CROUCHED low in a sordid chamber,
With a cupboard of empty shelves,
Half starved, and, alas, unable
To comfort or help themselves,
Two children were left forsaken,
All orphaned of mortal care;
But with spirits too close to heaven
To be tainted by earth's despair,
Alone in that crowded city,
Which shines like an arctic star,
By the banks of the frozen Neva,
In the realm of the mighty Czar.
Now, Max was an urchin of seven;
But his delicate sister, Leeze,
With the crown of her rippling ringlets,
Could scarcely have reached your knees.
As he looked on his sister weeping,
And tortured by hunger's smart,
A thought like an angel entered
At the door of his opened heart.
He wrote on a fragment of paper,
With quivering land and soul,
"Please send to me, Christ, three copecks,
To purchase for Leeze a roll!"
Then, rushed to a church, his missive
To drop,--ere the vesper psalms,--
As the surest mail bound Christward,
In the unlocked box for alms!
While he stepped upon tiptoe to reach it,
One passed from the priestly band,
And with smile like a benediction,
Took the note from his eager hand.
Having read it, the good man's bosom
Grew warm with a holy joy;
"Ah! Christ may have heard you already,
Will you come to my house, my boy?"
"But not without Leeze?" "No, surely.
We'll have a rare party of three;
Go, tell her that somebody's waiting
To welcome her home to tea."
That night in the cosiest cottage,
The orphans were safe at rest,
Each sang as a callow birdling,
In the depths of its downy nest.
And the next Lord's Day, in his pulpit,
The preacher so spake of these,
Stray lambs from the fold, which Jesus
Had blessed by the sacred seas:
So recounted their guileless story,
As he held each child by the hand,
That the hardest there could feel it,
And the dullest could understand.
O'er the eyes of the listening fathers
There floated a gracious mist;
And oh, how the tender mothers
Those desolate darlings kissed!
"You have given your tears," said the preacher,
"Heart-alms we should none despise;
But the open palm, my children,
Is more than the weeping eyes!"
Then followed a swift collection,
From the altar steps to the door,
Till the sum of two thousand rubles
The vergers had counted o'er.
So you see that the unmailed letter
Had somehow gone to its goal,
And more than three copecks gathered
To purchase for Leeze a roll!
