“If I should tell you all, it would only be answering my own question, 'whether one could be happy after being left alone in the world by all whom she loved.' Little thing as I was then, I learned that there is no comfort from others, no diversion from a great calamity. Every thing that one clings to for help is only the sailor's block of ice, which is itself water. May you never know how utterly alone one is in a great sorrow; but if you ever should, may you find yourselves, as I did at last, taking root in the very ground on which you fall, and drawing a new life from the reality of your desolation. Thus I had to earn my own living; and you can judge if Clara's lot can seem a hard one to me, who have known so well what poverty is.” “Why, Miss Revere, how can you speak of poverty? I thought you had every thing you wished,” exclaimed Effie. “Dear child, I believe it is only those who have been unhappy, or in some way thrown out of their natural life, who can understand comparisons. We must all earn our own living in some way, and always in the way in which our life is different from all others.” “I wish, Anna, you had not told about the sailor swimming to that awful ice. I do not see the use of thinking of such things before they happen. I am sure I shall never dare to go to sea,” said Kate. “How did you feel, Fanny, when you were out in the boat, in the middle of the ocean?” asked Linda. “Why, was she ever at sea?” “And in a real shipwreck, my dear.” “What, Fanny here? Do, pray, tell us all about it.” “I thought every one knew about it. And yet I remember when we landed,--for we were picked up by another ship,--and I thought every one in the city would be thinking of nothing else, how strange it seemed that no one thought much about it. We went up to a hotel, and every one was seeing to his own baggage, and every thing going on just as if nothing had happened. I suppose this is why I have never talked more about it.” “But tell us; you know we shall be interested in it. I have always wanted to hear about a shipwreck from some one who had actually been in it.”