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- 2026-01-30T20:47:56.336Z
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- start_line
- 5902
- text
- together.
"William loves me this day as on the wedding-day, sir. Some hasty
words, but never a harsh one. I wish I were better and stronger for
his sake. And, oh! sir, both for his sake and mine" (and the soft,
blue, beautiful eyes turned into two well-springs), "how I wish little
William and Martha lived--it is so lonely-like now. William named after
him, and Martha for me."
When a companion's heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to
do nothing. I sat looking down on my as yet untasted pudding.
"You should have seen little William, sir. Such a bright, manly boy,
only six years old--cold, cold now!"
Plunging my spoon into the pudding, I forced some into my mouth to stop
it.
"And little Martha--Oh! sir, she was the beauty! Bitter, bitter! but
needs must be borne!"
The mouthful of pudding now touched my palate, and touched it with a
mouldy, briny taste. The rice, I knew, was of that damaged sort sold
cheap; and the salt from the last year's pork barrel.
"Ah, sir, if those little ones yet to enter the world were the same
little ones which so sadly have left it; returning friends, not
strangers, strangers, always strangers! Yet does a mother soon learn
to love them; for certain, sir, they come from where the others have
gone. Don't you believe that, sir? Yes, I know all good people must.
But, still, still--and I fear it is wicked, and very black-hearted,
too--still, strive how I may to cheer me with thinking of little
William and Martha in heaven, and with reading Dr. Doddridge
there--still, still does dark grief leak in, just like the rain through
our roof. I am left so lonesome now; day after day, all the day long,
dear William is gone; and all the damp day long grief drizzles and
drizzles down on my soul. But I pray to God to forgive me for this; and
for the rest, manage it as well as I may."
Bitter and mouldy is the "Poor Man's Pudding," groaned I to myself,
half choked with but one little mouthful of it, which would hardly go
down.
I could stay no longer to hear of sorrows for which the sincerest
sympathies could give no adequate relief; of a fond persuasion, to
which there could be furnished no further proof than already was had--a
persuasion, too, of that sort which much speaking is sure more or less
to mar; of causeless self-upbraidings, which no expostulations could
have dispelled, I offered no pay for hospitalities gratuitous and
honorable as those of a prince. I knew that such offerings would have
been more than declined; charity resented.
The native American poor never lose their delicacy or pride; hence,
though unreduced to the physical degradation of the European pauper,
they yet suffer more in mind than the poor of any other people in the
world. Those peculiar social sensibilities nourished by our peculiar
political principles, while they enhance the true dignity of a
prosperous American, do but minister to the added wretchedness of the
unfortunate; first, by prohibiting their acceptance of what little
random relief charity may offer; and, second, by furnishing them with
the keenest appreciation of the smarting distinction between their
ideal of universal equality and their grindstone experience of the
practical misery and infamy of poverty--a misery and infamy which is,
ever has been, and ever will be, precisely the same in India, England,
and America.
Under pretense that my journey called me forthwith, I bade the
dame good-by; shook her cold hand; looked my last into her blue,
resigned eye, and went out into the wet. But cheerless as it was,
and damp, damp, damp--the heavy atmosphere charged with all sorts
of incipiencies--I yet became conscious by the suddenness of the
contrast, that the house air I had quitted was laden down with that
peculiar deleterious quality, the height of which--insufferable to some
visitants--will be found in a poorhouse ward.
- title
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