the large edition of Johnson's Dictionary; and I do regret, with
considerable sincerity, having neglected to ask the gentleman whether,
in the course of his highly entertaining reading, he met with any word
so murdered, butchered, abused, and misunderstood, as the poor
polysyllable--education. Many wise people conceive it to signify many
multitudes of words--of dead words and of living words, of words without
symbols; or, in plain language, they say (or they act as if they said)
that education means to make a man's head a portable lexicon of all
languages. This is what they term the education classical. Some very
wise men go a step farther with the meaning of the term. They shake
their heads in contempt at the mere word-men. They mingle more of
utility with their idea of the signification. They maintain that
education meaneth also certain figures, whereby something is learned
concerning pounds and pence, and square inches and solid inches. Here
the general idea of education terminates; and this is the education
mercantile and mathematical. There are, however, a third class of
philosophically-wise men, who affirm that education means the
macadamising, on a small scale, of blue stones and grey ones; in
describing comets with tails, and planets without tails; in making the
invisible gases give forth light in darkness, as the invisible mind
lighteth mortality. This is the education scientific. Thus the artillery
of all the three is directed against the head. The head is made a
gentleman, a scholar, a philosopher, while the poor heart is suffered to
remain in a state of untutored, uncared-for barbarity and ignorance. And
in all this parade, concerning what education in reality imports, it is
overlooked, that the heart from whence all evil proceeds--the heart
where all good is received--is the soil where the first seeds of
education ought to be sown, watered, watched over, pruned, and reared
with tenderness. And it is not until the heart has become a sturdy
savage, hardened in ignorance, that any attempts are made to curb it
within the limits of moral obligation. A more insane idea cannot be
conceived by a rational man, than supposing that education begins by
learning to know that one letter is called A, a second B, and a third C.
Education begins with the first glance which the mother bestows upon her
child in answer to its first smile. Before the infant has lisped its
first word, the work of education has made progress. The mother is the
first, the fondest, the most important and responsible teacher. It is
hers to draw out the young soul, which dreams in the smiles and the
laughing eyes of her infant; it is hers to subdue, and in gentleness to
root up, the first germ of evil that springs into existence; it is hers
to unfold, by a thousand ways and a thousand tendernesses, which a
mother's heart can only conceive, and a mother's eye only can express,
the first shadows of right and of wrong; it is hers to teach feelings of
love, of gentleness, and gratitude--to give a direction and a colouring
to the embryo passions which shall mark the future character and destiny
of her yet sucking child. Nor is there an object upon earth more worthy
the admiration, we had almost said the envy, of an angel, than a
Christian mother gazing, in the depth of her affection, upon the babe of
her bosom, watching its faculties expand like young flowers--bending
them to the sun of truth, gently as the linnet bends the twig where it
thrills its little song to cheer its partner. But, when the infant
leaves the lap of its mother, and other duties divide her care, it is
then necessary that a teacher, equally affectionate and equally
efficient, be provided; for children seek, and will find, teachers of
good or of evil in every scene, and in every playmate. It is now that
the Infant School must mature the education which the mother has, or
ought to have, begun. Some disciple of moth-eaten customs, whose ideas
are like the flight of a bat, and whose imagination is hung round with
cobwebs, may snarl out his mouthfuls of broken humanity, and inquire,
what could be learned by infants of two or of five years of age, to
compensate for blighting their ruddy cheeks like tender plants in a
frost-wind, by mewing them up and crowding them together within the
dismal walls of a noxious schoolroom, through the midst of which a male
or a female tyrant continue their dreary tramp, tramping to and fro
within the hated circle of their terror, and flourishing fear and
trembling in their hand, in the shape of a birch, the bark of which has
yielded to their work of punishment? I readily admit that, in such a
place, and under such a teacher, nothing could be learned--nothing
experienced--but an early foretaste of future misery. This is no picture
of an infant school--this is no part of its discipline. Never would I
confine the little innocents within the walls of a prison-house--never
would I behold them trembling beneath the frown of a taskmaster. I would
not curtail one of their infant joys, nor cut off one of their young
pleasures. I would not mar their merry play, nor curb the glee that
wantons in their little clubs. But I would mingle education with their
joy and with their pleasures--health and lessons with their play--and
affection and forgiveness in their little bands. Thus their joys or
their pleasures, their play and their companions, become their teachers.
