ay School teacher for thirty years, and my
Father was always unduly impressed by the acumen of pious
barristers.

As time went on, and I grew older and more independent in mind,
my Father's anxiety about what he called 'the pitfalls and snares
which surround on every hand the thoughtless giddy youth of
London' became extremely painful to himself. By harping in
private upon these 'pitfalls'--which brought to my imagination a
funny rough woodcut in an old edition of Bunyan, where a devil
was seen capering over a sort of box let neatly into the ground--
he worked himself up into a frame of mind which was not a little
irritating to his hapless correspondent, who was now 'snared'
indeed, limed by the pen like a bird by the feet, and could not
by any means escape. To a peck or a flutter from the bird the
implacable fowler would reply:

'You charge me with being suspicious, and I fear I cannot deny the
charge. But I can appeal to your own sensitive and thoughtful
mind for a considerable allowance. My deep and tender love for
you; your youth and inexperience; the examples of other young
men; your distance from parental counsel; our absolute and
painful ignorance of all the details of your daily life, except
what you yourself tell us:--try to throw yourself into the
standing of a parent, and say if my suspiciousness is
unreasonable. I rejoicingly acknowledge that from all I see you
are pursuing a virtuous, steady, worthy course. One good thing my
suspiciousness does:--ever and anon it brings out from you
assurances, which greatly refresh and comfort me. And again, it
carries me ever to God's Throne of Grace on your behalf Holy Job
suspected that his sons might have sinned, and cursed God in
their heart. Was not his suspicion much like mine, grounded on
the same reasons and productive of the same results? For it drove
him to God in intercession. I have adduced the example of this
Patriarch before, and he will endure being looked at again.'

In fact, Holy Job continued to be frequently looked at, and for
this Patriarch I came to experience a hatred which was as
venomous as it was undeserved. But what youth of eighteen would
willingly be compared with the sons of Job? And indeed, for my
part, I felt much more like that justly exasperated character,
Elihu the Buzite, of the kindred of Ram.

As time went on, the peculiar strain of inquisition was relaxed,
and I endured fewer and fewer of the torments of religious
corresponden