What do we know of public
dinners and eloquent sermons and neatly printed circulars? Every
now and then the ease of some forlorn creature (generally of a
woman) who has committed suicide, within five minutes' walk,
perhaps, of an institution which would have opened its doors to
her, appears in the newspapers, shocks you dreadfully, and is
then forgotten again. Take as much pains to make charities and
asylums known among the people without money as are taken to make
a new play, a new journal, or a new medicine known among the
people with money and you will save many a lost creature who is
perishing now.
"You will forgive and understand me if I say no more of this
period of my life. Let me pass to the new incident in my career
which brought me for the second time before the public notice in
a court of law.
"Sad as my experience has been, it has not taught me to think ill
of human nature. I had found kind hearts to feel for me in my
former troubles; and I had friends--faithful, self-denying,
generous friends--among my sisters in adversity now. One of these
poor women (she has gone, I am glad to think, from the world that
used her so hardly) especially attracted my sympathies.
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