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284 couldn't help it." Not in the least suspecting her integrity, the natural inquiry was, "Has the house been robbed?" Frankly, she replied, "No, but I have taken them; my children were starving with hunger; I found the trunk open, which a painter who went into the chamber opened, as I supposed. You had long been gone, it was uncertain when you would return, and I might and should redeem them in a few weeks, and they are all in the pawn." The cause and effect were both before me in a true light, and the question is left to mothers, how they might have acted in a case like this. She had heard me say that life was more valuable than property, and when that was in peril, property became the moral right of him who had tried every expedient to save life, but especially when the taking of it did not threaten the same condition of that in which he was placed. She had said, "I will never see my children die for bread; I will work, I will beg, and when neither will do, I would go and stand on that bridge (which was under the window), and if asking would not do, I would seize the first that my hands could wrench from any one passing." She had flung me back on my principles, by acting up to hers, and what could be said. She could have been transported; and the whole city, who knew the affair, and had never been hungry, neither entered into her starving case nor pitied me for my foolish forbearance. The rich landlady who had recommended her to me coolly said she would put her out of the house, and she did so; and I found poor Bridget in a miserable hovel, with no means