By an infant school I would not mean a room where a hundred children may
be crowded together in an unhealthy atmosphere. The situation and
comforts of the school are almost as important as the nature of the
instruction, or the character and disposition of the teacher. The
situation should be airy and healthy, and the room well ventilated, with
a small play-ground attached. For the play-ground is almost as necessary
as the school, and both are regarded by the pupils as places of loved
amusement, where the presence of the teacher inspires no terror, no
restraint, but where he mingles in their sports and directs them as an
elder playmate, while they regard him as such, and in return love him as
a parent. And while all appears unrestrained mirth on the little yard,
or the little green; and exercise gives play to the lungs, vigour to the
system, and health to the blood, and the small gymnasium rings with the
joy of the happy beings, no incident, however trifling, is suffered to
pass unimproved, to "lead them from nature up to nature's God," to
eradicate evil propensities, and cherish a love of truth, justice,
mercy, and mutual love. Their sports, their tempers, their little
wrongs, or quarrels, all become monitors in the hands of the teacher, to
render his infant charges the future good men, or the excellent women.
The schoolroom is only changing the scene of amusement, and tasks which
I remember were to me the very essence of purgatory, pain, and
punishment, are rendered to them an exquisite pastime. The pence table
they carol merrily to the tune of "Nancy Dawson." With two or three sets
of merry motions, they chant the formidable multiplication table, which
affords them all the hilarity of chasing a butterfly, or romping on the
meadow. Nothing is given them in the shape of a task, but every new
lesson is a new pleasure. They are not so much taught by words, as by
bringing the thing signified under their observation. I should be sorry
if the objects of infant schools should ever be so perverted as to
attempt making them nurseries for infant prodigies. I care no more for
precocity of talent than I do for a tree that has blossomed before its
time, the fruit of which is sure not to be worth the gathering. The
design of infant schools is not to make ignorant parents _vain_ of their
children, but to make all parents _happy_ in their children. It is not
so much the _quantity_ of what they learn that is to be regarded, as the
_quality_ of what they learn. They will learn cheerful obedience to
their parents, their instructors, and their future masters; they will
learn the most important of all lessons to their after happiness, the
government of their temper; they will learn conscientiousness in all
that they do; they will learn sincerity; they will learn habits of
order, of cleanliness, and of courtesy; they will learn method and
dislike confusion; they will learn to bestow neatness, without vanity,
on their persons; and order in all things. They will acquire a knowledge
of geography, of the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms,
not as words but as things that exist, and of which they have an
understanding. They will acquire much to amuse and delight the fireside
of their parents--much to surround it with edification and instruction.
And instances have been, where they have there conveyed upon their
lisping tongues conviction and conversion to a parent's heart; while
their Maker from the lips of babes and of sucklings perfected praise.
They will be taught to feel that there is ever in the midst of them a
God of love, of mercy, and of power, who is angry with the wicked every
day. They will be taught to love the creatures He has framed, to know
his Word, and revere its precepts--to love virtue for virtue's sake. It
may be urged that much of the good produced by infant schools will be
afterwards destroyed, by their mingling in other schools in riper years,
with children whose passions have been permitted to run wild, and
especially where evil examples may exist on the part of the parents.
That these will have a prejudicial effect to a certain extent, is not to
be denied. But for them there is also a preventive and a remedy. The
infant school is the nursery of the Sabbath school, where all the good
begun will be strengthened and confirmed. Great as the moral and
religious change is which Sabbath schools have effected upon society,
their effect would have been tenfold, had not the moral culture of the
child been so unheeded before sending it to the school, and its heart so
hardened by years and neglect, as to render an abiding impression
impossible. But religious instruction, whether implanted in our minds by
our father's fireside, in the infant school, or the Sabbath school, will
never be forgotten. It will not depart from us. We may endeavour to
shake it off, but it will struggle with us as Jacob with the angel. It
will be a whisper in our souls for ever. We may grow up, and we may
mingle with the world, and we may cast our Bibles far from us--and we
may become wicked men and thoughtless women, but these whispers of
eternal truth, though even thought to be forgotten by ourselves, will
return and return again; and, when we wander in solitude, or lie
sleepless on our pillow in the darkness of midnight, they will rush back
upon our guilty minds, in texts, in verses, and in chapters, long, long
forgotten.
