So, could we look into the human breast,
How oft the fatal blight that meets our view,
Should we trace down to the torn, bleeding fibres
Of a too trusting heart--where it were shame,
For pitying tears, to give contempt or blame."
--"STREET WALKS."
The month was over;--the honeymoon to the newly-married; the
exquisite convalescence to the "living mother of a living child";
"the first dark days of nothingness" to the widow and the child
bereaved; the term of penance, of hard labour, and of solitary
confinement, to the shrinking, shivering, hopeless prisoner.
"Sick, and in prison, and ye visited me." Shall you, or I, receive
such blessing? I know one who will. An overseer of a foundry, an
aged man, with hoary hair, has spent his Sabbaths, for many years,
in visiting the prisoners and the afflicted in Manchester New
Bailey; not merely advising and comforting, but putting means into
their power of regaining the virtue and the peace they had lost;
becoming himself their guarantee in obtaining employment, and never
deserting those who have once asked help from him.
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