Excelsior.
THE POOR CONSUMPTIVE.
A COLPORTEUR SKETCH.
“Is this the place where a princess dwells,
A favored daughter of the King of kings?
Within their humble and contracted cells,
Do heavenly spirits wave their guardian wings?”
Stretched on a bed of painful sickness there lay a woman in the last stages of consumption. Pale-faced poverty was an inmate of the hovel in which she dwelt. The broken panes of glass, the bare floor, the large cracks in the wall, the scanty covering, carefully thrown over the bed, all plainly bespoke the absence of the very necessaries of life. As I entered the door, my heart throbbed hurriedly when my eyes caught the destitution, the misery, the wretchedness, which surrounded me. Several children, from six to fourteen years of age, were in the room—some of them lying together on the floor, others seated on the remnant of a chair, while one little fellow, with matted hair and unwashed face, scowled at me from behind a door, as if he thought me an unwelcome visitor. The children had evidently been long neglected. No voice of love had often fallen on their ears; no smile of affection had cheered their loneliness. Their lives had been made up with scenes of want and wretchedness. Their minds were like gardens all overgrown with noxious weeds. But few seeds of truth had been sown in their little hearts by the hand of kindness, and their little voices had never sung the sweet notes of “Happy Day,” or “The Sabbath-school.”