But to return to my history. I have said that the first of my education
was the sayings which I heard from the lips of my father and mother.
They gave an inclination to my spirit, as the hand bendeth the twig.
They became to me as monitors that were always present. I often think
that I hear the voice of my honoured father saying unto me still,
"Whatsoever ye take in hand, _persevere_ until ye accomplish it." That
maxim became with me a principle, which has continued with me from
childhood unto this day.
Before proceeding farther, it is necessary for me to say that my father
was not only a poor man, but his occupation was one of the humblest
which a peasant could occupy. He filled no higher situation than that of
occasional barnman, and hedger and ditcher, upon a farm near Thornhill,
in Dumfries-shire. Neither was he what some would call a strong-minded
man, nor did he know much of what the world calls education; but, if he
did not know what education was, he knew what the want of it was, and he
was resolved that that was a knowledge which his children should never
acquire. It was therefore his ambition to make them scholars to the
extent of his means. But, when I state that his income did not exceed
six shillings, you will agree with me that those means were not great.
But my father's maxim, _persevere_, carried him over every difficulty.
When my mother had said to him, as a quarter's wages became due--"Robin,
I will never be able to stand thir bairns' schooling--sae mony o' them
is a perfect ruination to me."
"Nonsense, Jenny," he would have said, in his own half-laughing,
good-natured way; "the back is aye made fit for the burden. Just try
anither quarter, though we have to be put to our shifts to make it out.
I'm no feared but that we will make it out some way or other. We have
always done it yet, and what we have done, we can do again. Let us give
them a' the schooling we can, poor things; and the day will come when
they will thank us, or mair than thank us, for a' that we have wared
upon them. O Jenny, woman! had I been a scholar, as I am not, instead o'
being the wife o' a labouring man the day, ye would have been my
wife--but a leddy."
A thousand times since, it has been a matter of wonder to me how my
parents, out of their niggard income, provided food, clothing, and
education for their family, which consisted of five sons and four
daughters, all of whom could not only read, write, and cast accounts;
but, though I say it who perhaps ought not to say it, his sons, in point
of "_schooling_" in higher branches, were the equals, and perhaps more
than the equals, of the richest farmer's sons in the neighbourhood. And
never did a quarter-day arrive, on which any of the nine children of
Robert and Janet Gray went before his teacher without his money in their
hand, even as the brethren of Joseph, the patriarch, carried the money
in their sacks' mouth. For it was not with my revered parents, as
now-a-days it is with too many, who regard paying a schoolmaster his
fees somewhat in the same light as paying a physician after his patient
is dead, or a lawyer when the cause is lost.
Every Saturday night my father, though no scholar himself, caused us to
bring home our books and our slates, and in his homely way he examined
us--or rather he examined _them_ (the books and the slates)--as to the
proficiency we had made. Of figures he did know something: grammar, he
said, was a new invention, and there, for a time, his examinations were
at fault, and he knew not how to judge or to decide. But (I being the
eldest) as I grew up, he transferred the examination of my younger
brothers, as regarded grammatical proficiency, to me. And well do I
remember, that every weekly examination closed with the
admonition--"Now, bairns, _persevere_. Ye see how your mother and me
have to fecht late and early to keep ye at the schule; and it is my
greatest ambition to see ye a' scholars. Learning is a grand thing; it
is a fortune equal to the best estate in the kingdom--ay, even to the
Duke o' Buccleugh's; but oh, the want o' it is a great calamity, as nane
can tell ye better than your faither. Therefore, bairns, _persevere_;
always strive to be at the head o' your class, and if I live to be an
auld man, I shall see some o' ye leddies and gentlemen."
Thus the word _persevere_ was for ever rung in our ears; and I believe,
before any of us knew its meaning, we one and all put it in practice.
