"
"Poor youth! so early doomed; I pity you."
"Ay, pity those who have no pity--those are the truly wretched; for
pity, in the world's life, is the soul of reason's action. Ah, madam, it
is those who have pity who do not need the pity of others, for they are
generally free from the faults that produce the unhappiness that needs
pity."
"But you have been punished, I admit, in a very strange and mysterious
way; for the word used by the boy was the joining link of the two
transactions, and you were led to misconstrue it--ay, and to take
advantage of your misconstruction to get the better of your friend."
"I see it all."
"But I say you have been punished," continued she, consolingly; "and I
perceive you are penitent--perhaps justice is satisfied; and when you
are liberated, you may be the better for the lesson. I shall now reverse
my prayer, and say to one I shall perhaps never see again, May God deal
mercifully by you."
And with these words, she retreated. But her prayer was never answered,
so far as man can judge of heaven's mysterious ways. The conviction
settled down and down into his heart, that that apparently simple affair
of killing a bird--which, even with the aggravation of all the cruelty
exhibited by the thoughtless, yet certainly pitiless youth, is so apt to
be viewed carelessly, or only with an avowal of disapprobation--which,
if too much insisted on as an act to be taken up by superior
retribution, is more apt still to be laughed at--was the cause of all
the ills that had befallen him.
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