! the
weariness of waiting for what we long for, and long for purely, but
which never comes! Is it the work or the longing--the long
longing--that has put the silver in your head, friend, and scarred
the smooth bloom of your cheeks, my lady, with those ugly lines?

"Mother, I'm hungry," said the little boy, looking up into the woman's
face. "Can't I have just a little more to eat?"

"Be still," answered the woman sharply, speaking in the tones of vexed
inability. "I've given you almost the last morsel in the house."

The boy said nothing more, but nestled up more closely to his mother's
knee, and stuck one little stockingless foot out until the cold toes
were half hidden in the ashes. O warmth! blessed warmth! how pleasant
art thou to old and young alike! Thou art the emblem of life, as thy
absence is the evidence and sign of life's cold opposite. Would that
all the cold toes in the world could get to my grate to-night, and all
the shivering ones be gathered to this fireside! Ay, and that the
children of poverty, that lack for bread, might get their hungry hands
into that well-filled cupboard there, too!

In a moment the woman said, "You children had better go to bed. You'll
be warmer in the rags than in this miserable fireplace."

The words were harshly spoken, as if the very presence of the
children, cold and hungry as they were, was a vexation to her; and
they moved off in obedience to her command.

O cursed poverty! I know thee to be of Satan, for I myself have eaten
at thy scant table, and slept in thy cold bed. And never yet have I
seen thee bring one smile to human lips, or dry one tear as it fell
from a human eye. But I have seen thee sharpen the tongue for biting
speech, and harden the tender heart. Ay, I've seen thee make even the
presence of love a burden, and cause the mother to wish that the puny
babe nursing her scant breast had never been born. And so the children
went to their unsightly bed, and silence reigned in the hut.

"Mother," said one of the girls, speaking out of the
darkness,--"mother, isn't this Christmas Eve?"

"Yes," answered the woman sharply. "Go to sleep." And again there was
silence.

Happy is childhood, that amid whatever deprivation and misery it can
so weary itself in the day that when night comes on it can lose in the
forgetfulness of slumber its sorrows and wants!

Thus, while the children lost the sense of their unhappy surroundings,
including the keen pangs of hunger,