And often, when the frost lay white upon the ground, before the sun got
up, and even when the ice drew itself together like a piece of lace-work
on the shallow pools, at the head of all the classes in our school,
which were just like stepping-stairs, a barefooted and barelegged
laddie, but with hands and face as clean as the linen on his back, might
have been seen as the dux of every class: and all those barefeeted or
barelegged laddies were the bairns of Robert Gray.
"Persevere as ye are doing, Roderic," my old teacher used to say, "and
ye will live to be an ornament to your country yet." I doubt all the
ornament I have been to my country is hardly of a higher kind than that
of a stucco or a paste-board figure on a mantelpiece, and perhaps not so
much. However, be that as it may, I have the consolation to think that I
have not passed through the world exactly as if I had been a cipher.
I know it is a difficult and a delicate thing for a man to write a
sketch of his own life, without committing shipwreck on the shoals and
quicksands of egotism; but I will endeavour to steer clear of this, and
while it is certain that I will "set down nought in malice," I trust
that I shall be able to show that I will "nothing extenuate."
My father's precept of _perseverance_ carried me through my schoolboy
days gloriously, even as it had borne him through the expense of paying
out of his scanty earnings for the education of nine children. I wanted
three days of completing my thirteenth year when I left the school, but
then I had begun to read Homer in Greek--I had read Horace in Latin, and
I was acquainted with Euclid. My father was proud of me, my master was
proud of me, for I had _persevered_. It was seldom that the son of a
cottar, or the son of any one else, left the school at such an age so
far advanced.
Many said that before I was twenty they would see me in a pulpit--but
they were mistaken. My father's habitual word, _persevere_, had taken
too deep root in my heart, until it produced a sort of mental perpetual
motion, which ever urged me onward--onward! and I found that the limits
of a pulpit would never confine or contain me. I felt like a thing of
life and happiness, that rejoiced and shook its wings beneath the
sunshine of freedom, and I longed to expand my wings, even though they
should fall or break under me.
I have said that I left school three days before I had completed my
thirteenth year, and on the day that I did so, I was to become tutor in
the family of a Colonel Mortimer, of the Honourable the East India
Company's service. I was to be at once the playmate and instructor of
two children; the one five, the other seven years of age--both boys. But
his family contained another child--Jessy Mortimer--a lovely, dark-eyed
girl of fifteen. The sun of an eastern clime had early drawn forth her
beauty into ripeness, and although but two years older than myself, she
was as a woman, while I was not only a mere boy, but, if I might use the
expression, something between what might be termed a boy and a child;
and certainly at the very age when children are most disagreeable to
persons of a riper age. Yet, young as I was, from the very day that I
beheld her, my soul took up its habitation in her eyes. I was dumb in
her presence, I opened not my mouth. I was as a whisper, a shadow, in
the family--a piece of mechanism that performed the task designed for
it. It was a presumptuous thing in the son of a humble barnman to fix
his eyes and his heart upon the daughter of an East India colonel, and
one two years older than himself; but the heart hath its vagaries, even
as our actions have.
For the first two years that I was in the house of Colonel Mortimer, I
may say that, save in my class-room, my voice was not heard above my
breath. But, as my voluntary dumbness became more and more oppressive,
so also did my affection, my devotion, for Jessy become the more
intense. The difference between our ages seemed even to have become more
marked, and I felt it. Yet I began to think that her eyes looked upon me
more tenderly; and the thought increased the devotion which for two
years I had silently cherished. There seemed also a music, a spirit of
gentleness and of kindness, in her voice, which first inspired me with
hope.
Thus did five years pass on, and during that period I hardly ventured to
lift up my eyes in her presence; though throughout that period I had
said within my heart, Jessy Mortimer _shall be my wife_, and that was a
bold thought for the son of a barnman to entertain towards the daughter
of a wealthy nabob. But throughout my whole life I had endeavoured to
put into practice my father's counsel concerning perseverance; and most
of all was I determined to follow it in the subject which was deepest in
my heart.
I remember the first time I ever spoke to Jessy. When I say the first
time I spoke to her, I mean the first time that my soul spoke to her
through my lips. For more than five years we had exchanged the common
civilities of society with each other; but the language of the heart is
ever a sealed volume, when the cold-fashioned ceremonies of society have
to be observed.
