could not go and take a pound or a shilling from our common
stock, as I used to do before you married, when you and I lived in one
mind, and when I believed that the very spirit of your departed, your
angel mother, dwelt in you, as you had, and have still, her very face
and form. No, no, we had no common stock when you married. She put me
on an allowance--ay, an allowance. You lived, and saw me receiving
an allowance; you whom I loved with an idolatry which God has now
punished; you to whom I freely gave up my business--my money-making
business. I gave it you--I gave all to you--I would have given my
very life and soul to you, because I thought that with your mother's
own face you had her noble and generous nature. You were kind before
you married; but that marriage has proved your weakness and want of
natural affection. Yes, you stood at my side yesterday; you looked
on my face--I, the father who loved you beyond all bounds of fatherly
love--you stood and heard me beg for a few shillings; you heard me
supplicate earnestly and humbly, and you would not give because your
wife was not willing. Henry, I could force you to give me a share of
the profits of your business; but keep it--keep it all. You would not
voluntarily give me some shillings, and I shall not demand what right
and justice would give me. Keep all, every farthing.

"It was for charity I asked the few shillings; you know it. You
know from whom I imbibed whatever I possess of the blessed spirit of
charity. I was as hard and unpitying as even your wife before your
mother taught me to feel and relieve the demands of poverty. Yes, and
she taught you; you cannot forget it. She taught you to give food to
the starving, in your earliest days. She strove to impress your infant
mind with the very soul of charity; and yesterday she looked down from
the heaven of the holy departed, and saw you refusing me, your father,
a few shillings to bestow on charity.

"Henry, I can live with you and your wife no more. I should grow
avaricious in my old age, were I to remain with you. I should long
for money to call my own. Those doled out shillings which I received
wakened within me feelings of a dark nature--covetousness, and envy,
and discontent--which must have shadowed the happiness of your mother
in heaven to look down upon. I must go and seek out an independent
living for myself, even yet, though I am fifty-two. Though my energies
for struggling with the world died, I thou