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.  For five days and five nights I have watched, and his bloodshot eye has not closed, no, not for a moment, from its horrible task of gazing on the dead face of the father that cursed him.  He sleeps now, if sleep it can be called, that is rather the torpor of exhaustion; but his rest is taken on that father’s death-bed.  Oh! young man, feel for me!  Do your task in such a manner, that my wretched boy may not awake till it is over, and the blessing of the widow be on you for ever!’ To this strange prayer I could only offer a solemn assurance that I would do my utmost to obey her; and with slow creeping steps we ascended the narrow stairs which led to the chamber of death.  It was a dark, wretched-looking, ill-furnished room, and a drizzling November rain pattered unceasingly at the latticed window, which was shaken from time to time by the fitful gusts of a moaning wind.  A damp chillness pervaded the atmosphere, and rotted the falling paper from the walls; and, as I looked towards the hearth, (for there was no grate,) I felt painfully convinced that the old man had died without the common comforts his situation imperiously demanded.  The white-washed sides of the narrow fire-place were encrusted with a green damp, and the chimney-vent was stuffed with straw and fragments of old carpet, to prevent the cold wind from whistling through the aperture.  The common expression, ‘He has seen better days,’ never so forcibly occurred to me as at that moment.  He had seen better days:  he had toiled cheerfully through the day, and sat down to a comfortable evening meal.  The wine-cup had gone round; and the voice of laughter had been heard at his table for many a year, and yet