Leslie touched close upon the very
help and solution she wanted, as she thought these thoughts.
Opposite to her there sat a poor man, to whom there had happened a great
misfortune. One eye was lost, and the cheek was drawn and marked by some
great scar of wound or burn. One half his face was a fearful blot. How
did people bear such things as these,--to go through the world knowing
that it could never be pleasant to any human being to look upon them?
that an instinct of pity and courtesy would even turn every casual
glance away? There was a strange, sorrowful pleading in the one
expressive side of the man's countenance, and a singularly untoward
incident presently called it forth, and made it almost ludicrously
pitiful. A bustling fellow entered at a way-station, his arms full of a
great frame that he carried. As he blundered along the passage, looking
for a seat, a jolt of the car, in starting, pitched him suddenly into
the vacant place beside this man; and the open expanse of the large
looking-glass--for it was that which the frame held--was fairly smitten,
like an insult of fate, into the very face of the unfortunate.
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