, and for a second, hope
brightens into a brief flicker. He enters the spacious hall, on one
side of which a marble group is seen representing the "good
Samaritan;" the appeal comes home to his heart, and he could cry, but
hunger has dried up his tears.

I will not follow him in his weary pilgrimage among the liveried
menials of the institution, nor shall I harass my reader by the cold
sarcasm of those who tell him that he has mistaken the object of the
association: that their care is not with life, but death; that the
breathing man, alive, but on the verge of dissolution, has no interest
for _them_; for _their_ humanity waits patiently for his corpse. It
is true, one pennyworth of bread--a meal your dog would turn
from--would rescue this man from death and self-murder. But what of
that--how could such humble, unobtrusive charity inhabit a palace? How
could it pretend to porters and waiting-men, to scores of officials,
visiting doctors, and physicians in ordinary? By what trickery could a
royal patron be brought to head the list of benefactors to a scheme so
unassuming? Where would be the stomach-pumps and the galvanic
batteries for science?--where the newspaper reports of a miraculous
recovery?--where the magazine records of suspended animation?--or
where that pride and pomp and circumstance of enlightened humanity
which calls in chemistry to aid charity, and makes electricity the
test of benevolence? No, no; the hungry man might be fed, and go his
way unseen, untrumpeted--there would be no need of this specious
plausibility of humanity which proclaims aloud--Go and drown yourself;
stand self-accused and condemned before your Creator; and if there be
but a spark of vitality yet remaining, we'll call you back to life
again--a starving suicide! No effort shall be spared--messengers shall
fly in every direction for assistance--the most distinguished
physician--processes the most costly--experiments the most
difficult--care unremitting--zeal untiring, are all yours. Cordials,
the cost of which had sustained you in life for weeks long, are now
poured down your unconscious throat--the limbs that knew no other bed
than straw, are wrapped in heated blankets--the hand stretched out in
vain for alms, is now rubbed by the jewelled fingers of a west-end
physician.

Men, men, is this charity?--is the fellow-creature nought?--is the
corpse everything?--is a penny too much to sustain life?--is a hundred
pounds too little to restor