Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/193

190 weather to study; see how the sun shines, grandfather, and the boys are all at play,' and away he goes." You may think me as garrulous as the old man to repeat all this to you, since I cannot send with it this lovely scene in twilight, harmonizing so well with the twilight of his closing life.

I inquired into the condition of the poor in this neighbourhood. He says their poverty is extreme. They live on potatoes and some black bread; on Sunday they have, for a family, half a pound of meat. A woman with three or four children to support has a florin a month allowed her. Begging is prohibited, but they must subsist on charity. Every hotel has a poors' box, of which the magistrate keeps the key, and comes each month to take out and distribute the travellers' alms. He says that, whenever a poor woman of the village lies in, she is supplied for fifteen days from their plentiful table. God bless their basket and their store!

left Braubach this morning. The old grandfather and that youngest grandchild, "a superb boy," truly, came to the shore with us, and we exchanged cordial good wishes at parting.

As we pushed off in our little boat and looked up to the precipitous shore, it seemed, even while we gazed on them, incredible that the vines should be reached for cultivation there, where they hung like a