A large heavy pair of blankets, for which Jane had paid five dollars, were now unrolled, and a couple of handsome chintz dresses, of dark rich colors, suitable for the winter season, displayed.  It was with difficulty that Ellen could restrain a sigh, as she looked at these comfortable things, and thought of how much she needed, and of how little she had to hope for.  Jane felt that such thoughts must pass through her sister’s mind, and she also felt much pained that she had undesignedly thus added, by contrast, to Ellen’s unhappy feelings.  When she returned home, she put away her new dresses and her blankets.  She had no heart to look at them, no heart to enjoy her own good things, while the sister she so much loved was denied like present comforts, and, worse than all, weighed down with a heart-sickening dread of the future.

We will not linger to contrast, in a series of domestic pictures, the effects of industry and idleness on the two married sisters and their families,—­effects, the causes of which, neither aided materially in producing.  Such contrasts, though useful, cannot but be painful to the mind, and we would, a thousand times, rather give pleasure than pain.  But one more striking contrast we will give, as requisite to show the tendency of good or bad principles, united with good or bad habits.

Unable to get any employment in the village, Thorne, hearing that steady work could be obtained in Charleston, South Carolina, sold off a portion of his scanty effects, by which he received money enough to remove there with his wife and child.  Thus were the sisters separated; and in that separation, gradually estranged from the tender and lively affection that presence and constant intercourse had kept burning with undiminished brightness.  Each became more and more absorbed, every day, in increasing cares and duties; yet to one those cares and duties were painful, and to the other full of delight.

Ten years from the day on which they parted in tears, Ellen sat, near the close of day, in a meanly furnished room, in one of the southern cities, watching, with a troubled countenance, the restless slumber of her husband.  Her face was very thin and pale, and it had a fixed and strongly marked expression of suffering.  Two children, a boy and a girl, the one about six, and the other a little over ten years of age, were seated listlessly on the floor, which was uncarpeted.  They seemed to have no heart to play.  Even the elasticity of childhood had departed from them.  From the appearance of Thorne, it was plain that he was very sick; and from all the indications the room in which he lay, afforded, it was plain that want and suffering were its inmates.  The habit of idleness he had suffered to creep at a slow but steady pace upon him.  Idleness brought intemperance, and intemperance, reacting upon idleness, completed his ruin, and reduced his family to poverty in its most appalling form.  Now he was sick with a southern fever, and his miserable dwelling afforded him no cordial, nor his wife and children the healthy food that nature required.