Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/334

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326
PAUL CLIFFORD.

of such a public grievance?—"Clifford!" Who struggled for, and won such a popular benefit?—"Clifford!" In the gentler part of his projects and his undertakings, in that part, above all, which concerned the sick or the necessitous, this useful citizen was seconded, or rather excelled, by a being over whose surpassing loveliness Time seemed to have flown with a gentle and charmed wing. There was something remarkable and touching in the love which this couple (for the woman we refer to was Clifford's wife,) bore to each other; like the plant on the plains of Hebron, the time which brought to that love an additional strength, brought to it also a softer and a fresher verdure. Although their present neighbours were unacquainted with the events of their earlier life, previous to their settlement at ——, it was known that they had been wealthy at the time they first came to reside there, and that by a series of fatalities, they had lost all; but Clifford had borne up manfully against fortune, and in a new country, where men who prefer labour to dependence cannot easily starve, he had been enabled to toil upward through the severe stages of poverty and