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Sometimes, at the entrance of public buildings, you will notice a placard printed in large letters, "No peddlers allowed here." Well, I suppose they are oftentimes, a real nuisance; for I know some of these little street-peddlers are veritable "tramps," and often have a long story to tell that hasn't a word of truth in it.

I saw a little girl in the Post Office one day, hurrying along with a big basket on her arm that was covered over with an old blue cloth. She was munching away on a banana as if she wanted to get it out of sight as quickly as possible; and when I stepped up to buy something from her basket, she started suddenly, hung down her head, tucked the old cloth tightly over the fruit, and ran off -- out of the Post Office and down Water Street as fast as her feet could carry her.

It was very evident that the child had stolen her bananas, but when I thought of the wretched home she had come from, where her theft had, doubtless, been praised as "smartness," I felt more like pitying than blaming her. Poor little girl! What will become of her if she is left to grow up under such wicked influences!

"Please, sir, won't you buy a cake of soap?"

It is a very pitiful voice, and the gentleman looks up to see before him a forlorn little specimen of humanity with two cakes of soap in her hand.

"No, child, I don't want any to-day,"

"But please, sir, do buy one cake, mother's sick and father can't get any work. I haven't had a thing to eat since morning."

The gentleman keeps on writing, and the child keeps on whining.

"But I told you I didn't want any soap. Here! take this quarter and run off."

This is just what the child expected; those three cakes of soap, that she slid off the counter at the big store when no one was looking, she knows will last her all day, if she can only find the right persons to impose upon. For the child's story is all false; and had the gentleman just taken the trouble to inquire into the matter he would soon have found out the truth for himself. When he does know it he will probably say:

"They are all alike -- a thieving, lying set, the whole of them!"

But this is not so. There are, even among the poorest and most ignorant, those who are honest, truthful, and willing to work; but we must learn to seek them out; must go into the "highways and hedges" ourselves, and then we shall know just who do need and are really worthy of our help.

Some time ago, a little German girl came to a friend's house on Beacon Street and rang the bell. She had a basket on her arm and in the basket were trimming laces, pins, needles, sewing-silk and buttons.

Now, it happened the lady wanted some of these very articles, and so she told the servant to bring the little girl up to her room.

I don't think the child had ever seen so grand a house before. It seemed just like a dream to her, and she wondered if they were not stepping on real flowers as she followed the servant through the long halls and up the broad stairway. But if she had been "born to the purple," she couldn't have behaved in a prettier manner. Her neat dress, her gentle quiet ways, and her modest straight-forward replies to the lady's questions, showed, at once, how well she had been brought up. But my friend, although she was very much pleased and bought more of the little girl's wares than she actually wanted, was not satisfied until she had been to the child's home and proved the truth of her simple touching story. It was, as she thought, just as the little girl had said, and ever since then the poor struggling family have not wanted the help and encouragement of warm, true friends.

It is curious to notice what a variety of articles are peddled now-a-days upon the street. Here is a boy with sponges, another with tooth-picks, and still another with the "little Harry lamps." In one door- way stands a keen-eyed Jew with neck-ties and scarfpins to sell; in another, a man with rubber balls and funny toy spiders on an elastic string.

Here are the new-fashioned crimping pins -- "just a few more left, ladies!" -- and here are the "roly-poly dolls," and the reins with jingling bells. Tissue paper of all colors, plaster-paris images, books, chromos, imitation bronzes, eye-glasses, jewelry, oil paintings (so-called), and even live puppies, you will see offered for sale on our Boston streets. At the holiday season, why it actually seems as if all the stores were turning themselves inside out.

But the indefatigable peddlers do not stop here. In the depots, at the wharves, on the cars, anywhere and everywhere they are not actually forbidden and there is any possibility of selling their wares, you will be sure to find them.

Well! it is certainly better than begging, and in these days when it is so hard to get any kind of work it is oftentimes the only way that many have of earning a livelihood.

I know of a man whose helpless family is dependent upon charity, just because he is too proud to do menial work or anything like peddling. One of his children is a little invalid, and if it were not for kind friends who send the child many necessaries as well as delicacies I don't know how the family would get along. They live in a tenement house down by one of our large depots, and people coming into town have often noticed the pale sweet face at the window.