For a few
months longer, however, he struggled on, meeting every difficulty with
meek endurance. From his very boyhood he had reverenced the sanctity of
religion, and was actuated by a strong devotional spirit. He trusted in
God, and worshipped Him night and morning with a sincere heart.
At this crisis he was certainly an object of pity; his clothes, which,
for some time before had been reduced to tatters, he had replaced by a
cast-off coat and small-clothes, a present from his friend the Curate,
who never abandoned him. This worthy young man could not afford him
money, for as he had but fifty pounds a year, with which to clothe,
subsist himself, keep a horse, and pay rent, it was hardly to be
expected that his benevolence could be extensive. In addition to this,
famine and contagious disease raged with formidable violence in the
parish; so that the claims upon his bounty of hundreds who lay huddled
together in cold cabins, in out-houses, and even behind ditches, were
incessant as well, as heart-rending. The number of interments that took
place daily in the parish was awful; nothing could be seen but funerals
attended by groups of ragged and emaciated creatures from whose hollow
eyes gleamed forth the wolfish fire of famine. The wretched mendicants
were countless, and the number of coffins that lay on the public
roads--where, attended by the nearest relatives of the deceased, they
had been placed for the purpose of procuring charity--were greater than
ever had been remembered by the oldest inhabitant.
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