The Lily of the Valley

CHAPTER I. TWO CHILDHOODS

To what genius fed on tears shall we some day owe that most touching of all elegies,--the tale of tortures borne silently by souls whose tender roots find stony ground in the domestic soil, whose earliest buds are torn apart by rancorous hands, whose flowers are touched by frost at the moment of their blossoming? What poet will sing the sorrows of the child...