Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/279

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ETHEL CHURCHILL.
277

every-day use, and there was one whole line of little children's frocks; moreover, in one corner appeared, piled up, a large heap of blankets.

There is something fearfully wrong in what we call our highly civilized state of society, when poverty can be permitted to take the ghastly shapes of suffering that it does. It is enough, if we did but think, to make the heart sick, when we know the misery, the abject misery, which surrounds us in this vast city; and we might tremble to consider how much might be prevented—prevented both by individual and by general exertion. We are seated, perhaps leaning, in an easy chair, out feet on the fender, doing nothing or some light work, which is only an amusement; our meals have gratified not only hunger, but taste; we are under the pressure of not one single want; and yet, within an hundred yards from our door, there is a wretch dying of cold and hunger!

No one can deny the wide and ready benevolence which prevails in our country; but