have been crying for a long time; every muscle in his face quivered as if
under torture, his limbs shook; his eyes, his voice, uttered such misery
as only the vilest criminal should be made to suffer. And it was because
he had lost sixpence!

I could have shed tears with him--tears of pity and of rage at all this
spectacle implied. On a day of indescribable glory, when earth and
heaven shed benedictions upon the soul of man, a child, whose nature
would have bidden him rejoice as only childhood may, wept his heart out
because his hand had dropped a sixpenny piece! The loss was a very
serious one, and he knew it; he was less afraid to face his parents, than
overcome by misery at the thought of the harm he had done them. Sixpence
dropped by the wayside, and a whole family made wretched! What are the
due descriptive terms for a state of "civilization" in which such a thing
as this is possible?

I put my hand into my pocket, and wrought sixpennyworth of miracle.

It took me half an hour to recover my quiet mind. After all, it is as
idle to rage against man's fatuity as to hope that he will ever be less a
fool. For me, the great thing was my sixpenny miracle. Why, I have
known the day when it would have been beyond my power altogether, or else
would have cost me a meal. Wherefore, let me again be glad and thankful.



IV.


There was a time in my life when, if I had suddenly been set in the