Rain comes with strong caressing fingers, and the branches
seem no whit the cleaner for her care; but then their glistening
blackness mirrors back the succeeding sunlight, as a muddy pavement
will sometimes lap our feet in a sea of gold. The little wet
sparrows are for the moment equally transformed, for the sun turns
their dun-coloured coats to a ruddy bronze, and cries Chrysostom as
it kisses each shiny beak. They are dumb Chrysostoms; but they
preach a golden gospel, for the sparrows are to London what the
rainbow was to eight saved souls out of a waste of waters--a
perpetual sign of the remembering mercies of God.
Last night there was a sudden clatter of hoofs, a shout, and then
silence. A runaway cab-horse, a dark night, a wide crossing, and a
heavy burden: so death came to a poor woman. People from the
house went out to help; and I heard of her, the centre of an
unknowing curious crowd, as she lay bonnetless in the mud of the
road, her head on the kerb. A rude but painless death: the misery
lay in her life; for this woman--worn, white-haired, and wrinkled--
had but fifty years to set against such a condition. The policeman
reported her respectable, hard-working, living apart from her
husband with a sister; but although they shared rooms, they "did
not speak," and the sister refused all responsibility; so the
parish buried the dead woman, and thus ended an uneventful tragedy.
Was it her own fault? If so, the greater pathos.
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