damp straw, spread out thinly upon a still damper foot of earth, in a
portion of which the foot sinks when walking over it. The two beds--each
what is termed a shake down--have barely covering enough to preserve
the purposes of decency, but not to communicate the usual and necessary
warmth. In consequence of the limited area of the cabin floor they
are not far removed from each other. Upon a little three-legged stool,
between them, burns a dim rush candle, whose light is so exceedingly
feeble that it casts ghastly and death-like shadows over the whole
inside of the cabin. That family consists of nine persons, of whom five
are lying ill of fever, as the reader, from the nature of their bedding,
may have already anticipated--for we must observe here, that the
epidemic was rife at the time. Food of any description has not been
under that roof for more than twenty-four hours. They are all in bed
but one. A low murmur, that went to the heart of that one, with a noise
which seemed to it louder and more terrible than the deepest peal that
ever thundered through the firmament of heaven--a low murmur, we say, of
this description, arose from the beds, composed of those wailing sounds
that mingle together as they proceed from the lips of weakness, pain,
and famine, until they form that many-toned, incessant, and horrible
voice of multiplied misery, which falls upon the ear with the echoes of
the grave, and upon the heart as something wonderful in the accents of
God, or, as we may suppose the voice of the accusing angel to be, whilst
recording before His throne the official inhumanity of councils and
senates, who harden their hearts and shut their ears to "the cry of the
poor."

Seated upon a second little stool was a man of huge stature, clothed,
if we can say I so, with rags, contemplating the misery around him, and
having no sounds to listen to but the low, ceaseless wail of pain
and suffering which we have described. His features, once manly and
handsome, are now sharp and hollow; his beard is grown; his lips are
white; and his eyes without I speculation, unless when lit up into
an occasional blaze of fire, that seemed to proceed as much from the
paroxysms of approaching insanity as from the terrible scene which
surrounds him, as well as from his own I wolfish desire for food.
His cheek bones project fearfully, and his large temples seem, by the
ghastly skin which is drawn tight about them, to remind one of those of
a skeleto