Page:Annalsoffaminein00nich.djvu/336

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330
ANNALS OF THE

tity of bread, that you should be willing to receive and eat—if you have never sent a starving one empty away, when you had it by you, because ease would be disturbed—if dinners and toasts have not drained any money that belonged to the poor, then "well done, good and faithful servant;" and if you have may you be forgiven, and never be left "to feel the hunger." My lot was to be once in a house where a sumptuous feast was held among this class of laborers, and that was in the midst of desolation and death. They "tarried," to speak modestly, "a little too long at the wine" that night, and drank toasts, which, if they honored the Queen, did little credit to men in their station, and in their responsible work. But I have seen and handled the "black bread" for months, and have told the story. I have seen many sent from the relief, on days of giving it out, without a mouthful, and have not a doubt but many died in consequence of this, when they should and might have been fed. Time will not allow of dwelling on these cases; but one which was vividly impressed, and particularly marked at the time, may serve as a specimen. Going out one cold day in a bleak waste on the coast, I met a pitiful old man in hunger and tatters, with a child on his back, almost entirely naked, and to appearance in the last stages of starvation; whether his naked legs had been scratched, or whether the cold had affected them I knew not, but the blood was in small streams in different places, and the sight was a horrid one. The old man was interrogated, why he took such an object into sight, upon the street, when he answered