The following touching incident which drew tears from my eyes, was related
to me a short time since, by a dear friend who had it from an eyewitness
of the same. It occurred in the great city of New York, on one of the
coldest days in February.
A little boy about ten years old was standing before a shoe-store in
Broadway barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering with cold.
A lady riding up the street in a beautiful carriage, drawn by horses
finely caparisoned, observed the little fellow in his forlorn condition
and immediately ordered the driver to draw up and stop in front of the
store. The lady richly dressed in silk, alighted from her carriage, went
quickly to the boy, and said:
"My little fellow why are you looking so earnestly in that window?"
"I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes," was the reply. The lady
took him by the hand and went into the store, and asked the proprietor
if he would allow one of his clerks to go and buy half a dozen pairs of
stockings for the boy. He readily assented. She then asked him if he
could give her a basin of water and a towel, and he replied: "Certainly,"
and quickly brought them to her.
She took the little fellow to the back part of the store, and, removing
her gloves knelt down, washed those little feet and dried them with the
towel.
[Illustration]
By this time the young man had returned with the stockings. Placing a
pair upon his feet, she purchased and gave him a pair of shoes, and tying
up the remaining pairs of stockings, gave them to him, and patting him
on the head said: "I hope my little fellow, that you now feel more comfo
rtable."
As she turned to go, the astonished lad caught her hand, and looking up
in her face, with tears in his eyes answered her question with these
words: "Are you God's wife?"
--_Parish Register_