Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/76

76THE HALLIG.

sons their poverty is their riches, their degradation
their pride, their folly wisdom, and their condemnation
blessedness.
  To the careless observer they may appear fair, but
they are dead within — a decaying fruit which has Men
from the tree of life and now lies in the dust contented
with its place and desirng no reunion with the parent
stem.
  Pastor Hold probably entertained views very similar
to those we have expressed, after he had become better
acquainted with Oswald and recalled to himself his
own experience in town society. For we find in a man-
uscript of his, to which he had given the somewhat
quaint title of "Sights," and from which we may
perhaps hereafter make some further extracts, the
following " Sight" apparently written about that
period.
  "I saw a little girl with all the marks of hunger on
her pale sunken cheeks, sitting by the wayside, clad in
rags of the deepest poverty. Her age might have been
ten or twelve years, but her form was weak and puny
like the sickly growth of a hot-house. A woman neatly
but humbly clad passed, carrying in her arms a smiling
infant and leading a lively boy by the hand. A basket
hung on her arm. Her hasty step was arrested by the
sight of the little girl ; she dropped the hand of her
boy and looked at her basket. But she passed on, and
crossing over a little foot-bridge went up to a man who
was working in the field. He wiped the perspiration
from his brow and took the black bread from the basket
while the boy filled a flask from the adjacent spring.
The little girl looked over from the road at the bread,