But to proceed. I was now upwards of eighteen, and the children under my
tuition were to be removed to a public school. It was no disgrace to me
that they were to be so removed, for I knew it from the beginning of my
engagement. Yet I felt it as disgrace--as more than disgrace--because
that it would tear me from the side of Jessy, on whom my eyes lived and
my mind dreamed. I had no wish to be a teacher, no ambition to become a
minister; and her father had procured for me a situation as a clerk to a
broker in London. But to me the thoughts of departure were terrible.
Everything within and around the colonel's establishment had become
things that I loved. I loved them because Jessy loved them, because she
saw them, touched them, was familiar with and in the midst of them. They
had become a portion of my _home_. I was unhappy at the thought of
leaving them; but, beyond every other cause, my mind was without comfort
at the thought of leaving her--it was hopeless, desolate. It was like
causing a memory by force to perish in my heart.
It was in the month of September; I was wandering amidst the wooded
walks upon her father's grounds. The rainbowed bronze of autumn lay upon
the trees, deepening as it lay. The sun hung over the western hills; and
the lark, after its summer silence, carolled over the heads of the last
reapers of the season, to cheer their toil. A few solitary swallows
twittered together, as if crying, "Come--come!" to summon them to a
gathering and departure. The wood-pigeon cooed in the plantations, and
as the twilight deepened, the plaintiveness of its strain increased. As
I have said, I was then wandering in the wooded walks upon Colonel
Mortimer's grounds, and my thoughts were far too deep for words. While I
so wandered in lonely melancholy, my attention was aroused by the sound
of footsteps approaching. I looked up, and Jessy Mortimer stood before
me. I was too bashful to advance--too proud, too attached towards her,
to retire.
We stood as though an electric spark had stricken both. I trembled, and
my eyes grew dim; but I saw the rose die upon her cheeks. I beheld her
ready to fall upon the ground, and, half unconscious of what I did, I
sprang forward, and my arm encircled her waist.
"Jessy!--Miss Mortimer!" I cried. "Pardon me--speak to me."
"Sir!" she exclaimed--"Roderic!" I approached her--I took her hand. We
stood before each other in silence. She drew herself up--she fixed her
eyes upon me. "Sir," she returned, "I will not pretend to misunderstand
your meaning; but remember the difference that exists in our
situations."
"I remember it, Miss Mortimer--I do. I will remember it, Jessy. There
_is_ a difference in our situations."
I sprang from her--I thought I felt her hand detaining mine; and, as I
rushed away, I heard her exclaiming, "Stay, Roderick! stay!" But wounded
pride forbade me--it withheld me. I thought of my father's and of my
mother's words--"Persevere! persevere!" And while I thought, I felt a
something within, which whispered that I should one day speak to the
daughter of Colonel Mortimer as her equal.
As I rushed away, I turned round for a moment to exclaim, "Farewell,
Jessy!--we shall meet again!" Me-thought, as I hurried onward, I heard
the accents of broken-hearted agony following after me; and through all,
and over all, her voice was there. But I would not, I could not return.
It was better to feel the arrow in my soul, than to have a new one
thrust into it.
In a few days I took my departure towards London. I carried with me the
letters of introduction which her father had given me. The broker to
whom he recommended me was a Mr Stafford. He received me civilly, but at
the same time most coldly, and pointing with his finger to the desk,
said, "You will take your place there."
I did so, and in a very few weeks I became acquainted with the minutiae
of a broker's office. I perceived the situation which my senior clerks
occupied, and I trusted one day to be as they were. I had heard them
tell of our master having come to London with only half-a-crown in his
pocket; and I thought of my father's maxim, "persevere," and that I
might do even as my master had done.
There were a dozen clerks; and three years had not passed, until I
occupied one of the chief seats in the counting-house. I became a
favourite with my employer, and one in whom he trusted.
During that period I had heard nothing of my early benefactor--nothing
of Jessy; but my thoughts were full of them.
Now it came to pass, somewhat more than three years after I had arrived
in London, that, one day as I was passing up Oldgate, a person stopped
me, and exclaimed, "Roderic!"
"Esau!" I returned; for his name was Esau Taylor.
