hankful inhabitants of a small
house, or hut, placed on the borders of the sea.

Each morning wakes the father and the son to cheerful labour in fishing,
or the tending of a garden, the produce of which they carry to the next
market town. The evening sends them back to their home in joy: where
Rebecca meets them at the door, affectionately boasts of the warm meal
that is ready, and heightens the charm of conversation with her taste and
judgment.

It was after a supper of roots from their garden, poultry that Rebecca's
hand had reared, and a jug brewed by young Henry, that the following
discourse took place.

"My son," said the elder Henry, "where under Heaven shall three persons
be met together happy as we three are? It is the want of industry, or
the want of reflection, which makes the poor dissatisfied. Labour gives
a value to rest which the idle can never taste; and reflection gives to
the mind a degree of content which the unthinking never can know."

"I once," replied the younger Henry, "considered poverty a curse; but
after my thoughts became enlarged, and I had associated for years with
the rich, and now mix with the poor, my opinion has undergone a total
change; for I have seen, and have enjoyed, more real pleasure at work
with my fellow-labourers, and in this cottage, than ever I beheld, or
experienced, during my abode at my uncle's; during all my intercourse
with the fashionable and the powerful of this world."

"The worst is," said Rebecca, "the poor have not always enough."

"Who has enough?" asked her husband. "Had my uncle? No: he hoped for
more; and in all his writings sacrificed his duty to his avarice. Had
his son enough, when he yielded up his honour, his domestic peace, to
gratify his ambition? Had Lady Bendham enough, when she staked all she
had, in the hope of becoming richer? Were we, my Rebecca, of
discontented minds, we have now too little. But conscious, from
observation and experience, that the rich are not so happy as ourselves,
we rejoice in our lot."

The tear of joy which stole from her eye expressed, more than his words,
a state of happiness.

He continued: "I remember, when I first came a boy to England, the poor
excited my compassion; but now that my judgment is matured, I pity the
rich. I know that in this opulent kingdom there are nearly as many
persons perishing through intemperance as starving with hunger; there are
as many miserable in the lassitude of having noth