The aid of the sympathetic public--was it charity? No, it was duty. I _owe_ to help my fellow man in distress just as much as I _owe_ to pay my debts, and sometimes more. Mercy is _due_ to men no less than justice. “If any man seeth his brother have need and shutteth up the bowels of his compassion against him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” We might add: How dwelleth the love of _man_ in him? He that does not love his fellow men is not entitled to a place among them, any more than fleas or serpents are entitled a place in human beds. “That man may last, but never lives, Who all receives, but nothing gives; Whom none can love, whom none can thank, Creation’s blot, creation’s blank.” CHAPTER XIX. FAMINE AND PESTILENCE. “Then--see those million worlds which burn and roll, Around us--their inhabitants beheld My spher’ed light wave in wide Heaven; the sea Was lifted by strange tempests, and new fire From earthquake rifted mountains of bright snow Shook its portentous hair beneath heaven’s frowns, Lightning and inundation vexed the plains, Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled; When plague had fallen on man and beast and worm, And famine: and black blight on herb and tree. * * * * * * * and the thin air, my breath, was stained, With the contagion of a mother’s hate, Breathed on her child’s destroyer.” Signs and wonders, grave omens, strange portents, have by the ignorant and superstitious been believed to precede and presage the approach of famine and pestilence. Comets have terrified the multitudes; the rabble has quailed at the aurora, and blanched with fear at the sight of colored rain and snow. And yet nothing is clearer than that famine is the result of the simplest meteorological causes. A deficiency in rainfall is sufficient cause--is almost the only cause. Elsewhere we have noted how dependent we are upon the winds and clouds, and we need spend no further explanation of their causes and variations. Owing to the decidedly local character of our own rains, the probability of a general famine in this country is very slight, though local droughts are of continual occurrence. Europe has been affected with serious famines at various periods; but the greatest “harvest of death” has been in Oriental lands. During the present century there have been two or three severe famines in Asia Minor, the last but two or three years since. But it is in India and China, with their overcrowded populations and lack of facilities for inter-communication, that famine becomes most terrible in its ravages. The story of one is that of another; a deficient rainfall, a failure of the rice crop, a multitude eating grass, dead leaves, straw, offal--millions starving. As these lines are written come reports of great dearth in some provinces in Japan.