By forming a humble scheme for their remaining life, a scheme depending
upon their _own_ exertions alone, on no light promises of pretended
friends, and on no sanguine hopes of certain success, but with prudent
apprehension, with fortitude against disappointment, Henry, his son, and
Rebecca (now his daughter), found themselves, at the end of one year, in
the enjoyment of every comfort with such distinguished minds knew how to
taste.
Exempt both from patronage and from control--healthy--alive to every
fruition with which Nature blesses the world; dead to all out of their
power to attain, the works of art--susceptible of those passions with
endear human creatures one to another, insensible to those which separate
man from man--they found themselves the thankful inhabitants of a small
house, or hut, placed on the borders of the sea.
Each morning wakes the father and the son to cheerful labour in fishing,
or the tending of a garden, the produce of which they carry to the next
market town. The evening sends them back to their home in joy: where
Rebecca meets them at the door, affectionately boasts of the warm meal
that is ready, and heightens the charm of conversation with her taste and
judgment.
It was after a supper of roots from their garden, poultry that Rebecca's
hand had reared, and a jug brewed by young Henry, that the following
discourse took place.
"My son," said the elder Henry, "where under Heaven shall three persons
be met together happy as we three are? It is the want of industry, or
the want of reflection, which makes the poor dissatisfied. Labour gives
a value to rest which the idle can never taste; and reflection gives to
the mind a degree of content which the unthinking never can know."
"I once," replied the younger Henry, "considered poverty a curse; but
after my thoughts became enlarged, and I had associated for years with
the rich, and now mix with the poor, my opinion has undergone a total
change; for I have seen, and have enjoyed, more real pleasure at work
with my fellow-labourers, and in this cottage, than ever I beheld, or
experienced, during my abode at my uncle's; during all my intercourse
with the fashionable and the powerful of this world."
"The worst is," said Rebecca, "the poor have not always enough."
"Who has enough?" asked her husband. "Had my uncle? No: he hoped for
more; and in all his writings sacrificed his duty to his avarice. Had
his son enough, when he yielded up his honour, his domestic peace, to
gratify his ambition? Had Lady Bendham enough, when she staked all she
had, in the hope of becoming richer? Were we, my Rebecca, of
discontented minds, we have now too little. But conscious, from
observation and experience, that the rich are not so happy as ourselves,
we rejoice in our lot."
The tear of joy which stole from her eye expressed, more than his words,
a state of happiness.
He continued: "I remember, when I first came a boy to England, the poor
excited my compassion; but now that my judgment is matured, I pity the
rich. I know that in this opulent kingdom there are nearly as many
persons perishing through intemperance as starving with hunger; there are
as many miserable in the lassitude of having nothing to do as there are
of those bowed down to the earth with hard labour; there are more persons
who draw upon themselves calamity by following their own will than there
are who experience it by obeying the will of another. Add to this, that
the rich are so much afraid of dying they have no comfort in living."
"There the poor have another advantage," said Rebecca; "for they may defy
not only death, but every loss by sea or land, as they have nothing to
lose."
"Besides," added the elder Henry, "there is a certain joy of the most
gratifying kind that the human mind is capable of tasting, peculiar to
the poor, and of which the rich can but seldom experience the delight."
"What can that be?" cried Rebecca.
"A kind word, a benevolent smile, one token of esteem from the person
whom we consider as our superior."
To which Rebecca replied, "And the rarity of obtaining such a token is
what increases the honour."
"Certainly," returned young Henry, "and yet those in poverty, ungrateful
as they are, murmur against that Government from which they receive the
blessing."
"But this is the fault of education, of early prejudice," said the elder
Henry. "Our children observe us pay respect, even reverence, to the
wealthy, while we slight or despise the poor. The impression thus made
on their minds in youth is indelible during the more advanced periods of
life; and they continue to pine after riches, and lament under poverty:
nor is the seeming folly wholly destitute of reason; for human beings are
not yet so deeply sunk in voluptuous gratification, or childish vanity,
as to place delight in any attainment which has not for its end the love
or admiration of their fellow-beings."
"Let the poor, then," cried the younger Henry, "no more be their own
persecutors--no longer pay homage to wealth--instantaneously the whole
idolatrous worship will cease--the idol will be broken!"