Here also was an establishment for distributing food, and a crowd of poor half-fed wretches were there to meet them.

Not that at that time things were so bad as they became afterwards.

Men were not dying on the road-side, nor as yet had the apathy of want produced its terrible cure for the agony of hunger.

The time had not yet come when the famished living skeletons might be seen to reject the food which could no longer serve to prolong their lives.
Though this had not come as yet, the complaints of the women with their throngs of children were bitter enough; and it was heart-breaking too to hear the men declare that they had worked like horses, and that it was hard upon them now to see their children starve like dogs.

For in this earlier part of the famine the people did not seem to realize the fact that this scarcity and want had come from God.