bered her precepts
I should, I believe, have been in a very different position to what I
now am in my old age. My poor father took her death very much to heart.
For days after her funeral he sat on his chair in our little cottage
with his hands before him, scarcely lifting up his head from his breast,
forgetting entirely that he ought to go out and seek for work, as
without it he had no means of finding food for himself and me. I should
have starved had not a kind woman, a neighbour, brought me in some
potatoes and buttermilk. Little enough I suspect she had to spare after
feeding her own children.

At length my father roused himself to action. Early one morning,
seizing his hat and bidding me stay quiet till his return, he rushed out
of the house. He was a stonemason. He got work, I believe, but the
tempter came in his way. A fellow-workman induced him to enter a whisky
shop. Spirits had, in his early days, been his bane. My mother's
influence had kept him sober. He now tried to forget his sorrow in
liquor. "Surely I have a right to cure my grief as best I can," said
he. Unhappily he did not wait for a reply from conscience. Little food
could he buy from the remnant of his day's wages. Thus he went on from
day to day, working hard when sober, drinking while he had money to pay
for liquor.

Still his affection for me did not diminish. While in his right mind he
could not bear to have me out of his sight. Every morning we might have
been seen leaving our cottage, I holding his hand as he went to his
work; yet nearly as certainly as the evening came round I had to creep
supperless to bed. All day he would keep me playing about in his sight,
except when any of his fellow-workmen, or people living near where we
happened to be, wanted a lad to run on an errand. Then I was always
glad of the job. Whenever, by happy chance, he came home sober in an
evening, he would take me between his knees, and, parting my hair, look
into my face and weep till his heart seemed ready to burst. But these
occasions grew less and less frequent. What I have said will show that
I have reason to love the memory of both my parents, in spite of the
faults my unhappy father undoubtedly possessed.

Several months had thus passed away after my mother's death, when one
afternoon my father entered our cottage where he had left me since the
morning.

"Jack, my boy," said he, taking my hand, "come along, and I will show
you what _l