"Why shines the sun except that he Makes gloomy nooks for grief to
hide? And pensive shades for melancholy When all the earth is bright
beside?"
The words seemed written on the dingy house-tops before me, and borne
on the gusty breeze that wafted noxious odors far and wide. My heart
turned sick, and yet this was what I had come out to see. I could not
have gone away from a lively city like this, where towers and steeples
of lofty and majestic buildings reared themselves in proud beauty
towards heaven, without having also looked on the picture's gloomy
side. Where so much wealth and fashion and finery dazzled the casual
eye, there must, said I, be also 'poverty, hunger and dirt,' and were
my words not fully verified now?
I have been warned more than once of the danger of going unattended
along these haunts of misery and vice, but whether or not it is
because my motive is one of pure philanthropy, and my sentiments
exclusively sympathetic I do not know, I have, however, escaped up to
this without interference from the lowly inhabitants of these obscure
corners, and can vouch for the latent gallantry of many a ragged hero,
who restored a fallen umbrella or parcel with as much courtesy as his
brother clad in broadcloth ever showed me.
That human mind which feasts exclusively upon the dainty morsels of
life is only half educated, though there are grand fragments of
knowledge and experience to be gathered among the haunts of high art,
and where stand the immortal monuments of power and fame, though the
heart may swell with a just enthusiasm at sight of the marvels which
have risen out of gold piles, the coffers of nations or individuals, I
hold that all the majesty of the best-spent wealth has not power to
awaken such a depth of feeling in the human breast as one of these
tottering huts with its mouldy walls and mud-spattered window-panes,
the "Home Sweet Home" of flesh and blood as real and as sensitive as
our pampered own.
Pages:
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182