he sick or starving survivors.

That, indeed, was the trying and melancholy period in which all
the lingering traces of self-respect--all recollection of former
independence--all sense of modesty was cast to the winds. Under the
terrible pressure of the complex destitution which prevailed, everything
like shame was forgotten, and it was well known that whole families, who
had hitherto been respectable and independent, were precipitated, almost
at once, into all the common cant of importunity and clamor during this
frightful struggle between life and death. Of the truth of this, the
scenes which took place at the public Soup Shops, and other appointed
places of relief, afforded melancholy proof. Here were wild crowds,
ragged, sickly, and wasted away to skin and bone, struggling for the
dole of charity, like so many hungry vultures about the remnant of some
carcase which they were tearing, amid noise, and screams, and strife,
into very shreds; for, as we have said, all sense of becoming restraint
and shame was now abandoned, and the timid girl, or modest mother of
a family, or decent farmer, goaded by the same wild and tyrannical
cravings, urged their claims with as much turbulent solicitation and
outcry, as if they had been trained, since their very infancy, to all
the forms of impudent cant and imposture.

This, our readers will admit, was a most deplorable state of things;
but, unfortunately, we cannot limit the truth of our descriptions to the
scenes we have just attempted to portray. The misery which prevailed, as
it had more than one source, so had it more than one aspect. There were,
in the first place, studded over the country, a vast number of strong
farmers with bursting granaries and immense haggards, who, without
coming under the odious denomination of misers or mealmongers, are in
the habit of keeping up their provisions, in large quantities, because
they can afford to do so, until a year of scarcity arrives, when they
draw upon their stock precisely when famine and prices are both at their
highest. In addition to these, there was another still viler class; we
mean the hard-hearted and well known misers--men who, at every time, and
in every season, prey upon the distress and destitution of the poor,
and who can never look upon a promising spring or an abundant harvest,
without an inward sense of ingratitude against God for his goodness,
or upon a season of drought, or a failing crop, unless with a thankful
f