"She is not reserved in regard to her past life, said Lester. "She is too
happy to seize the attention of any one to whom she can pour forth her
dark and angry confidence. She saw her husband, who was afterwards
dismissed the service, a strong, powerful man, a giant of his tribe, pine
and waste, inch by inch, from mere physical want, and at last literally
die from hunger. It happened that they had settled in the country in
which her husband was born, and in that county, those frequent famines
which are the scourge of Ireland were for two years especially severe.
You may note, that the old woman has a strong vein of coarse eloquence at
her command, perhaps acquired in (for it partakes of the natural
character of) the country in which she lived so long; and it would
literally thrill you with horror to hear her descriptions of the misery
and destitution that she witnessed, and amidst which her husband breathed
his last. Out of four children, not one survives. One, an infant, died
within a week of the father; two sons were executed, one at the age of
sixteen, one a year older, for robbery committed under aggravated
circumstances; and the fourth, a daughter, died in the hospitals of
London. The old woman became a wanderer and a vagrant, and was at length
passed to her native parish, where she has since dwelt. These are the
misfortunes which have turned her blood to gall; and these are the causes
which fill her with so bitter a hatred against those whom wealth has
preserved from sharing or witnessing a fate similar to hers."

"Oh!" said Aram, in a low, but deep tone, "when--when will these hideous
disparities be banished from the world? How many noble natures--how many
glorious hopes--how much of the seraph's intellect, have been crushed
into the mire, or blasted into guilt, by the mere force of physical want?
What are the temptations of the rich to those of the poor? Yet see how
lenient we are to the crimes of the one,--how relentless to those of the
other! It is a bad world; it makes a man's heart sick to look around him.