"The same," he replied, "your old schoolfellow."
Hunger sat upon his cheeks--starvation glared from his
eyeballs--necessity fluttered around him as a ragged robe. The shoes
upon his feet were the ghost of what they had been. His whole apparel
was the laughingstock of the wind; but my father had taught me to
despise no one, however humble. It was a saying of his, "Look to the
heart within a breast, and not to the coat that covers it;" and
therefore I received Esau Taylor kindly. He was the son of an extensive
farmer in our neighbourhood, and although I wondered to find him in a
situation so distressed, I recollected that in London such things were
matter of everyday occurrence. Therefore I did not receive him coldly,
because of the shabbiness of his coat, and the misery of his appearance.
I knew that I was the son of a barnman, and that my father's coat might
be out at the elbows.
"Ha, Esau! my dear fellow," said I to him, "when did you come to town?"
"Several weeks ago," he replied.
"And what have you been doing?" said I.
"Nothing, nothing," he rejoined.
"Well," said I, "will you meet me in this house to-morrow? You were
always good at figures, Esau; you can keep accounts. I think I can do
something for you; and if you _persevere_, I doubt not but that you may
arrive at the top of the tree, and become the managing clerk of the
establishment."
"Thank you! thank you! thank you!" said Esau, grasping my hands as he
spoke.
"Ah!" said I, "there is no necessity for thanks; I am a plain, blunt
person. I did not know you personally in the place of my nativity, but I
remember having seen you. I remember also your friends; and as a
townsman it will give me pleasure to know that I can be of service to
you."
Esau grasped my hand, and he shook it as though he would have taken it
from the elbow. I was certain that he would obtain the situation which I
had in view for him. We sat down together--we talked of old times, when
the feelings of our hearts were young; and, amongst other things, we
spoke of Jessy Mortimer. I sat--I drank with him--we became happy
together--we became mad together. My Jessy--Jessy Mortimer was before
me. Her presence filled my thoughts--it overshadowed me. I could think
of nothing else--I could speak of nothing else. I drank to her in
bumpers; but Esau sat as calm as a judge with the black cap upon his
head. I marvelled that the man had so little of what is called sympathy
in his soul. He appeared before me as a dead man--a thing that moved
merely as it was moved. I almost despised, and yet I trusted him,
because he was connected with the part of the country to which I
belonged.
Now, as I have informed you, we sat together, we drank together, and the
name of Jessy Mortimer overcame me; but I sat till I forgot her, until I
forgot myself--my companion--everything! In this state I was left
sitting; and when consciousness returned, I was alone, bewildered. My
companion had left me. My first sensation was that of shame--of burning
shame. I felt that I had abused the time and the confidence of my
employer, and the thought rendered me wretched.
It was two days before I ventured to call again at the office, where I
had become a confidential clerk. My master passed me as I entered, but
he neither spoke to nor noticed me. His coldness stung me. I felt my
guiltiness burning over me. But my confusion was increased, when I
learned that I was not only discharged, but that my place was to be
supplied by Esau Taylor!
"Impossible!" I exclaimed.
"Deem it so," said my informant. "But you have cherished an adder that
has stung you; and, with all your knowledge, you are ignorant of the
world, and of the people that live, breathe, and act in it. Take my
counsel, and regard every man as though he were your enemy, until you
have proved him to be your friend."
There was something in his words that more than restored my wandering
thoughts into their proper channel.
I found that I had performed an act of kindness towards a villain--for I
had not only treated Esau Taylor hospitably, but knowing that in London
a good coat is of as much importance as a good character, I had
furnished him with wearing apparel from my own wardrobe. A few days
afterwards I met him in the Strand, arrayed in my garments, and he
passed me with a supercilious air, as though I were a being only fit to
be despised. I walked on as though I saw him not, conscious that, if he
had a soul within him, it must be burning with the coals of fire which I
had heaped upon his head.
I soon found it was much easier to lose a good situation than to obtain
an indifferent one, and that one act of folly might accomplish what a
thousand of repentances could not retrieve.
In a few months I found myself in a state of destitution; and while the
coat which I had given to Esau Taylor was still glossy upon his back,
mine--my last remaining one--hung loose and forlorn upon my shoulders.
