the
evils of this fleeting life, and receive with resignation the chastenings
of Providence; for we all needed correction, being by nature utterly
sinful and depraved. And after some vague and indefinite offers of
assistance, the good women would take their leave. A way of discharging
duty discovered by modern philanthropists; and when accompanied by the
Societies' tract, seldom fails to convince the unfortunate object of
charity that to Heaven alone should they look for assistance and sympathy.

This lady, as we have intimated, possessed a large share of that generous
spirit so common in her sex, which enabled her to sustain herself amid the
evils which oppressed her. And nobly did the mother strive to shield from
want and ignorance the little orphan, now her only care. Her own education
enabled her in some measure to supply the place of teachers, which she was
unable to employ. And never was maternal care better rewarded than by the
improvement of the gentle being under her charge. But in this blessed
employment the poor mother was interrupted. While health continued, she
had been enabled by the most unremitted exertion to prevent the approach
of absolute want, slight indeed as were her earnings. (The modern
improvements in machinery having destroyed domestic manufacture, properly
so called, and left but little for the female to earn who is not attending
its motions in the noisy factory.) But illness had intervened, and
diminished even that small resource; and it was apparent to all that the
want of suitable food assisted in blanching still more the fair face of
the poor child. Maternal love had conquered the honest pride of the poor
mother so far as to constrain her to accept the slight and uncertain
donations of her neighbors. But this assistance, scanty as it was, could
not continue. The tax-paying husbands of the benevolent ladies who
furnished it, complained that the poor-rates were heavy, and that they had
already helped to pay for a house of refuge for the poor and the
destitute, could not, in addition to this, support them out of it.

She was told it was her duty to place her daughter in some family to be
brought up as a servant. In vain did she assert her ability to maintain
herself and child when health should return. Her advisers could little
sympathize with her feelings, and reproached her with pride. And she was
now harassed with the fear that her delicate and cultivated little girl
would be torn from her