It was one of the many causes for personal pride with which old Osborne

chose to recreate himself that Sedley, his ancient rival, enemy, and

benefactor, was in his last days so utterly defeated and humiliated as

to be forced to accept pecuniary obligations at the hands of the man

who had most injured and insulted him. The successful man of the world

cursed the old pauper and relieved him from time to time. As he

furnished George with money for his mother, he gave the boy to

understand by hints, delivered in his brutal, coarse way, that George's

maternal grandfather was but a wretched old bankrupt and dependant, and

that John Sedley might thank the man to whom he already owed ever so

much money for the aid which his generosity now chose to administer.

George carried the pompous supplies to his mother and the shattered old

widower whom it was now the main business of her life to tend and

comfort. The little fellow patronized the feeble and disappointed old

man.

It may have shown a want of "proper pride" in Amelia that she chose to

accept these money benefits at the hands of her father's enemy. But

proper pride and this poor lady had never had much acquaintance

together. A disposition naturally simple and demanding protection; a

long course of poverty and humility, of daily privations, and hard

words, of kind offices and no returns, had been her lot ever since

womanhood almost, or since her luckless marriage with George Osborne.

You who see your betters bearing up under this shame every day, meekly

suffering under the slights of fortune, gentle and unpitied, poor, and

rather despised for their poverty, do you ever step down from your

prosperity and wash the feet of these poor wearied beggars? The very

thought of them is odious and low. "There must be classes--there must

be rich and poor," Dives says, smacking his claret (it is well if he

even sends the broken meat out to Lazarus sitting under the window).

Very true; but think how mysterious and often unaccountable it is--that

lottery of life which gives to this man the purple and fine linen and

sends to the other rags for garments and dogs for comforters.

So I must own that, without much repining, on the contrary with

something akin to gratitude, Amelia took the crumbs that her father-in-law

let drop now and then, and with them fed her own parent.

Directly she understood it to be her duty, it was this young woman's

nature (ladies, she is but thirty still, and we choose to call her a

young woman even at that age) it was, I say, her nature to sacrifice

herself and to fling all that she had at the feet of the beloved

object. During what long thankless nights had she worked out her

fingers for little Georgy whilst at home with her; what buffets,

scorns, privations, poverties had she endured for father and mother!

And in the midst of all these solitary resignations and unseen

sacrifices, she did not respect herself any more than the world

respected her, but I believe thought in her heart that she was a

poor-spirited, despicable little creature, whose luck in life was only

too good for her merits. O you poor women! O you poor secret martyrs

and victims, whose life is a torture, who are stretched on racks in

your bedrooms, and who lay your heads down on the block daily at the

drawing-room table; every man who watches your pains, or peers into

those dark places where the torture is administered to you, must pity

you--and--and thank God that he has a beard. I recollect seeing, years

ago, at the prisons for idiots and madmen at Bicetre, near Paris, a

poor wretch bent down under the bondage of his imprisonment and his

personal infirmity, to whom one of our party gave a halfpenny worth of

snuff in a cornet or "screw" of paper. The kindness was too much for

the poor epileptic creature. He cried in an anguish of delight and

gratitude: if anybody gave you and me a thousand a year, or saved our

lives, we could not be so affected. And so, if you properly tyrannize

over a woman, you will find a h'p'orth of kindness act upon her and

bring tears into her eyes, as though you were an angel benefiting her.




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