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Doherty. "God forgive me. 'Perhaps, says I to myself, 'she is kidnapped. And she was such a purty angel, with a face you would delight looking on; and on her right hand, the Lord save us! a circle like a ring was on her middle finger. She was too good to live; and was made for heaven, I suppose. Glory be to God." Our poormaster, Van Stingey, was a very conscientious officer.
Accordingly, when he heard of any case of particular distress, such as that a poor emigrant died of misery in a cold, deserted house, our poormaster regretted it, as an individual; but, as an officer, he said, he acted according to principle. He could not betray his constituents, who elected him against his will, by any act of extravagance; and the good of the many must be consulted.
Poormaster Van Stingey had "got religion," by which he was wonderfully enlightened, having been so lucky as to gain that valuable accomplishment just six months, and only six months, before his election, at a camp meeting held near the village of M ville. "I tell you what, the fact of the matter is, Mr. Knicks," said he, "there is nothin' like religion.
"Why, the poorhouse farm is this side of the town," said Bob, munching a cracker with liveliest manifestations of appreciation. "Coming back to-night that's what made me late Jim Turner, who's poormaster now, called me in. Said he had something to tell me. It seems there was a queer old duffer spent one night there a while back Jim thought it must have been a month ago.
I can tell thee, however, that thee said nothing of which thee need be ashamed." "Well, I can't account for it. I must have been taken very suddenly. One thing is clear: you are the kindest people I ever heard of. You ought to be put in a museum." "Why, Friend Morton, is it queer that we didn't turn thee out of doors or give thee in charge of the poormaster?"
He could have escaped any day, and repudiated the iniquitous contract by which the villanous poormaster had sold him and his brethren; but what was to become of his younger sister and brothers? He knew how to plough, mow, cradle, and farm it, as well as any body of his age.
"Like you Irish, allers asking questions," said he, discharging a mass of tobacco almost in her face. "I am the poormaster; and, having received a report that there was a dead pauper here, thought I would have it put out of the way early, before the folks would get up." "You are a very polite gintleman, God bless you. I hope she won't be buried so soon.
Then the ballot box was surrounded but by a few Irish naturalized citizens, and these not of such importance as to influence the election of a constable or poormaster; now the Irish adopted citizen, by the power he exercises in his vote, is solicited by candidates, from a town officer to the president; and whoever would attempt to reënact the kidnapping of Van Stingey, and many other officials of his class, in their days of petty power, would be sure to be compelled to retire forever from public life, and pass into the gloom and infamy of his depraved private circle.
You can manage a living of sorts; and farm produce, even scanty, unskillfully contrived, and the charity of relatives, and the patience of tradesmen, will see you through. But a funeral that's different! Undertaker that means money. Was it possible that the sordid epic of their lives must be capped by the crowning insult, the Poormaster and the Pauper's Field?
On a narrow and obscure street, little more than an alley, behind the cemetery, there were still several crumbling tenements, built for the mill operatives, but now occupied by a handful of abjectly poor whites, who kept body and soul together through the doubtful mercy of God and a small weekly dole from the poormaster.
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