'you may carry
it to your lodging, and keep it for your own.'

Looking at the old woman with surprise, I exclaimed, 'Is it possible that
you are willing to part with the book which has been your source of
comfort so long?'

Whereupon the old woman entered into a long history, from which I
gathered that the book had become distasteful to her; she hardly ever
opened it of late, she said, or if she did, it was only to shut it again;
also, that other things which she had been fond of, though of a widely
different kind, were now distasteful to her. Porter and beef-steaks were
no longer grateful to her palate, her present diet chiefly consisting of
tea, and bread and butter.

'Ah,' said I, 'you have been ill, and when people are ill, they seldom
like the things which give them pleasure when they are in health.' I
learned, moreover, that she slept little at night, and had all kinds of
strange thoughts; that as she lay awake many things connected with her
youth, which she had quite forgotten, came into her mind. There were
certain words that came into her mind the night before the last, which
were continually humming in her ears: I found that the words were, 'Thou
shalt not steal.'

On inquiring where she had first heard these words, I learned that she
had read them at school, in a book called the primer; to this school she
had been sent by her mother, who was a poor widow, and followed the trade
of apple-selling in the very spot where her daughter followed it now. It
seems that the mother was a very good kind of woman, but quite ignorant
of letters, the benefit of which she was willing to procure for her
child; and at the school the daughter learned to read, and subsequently
experienced the pleasure and benefit of letters, in being able to read
the book which she found in an obscure closet of her mother's house, and
which had been her principal companion and comfort for many years of her
life.

But, as I have said before, she was now dissatisfied with the book, and
with most other things in which she had taken pleasure; she dwelt much on
the words, 'Thou shalt not steal'; she had never stolen things herself,
but then she had bought things which other people had stolen, and which
she knew had been stolen; and her dear son had been a thief, which he
perhaps would not have been but for the example which she set him in
buying things from characters, as she called them, who associated with
her.

On inquiring how she had