With rare exceptions, quietness reigns at all those mills. . . . It
may be that our material atmosphere is somewhat brighter than it
was, but our social atmosphere is much darker and denser. Hard times
have come; and we have had them sufficiently long to know what they
mean. We have fathers sitting in the house at mid-day, silent and
glum, while children look wistfully about, and sometimes whimper for
bread which they cannot have. We have the same fathers who, before
hard times came, were proud men, who would have thought 'beggar' the
most opprobrious epithet you could have hit them with; but who now
are made humble by the sight of wife and children almost starving,
and who go before 'relief committees,' and submit to be questioned
about their wants with a patience and humility which it is painful,
almost schocking, to witness, And some others of these fathers turn
out in the morning with long besoms as street-sweepers, while others
again go to breaking stones in the town's yard or open road-side,
where they are unprotected from the keen east winds, which add a
little more to the burden of misery which they have to bear just
now.
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