Opis: Righted at Last - Author Unknown

Excerpt from Righted at Last: A Novel

I was a waif cast up by the Dead Sea of poverty upon the town of Bradshaw, Connecticut. From my earliest memory I was "town poor," and lived with Granny Hunt in the Pond District, a portion of the town not remarkable for the respectability or sobriety of its inhabitants.

I do not know how the select-men could have put a little child to live with such a woman as Sally Hunt; they certainly would never have subjected one of their own children to the ordeal, but they were acting for the public interest, and I suppose the public conscience absolved them, all the more readily, because she offered to keep me for a shilling per week less than any one else. Moreover, she was known to be neat, economical, and industrious, a "regular driver;" she would early initiate me into these saving habits, and what more could a town pauper need or expect Why should I blame them

Are there not many there now who deem these the cardinal virtues, and make them cover a multitude of sins Then, I was an orphan, without a relative or friend in the world to care what did become of me, as the old woman often said.

Indeed, I remember no time when I was not made to feel that I had no business to be in the world, and I early became a sort of Ishmaelite, and gave back scorn for scorn, and hate for hate. I know now that I could have given love for love, for I made friends of all things without-doors; even the great turtles in the pond, I fancied, knew my voice, and when Ollie came - little Oliver Lee - I gave him my whole heart.

He was a pale, sickly boy, of ten, with great, sunken eyes, that looked like wells, and clubbed feet, turning inward, the scrofulous legacy which two formerly wealthy families had, through a long series of intermarriages, left to the town; and the town sent him to Granny Hunt, and paid her "nine shillings per week" for keeping him; at least, so she told our neighbor, Mrs. Smith; but I knew God sent him to be a good angel to me, for the taint touched only his physical system - a better, truer, more patient, loving soul, I have never seen. When blows and coarse abuse fell upon him, he did not swell with suppressed rage, or fire up with lightning-like anger and scorn, like me; he only shrunk a little, and pressed his pale lips together more closely. And in the summer evenings, when we were sent to our beds in the old kitchen-chamber, his bed occupying one end of the long, low, "lean-to" row, and mine the other, we would sit beneath the high, narrow window, still as mice, while he told me, in low whispers, why he bore this, and made me kneel by his side and say "Our Father" with him.

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Szczegóły: Righted at Last - Author Unknown

Nazwa: Righted at Last A Novel (Classic Reprint)
Autor: Author Unknown
Wydawnictwo: FB &c Ltd
Kod paskowy: 9781330118368
Języki: angielski
Ilość stron: 188
Format: 15.2x22.9cm
Oprawa: Miękka

Recenzje: Righted at Last - Author Unknown