"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 involuntary sympathy, by
saying that they have all parishes to go to, or wonder that the
poor dread to enter the gloomy walls.
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