How often, too, have I seen the reverse of the
picture I have just drawn; when the pale unconscious corse has lain
abandoned in its loveliness, and grudging hands have scantily dealt out a
portion of their superfluity, to obtain the last rites for one who so
lately moved, spoke, smiled, and walked amongst them! And I have felt,
even then, that there were those to whom that neglected being had been far
more precious than heaps of gold, and I have mourned for them who perished
among strangers. One horrible scene has chased another from my mind
through a succession of years; and some of those which, perhaps, deeply
affected me at the time, are, by the mercy of Heaven, forgotten. But
enough remains to enable me to give a faint outline of the causes which
have changed me from what I was, to the gloomy joyless being I am at
length become. There is one scene indelibly impressed upon my memory."
A scene of domestic tragedy follows, which is wrought up with great effect:
"I was summoned late at night to the house of a respectable merchant, who
had been reduced, in a great measure, by the wilful extravagance of his
only son, from comparative wealth to ruin and distress. I was met by the
widow, on whose worn and weary face the calm of despair had settled. She
spoke to me for a few moments, and begged me to use dispatch and caution
in the exercise of my calling:--'for indeed,' said she, 'I have watched my
living son with a sorrow that has almost made me forget grief for the
departed.
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