Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/85

 ocean of fresh air. In life they were forgotten, but now, as that mystic diorama moved forward, I saw that very scene in the grove, reproduced in every minute detail. There sat the courtezans—there walked I past them; and as she of the large blue eye looked up toward me, with a mute demand for one sympathetic glance—one kind word—only one kind word—I turned heedlessly away; and in doing so, I now saw that a wrong thing had taken place; for had I spoken kindly, they might have been saved from ruin, so far as the world is concerned—utter and complete. Then, when it was, alas! too late, I saw how very easily I might have melted and won the heart of the woman with the thin pale cheek, and she would have become a ministering spirit for good to many and many a lost and degraded one. I now saw her antecedents—a young girl, a tender, loving daughter—fair, beautiful and sensitive to the last degree. In her home misery reigned—no work for the father, no bread for her little sisters, a sick mother, and the storms of winter howling in the streets, and the cold wind, sleet-laden, searching for nooks and crannies, that it might freeze the little hands and make the pale lips blue. And then father took to drinking, and the pampered servants of the rich lordlings of the great city drove her with the large blue eye from their doors; and she was hungry, very hungry; and then the foul fiend tempted her to accept a handful of silver from—a male! for never do such things—things so infernal, so hideous, so ineffably mean—in exchange for her body! * * * * And so she sold it—again, and again, and again! Great God! she was obliged to sell it, or starve