"Why were ye afraid?" A dignified Hope, therefore--even
now, when we cower beneath this worldwide shadow of the wings of the
Condor of Death--becomes us: and, indeed, we see such an attitude among
some of the humblest of our people, from whose heart ascends the cry:
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Here, therefore, O Lord! O
Lord, look down, and save!

'But even as we thus write of hope, Reason, if we would hear her,
whispers us "fool": and inclement is the sky of earth. No more ships can
New York Harbour contain, and whereas among us men die weekly of
privations by the hundred thousand, yonder across the sea they perish by
the million: for where the rich are pinched, how can the poor live?
Already 700 out of the 1000 millions of our race have perished, and the
empires of civilisation have crumbled like sand-castles in a horror of
anarchy. Thousands upon thousands of unburied dead, anticipating the
more deliberate doom that comes and smokes, and rides and comes and
comes, and does not fail, encumber the streets of London, Manchester,
Liverpool. The guides of the nation have fled; the father stabs his
child, and the wife her husband, for a morsel of food; the fields lie
waste; wanton crowds carouse in our churches, universities, palaces,
banks and hospitals; we understand that late last night three
territorial regiments, the Munster Fusiliers, and the Lotian and East
Lancashire Regiments, riotously disbanded themselves, shooting two
officers; infectious diseases, as we all know, have spread beyond limit;
in several towns the police seem to have disappeared, and, in nearly
all, every vestige of decency; the results following upon the sudden
release of the convicts appear to be monstrous in the respective
districts; and within three short months Hell seems to have acquired
this entire planet, sending forth Horror, like a rabid wolf, and
Despair, like a disastrous sky, to devour and confound her. Hear,
therefore, O Lord, and forgive our iniquities! O Lord, we beseech Thee!
Look down, O Lord, and spare!'

* * * * *

When I had read this, and the rest of the paper, which had one whole
sheet-side blank, I sat a long hour there, eyeing a little patch of the
purple ash on a waxed board near the corner where the girl sat with her
time-pieces, so useless in her Eternity; and there was not a feeling in
me, except a pricking of curiosity, which afterwards became morbid and
ravenous, to k