Charles Dickens,
Hard Times — Book the First, Chapter XIII
(1854)
“ Rachael A CANDLE faintly burned in the window, to which the black ladder had often been raised for the sliding away of all that was most precious in this world to a striving wife and a brood of hungry babies; and Stephen added to his other thoughts the stern reflection, that of all the casualties of this existence upon earth, not one was dealt out with so unequal a hand as Death. ”
Charles Dickens,
Hard Times — Book the First, Chapter XIII
(1854)
“ The wind was blowing again, the rain was beating on the house-tops, and the larger spaces through which he had strayed contracted to the four walls of his room. Saving that the fire had died out, it was as his eyes had closed upon it. Rachael seemed to have fallen into a doze, in the chair by the bed. She sat wrapped in her shawl, perfectly still. The table stood in the same place, close by the bedside, and on it, in its real proportions and appearance, was the shape so often repeated. ”
Charles Dickens,
Hard Times — Book the First, Chapter XIII
(1854)
“ There have been plenty to do that. Thou art not the man to cast the last stone, Stephen, when she is brought so low.’‘O Rachael, Rachael!’‘Thou hast been a cruel sufferer, Heaven reward thee!’ she said, in compassionate accents. ‘I am thy poor friend, with all my heart and mind.’The wounds of which she had spoken, seemed to be about the neck of the self-made outcast. She dressed them now, still without showing her. She steeped a piece of linen in a basin, into which she poured some liquid from a bottle, and laid it with a gentle hand upon the sore. ”
