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Under the Roman law persons found guilty, of certain offenses were not only destroyed, but their blood was polluted, and their children became outcasts. If, however, they died before conviction, their children were saved. Many committed suicide to save their babes. Certainly they were not cowards.

The night was coming on, and husbands and wives, mothers and sisters, were leaving the prison walls with a burden of grief and shame for the loved yet lost ones within; and as Jennie and her kind teacher, one hour later, entered the peaceful abode of innocence and joy, the light had wholly departed from the long corridors of that gloomy building, and the doors were closely secured upon the shuddering inmates of those dismal cells, who crept into their beds, and covered their heads with the thick clothes to shut out the demons that were hovering about them in the polluted air.

If you do, what a shame it is to plan to give God only the dregs of life! You need Him, quite as much, if not more, now in the flush of youth as in old age. Why should you rob yourself of years of blessing, and lay up bitter memories of wasted and polluted moments? If ever you turn to God in your older days, nothing will be so painful as the remembrance that you forgot Him so long.

Some of you are foundering in terrible Euroclydon. Hark to the howling of the gale, and the splintering of the spars, and the starting of the timbers, and the breaking of the billow, clear across the hurricane deck. Down she goes! Into the life-boat! Quick! One boat! One shore! One oarsman! One salvation! You are polluted; there is but one well at which you can wash clean.

What of consolation or of hope remained to me? To return to my ancient dwelling, now polluted with blood, or, perhaps, nothing but a smoking ruin, was abhorred. Life, connected with the remembrance of my misfortunes, was detestable. I was no longer anxious for flight. No change of the scene but that which terminated all consciousness could I endure to think of.

Moreover, a cornet in the service of the Earl's nephew, Sir Robert Sidney, had been seen at Zutphen in conference with Tassis; and the horrible suspicion went abroad that even the illustrious name of Sidney was to be polluted also.

As the distant land drew nearer, lips ever polluted with profanity, hearts black with crime, called on the saints to save and protect them; and even the sceptical Herbert, as he gazed on the dark rock crowned with curling mists, fancied with the rest that he could see weird, awful shapes hovering about the shore. The horror of the place seized him.

A great panic struck them at first as they ran about to their lodgings to carry away their effects. Afterwards, when setting out, indignation arose in their breasts: "that they, as if polluted with crime and contaminated, were driven away from the games, on festival days, from the converse in a manner of men and gods."

And life has always been this, and I never knew it, even if we did take the papers at home. Ha, ha! Yes, I can laugh, even in the face of it. 'Life is real, life is earnest' how that line comes back to me with new force!" A succeeding letter from a base hospital somewhere in France spelled in full certain words that had never before polluted Winona's pen.

And the most probable cause to my judgement is, that this blackenesse proceedeth of some naturall infection of the first inhabitants of that Countrey, and so all the whole progenie of them descended, are still polluted with the same blot of infection.