calamities draw forth the remembrances of him she has
lost, with such vividness that his past virtues are added to her
present sufferings; and his manly love as a husband--his tenderness as
a parent--his protecting hand and ever kind heart, crush her solitary
spirit by their memory, and drag it down to the utmost depths of
affliction. Oh! bitter reflection!--"if her Owen wore now alive, and
in health, she would not be here; but God took him to Himself, and now
unless he--the miser--has compassion on her, she and her children--her
Owen's children--must lie down and die! If it were not for their sakes,
poor darlings, she would I wish to follow him out of such a world; but
now she and the Almighty are all that they have to look to, blessed be
His name!"

Others there were whose presence showed; how far the general destitution
had gone into the heart of society, and visited many whose circumstances
had been looked upon as beyond its reach. The decent farmer, for
instance, whom no one had suspected of distress, made his appearance
among them with an air of cheerfulness that was put on to baffle
suspicion. Sometimes he laughed as if his heart were light, and again
expressed a kind of condescending sympathy with some poor person or
other, to whom he spoke kindly, as a man would do who knew nothing
personally of the distress which he saw about him, but who wished to
encourage those who did with the cheering hope that it must soon pass
away. Then affecting the easy manner of one who was interesting himself
for another person, he asked to have some private conversation with the
usurer, to whom he communicated the immediate want that pressed upon him
and his family.

It is impossible, however, to describe the various aspects and claims of
misery which presented themselves at Skinadre's house. The poor
people flitted to and fro silently and dejectedly, wasted, feeble, and
sickly--sometimes in small groups of twos and threes, and sometimes a
solitary individual might be seen hastening with earnest but languid
speed, as if the life of some dear child or beloved parent, of a husband
or wife, or perhaps, the lives of a whole farcify, depended upon his or
her arrival with food.

CHAPTER VII. -- A Panorama of Misery.

Skinadre, thin and mealy, with his coat off, but wearing a waistcoat to
which were attached flannel sleeves, was busily engaged in his agreeable
task of administering to their necessities. Such was his smoothne