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Mrs. Prescott seemed sent to the poor-house by an over-ruling Hand. Nobody could exactly tell why she was allowed to spend her last days there -- so good, pious, charitable as she was and had been; but there she was. And who knows but she was sent there by the Lord to do good? There were some creatures in that poor-house who had souls! They were a squalid, miserable set of beings; but what they wanted was just what you and I want, and every body else wants -- a thorough soul-cleansing.

So aunt Prescott thought. So aunt Dorothy said and sung.

CHAPTER III.
GENTLEMEN who sell their Cattle, Sheep, and Hogs by Auction, so contrive it that the highest bidder gets them: so they realize. When a lot of Paupers is disposed of at Auction, the town so contrives it that the lowest bidder gets them: so the town realizes.

LET no one suppose that in this description of the poor-house of Crampton, we mean to say it is the property of that town. Not at all. The only property in it the town claims is, to its temporary occupants, the paupers. These belong to it. They are natives of the town -- "town-born," as we say -- or long resident citizens, who have acquired what is called a "legal settlement" there. They may also have become residents, and gained a settlement by owning real estate to the value of three hundred and fifty dollars, (1) voting, and paying taxes on this and other estate, if other, in possession. Fallen into the arms of Poverty, while legally citizens of a town, the paupers have a claim of support from it, and go to the poor-house. But as we have said, not to the town's house, though the town may, and often does, own a town or poor-house. It is the house of a private individual of the place into whose care the town has confided its paupers for a given period -- say a year. The manner of this conveyance? That we shall show you as we proceed; it is an important quality in the act, and has much to do with our story. Here, we simply say, the paupers of the town, be the number more or less, are disposed of at the annual town meeting when the voters assemble to choose their selectmen and other officers for the year, either at public auction to the -- LOWEST BIDDER, or they are more quietly worked off by the selectmen and overseers of the poor, (at the best bargains possible,) at what may be called a private town Sale, selling the whole to one individual, or selling, i.e. (if you please,) boarding, or renting, or farming them out in parcels to several individuals, always at the lowest possible price, that the TOWN may feel their support as little as may be! They are disposed of by the town or its agents in "lots to suit purchasers," or in a body, as it may best suit the town. Free white men, women, and children, educated -- once, if not now respectable -- voters, tax-payers, the ill-tides of fortune bearing them to the town hall, they are "passed upon" as paupers, and sold out -- work, wages, food, clothing, body and soul -- for the year, the town agreeing to pay so much money to him who will take the risk and do the best he can with it -- working them as he likes, clothing them as he deems it pecuniarily safe, and so feeding them likewise; and in the event of sickness and death, quietly, and at such charges as he deems it wise for him, consigning them to the grave.

The successful bidder for this stock of New England pauper-humanity is usually a citizen of the town, who may be in debt, and wish to free himself therefrom -- in itself a laudable desire; he may be a man of small family, to whom a larger responsibility may not be very irksome; he may be a large farmer, who can employ the paupers on his grounds; he may be one who has a large house and little use for it, who, in its wings and garrets, thinks he can accommodate the poor; or he may be one who owns a long, dark, dilapidated, forsaken: tenement, where his father lived or his more distant grandfather, since then used as a storehouse for grain and lumber -- a retreat for the fowls and sheep and swine -- abandoned, otherwise, long years ago; but which, by the aid of broom, and shovel, and soap, and nails, the tightening of floor boards, doors and windows, may be deemed a snug quarters for the town's poor!

The reader will understand that this mode of supporting the paupers is a private enterprise -- a private risk or speculation -- in which the town bears no part, having nothing to hope or fear in it; these exercises of the mind being altogether confined to the individual speculator. The part which the town has in this transaction is the putting up of the property at sale, to be worked off as a temptation to somebody; the moral, conscientious, and religious people voting to give him so many good dollars a year, as he, in a fair competition with other bidders, takes the job for, and risks all its possible contingencies and consequences.

The speculator in this sort of chattels sometimes makes the risk a valuable one, and at other times ruinous to himself. It is very much as the man is as to genius, tact, energy, calculation. Remuneration in poor-house tenantry is got by "grinding the faces of the poor" to a considerable degree of sharpness, and by ciphering down the cost of things till they aggregate in ciphers. A man who would remunerate himself in such risks, must be a man of great faith in the ability of paupers to live on almost nothing, to suffer almost every thing, and to be contented with almost any thing!