not to meddle with the territories; second,
Kansas to be a slave state; third, to acquire
more territory suitable for the further extension
of slavery without regard to the rights
of anyone.

MY LITTLE WARD.

I AM not a rich man now, but ten years
ago I was much poorer. Having a small
family likely to become a large one, and a
small living in the north, which was not
likely to become a large one; the difference
of fare between the second and third
class carriages to London was of some
consideration to me; and whenever I had
occasion—which was but seldom—to take that
journey, I travelled in the latter. We were
a very long time, certainly, upon the road—
from early morning to quite late into the
night; but I seldom found it wearisome. Not
only because I am a clergyman do I make it a
rule to consider nobody belonging to the
Church of England as foreign to me, but it
is my natural disposition to take a great
interest in all my fellow-creatures of every
degree. Without any views of acquiring
additional information, of sucking the brains
of those who have the misfortune to come
across me, as is much recommended by
moralists and philosophers of all times, I am
in the habit of listening greedily to
communicative travellers; of sympathising with
their joys or troubles; and of becoming for
the time, indeed, rather more wrapped up in
them than their own mothers. I have many
times, on my different trips, felt as if I could
have died for my next neighbour, who may
have got in at one station and out at the next.
I actually did upon one occasion—not die,
but—become answerable to the extent of
seventeen shillings and sixpence for a
passenger who had lost his railway ticket from
Preston: which money, by the bye, he afterwards
sent me faithfully, as soon as he could
earn it, like a man. The first-class passenger
is too reserved, not to say too airified and
selfish for me, and the second-class takes his
opinions from the first at second-hand; but
in the parliamentary train we are all of us
perfectly natural and (we at least who have
backs to our seats) at our ease, and our
sentiments are more original and not seldom
better worth having. Our journeys, unless
we are in an excursion train, are rarely
undertaken for pleasure's sake, and it may
be generally predicted, from our personal
appearance, upon what errand we have set out.
At the larger stations there are scores of
us, always very much before our time, each,
as it were, a life-picture, displaying his or
her biography in very looks.

This labourer, wayworn with the dusty roads,
who shoulders his heavy bundle, through which
a hedge-stick passes—to the last never resting
it a moment, but pacing up and down the
platform, as though he might be so set
onward on his travel—has all his worldly
wealth (and little it is) within it. He has
walked far and fast, but he does not join the
boisterous throng about the Railway Arms;
not so much that he has but few pennies to
spare, as that his heart has fallen below that
point whereat beer has power to cheer it.
He is a powerful man, and surely not an
idle one; still those two strong arms of his
cannot earn bread enough—for whom? For
the wife and bairns who will come up
presently in the train from a station lower down
the line, from which he himself has walked
round some twenty miles to save a shilling.
A kindly and unselfish heart he has,
notwithstanding that knitted brow and those
almost sinister eyes. Be careful how you
address him, for he is rough and rude; he
needs none of your smooth lies, he says, and
he has none to give you in return. There is
very little of that rose-coloured patriotism
about him which we see and read of boasting
itself in after-dinner speeches, with three
times three and one cheer more. The first-
class gentry who are forced to travel for a
little way by the parliamentary, regard him
suspiciously, and write him down a Chartist
in their hearts, and I think it very likely that
he is one; but there is no fear of his upsetting
the constitution just at present, poor
fellow! for he is going far away from
England, and most likely for ever; the ship
that he will sail by, is but a tale to him, for
he has never seen one; the ocean that he
will have to traverse is but a dream to him;
and of the distant land to which he is
bound, and whither, thank God! all that is
most dear to him is going likewise, he hardly
knows the name.

This maiden with the Saxon hair, so
young that she scarce esteems it beautiful,
and with the trustful light blue eyes, I trust
leaves not her fatherland. That slender
purse in her sunburnt fingers, the great
marble-coloured box that stands beside her,
and that tearful leave-taking of the grey-
haired old man, her father, seem indeed
to threaten it; but, though his darling
daughter, and the comfort of his old age, is
leaving him, it is not for so very long; that
is what he tells her, or strives to tell her,
and what the poor girl tries to look as if she
derived consolation from. God grant, prays
he (but not aloud), that thy beauty may not
prove thy misery! She is going to the mighty
city far away, where lovers are many and
friends are few, to the new mistress and the
strange house.

This mother and her son; they will be
together, that is something, at least for this one
journey. Her loving eyes, her clasping hand,
are making very much of him while he is yet
within her gaze and grasp. Tearless eyes
and steady hands she has. She comes of a
sturdy race, an Englishwoman born and
bred; sorrow and she have been far too
long acquainted for her to fear him now. By