 | This, that and the other |  |
POOR AND FRIENDLESS.
Gather up your dress! Closer! There, that is right. She
cannot hit so much as the hem of your robe, now, — the little
pauper!
How her thin frock clings to her shivering limbs! She has
bare feet, too; and the tangled elf-locks are peeping from
beneath the tattered hood.
What a sight she is, to be sure! You wonder poor people
will let their children go out in the street looking so indecently.
Hush! she is speaking to you: “Please, ma'am, for the love of
Heaven, give me a little bread for my poor old grandmother!”
O, you must preserve your dignity, young lady! It will
never do to be accosted by such persons in the street.
Tell her you are Col. Lofton's daughter; she must know you
have no time to spend with idle, worthless beggars. That's
right! She knows who you are now! You have preserved your
dignity admirably; no fear of her annoying you again.
There she goes, homeward. Now you notice it, she does walk
very gracefully. Those chilled limbs, which her poor robe reveals
so plainly, are chiselled like a model from the sculptor.
Those eyes, too, that she raised to your face, filled with the
mournful agony which we read sits in the fixed, settled gaze
of the drowning, agony that only comes to us when the life-waves
have surged away our last hope, — those dark, despair
THE FIRST KIND WORD.
[Description: 655EAF. Illustration page. Image of a wealthy man talking to a little girl on a street corner.]
that might have broken the heart of Paris, — but you said well,
she is a beggar! Poor in all things, save this ill-fated beauty,
which is a double woe to its possessor!
On she goes, down close, dirty streets, and now up, up, many
a flight of steps in that rickety old house.
Do you hear that sharp voice asking, “Hey, child, what you
got?” and the answer, — the fierce blows, and the low wail.
What wonder that she rushes down, down, and goes out weeping
into the cold, miserable streets? And now, for the first time,
she hears sweet words of kindness!
He is very handsome, that young gentleman who has paused
to speak to her. True, there is an expression of dissolute selfishness
around the ripe and well-cut lips; but the girl heeds it
not. They utter the first words of kindness she has heard in a
lifetime.
She was born in a fierce, dry storm. There was a high wind,
and dark clouds, and moans and sighings in the air; but no
gentle, pitying rain, falling like the quiet drops of a human
sorrow.
Wilder, wilder blew the gale, when the little pauper opened
her eyes on life; and they carried her dead mother out, and
buried her where the spot is fenced about for nameless pauper
graves, within the village church-yard.
Strange, is n't it, that the poor child's heart bounds at these
first words of love? Strange she should be so imprudent as to
go home with him who, for the first time, offers her fire, and
food, and shelter!
Strange, too, that she should look so much like a lady, — so
hair is braided up with jewels, and the slender figure draped in
silks and satin. But the vain man wearies at length of his
plaything.
He has taught her the lore of many a land, — the transcendentalism
of the Germans, the gay infidelity of France, — but
never once life's greatest lesson, “Thou, God, seest me!”
What wonder that she falls lower and lower, until, with a
still more haughty contempt, you gather up your jewelled robe,
and cross the side-walk to avoid the contamination of her presence!
True, Jesus said to such an one, in other days, “Go,
daughter, sin no more;” but you — O, you have a code of morals
a shade purer than the carpenter of Galilee!
But “there 's an hour that comes to all;” some time the
scenes of that first night may visit you, — there may be stains
upon your robe you will not care to see.
You put strange memories in my head;
Not thrice your branching limes have blown
Since I beheld the pauper dead!”
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