e wages were small, and they had
many mouths to feed.

Mr. Bright had saved up fifty dollars; and he thought a great deal more
of this sum than many people do of a thousand dollars. He had had to
work very hard and be very prudent in order to accumulate this sum,
which made him value it all the more highly.

With this sum of fifty dollars at his command, John Bright felt rich;
and then, more than ever before, he wanted to own the little black
house. He felt as grand as a lord; and as soon as the forty-nine
dollars had become fifty, he waited upon Mr. Hardhand, a little crusty
old man, who owned the little black house, and proposed to purchase it.

The landlord was a hard man. Every body in Riverdale said he was mean
and stingy. Any generous-hearted man would have been willing to make
an easy bargain with an honest, industrious, poor man, like John
Bright, who wished to own the house in which he lived; but Mr.
Hardhand, although he was rich, only thought how he could make more
money. He asked the poor man four hundred dollars for the old house
and the little lot of land on which it stood.

It was a matter of great concern to John Bright. Four hundred dollars
was a "mint of money," and he could not see how he should ever be able
to save so much from his daily earnings. So he talked with Squire Lee
about it, who told him that three hundred was all it was worth. John
offered this for it, and after a month's hesitation, Mr. Hardhand
accepted the offer, agreeing to take fifty dollars down and the rest in
semi-annual payments of twenty-five dollars each, until the whole was
paid.

I am thus particular in telling my readers about the bargain, because
this debt which his father contracted was the means of making a man of
Bobby, as will be seen in his subsequent history.

John Bright paid the first fifty dollars; but before the next
instalment became due, the poor man was laid in his cold and silent
grave. A malignant disease carried him off, and the hopes of the
Bright family seemed to be blasted.

Four children were left to the widow. The youngest was only three
years old, and Bobby, the oldest, was nine, when his father died.
Squire Lee, who had always been a good friend of John Bright, told the
widow that she had better go to the poorhouse, and not attempt to
struggle along with such a fearful odds against her. But the widow
nobly refused to become a pauper, and to make paupers of her children,
whom she lo