Yet, although I then suffered from both cold and hunger, the words which
my parents had made a portion of my character departed not from me, and
the words "_persevere!--persevere!_" were ever in my heart, kindling,
glowing as a flame, until, in solitary enthusiasm, I have exclaimed
aloud, as I wandered (not having a roof to shelter me) upon the streets
at midnight, "I will persevere."
I was glad to accept of employment as copying clerk to a law stationer,
at a salary of seven shillings a-week. It was a small sum, and I have
often thoughtlessly wasted many times the amount since; but it made me
happy then. It snatched, or rather it bought from the gripe of death--it
relieved me from the pains and the terrors of want. My situation was now
sufficiently humble, but my spirit was not broken; neither had I
forgotten Jessy Mortimer, nor did I despair of one day calling her mine.
During the days of humiliation which I am recording, I was struck with
an incident, which, although trifling in itself, I shall here relate;
for from it I drew a lesson which encouraged me, and made me resolve, if
possible, to carry my maxim into more active practice. Frequently on a
Saturday afternoon, when the labours of the week were over, instead of
returning to my wretched garret (for which I paid a shilling a-week, and
which contained no furniture save a shake-down bed and a broken chair),
I was wont to go out in the country, and to seek the silence and
solitude of the woods and the green lanes. On such occasions
"My lodging was on the cold ground,"
and on the Sabbath mornings, I was wont to steal, as if unobserved, into
the first country church, or rather place of worship, which I found
open. I was there unknown; and in a congregation of English peasantry,
the one-half of whom were in their smock-frocks, there were none to
observe the shabbiness of my garments. And in the plainness of
everything around me, there was something that accorded with my frame of
mind, and in the midst of which I felt happier, and more at ease, than I
could in the splendid cathedral or the gaudy chapel of a great city. It
was in the month of May, and the sweet blossom, like odoriferous snow,
lay on the hawthorn. The lark sang over me its Sabbath hymn. The sun had
just risen, and, like the canopy of a celestial couch on which an angel
might have reposed, the clouds, like curtains of red and gold, seemed
drawn asunder. I sat beneath a venerable elm-tree, over which more than
a hundred winters had passed; but their frosts had not nipped the
majesty of its beauty. Above me a goldfinch chirmed and fed its young,
and they seemed ready to break away upon the wing. It chirped to them,
it fluttered from branch to branch, to allure them from the nest. One
bolder than the rest ventured to follow, but ignorant of the strength of
its wings, it fell upon the ground. The parent bird descended, and with
strange motions mourned over it, anxiously striving again to teach it to
ascend and regain its nest. My first impulse was to take up the little
flutterer, to climb the tree, and replace it in the home which its first
parent had built; but I lay and watched its motions for a few minutes.
Again and again by a bold effort it endeavoured to reach the lofty
branch where its parent had poised its nest, but as often it fell upon
the ground, and its little breast panted on the earth. At length it
perched upon the lowest twig, and from it got to others higher and
higher, turning round proudly as it ascended, as if conversing with its
parent, happy in what it was achieving, until the nest was regained.
"There," I exclaimed--"there is an example of perseverance; and a lesson
is taught me by that little bird. It attempted too much at once, and its
efforts were unsuccessful; it endeavoured to rise step by step, and it
has gained the object it desired. That bird shall be my monitor, and I
will endeavour to rise step by step, even as it has done."
I returned to London, and as I went, the attempts of the little bird
were the text on which my thoughts dwelt. By sedulous attention to my
duties, I began to rise in the esteem of my employer, the law stationer,
and he increased my salary from seven shillings to a guinea a-week. I
said unto myself, that, like the young bird, I had gained a higher
branch.
Within twelve months he obtained me a situation in the office of an
eminent solicitor, where I was engaged at a salary of a hundred pounds
a-year. This was the scaling of another branch; and I again found myself
in circumstances equal to those I had enjoyed previous to the treachery
of Esau Taylor. I did not, in order to ingratiate myself with my
employer, practise the _bowing_ system, with which my countrymen have at
times been accused; but I strove to be useful, I studied to oblige, and
was rewarded with his confidence and favour.