Penelope, Volume I by William Pitt Scargill

Another day dawned upon the multitudinous interests and emotions of humanity. To the mind which can spare time from the intensity of its own feelings, and the selfishness of its own concerns, to think of others -- to think, not merely to talk morality and sentiment about them, but to realise the emotions and agitations of thoughts which harass the human breast, there is in the thought of a day dawning in a great city a deep and serious fulness of interest. The sun's first blush upon the mountains and woods and streams and spangled meadows, is poetical and pretty enough, but the same light beaming on the condensed and crowded habitations of men, brings to the mind far other thoughts, and excites widely different emotions. It awakens misery from its dreams of bliss, and guilt from its dreams of innocence, poverty from its dreams of wealth, and despair from its dreams of hope. Anxiety begins anew its busy work in the breast of the needy parent, and gnawing hunger oft reminds the sufferer of the opening of another day. Bitter are the feelings which morning ofttimes brings to the sons and daughters of poverty; but not to them alone are confined the agonizing throbs of the heart. There is among the inmates of those proud mansions which seemed built for festivity alone, and tenanted by luxury and repose, many, many a bitter pang. There is the thought of keener anguish than any mere physical privation or suffering can inflict, there are pangs of heart for which language has no words, and fancy no figures, there are fears and dreads of which the humbler sufferers of life's ills have no conception. Not enviable were the feelings of our heroine on the first morning in which she woke in the great city.

Then did she feel her truly desolate and destitute condition. She had been as a beauteous flower hanging on a slender film over the current of a river, that film had broken, and the flower had dropped upon the stream at the mercy of its waves. With the opening day there had been accustomed to enter into her mind thoughts of devotion and gratitude. These thoughts came, but not as usual. It seemed to her as though she had not been sufficiently thankful to her Creator for his blessings, and that they had been withheld. She would have prayed but she dared not, she would have wept but she could not. Her bodily fatigue was gone, but the weariness of mind was felt more strongly. She endeavoured to compose her scattered thoughts, but that was a task of no small difficulty. One of the greatest concerns of all, however, was, that by this new arrangement she was placed out of all communication with her father; for the late Dr Greendale was the only person in England with whom Mr Primrose had any correspondence. It was even doubtful whether Mrs Greendale herself knew his address. These circumstances, therefore, though they might not break off his communication with England, would naturally produce a long and serious interruption to it. For her own part, it was out of her power to convey to her father any knowledge of her situation, so as to be able by his intervention to avoid that publicity which she so much dreaded.