m 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 farther 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 shaking their heads, one to another,