University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

THE ORPHANS.

—J. Browne.

The next day the remains of the poor
widow were committed to the earth, and the

last duties performed by the charitable woman
to her friend. To one in her situation
this was a heavy expense. She knew that
by bringing to her board the orphans, she
must toil late and early to gain the means of
living. She knew that her scanty means
scarcely now enabled her to provide for her
own two little ones, and that it would be
long ere she could expect assistance from
their labors. But Mrs. Martin's was not a
mind to quail; she had not spoken hastily,
nor without thought, when she had so solemnly
promised her dying friend; she saw
the difficulties of her situation, but should
she desert the helpless orphans in their sore
need,—should she let them be cast forth to
the cold mercy of the world, while a grain
of meal was in her barrel, or a drop of oil
in her cruse? No! she resolved that her
own children should suffer before she should
neglect the holy trust committed to her.

“And they will not suffer,” she said in
her heart; “the God of the orphan and the
fatherless will assist me, and enable me to
perform my duty to the children of my
friend.”

There are many in the wide world like
Mrs. Martin. But they are not found among
the prosperous and wealthy; they move not
in the glare of fashion, and in the gardens of
luxury. No, they must be sought where
they are—in the lowly abodes of poverty—
among those who earn by the sweat of the
brow, a hard fare and a harder pillow—among
those whose love and charity are not blazoned
forth in the eyes of the world, but whose
deeds are written with the pens of angels, on
the imperishable records of heaven.

Mrs. Martin was a hard-working woman.
She went daily forth to her duties, and
scarcely earned, with all her industry, a subsistence
for herself and children. But her
heart was a kind and cheerful one, and
whether bending over the wash-tub, or sitting
in the evening at her quiet fireside,
with her children around her, she was still
the same loving, unrepining creature, with a
wish to do more good than her means would
ever admit of. Mrs. Martin's husband, formerly
a pilot, had been lost in the terrible
storm of 1816, and she had been left, with
her two children, to procure a subsistence by
the daily and laborious occupation of a
washerwoman.

A few months passed, and the orphan
children had become reconciled to their new
home, and ceased to miss the kind voice
and look of their own dear parent. Mrs.
Martin was, as she had promised, a mother,
and more than a mother, to them; when she
returned from her labors, and brought some
little nick-nack to please the taste of children,
the little strangers were always sure to
have their share; and so solicitous was the
good woman lest her natural affection might
cause injustice, that the largest portion was
often that of the orphans. Before the death
of their mother, they had been constant in
their attendance at the public school, and
there still were they sent. And it would
have joyed the heart of an angel to witness
the pleasure that sparkled in the eyes of the
good Mrs. Martin, when at evening they
came around her and told her of the progress
they had made. Her own children were too
young to attend school, and it was the joy
of the orphan boy, Henry Fowler, to teach
them in the evening what he had learned
during the day. And his sister, though
scarcely nine years old, had already learned
to take care of the youngest child—a bright
little fellow of four years old—to make the
fire, sweep the room, and the thousand little
offices performed the more cheerfully, because
not required.