Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/261

Rh enlarged, and rebuilt—for a female with an infant, who had represented herself to me as a miserable mother, and into the truth of whose story I was anxious to inquire.

I had been into several of the lowest lodging-houses, and into the cellars of that nest of misery and guilty and was unsuccessful in finding the object I sought.

Only a few of these abodes of wretchedness remained unvisited, when I inquired after the poor woman I was seeking of a somewhat decently clothed woman, who rented one of them.

She was the weekly tenant of one of these houses, and told me that on the preceding night a poor woman, with a child wrapped up in a miserably torn shawl, had applied for a lodging at about eleven o'clock. It was raining hard, and the poor woman possessed only twopence, and the price of a bed in the cellar was at this house threepence. The poor woman went away, remarking that she must then go and pawn the remnant of the shawl that covered her infant. She went, but returned no more.

The ancient weekly tenant then thought it necessary to defend, or rather to explain, her own apparently cruel conduct. I told her that it was unnecessary, and that even in my inmost thoughts I had not cast a reproach upon her. I told her that, from my knowledge of the misery suffered by poor people, I could readily imagine circumstances which might fully explain her conduct.

Her heart, however, was too full, so I sat down and listened to her tale. She was a widow advanced in years, having no relatives, or even friends, to assist her in her old age. She was the weekly tenant of a small house in that villanous street, and was entirely supported by letting out every foot of floor which could be made available for a human being to