and gusty night; how her daughter married, and was well to do, and
assisted her; how she fell into a rapid decline, and died, a picture of
health to inexperienced eyes. How she, the mother, saw and knew, and
watched the treacherous advance of disease and death; how others said
gayly, "Her daughter was better," and she was obliged to say, "Yes." How
she had worked, eighteen hours a day, at making nets; how, when she let
out her nets to the other men at the herring fishing, they always cheated
her, because her man was gone. How she had many times had to choose
between begging her meal and going to bed without it, but, thank Heaven!
she had always chosen the latter.

She told him of hunger, cold, and anguish. As she spoke they became real
things to him; up to that moment they had been things in a story-book.
And as she spoke she rocked herself from side to side.

Indeed, she was a woman "acquainted with grief." She might have said,
"Here I and sorrow sit. This is my throne, bid kings come and bow to it!"

Her hearer felt this, and therefore this woman, poor, old, and ugly,
became sacred in his eye; it was with a strange sort of respect that he
tried to console her. He spoke to her in tones gentle and sweet as the
south wind on a summer evening.

"Madam," said he, "let me be so happy as to bring you some comfort. The
sorrows of the heart I cannot heal; they are for a mightier hand; but a
part of your distress appears to have been positive need; that we can at
least dispose of, and I entreat you to believe that from this hour want
shall never enter that door again. Never! upon my honor!"

The Scotch are icebergs, with volcanoes underneath; thaw the Scotch ice,