e but one more to speak of--the
old Dominie. It is now two years since I closed the eyes of this worthy
man. As he increased in years so did he in his abstractions of mind,
and the governors of the charity thought it necessary to superannuate
him with a pension. It was a heavy blow to the old man, who asserted
his capabilities to continue to instruct; but people thought otherwise,
and he accepted my offer to take up his future residence with us, upon
the understanding that it was necessary that our children, the eldest of
whom, at that time, was but four years old, should be instructed in
Latin and Greek. He removed to us with all his books, etcetera, not
forgetting the formidable birch; but as the children would not take to
the Latin of their own accord, and Mrs Faithful would not allow the rod
to be made use of, the Dominie's occupation was gone. Still, such was
the force of habit, that he never went without the Latin grammar in his
pocket, and I have often watched him sitting down in the poultry-yard,
fancying, I presume, that he was in his school. There would he decline,
construe, and conjugate aloud, his only witnesses being the poultry, who
would now and then raise a gobble, gobble, gobble, while the ducks with
their _quack, quack, quack_, were still more impertinent in their
replies. A sketch of him, in this position, has been taken by Sarah,
and now hangs over the mantel-piece of my study, between two of Mr
Turnbull's drawings, one of an iceberg, on the 17th of August '78, and
the other showing the dangerous position of the _Camel_ whaler, jammed
between the floe of ice, in latitude ---, and longitude ---.

Reader, I have now finished my narrative. There are two morals, I
trust, to be drawn from the events of my life, one of which is, that in
society we naturally depend upon each other for support, and that he who
would assert his independence throws himself out of the current which
bears to advancement; the other is, that with the advantages of good
education, and good principle, although it cannot be expected that
everyone will be so fortunate as I have been, still there is every
reasonable hope, and every right to expect, that we shall do well in
this world. Thrown up, as the Dominie expressed himself, as a tangled
weed from the river, you have seen the orphan and charity-boy rise to
wealth and consideration; you have seen how he who was friendless
secured to himself the warmest friends; he who requir