ome and help me. He
was confined to his bed by illness; he could only write me a letter
of good advice. To profit by good advice people must have a glimpse
of happiness to look forward to as a reward for exerting themselves.
Religion itself is obliged to hold out a reward, and to say to us
poor mortals, Be good, and you shall go to Heaven. I had no glimpse
of happiness. I was thankful (in a dull sort of way) to good Mr.
Bapchild--and there it ended.

"The time had been when a word from my old pastor would have put me in
the right way again. I began to feel scared by myself. If the next ill
usage I received from Joel Dethridge found me an unchanged woman, it was
borne in strongly on my mind that I should be as likely as not to get my
deliverance from him by my own hand.

"Goaded to it, by the fear of this, I humbled myself before my relations
for the first time. I wrote to beg their pardon; to own that they had
proved to be right in their opinion of my husband; and to entreat them
to be friends with me again, so far as to let me visit them from time
to time. My notion was, that it might soften my heart if I could see the
old place, and talk the old talk, and look again at the well-remembered
faces. I am almost ashamed to own it--but, if I had had any thing to
give, I would have parted with it all, to be allowed to go back into
mother's kitchen and cook the Sunday dinner for them once more.

"But this was not to be. Not long before my letter was received mother
had died. They laid it all at my door. She had been ailing for years
past, and the doctors had said it was hopeless from the first--but they
laid it all at my door. One of my sisters wrote to say that much, in
as few words as could possibly suffice for saying it. My father never
answered my letter at all."

8.

"Magistrates and lawyers; relations and friends; endurance of injuries,
patience, hope, and honest work--I had tried all these, and tried them
vainly. Look round me where I might, the prospect was closed on all
sides.

"At this time my husband had got a little work to do. He came home out
of temper one night, and I gave him a warning. 'Don't try me too far,
Joel, for your own sake,' was all I said. It was one of his sober days;
and, for the first time, a word from me seemed to have an effect on him.
He looked hard at me for a minute or so. And then he went and sat down
in a corner, and held his peace.

"This was on a Tuesday in the week. On the Satu