poor
creatures whose labors were to construct that edifice. She, in fact,
never thought about them. Want of thought may be pleaded as the excuse,
wretched one as it is, for the cruelties of those days. People certainly
had not the claim of common humanity sounded into their ears as it is
into all ears now. A few admirable philanthropists talked of it, and
preached it; but it was not to be heard calling in the streets, as it is
the triumph of our day to acknowledge, till the hardest heart for very
shame is forced to pay _some_ attention to the call.

It never entered into Miss Lavington's head that she had any other
business with her young women, but to get all the work she possibly
could out of their hands, and as well done, and as speedily done as
possible. If she objected to night-work in addition to day-work, it was
not in the slightest degree out of compassion for the aching limbs and
wearied eyes of the poor girls; but because wax candles were expensive,
and tallow ones were apt to drip; and there was always double the duty
required from the superintendent (her special favorite), to keep the
young women at those times to their duty, and prevent fine materials
from being injured.

Oh! those dreadful days and nights of the _season_, which the poor Lucy
Miles at that place went through.

She--accustomed to the sweet fresh air of the country, to the cheerful
variety of daily labor in her father's large farm, and under the care of
a brisk, clever, but most kind and sensible mother--to be shut up
twelve, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, nay twenty hours before a
birth-night, in the sickening atmosphere of the close work-room. The
windows were rarely opened, if ever; for the poor young things were so
unnaturally chilly for want of exercise and due circulation of the
blood, that they said they should, and perhaps they might, have taken
cold if fresh air were admitted. There was nothing they all dreaded so
much as taking cold; those fatal coughs, which every season thinned the
ranks, to be filled with fresh victims, were invariably attributed to
some particular occasion when they had "taken cold." They did not know
that they were rejecting the very cordial of life and inhaling poison
when they kept the room so close.

Oh! for the dreadful weariness which proceeds from _in_-action of the
limbs! so different from the wholesome fatigue of action, _In_-action
where the blood is stagnating in every vein: _in_-action, after which