The pen had fallen from his hand.
FOOD AT THE DOOR.
“DON’T FEED him, because others will be sure to come.”
The speaker was a handsome woman who sat at dinner with her husband in one of the beautiful homes of C. She was dressed in a rich garnet satin, with a bunch of yellow chrysanthemums at her throat, which accorded with the dark garnet leather of the carved furniture.
All had gone well with Mrs. Heatherstone. Her husband, with hair prematurely gray from his hard financial struggles, had become rich, and his wife and only son were spending the money in fine clothes and stylish equipages.
A servant had just come in to say that an old man was at the door who had had nothing to eat all day, and to ask if she should give him a supper.
Mrs. Heatherstone reiterated her old rule, not to feed anybody at the door, lest other poor people be told of it, and the family be annoyed with tramps. “We never give anything at the door,” she was wont to say, and so in process of time poor people generally passed by the Heatherstone mansion, and she was glad of it.
The poor old man of to-night caught a glimpse of the well-filled table as he passed the window, and he felt hurt and bitter at fate. He was not a drinking man, but he had lost his property by reverses, his wife and children were dead, he was unable to do hard labor, and he could rarely find work that was light or heavy. There was not work enough for all, and the young and vigorous obtained what there was.