hildren. I accounted for
it partly by their nerveless, unstrung state of body, incapable of the
quick thrills of delight and fear which play upon the lively harp-strings
of a healthy child's nature, and partly by their woful lack of
acquaintance with a private home, and their being therefore destitute of
the sweet homebred shyness, which is like the sanctity of heaven about a
mother-petted child. Their condition was like that of chickens hatched in
an oven, and growing up without the especial guardianship of a matron-hen:
both the chicken and the child, methinks, must needs want something that
is essential to their respective characters.

In this chamber (which was spacious, containing a large number of beds)
there was a clear fire burning on the hearth, as in all the other occupied
rooms; and directly in front of the blaze sat a woman holding a baby,
which, beyond all reach of comparison, was the most horrible object that
ever afflicted my sight. Days afterwards--nay, even now, when I bring it
up vividly before my mind's eye--it seemed to lie upon the floor of my
heart, polluting my moral being with the sense of something grievously
amiss in the entire conditions of humanity. The holiest man could not be
otherwise than full of wickedness, the chastest virgin seemed impure, in a
world where such a babe was possible. The governor whispered me, apart,
that, like nearly all the rest of them, it was the child of unhealthy
parents. Ah, yes! There was the mischief. This spectral infant, a hideous
mockery of the visible link which Love creates between man and woman, was
born of disease and sin. Diseased Sin was its father, and Sinful Disease
its mother, and their offspring lay in the woman's arms like a nursing
Pestilence, which, could it live to grow up, would make the world a more
accursed abode than ever heretofore. Thank Heaven, it could not live! This
baby, if we must give it that sweet name, seemed to be three or four
months old, but, being such an unthrifty changeling, might have been
considerably older. It was all covered with blotches, and preternaturally
dark and discolored; it was withered away, quite shrunken and fleshless;
it breathed only amid pantings and gaspings, and moaned painfully at every
gasp. The only comfort in reference to it was the evident impossibility of
its surviving to draw many more of those miserable, moaning breaths; and
it would have been infinitely less heart-depressing to see it die, right
b