starving inhabitants. We told her; and soon after we saw by the public
papers that, subsequently to our visit, she had done some needle-work,
which was sold, and the proceeds appropriated at her request to
purchase a barrel of flour for that unhappy land. "How," exclaims Elihu
Burritt, "she plied at morning, noon, and night, those fingers!
wonderful fingers! It seemed that the very finger of God had touched
them with miraculous susceptibilities of fellowship with the spirit
world and that around her. She put them upon the face of His written
word, and felt them thrilled to her heart with the pulsation of His
great thoughts of love to man. And then she _felt_ for other's woe.
Poor child! God bless her richly! She reached out her short arms to
feel after some more unhappy than she in the condition of this life;
some whose fingers' ends had not read such sweet paragraphs of heaven's
mercy as hers had done; some who had not seen, heard, and felt what her
dumb, silent, deaf fingers had brought into her heart of joy, hope, and
love. Think of that, ye young eyes and ears that daily feast upon the
beauty and melody of this outer world! Within the atmosphere of her
quick sensibilities, she felt the presence of those whose cup was full
of affliction. She put her fingers, with their throbbing sympathies,
upon the lean bloodless faces of the famishing children in Ireland, and
her sightless eyes filled with the tears that the blind may shed for
griefs they cannot see. And then she plied the needle and those
fingers, and quickened their industry by placing them anon upon the
slow sickly pulse of want that wasted her kind at noonday across the
ocean. Days, and nights too--for day and night were alike to her
wakeful sympathies--and weeks she wrought on with her needle. And then
the embroidery of those fingers was sold to the merchants. Would it had
been sold to England's Queen, to be worn by the young princesses on
days of state! It was sold; and its purchase price was _a barrel of
flour_, instead of a country's harvest, which it was well worth. And