like dogs!"

Alarmed by some indistinct noise, Jemima rose hastily to listen, and
Maria, turning to Darnford, said, "I have indeed been shocked beyond
expression when I have met a pauper's funeral. A coffin carried on the
shoulders of three or four ill-looking wretches, whom the imagination
might easily convert into a band of assassins, hastening to conceal the
corpse, and quarrelling about the prey on their way. I know it is of
little consequence how we are consigned to the earth; but I am led by
this brutal insensibility, to what even the animal creation appears
forcibly to feel, to advert to the wretched, deserted manner in which
they died."

"True," rejoined Darnford, "and, till the rich will give more than a part
of their wealth, till they will give time and attention to the wants of
the distressed, never let them boast of charity. Let them open their
hearts, and not their purses, and employ their minds in the service, if
they are really actuated by humanity; or charitable institutions will
always be the prey of the lowest order of knaves."

Jemima returning, seemed in haste to finish her tale. "The overseer
farmed the poor of different parishes, and out of the bowels of poverty
was wrung the money with which he purchased this dwelling, as a private
receptacle for madness. He had been a keeper at a house of the same
description, and conceived that he could make money much more readily in
his old occupation. He is a shrewd--shall I say it?--villain. He observed
something resolute in my manner, and offered to take me with him, and
instruct me how to treat the disturbed minds he meant to intrust to my
care. The offer of forty pounds a year, and to quit a workhouse, was not
to be despised, though the condition of shutting my eyes and hardening my
heart was annexed to it.

"I agreed to accompany him; and four years have I been attendant on many
wretches, and"--she lowered her voice,--"the witness of many enormities.
In solitude my mind seemed to recover its force, and many of the
sentiments which I imbibed in the only tolerable period of my life,
returned with their full force. Still what should induce me to be the
champion for suffering humanity?--Who ever risked any thing for me?--Who
ever acknowledged me to be a fellow-creature?"--

Maria took her hand, and Jemima, more overcome by kindness than she had
ever been by cruelty, hastened out of the room to conceal her emotions.

Darnford soon after heard his summon