inexpressibly shocking that my
mother interposed and compelled them to desist and leave us alone. By
degrees we learned more of the actual condition of the family. It
appeared that Varick had in better days become a member of a beneficial
society which allowed forty dollars to a widow for the funeral expenses
of her husband. The harpies of the tenement-house had become acquainted
with this circumstance, and while one set was seeking to obtain
possession of the dead man's clothes, another was practising every art
to steal from the widow the little beneficiary fund with which he was
to be buried. Through all her difficulties the poor needle-woman had
managed to pay the society's dues, foreseeing what the end would be, and
she was now entitled to draw the forty dollars. My mother immediately
obtained from her an order for the money, drew it, kept it from the
rapacious set who watched for it, and made it an efficient means of
immediate comfort.

The ministerial undertaker was of course present at the funeral. He was
evidently as keen after business as he was powerful in prayer. When the
hour for moving from the house had arrived, he approached the widow and
whispered to her that he could not think of letting the coffin leave the
premises until some one had become surety for the payment of his bill!
My mother and myself both sat near the widow, and heard this
extraordinary and ill-timed demand. I was amazed and disgusted at the
indecency of the man in not urging it at the proper time, and pressing
it at so improper a one. But my mother told him to proceed, and that she
would pay the bill.

All these enormities were new things to me. I had seen nothing, I had
imagined nothing, so every way terrible as came within my notice under
the squalid roof of this poor needle-woman. But my mother had long been
in the habit of penetrating into the abodes of the sick and destitute;
and though shocked by the new combination of religion and trade which
she here witnessed, yet she regarded it only as a fresh development of
the selfishness and hypocrisy of human nature. This poor woman and her
family must live. How, thought I, is she to do so in this season of
declining prices of the only work she is able to perform? If she could
survive such a crisis so uncomplainingly, and be willing to take to her
bosom the helpless foundling left upon her doorstep, what cause was
there for me to complain? Sorrows gathered all round her pathway, while
o