--The terrified fire in
Charleston, which has laid so large a part of that beautiful city in rains, and driven so many families into the streets, without a shelter and without a home, must arouse the Seepiest and keenest sympathies of the whole country.
Misfortunes, it is said, never come single, and the recent events in
Charleston afford another illustration of the truth of the proverb.
Beleaguered by a malignant enemy, her harbor blockaded, the flower of her population in the battle fields, the devastating element of fire is suddenly let loose at midnight upon a population mostly composed of women and children, and amidst the clanging of fire-bells, the wail of the wintry wind, and the lurid glare of a whole city on fire, multitudes of delicate and defenceless beings, whose husbands, fathers, brothers and sons are bearing their bosoms to the missiles of the enemy, are forced from their homes, and exposed to the rigors of winter, the sufferings of poverty and privation, and, what is often colder than winter, the cold charities of the world.
The destruction of so many noble public edifices is one of the least lamentable features of this fearful conflagration.--Far sadder and more heart tending is the distress and misery brought upon multitudes who have been deprived not only of their comforts, but the necessities of life, and who can only find relief in the prompt action and universal sympathy and beneficence of their countrymen.
How mysterious are the ways of
Providence!
If ever there was a city in any land distinguished above all others for the charities of life and for practical benevolence and religion, it is the city of
Charleston.
We know of no other city in which there exists so many and stick efficient associations for the relief of the poor, the aged, of widows and of orphans, as those which have for years adorned and ennobled the character of
Charleston.
No other city has done more for the comfort and relief of the brave men who are now batting for our rights.
Surely, when such a people are visited by such a calamity as that which has now desolated
Charleston, their brethren of the
Confederacy will not prove mere men of words, like the comforters of Job, but will vie with each other in instant and energetic measures to assuage their distresses, and to fulfill to those who have so often soothed the sorrows of others, the promise that the bread which they have so abundantly cast upon the waters shall return to console and bless their own hearts.
