great deal of what I do remember. But it
all comes back to me so fresh, that I can't help crying sometimes to
think I shall never read them again with him."

Arthur had never spoken of his home before, and Tom hadn't encouraged
him to do so, as his blundering school-boy reasoning made him think
that Arthur would be softened and less manly for thinking of home. But
now he was fairly interested, and forgot all about chisels and bottled
beer; while with very little encouragement Arthur launched into his home
history, and the prayer-bell put them both out sadly when it rang to
call them to the hall.

From this time Arthur constantly spoke of his home, and above all, of
his father, who had been dead about a year, and whose memory Tom soon
got to love and reverence almost as much as his own son did.

Arthur's father had been the clergyman of a parish in the Midland
Counties, which had risen into a large town during the war, and upon
which the hard years which followed had fallen with a fearful weight.
The trade had been half ruined: and then came the old sad story, of
masters reducing their establishments, men turned off and wandering
about, hungry and wan in body and fierce in soul, from the thought of
wives and children starving at home, and the last sticks of furniture
going to the pawn-shop. Children taken from school, and lounging about
the dirty streets and courts, too listless almost to play, and squalid
in rags and misery. And then the fearful struggle between the employers
and men; lowerings of wages, strikes, and the long course of
oft-repeated crime, ending every now and then with a riot, a fire, and
the county yeomanry. There is no need here to dwell upon such tales; the
Englishman into whose soul they have not sunk deep is not worthy the
name; you English boys for whom this book is meant (God bless your
bright faces and kind hearts!) will learn it all soon enough.

Into such a parish and state of society, Arthur's father had been thrown
at the age of twenty-five, a young married parson, full of faith, hope,
and love. He had battled with it like a man, and had lots of fine
Utopian ideas about the perfectibility of mankind, glorious humanity and
such-like, knocked out of his head; and a real wholesome Christian love
for the poor struggling, sinning men, of whom he felt himself one, and
with and for whom he spent fortune, and strength, and life, driven into
his heart. He had battled like a man, and gotten a man'