CHAPTER XXIII.
DOWN THE HILL.
When Franks, the acrobat, and his family left Mrs. Baldwin's garret to
go to another yet poorer lodging, it was with heavy hearts: they crept
silent away, to go down yet a step of the world's stair. I have read
somewhere in Jean Paul of a curiously contrived stair, on which while
you thought you were going down you were really ascending: I think it
was so with the Frankses and the stair they were upon. But to many the
world is but a treadmill, on which while they seem to be going up and
up, they are only serving to keep things going round and round.
I think God has more to do with the fortunes of the poor a thousand fold
than with those of the rich. In the fortunes of the poor there are many
more changes, and they are of greater import as coming closer to the
heart of their condition. To careless and purblind eyes these fortunes
appear on an almost dead level of toil and privation; but they have more
variations of weather, more chequers of sunshine and shade, more storms
and calms, than lives passed on airier slopes. Who could think of God as
a God like Christ--and other than such he were not Godand imagine he
would not care as much for the family of John Franks as for the family
of Gerald Raymount? It is impossible to believe that he loves such as
Cornelius or Vavasor as he loves a Christopher.
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