young man for which he could not account; and meeting him so
frequently, he determined to speak to him. As a pretext for accosting
him he offered to sell him some books, although he had no hopes of
success. The young man regarded him with visible surprise, when he
enquired if he would not like to purchase a book. 'I have no money to
spend for books,' replied the man, yet as if unable to resist the
impulse, he leaned over the table, on which the agent had placed several
books, and began looking them over; and finally selected one, inquired
the price, and paid for it. They soon after parted, and the agent
thought they should probably meet no more, as he expected soon to leave
the city. He returned to the hotel where he boarded, and after tea
seated himself on the piazza, to enjoy the cool evening air; when the
same young man suddenly approached him, and grasping his hand said, in a
voice choked with emotion: 'Tell me, sir, where, O! where did you get
that book?' This young man was the erring but still loved son of the
Virginian widow, who for these long dreary years had roamed over the
earth, unfriended and unaided, vainly imagining his own arm sufficient
to ward off the ills of life. He had wandered here from the coasts of
the Pacific, where he had been wrecked; his money was nearly gone, and
his health had become impaired by hardship and exposure as well as his
dissipated course of life. As he afterwards said, he had no intention of
reading the book when he purchased it merely out of civility to the
stranger who accosted him so kindly; but after the agent left him he
opened the book, and a cold dew broke out upon his forehead, for on the
title-page he read the name of his _mother_ as the author. Her thoughts
were continually upon her lost son, and in her mind's eye she often
traced his downward career. She imagined him worn and weary, his days
spent in unsatisfying folly, and his moments of reflection embittered by
remorse; unconsciously, in writing this little book she had drawn from
her own feelings and addressed one in this situation. She pointed to him
the falseness of the world, and bade him judge of the fidelity of the
picture by his own experience; and she taught him the way of return to
the paths of peace. And thus it was that the little book which the
wretched young man had selected--some would say so accidentally, others,
so providentially--proved the means of his return from the paths of sin
and folly to those