Having now no ink nor
colouring matter, he did not hesitate, but out penknife, up sleeve, and
drew blood from his arm, and with it wrote once more to the
Commissioners, but kept this letter hidden for an ingenious purpose. What
that purpose was my reader shall divine.
CHAPTER XLII
WE left Julia Dodd a district visitor. Working in a dense parish she
learned the depths of human misery, bodily and mental.
She visited an honest widow, so poor that she could not afford a farthing
dip, but sat in the dark. When friends came to see her they sometimes
brought a candle to talk by.
She visited a cripple who often thanked God sincerely for leaving her the
use of one thumb.
She visited a poor creature who for sixteen years had been afflicted with
a tumour in the neck, and had lain all those years on her back with her
head in a plate; the heat of a pillow being intolerable. Julia found her
longing to go, and yet content to stay: and praising God in all the lulls
of that pain which was her companion day and night.
But were I to enumerate the ghastly sights, the stifling loathsome
odours, the vulgar horrors upon horrors this refined young lady faced,
few of my readers would endure on paper for love of truth what she
endured in reality for love of suffering humanity, and of Him whose
servant she aspired to be.
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