Page:The Battle for Bread (1875).pdf/62

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HAVE no home. I am a mere renter. I am subject to another. In all this broad land, I have no home, not a foot of land. I only live by permission. And yet I have labored hard and long—toiled industriously and faithfully. O, that I could now, in the evening of my days, throw off this damnable burden of daily toil. But I cannot. I am too old to work; and yet I am too poor to live without."

Such was the language of one of the most honest, kind hearted of men; but who has felt "the iron of poverty enter his soul," notwithstanding, as he says, he has toiled hard and long. But in a world of such gross injustice and grinding greed, industry and honesty are no guarantee to securing a competence and a home.

"I have no home." Than this there is no expression that sounds more disconsolate—none that sinks deeper into the true man's heart. Shut out from the soil and the abundance thereof, not a rood they can possess, and without health to labor, their doom is fixed—their hope blighted and they must suffer. In the public highway they may breathe pure air, and drink from the cooling fountain, but the brook in the field, the green grove on the farm, the air that fans the leaves beyond the dusty