Several years ago, a poor widow had placed a smoked herring,—the last morsel of food she had in the house—on the table for herself and children, when a stranger entered and solicited food, saying that he had had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours. The widow unhesitatingly offered to share the herring with him, remarking, at the same time, "We shall not be forsaken, or suffer deeper for an act of charity."

As the stranger drew near the table and saw the scantiness of the fare, he asked, "And is this all your store? Do you offer a share to one you do not know? Then I never saw charity before. But, madam, do you not wrong your children by giving a part of your morsel to a stranger?" "Ah," said she, with tears in her eyes, "I have a boy, a darling son, somewhere on the face of the wide world, unless Heaven has taken him away; and I only act towards you as I would that others should act towards him. God, who sent manna from heaven, can provide for us as he did for Israel; and how should I this night offend him, if my son should be a wanderer, destitute as you, and he should have provided for him a home, even as poor as this, were I to turn you unrelieved away!"

The stranger whom she thus addressed, was the long absent son to whom she referred; and when she stopped speaking, he sprang from his feet, clasped her in his arms, and exclaimed, "God, indeed, has provided just such a home for your wandering son, and has given him wealth to reward the goodness of his benefactress. My mother! O, my mother!"[49]