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Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman-Part8_Mary Wollstonecraft(1759-1797)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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case known to the lady-like matron; but her forbidding countenance



prevented me. She condescended to look on the patients, and make

general enquiries, two or three times a week; but the nurses knew



the hour when the visit of ceremony would commence, and every thing

was as it should be.



"After my dismission, I was more at a loss than ever for a

subsistence, and, not to weary you with a repetition of the same



unavailing attempts, unable to stand at the washing-tub, I began

to consider the rich and poor as natural enemies, and became a



thief from principle. I could not now cease to reason, but I hated

mankind. I despised myself, yet I justified my conduct. I was



taken, tried, and condemned to six months' imprisonment in a house

of correction. My soul recoils with horror from the remembrance



of the insults I had to endure, till, branded with shame, I was

turned loose in the street, pennyless. I wandered from street to



street, till, exhausted by hunger and fatigue, I sunk down senseless

at a door, where I had vainly demanded a morsel of bread. I was



sent by the inhabitant to the work-house, to which he had surlily

bid me go, saying, he 'paid enough in conscience to the poor,'



when, with parched tongue, I implored his charity. If those

well-meaning people who exclaim against beggars, were acquainted



with the treatment the poor receive in many of these wretched

asylums, they would not stifle so easily involuntarysympathy, by



saying that they have all parishes to go to, or wonder that the

poor dread to enter the gloomy walls. What are the common run of



workhouses, but prisons, in which many respectable old people, worn

out by immoderate labour, sink into the grave in sorrow,



to which they are carried like dogs!"

Alarmed by some indistinct noise, Jemima rose hastily to



listen, and Maria, turning to Darnford, said, "I have indeed been

shocked beyond expression when I have met a pauper's funeral.



A coffin carried on the shoulders of three or four ill-looking

wretches, whom the imagination might easily convert into a band of



assassins, hastening to conceal the corpse, and quarrelling about

the prey on their way. I know it is of little consequence how we



are consigned to the earth; but I am led by this brutal insensibility,

to what even the animal creation appears forcibly to feel, to advert



to the wretched, deserted manner in which they died."

"True," rejoined Darnford, "and, till the rich will give more



than a part of their wealth, till they will give time and attention

to the wants of the distressed, never let them boast of charity.



Let them open their hearts, and not their purses, and employ their

minds in the service, if they are really actuated by humanity;



or charitable institutions will always be the prey of

the lowest order of knaves."



Jemima returning, seemed in haste to finish her tale. "The

overseer farmed the poor of different parishes, and out of the



bowels of poverty was wrung the money with which he purchased this

dwelling, as a private receptacle for madness. He had been a keeper



at a house of the same description, and conceived that he could

make money much more readily in his old occupation. He is a



shrewd--shall I say it?--villain. He observed something resolute

in my manner, and offered to take me with him, and instruct me how



to treat the disturbed minds he meant to intrust to my care. The

offer of forty pounds a year, and to quit a workhouse, was not to



be despised, though the condition of shutting my eyes and hardening

my heart was annexed to it.



"I agreed to accompany him; and four years have I been attendant

on many wretches, and"--she lowered her voice,--"the witness of



many enormities. In solitude my mind seemed to recover its force,




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