Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 edition. Excerpt: ... xi. A cabman'S life. he following summer and autumn proved the happiest time Jenny ever remembered having spent. Life was altogether a new thing to her; and had it not been for the gloomy shadow caused by her step-mother's ill-doing, which always rested depressingly upon her home, the child would have felt almost perfectly happy and content. Her heart was full of the sunshine of God's love and peace, and she knew that she was making sunshine for others. What more is needed to complete the happiness of a human being? Very little, if anything. Outward circumstances do not affect such a one. Poverty is no grievance, if there be not absolute want; and the grayest surround ings become golden-tinted by the inward glory and joy. The world had grown a beautiful place in Jenny's eyes, albeit she saw so little of its abounding and surpassing beauties. The ever-changing sky over the narrow, dingy street in which she lived, the verdure of the parks, and the flowers which she saw in shop-windows for sale, were all she saw of nature. But this summer the parks seemed to her like Eden, though the turf lost its emerald hue so early in the season, as London grass is wont to do, and the trees looked dingy as they rustled in the summer air, making but ghost-like music, a mere fragmentary crooning of some long-forgotten melody, compared with the joyous sweep and rush of woodland music away out in the breezy country places, where the broad leaves seemed indeed to "clap their little hands in glee," whenever the summer wind stirred them into motion. Jenny had no idea of the lavish wealth of the beauty of the country, so that she thought what little of nature London could show her beautiful indeed. And as she passed to and fro daily in the street where her home...