The Broken Heart CHAPTER 10.
Back to The Broken Heart
Mrs. Morrison was now all alone with the child that had fallen to her charge. She was nearly sixty years old, and much enfeebled by constant toil and great mental suffering. She had no means with which to pay for nursing the child, and even if she had been able, she would still have been unwilling to have parted with it. No certain means were within her reach, for even a subsistence; but she did not give way to despondency. A kind neighbor who kept a cow supplied her with new milk twice a day for the infant, and between knitting, spinning, and doing coarse sewing for the shops, she managed to get enough food to supply her own needs, and to gather together the rent for the landlord whenever he should call for it.
For a year after her daughter died, the widow Morrison managed to get along without actual suffering. But her strength began now rapidly to fail, and of course, her slender income was diminished. Little Henry could now just totter about, and required even more of her attention than when, seated upon the floor, he used to amuse himself for hours. For another year she toiled on, but it was amid many sufferings and severe privations. Henry was often sick from his first to his second year, and required, in consequence, the most careful attention. He was now entering his third year, and Mrs. Morrison began to fear, from too apparent indications, that she should be unable long to bear up.
Winter soon came on, and she had nothing laid aside for the inclement season. And though she toiled on in pain and weakness, she could earn but little. Tea and coffee, which become so necessary from long use, to old people, she could now rarely procure. Unwilling to make her needs known, where relief would have been obtained, she struggled on, often stinting herself — that her dear little boy might have a hearty meal. Through it all, she managed to have her money ready on the day her landlord called. Some little bit, she continued to earn all along, but she called none of it her own, until she had laid aside just what the rent would amount to.
As the weather grew more severe, she found it very difficult to procure wood enough to keep them warm. Almost every night, as soon as it grew dark, would she retire to her bed with little Henry, to keep warm, and thus save wood and candles. Often when they thus retired, their supper had consumed every particle of food in the house. But she generally managed to economize her little resources so well, as to have still a few cents left to buy bread for breakfast; and through the following day she never failed to obtain something for work already finished. So constantly was her mind occupied with the duties devolving upon her — that she had no time to be unhappy. And the sore trials she had passed through, and the afflictions she had experienced, had elevated her affections above mere selfish and sensual things — and caused her to fix them upon a higher and more certain source of contentment.
There was one abiding principle of her mind that had, in all her long suffering, buoyed her up — it was a fixed confidence in the Divine Providence. She perceived, clearly, that, in the Divine Providence, eternal ends were always in view, and that all temporal affliction was of use, to enable its subject to see clearly where affection was wrongly placed.
Thus, had she gradually attained a state of preparation for another life, by the putting away of evils, through Divine assistance. The keen suffering she had endured showed how deeply seated had been the disease. Patiently, but fulfilling all her duties, she now waited for her change.
For the first time, one cold night in January, she retired to bed, after having consumed the last morsel, without anything left with which to buy food on the next morning. She had paid her rent on that day, and in doing so, parted with her last cent. She found herself through the day more feeble than usual, and to a neighbor who dropped in just about night-fall, she expressed herself as being conscious that she had nearly filled up the days of her earthly pilgrimage.
"I can hardly tell you," she said, "of how pleasantly my mind has been affected through the day, in looking back on a long and chequered life, and perceiving the hand of God in every event. It is all summed up for me now, and I can see the result. I know that I am near a peaceful end to all my wilderness wanderings; and standing now as I do upon the utmost verge of time, I bless the kind hand of Providence that has watched over me — and am thankful for all the affliction I have endured."
In a calm and holy frame of mind, did the Widow Morrison take her dear child in her arms, and resign herself to slumber. Sweetly, no doubt, did she sink away, like an infant on its mother's bosom. But the sleep that locked up her senses, proved to be a gentle lapsing away of life. When next she awoke — it was in the eternal world!
The rest has already been told.
THE END.
Back to The Broken Heart