But
she would quickly set him down, and hiding her face in her shawl,
give vent to the tears that blinded her; for no expression of
interest or amusement lighted up his thin and sickly face. His
recollections were few enough, but they were all of one kind--all
connected with the poverty and misery of his parents. Hour after
hour had he sat on his mother's knee, and with childish sympathy
watched the tears that stole down her face, and then crept quietly
away into some dark corner, and sobbed himself to sleep. The
hard realities of the world, with many of its worst privations--
hunger and thirst, and cold and want--had all come home to
him, from the first dawnings of reason; and though the form of
childhood was there, its light heart, its merry laugh, and sparkling
eyes were wanting.
'The father and mother looked on upon this, and upon each
other, with thoughts of agony they dared not breathe in words.
The healthy, strong-made man, who could have borne almost any
fatigue of active exertion, was wasting beneath the close confinement
and unhealthy atmosphere of a crowded prison. The slight and delicate
woman was sinking beneath the combined effects of bodily and mental
illness.
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