -- so perfectly impossible a thing!"

"The Lord -- no, indeed!" said Bill.

"Why not?" inquired Mrs. Prescott.

"Because it would be tantalizing his creatures, and tempting them, which the Lord never does."