before her time; but she was dear to him. His
children, stunted in their growth, bore traces
of unwholesome nurture; but they had beauty
in his sight. Above all other things, it was
an earnest desire of this man's soul that his
children should be taught. "If I am
sometimes missed," said he, "for want of
knowledge, at least let them know better, and avoid
my mistakes. If it is hard to me to reap the
harvest of pleasure and instruction that is
stored in books, let it be easier to them."

But, the Bigwig family broke out into violent
family quarrels concerning what it was lawful
to teach to this man's children. Some of
the family insisted on such a thing being
primary and indispensable above all other
things; and others of the family insisted on
such another thing being primary and
indispensable above all other things; and
the Bigwig family, rent into factions, wrote
pamphlets, held convocations, delivered charges,
orations, and all varieties of discourses;
impounded one another in courts Lay and
courts Ecclesiastical; threw dirt, exchanged
pummellings, and fell together by the ears
in unintelligible animosity. Meanwhile, this
man, in his short evening snatches at his
fire-side, saw the demon Ignorance arise
there, and take his children to itself. He
saw his daughter perverted into a heavy
slatternly drudge; he saw his son go moping
down the ways of low sensuality, to brutality
and crime; he saw the dawning light of
intelligence in the eyes of his babies so changing
into cunning and suspicion, that he could
have rather wished them idiots.

"I don't understand this any the better,"
said he; "but I think it cannot be right. Nay,
by the clouded Heaven above me, I protest
against this as my wrong!"

Becoming peaceable again (for his passion
was usually short lived, and his nature kind),
he looked about him on his Sundays and
holidays, and he saw how much monotony and
weariness there was, and thence how
drunkenness arose wth all its train of ruin. Then
he appealed to the Bigwig family, and said,
"We are a labouring people, and I have
a glimmering suspicion in me that labouring
people of whatever condition, were made—by
a higher intelligence than yours, as I poorly
understand it—to be in need of mental
refreshment and recreation. See what we fall
into, when we rest without it. Come! Amuse
me harmlessly, show me something, give me
an escape!"

But, here the Bigwig family fell into a state
of uproar absolutely deafening. When some
few voices were faintly heard, proposing to
show him the wonders of the world, the greatness
of creation, the mighty changes of time,
the workings of nature and the beauties of
art—to show him these things, that is to say,
at any period of his life when he could look
upon them—there arose among the Bigwigs
such roaring and raving, such pulpiting and
petitioning, such maundering and memorialising,
such name-calling and dirt-throwing,
such a shrill wind of parliamentary questioning
and feeble replying—where "I dare not"
waited on "I would"—that the poor fellow
stood aghast, staring wildly around.

"Have I provoked all this," said he, with
his hands to his affrighted ears, "by what
was meant to be an innocent request, plainly
arising out of my familiar experience, and the
common knowledge of all men who choose to
open their eyes? I don't understand, and I am
not understood. What is to come of such a
state of things?"

He was bending over his work, often asking
himself the question, when the news began to
spread that a pestilence had appeared among
the labourers, and was slaying them by
thousands. Going forth to look about him, he
soon found this to be true. The dying and
the dead were mingled in the close and tainted
houses among which his life was passed.
New poison was distilled into the always
murky, always sickening air. The robust
and the weak, old age and infancy, the father
and the mother, all were stricken down
alike.

What means of fight had he? He remained
where he was, and saw those who were dearest
to him die. A kind preacher came to him,
and would have said some prayers to soften
his heart in his gloom, but he replied:

"O what avails it, missionary, to come to
me, a man condemned to residence in this
foetid place, where every sense becomes a
torment, and where every minute of my
numbered days is new mire added to the heap
under which I lie oppressed! But, give me my
first glimpse of Heaven, through a little of its
light and air; give me pure water; help me
to be clean; lighten this heavy atmosphere
and heavy life, in which our spirits sink, and
we become the indifferent and callous
creatures you too often see us; gently and kindly
take the bodies of those who die among us,
out of the small room where we grow to be so
familiar with the awful change that even its
sanctity is lost to us; and, Teacher, then I
will hear—none know better than you, how
willingly—of Him whose thoughts were so
much with the poor, and who had compassion
for all human sorrow!"

He was at his work again, solitary and sad,
when his Master came and stood near to him,
dressed in black. He, also, had suffered
heavily. His young wife, his beautiful and good
young wife, was dead; so, too, his only child.

"Master, 'tis hard to bear—I know it—but
be comforted. I would give you comfort, if
I could."

The Master thanked him from his heart,
but, said he, "O you labouring men! The
calamity began among you. If you had but
lived more healthy and decently, I should not
be the widowed and bereft mourner that I
am this day."

"Master," returned the other, shaking his
head, "I have begun to understand a little