conditions of health as they do understand. No
town was less prepared to encounter an onset
of autumnal fever than that in which the
Ellisons lived. It had no right to expect
health at any time: the history of the place
told of plague in old times, and every epidemic
which visited England became a pestilence
amidst its ill-drained streets, its tidal expanse
of mud, and its crowded alleys. These were
the times when the beloved pastor's fidelity
shone out. For weeks he was, night and day,
in close attendance on the poor of his flock,
and any other poor who were needing help.
He could not aid them in the way that a more
practical man would have done; but Joanna
supplied that kind of ability, while the voice
of her husband carried peace and support
into many a household, prostrated in grief
and dread. He ran far greater risks all the
while than he needed, if he could have been
taught common prudence. He forgot to eat,
and went into unwholesome chambers with
an empty stomach and an exhausted frame.
In spite of his wife's watchfulness, he omitted
to give himself the easy advantages of
freshened air, change of clothes, and a
sufficiency of wholesome food; and, for one week,
he hardly came home to sleep. It was no
wonder that, at last, both were down in the
fever. The best care failed to save Joanna.
She died, without having bidden farewell to
husband and child. Her husband was in bed
delirious, and her boy was in the country,
whither he had been taken for safety when
fever entered the house.

Mr. Ellison recovered slowly, as might be
expected, from the weight upon his mind.
There was something strange, it appeared to
his physician, in his anxiety to obtain strength
to go to London. He was extremely pertinacious
about this. The Careys, glad to see
that he could occupy himself with any project,
humoured this, without understanding it.
They spoke as if he was going to London
when he should be strong enough. They did
not dream of his not waiting for this. But,
in the dark, damp evening of the day when
he dismissed his physician, after Mrs. Carey
had gone home, leaving him on the sofa, and
promising that her husband should call after
tea, he was seen at the coach-office, in the
market-place; and he made a night-journey
to London. There were no railways in those
days; and this journey of one hundred miles
required twelve hours by the "Expedition,"
the "High-Flyer," the "Express," or whatever
the fastest coach might be called. As
soon as he arrived, Mr. Ellison swallowed a
cup of coffee in the bar of the inn, had a
coach called, and proceeded to an insurance—
office to insure his life. As he presented
himself, emaciated and feeble, unwashed,
unshaven, with a crimson handkerchief tied over
his white lips, which quivered when he
uncovered them;—as he told his errand, in a
weak and husky voice, the clerks of the office
stared at him in pitying wonder; and the
directors dismissed him from their parlour,
under the gentlest pretexts they could devise.

He returned home immediately, and told
his adventure to Mr. Carey.

"I could not rest till I had made the effort,"
he said. "When dear Joanna was gone, and
I believed that I should follow her, it
occurred to me that our child would be left
destitute. I saw that I had neglected my
duty; and I resolved that, if I recovered, it
should be so no longer. I have made the
effort; it has failed; and God's will be
done!"

Mr. Carey would not allow that the matter
must be given up. In fact, there was no
difficulty in effecting the insurance, in the
next spring, when Mr. Ellison was restored
to his ordinary state of health, and Mr. Carey
was his guide and helper in the business. The
interest of Joanna's little portion was
appropriated for the purpose, with a small addition,
rendered necessary by the lapse of three
years. It is well known that the most
unworldly and unapt persons are the most proud
of any act of prudence or skill that they
may have been able to achieve. So it was in
this case. When the pastor sat gazing at his
child, it appeared to him a marvellous thing
that he, even he, should have endowed any
human being with a fortune. He was heard
to say to himself, on such occasions, in a tone
of happy astonishment,

"A thousand pounds! Ha!—a thousand
pounds!"

We cannot here follow out the curious
process of that boy's rearing. We have not space
to tell how tenderly he was watched by grand-
mamma, and by Charlotte, till her marriage
gave her cares of her own:—nor what a
stroke it was when Mr. Ellison moved to a
distant city, being invited to a higher post in
the ministry of his sect; nor how curiously
he and his child lived in a lodging, where,
notwithstanding all his efforts to fill the place
of both parents, his boy was too often seen
in rags; nor how the child played leap-frog
and other games with little beggars and
ruffians in the streets, so cleverly, that his
father might be seen gazing at him from
the foot-pavement, in a rapture of admiration;
nor how, on the great occasion of
the little lad's first going to chapel, he
told everybody within reach, that it was
"Pa" in the pulpit; nor how, when he was
tired of the sermon, he was wont to scrape the
sand from the floor, and powder with it the
wigs of the old men who sat in the long pew
before him; nor how, at length, the
importunity of friends prevailed to get him sent to
school; nor how comfortably his father was
boarded in a private family when the lodging
plan became too bad to be borne even by
him. All this we must leave undescribed;
and also his satisfaction when, in a later time
—when his son was grown up, and prosperous,
and well married—the good pastor found
himself at liberty to do, if he should wish it,