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ONLY A PAUPER.
Over the stony street of the great city the iron-shod car rattled
onward, bearing the rude, hastily-constructed hearse.
The coffin was narrow, and rather short, and the sexton's lip
curled slightly, as, in answer to our half-whispered inquiry, he
muttered, “Only a pauper!” The form within was very slight
and fair, the features delicate and purely classical in their outline,
the mouth like a frozen rosebud, and forth from the coarse
cap had strayed one long, sunny curl, which fond hands long ago
must have nurtured carefully.
But there was no funeral train to go to the pauper burial; only
the sullen hearse-driver and the two bearers, with the brutal,
stupid leer on their coarse faces.
No long array of coaches wheeled along in stately grandeur,
with the black plumes nodding their solemn mockery over the
horses' heads!
There was no silver plate, or sculptured marble, on which to
write out the sanctified lies of an epitaph; no parson to say his
prayer, or clerk to breathe amens, as they lowered the dead
woman to her nameless grave. Therefore the sexton's lip curled;
therefore he answered me, “Only a pauper!”
Was this, indeed, all? Had life for her no deeper destiny?
Were there no eyes which brightened at the light in her own, no
broad breast where her head might lean, no child's voice to call
hand parted the sunshine of her flowing curls? O, yes! Once
a sweet country home had echoed back her laugh, a deep voice
had whispered lovingly in her ear, and her sleep had grown sweet
with a small head pillowed on her bosom. But father and
mother had long lain sleeping; the sod had grown over his broad
breast; and, for the child, the gaunt, half-famished thing was
whipped for crying, and told it was no use for her to go to the
pauper funeral.
As for souls, does anybody know whether paupers have such
an article? Hers must have been safe enough; or, if it were not,
who cared? — she was only a pauper!
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