Tell me if thou waterest through all thy course a
single habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs of
complaint."
"You are then," said Rasselas, "not more successful in private
houses than I have been in Courts." "I have, since the last
partition of our provinces," said the Princess, "enabled myself to
enter familiarly into many families, where there was the fairest
show of prosperity and peace, and know not one house that is not
haunted by some fury that destroys their quiet.
"I did not seek ease among the poor, because I concluded that there
it could not be found. But I saw many poor whom I had supposed to
live in affluence. Poverty has in large cities very different
appearances. It is often concealed in splendour and often in
extravagance. It is the care of a very great part of mankind to
conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by
temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for the
morrow.
"This, however, was an evil which, though frequent, I saw with less
pain, because I could relieve it.
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