Knickerbocker | Page 6

was held at the house of the person who had kept them the
previous year, (and where these unfortunates still were) as well because
it was supposed he would again bid for them, as that those who wished
to become competitors might ascertain their number and condition. It
was in the afternoon of a day in November, one of those dark and
dreary days so common to the season and climate, adding gloom to the
surrounding objects, in themselves sufficiently cheerless. The house
was situated on an obscure road in a remote part of the town,
surrounded by level and sandy fields; and the monotony of the prospect
only broken by scattered clumps of dwarf-pine and shrub-oak; a few
stunted apple-trees, the remains of an orchard which the barren soil had

refused to nourish; some half ruinous out-houses, and a meagre kitchen
garden enclosed with a common rough fence, completed the picture
without.
Still more depressing was the scene within. The paupers were collected
in the same room with their more fortunate townsmen, that the bidders
might be enabled to view more closely their condition, and estimate the
probable expense of supporting them through the year. Many
considerations entered as items into this sordid calculation; such as the
very lowest amount of the very coarsest food which would suffice, (not
to keep them in comfort, but to sustain their miserable existence for the
next three hundred and sixty-five days, and yet screen the provider
from the odium of having starved his victims,) the value of the clothes
they then wore, and thus the future expense of their clothing; and other
such considerations, which I will not farther disgust the reader by
enumerating.
They were about twenty in number, and not greatly distinguished from
the ordinary poor of a country town in New-England; unless by there
being present three idiot daughters of one poor man, whose low and
narrow foreheads, sunken temples, fixed but dead and unmeaning eyes,
half opened and formless mouths, indicating even to childhood the
absence of that intellectual light, which in those who possess it shines
through the features. Insanity also was there, that most dreadful
infliction of Providence; the purpose of which lies hidden in the
darkness which surrounds His throne. Its unhappy subject was with
them, but not of them. His eyes were fixed upon the scene, but the
uncertain fire which illumined his features was caused by thoughts
which had no connection with the passing scene.
Vice, too, had its representatives; for in a community where wealth is
nearly the only source of distinction, and where Mammon is
consequently worshipped as the true god, the destiny of the unfortunate
and of the vicious is nearly the same. And the 'poor-house' was used, as
in other towns in New-England, as a house of correction, and at this
time contained several professors of vice of each sex. Alas! of that sex
which when corrupt is more dangerous than the other in a like

condition, as the most rich and grateful things are in their decay the
most noxious!
The remaining number consisted of the aged and childless widow, the
infirm and friendless old man, the sick, the deformed, and the cripple;
the virtuous poor, in forced and loathed contact with vice and infamy.
Those of society who in life's voyage had been stranded on the bleak
and barren coast of charity, and who were now waiting for death to
float them into the ocean of eternity. While this scene was passing at
the alms-house, another connected with it, and fitted to excite still
deeper feelings, was acting in another part of the town.
A person who was that year one of the select-men,[1] and a deacon in
the church, was delegated by his colleagues to bring to the alms-house
the 'lone woman' who forms the chief subject of our homely story. The
widow Selden (a brief history of whom it will be necessary to give) had
received an education suited rather to the respectability and former
wealth of her family, than to its subsequent reduced condition, became
in early life the wife of a merchant of our village, a man of good
character and fair prospects, to whom she was much attached. Traders
in New-England where wealth is so eagerly sought, are, especially in
country towns, men of much consideration, as engaged in a
money-making business. Mrs. Selden, therefore, independently of her
personal merits, was not likely to be neglected. Her company was
sought by the best society of our place, and she exchanged visits on
equal terms even with the families of the clergyman and the village
lawyer.
[1] Men who are yearly selected by the inhabitants to superintend the
business of the town, and who, among other duties, have the charge of
managing the poor.
A