owe a debt of love to one another, because
there is no other method of paying the debt of love and care which all of
us owe to Providence. You will hardly believe what I am going to tell you.
These naughty people taught their children to be no better than
themselves, and used to clap their hands, by way of encouragement, when
they saw the little boys and girls run after some poor stranger, shouting
at his heels, and pelting him with stones. They kept large and fierce
dogs, and whenever a traveler ventured to show himself in the village
street, this pack of disagreeable curs scampered to meet him, barking,
snarling, and showing their teeth. Then they would seize him by his leg,
or by his clothes, just as it happened; and if he were ragged when he
came, he was generally a pitiable object before he had time to run away.
This was a very terrible thing to poor travelers, as you may suppose,
especially when they chanced to be sick, or feeble, or lame, or old. Such
persons (if they once knew how badly these unkind people, and their unkind
children and curs, were in the habit of behaving) would go miles and miles
out of their way, rather than try to pass through the village again.

What made the matter seem worse, if possible, was that when rich persons
came in their chariots, or riding on beautiful horses, with their servants
in rich liveries attending on them, nobody could be more civil and
obsequious than the inhabitants of the village. They would take off their
hats, and make the humblest bows you ever saw. If the children were rude,
they were pretty certain to get their ears boxed; and as for the dogs, if
a single cur in the pack presumed to yelp, his master instantly beat him
with a club, and tied him up without any supper. This would have been all
very well, only it proved that the villagers cared much about the money
that a stranger had in his pocket, and nothing whatever for the human
soul, which lives equally in the beggar and the prince.

So now you can understand why old Philemon spoke so sorrowfully, when he
heard the shouts of the children and the barking of the dogs, at the
farther extremity of the village street. There was a confused din, which
lasted a good while, and seemed to pass quite through the breadth of the
valley.

"I never heard the dogs so loud!" observed the good old man.

"Nor the children so rude!" answered his good old wife.

They sat shaking their heads, one to the other, while the noise cam