The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba by George Bryce
page 29 of 243 (11%)
page 29 of 243 (11%)
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such a tree, which will shelter and bless future generations of mankind.
Financial loss he might have; but he would have fame as his reward. CHAPTER III. "ACROSS THE STORMY SEA." Oh dreadful war! It is not only in the deadly horror of battle, and in the pain and anguish of men strong and hearty, done to death by human hands. It is not only in the rotting heap of horses and men, torn to pieces by bullets and shell, and thrust together within huge pits in one red burial blent. It is not only in the helpless widow and her brood of dazed and desolate children weeping over the news that comes from the battlefield, that war become so hideous. It is always, as it was in the time of the Europe-shadowing Napoleon when for twenty years the wheels of industry in Britain were stopped. It is always the derangement of business, the increased price of food for the poor, the decay of trade, the cutting off of supplies, and the stopping of works of improvement that brings conditions which make poverty so terrible. Rags! A bed of straw; a crust of bread; the shattered roof; the naked floor; a deal table; a broken chair! A writer whose boyhood saw the terror, and want, and despair of the last decade of the Napoleonic War, puts into the mouth of the victim of poverty this terrible wail: "But why do I talk of death? That phantom of grizzly bone; |
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