screen the provider from the odium of having
starved his victims,) the value of the clothes they then wore, and thus
the future expense of their clothing; and other such considerations, which
I will not farther disgust the reader by enumerating.

They were about twenty in number, and not greatly distinguished from the
ordinary poor of a country town in New-England; unless by there being
present three idiot daughters of one poor man, whose low and narrow
foreheads, sunken temples, fixed but dead and unmeaning eyes, half opened
and formless mouths, indicating even to childhood the absence of that
intellectual light, which in those who possess it shines through the
features. Insanity also was there, that most dreadful infliction of
Providence; the purpose of which lies hidden in the darkness which
surrounds His throne. Its unhappy subject was with them, but not of them.
His eyes were fixed upon the scene, but the uncertain fire which illumined
his features was caused by thoughts which had no connection with the
passing scene.

Vice, too, had its representatives; for in a community where wealth is
nearly the only source of distinction, and where Mammon is consequently
worshipped as the true god, the destiny of the unfortunate and of the
vicious is nearly the same. And the 'poor-house' was used, as in other
towns in New-England, as a house of correction, and at this time contained
several professors of vice of each sex. Alas! of that sex which when
corrupt is more dangerous than the other in a like condition, as the most
rich and grateful things are in their decay the most noxious!

The remaining number consisted of the aged and childless widow, the infirm
and friendless old man, the sick, the deformed, and the cripple; the
virtuous poor, in forced and loathed contact with vice and infamy. Those
of society who in life's voyage had been stranded on the bleak and barren
coast of charity, and who were now waiting for death to float them into
the ocean of eternity. While this scene was passing at the alms-house,
another connected with it, and fitted to excite still deeper feelings, was
acting in another part of the town.

A person who was that year one of the select-men,[1] and a deacon in the
church, was delegated by his colleagues to bring to the alms-house the
'lone woman' who forms the chief subject of our homely story. The widow
Selden (a brief history of whom it will be necessary to give) had received
an education suit