Some such boons as these were the best which Fortune allotted to poor

little Amelia. Her life, begun not unprosperously, had come down to

this--to a mean prison and a long, ignoble bondage. Little George

visited her captivity sometimes and consoled it with feeble gleams of

encouragement. Russell Square was the boundary of her prison: she

might walk thither occasionally, but was always back to sleep in her

cell at night; to perform cheerless duties; to watch by thankless

sick-beds; to suffer the harassment and tyranny of querulous

disappointed old age. How many thousands of people are there, women

for the most part, who are doomed to endure this long slavery?--who are

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hospital nurses without wages--sisters of Charity, if you like, without

the romance and the sentiment of sacrifice--who strive, fast, watch,

and suffer, unpitied, and fade away ignobly and unknown.

The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the destinies of mankind

is pleased so to humiliate and cast down the tender, good, and wise,

and to set up the selfish, the foolish, or the wicked. Oh, be humble,

my brother, in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less

lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you to be

scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may

be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity

is very likely a satire.

They buried Amelia's mother in the churchyard at Brompton, upon just

such a rainy, dark day as Amelia recollected when first she had been

there to marry George. Her little boy sat by her side in pompous new

sables. She remembered the old pew-woman and clerk. Her thoughts were

away in other times as the parson read. But that she held George's hand

in her own, perhaps she would have liked to change places with....

Then, as usual, she felt ashamed of her selfish thoughts and prayed

inwardly to be strengthened to do her duty.

So she determined with all her might and strength to try and make her

old father happy. She slaved, toiled, patched, and mended, sang and

played backgammon, read out the newspaper, cooked dishes, for old

Sedley, walked him out sedulously into Kensington Gardens or the

Brompton Lanes, listened to his stories with untiring smiles and

affectionate hypocrisy, or sat musing by his side and communing with

her own thoughts and reminiscences, as the old man, feeble and

querulous, sunned himself on the garden benches and prattled about his

wrongs or his sorrows. What sad, unsatisfactory thoughts those of the

widow were! The children running up and down the slopes and broad

paths in the gardens reminded her of George, who was taken from her;

the first George was taken from her; her selfish, guilty love, in both

instances, had been rebuked and bitterly chastised. She strove to think

it was right that she should be so punished. She was such a miserable

wicked sinner. She was quite alone in the world.




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