have laughed
had anybody told them that human beings owe a debt of love to one
another, because there is no other method of paying the debt of love and
care which all of us owe to Providence. You will hardly believe what I
am going to tell you. These naughty people taught their children to be
no better than themselves, and used to clap their hands, by way of
encouragement, when they saw the little boys and girls run after some
poor stranger, shouting at his heels, and pelting him with stones. They
kept large and fierce dogs, and whenever a traveler ventured to show
himself in the village street, this pack of disagreeable curs scampered
to meet him, barking, snarling, and showing their teeth. Then they would
seize him by his leg, or by his clothes, just as it happened; and if he
were ragged when he came, he was generally a pitiable object before he
had time to run away. This was a very terrible thing to poor travelers,
as you may suppose, especially when they chanced to be sick, or feeble,
or lame, or old. Such persons (if they once knew how badly these unkind
people, and their unkind children and curs, were in the habit of
behaving) would go miles and miles out of their way rather than try to
pass through the village again.

What made the matter seem worse, if possible, was that when rich persons
came in their chariots, or riding on beautiful horses, with their
servants in rich liveries attending on them, nobody could be more civil
and obsequious than the inhabitants of the village. They would take off
their hats, and make the humblest bows you ever saw. If the children
were rude, they were pretty certain to get their ears boxed; and as for
the dogs, if a single cur in the pack presumed to yelp, his master
instantly beat him with a club, and tied him up without any supper. This
would have been all very well, only it proved that the villagers cared
much about the money that a stranger had in his pocket, and nothing
whatever for the human soul, which lives equally in the beggar and the
prince.

So now you can understand why old Philemon spoke so sorrowfully when he
heard the shouts of the children and the barking of the dogs at the
further extremity of the village street. There was a confused din, which
lasted a good while, and seemed to pass quite through the breadth of the
valley.

"I never heard the dogs so loud!" observed the good old man.

"Nor the children so rude!" answered his good old wife.

They sat shakin