“Immalee’s shudderings were her only answer, (though of many parts of his description she had a very imperfect idea). “No, he is not enough so yet,” pursued the stranger, pressing the picture on her; “let his steps, that know not where they wander, conduct him to the gates of the affluent and the luxurious--let him feel that plenty and mirth are removed from him but by the interval of a wall, and yet more distant than if severed by worlds--let him feel that while _his_ world is darkness and cold, the eyes of those within are aching with the blaze of light, and hands relaxed by artificial heat, are soliciting with fans the refreshment of a breeze--let him feel that every groan he utters is answered by a song or a laugh--and let him die on the steps of the mansion, while his last conscious pang is aggravated by the thought, that the price of the hundredth part of the luxuries that lie untasted before heedless beauty and sated epicurism, would have protracted his existence, while it poisons theirs--let him _die of want on the threshold of a banquet-hall_, and then admire with me the ingenuity that displays itself in this new combination of misery. The inventive activity of the people of the world, in the multiplication of calamity, is inexhaustibly fertile in resources. Not satisfied with diseases and famine, with sterility of the earth, and tempests of the air, they must have laws and marriages, and kings and tax-gatherers, and wars and fetes, and every variety of artificial misery inconceivable to you.”