to her mysteries and wonders: or, if it had, received in reply the simple answer, " work!" A strong, stalwart, energetic man; knowing much, yet uneducated; capable of much endurance without shrinking, of much suffering without complaint. He had little fine feeling and less sentimentality. A thorough townsman, loving his shop more than his house, and both more than all things else in the world. A man of few words and fewer ideas; not given to speculation, meditation, or standing still. His life was a combat, but with material foes. One of those men of whose like England has still her thousands; and such have made her the great coloniser of the earth. Such was Edway's father: the complete contrast of his mother, whose extreme youth and gracefulness of person was a fine set off to the complete manhood and broad-breastedness of her husband. A mere doll of a woman; but within her little bosom beat a heart full of simplicity and deep earnest love-a very fountain of love. In that clear transparent blue eye of hers, you might read the clear transparent soul, of which the eye was the truthful index. One wonders in what way the strong few-worded man wooed and won that little blossom of earth's flower-garden; but, wooed and won, one could well feel how she would love him and care for him through all the vicissitudes of life. A lovely unpretending woman she was, with a voice of music that rung on the ear gladsome, like a peal of marriage bells. No wonder that she charmed the rough heart of the hard working-man! especially when linked to her personal attractions, was a true knowledge of a housewife's duties, far exceeding her years. Scarcely a month over seveteen was she when John Edway made her the wife of his heart and home. It was beautiful to see the young thing in the fulness of her love and childlike trust, look up to the sturdy heart, in which she hoped to nestle for life, for guidance and support; and far more beautiful was it to see, how, in less than a year afterwards, she watched over the new life which had been given her to tend and foster, and with what a quiet soul-felt joy she looked on the fair face of her child, which, even from its birth, was a miniature of her own. With what love-pride she would hold the little stranger up for his father to kiss, as he came to and went from his meals, during the six days of toil! All this was beautiful to see, and shed such a glory round their humble home as made it a very terrestrial Paradise, with one cherub, his angel mother and earthly father for its inmates. We have now our hero's parents before us. We see under what tuition his infancy, childhood, and youth are likely to be passed. We have the lessons of love he will receive from his mother, and the stern teaching of his practical, anxious, hardworking father, dimly sketched out in this faint limning of their natures. The sphere of life in which he will spend his earliest years, is seen by the position of his parents: perhaps of all spheres the most hopeful one for a youth to pass through the world without much trouble of doubts and questionings; freed alike from the strong. temptations of deep poverty, and the still stronger temptations of great wealth. One might augur from such circumstances a quiet, useful, ordinary life; an almost unruffled passage from this world to the next; a respected memory, a respectable funeral, a modestly epitapthed tomb. Such we might augur, did we not defy the science, and feel that verily "there is a Providence in the fall of a sparrow." Here, in a small, neat, lowly house, in somewhat less than a year after marriage, to a girl of seveteen, with bright blue eyes and a heart overflowing with womanly love, and to a sturdy son of toil is born a fair-haired, light-eyed, gladsome boy; and there! The boy was called John after his father, grand-father, and a whole host of ancestral Johns. At the "kindtaufe," as our good German brethren call the christening, there were much noise and joy. Some few presents were brought the newly-named; and all were so full of prophecy that the mother's heart could scarcely beat in healthy order at the anticipation of the golden course which they laid out for her son's earthly career. Thornless roses were thickly scattered over his future path; and his mother's imagination, far exceeding in glory and grandeur whatever was said, leapt over the intervening time-space, and saw him greater than all that honest, thoughtless gossips in their exuberance of fancy, generated by tea and cake, ventured to predict. Well, from such a child one might certainly predict much! The christening is over, the friends are departed, honest John the elder and Lucy his wife are alone with honest John the younger the last-named, glowing in rosy slumber, carries on his existence to the entire satisfaction of his over-hanging mother; while his father, anxious to make up by extra labour to-morrow the holiday of to-day, proposes to imitate so good an example: Lucy, though, mother-like, desirous to repeat to her husband all the prescious things said about her boy, woman-like, quickly agrees; and sleep soon enfolds in its mystic robes the inmates of a house, in which we have henceforth some interest, and over their future history it is our purpose lovingly to keep an observing eye. Deep sleep and pleasant dreams to all! CHAPTER II.-CHILDHOOD. The childhood of our young Edway was, in all respects similar to that of most other children in like cases. He laughed and cried, ate and throye, in a very commendable manner._ _Teething was accomplished with eminent success to the toother. Every way he was a thriving promising specimen of the family of man. His mother's heart beat many a throb of exultation and joy, as she watched the slow developement of her boy. The first tooth and the first lisp were an opening of the gates of Paradise. It would be curious to note in what ever-varying phrases she let off the ful ness of her joy; the meanfully unmeaning epithets which she heaped upon her little charge, who screamed and shouted responses in a peculiarly delighted and delighting manner. Each day added some new source of pleasure to her loving heart; and each day saw our hero-in-petticoats advance farther and farther from childhood to boyhood. What a jubilee was his first stepping-day! and how his altogether satsfactory progress was an inexhaustible theme of talk for his mother, we need not further dilate upon here. Thus he throve and grew. By slow but sure steps, he made considerable acquaintance with his surroundings; became a little experimental philosopher, and ascertained for himself some of the properties of matter. He found, for instance, that sweetness was a property of sugar, and bitterness a property of certain powders which his mother, with tears in her eyes, forced the resisting valetudinarian to take for his own good, ungrateful as he was! He conquered all the enemies which find such delight in attacking infant humanity. One by one they departed, leaving our young soldier all the stronger from such contest and victory. With advancing months he grew in strength and knowledge, and at two years he was as fine and hopeful a boy as ever wore pinafores, or made a mother's heart rejoice over her first-born. We pass over a few years, and admit our readers to the following confidential dialogue between the parents of our young friend. His mother's musical voice is first heard : "John is now five years old," she began, "and I should like to send him to school. You know we always promised ourselves to give him a good education." "As you please," replied her compliant husband. "I have no objection; let him go." Accordingly to school he went. Of his career there we have nothing remarkable to narrate. He was neither very quick nor very slow; acquired a modicum of the elements of instruction; and in seven years of school-life had learned all his father deemed necessary for one having to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. From all that we can ascertain, nothing particularly worthy of note occurred during these seven years initiation in the mysteries of 66 "the three Rs". He conducted himself as is usual in such cases. Sometimes receiving due punishment of cane; sometimes due rewards of little books as encouragement for future good conduct: which little books were more precious than much gold or pearls of great price; and for honour of our school-boy, be it said, we think he valued the loving kiss he received from his mother for these scho lastic triumphs, far more than the reward itself. One thing, however, we must record of his school-day life. Among his companions was a boy named Ellwood, his elder by some years, who in a little time grew very fond of him; taught him all manner of boyish sports, and became his defender in all his school-boy troubles-his self-constituted guardian, guide, and protector. Ellwood was a note-worthy youth, of a quick, sensitive, loving nature; full of tales, scraps of poetry, and pieces of Shakspere's dramas. All of these he imparted to his friend, who was a willing learner of this golden lore, which seemed the more precious because taught by his hero-friend. Thus, far higher knowledge than any gained from the pedagogue did he acquire during his school days. The delight of his mother, as evening after evening he poured forth, with mingled pride and joy, his new treasures, may be imagined by mothers-and only by them. Ellwood also lent him books. Books of tales and poetry were plentifully supplied, and devoured with an appetite peculiar to boyhood. A new world was thus opened to our adventurer, the unknown regions of which it was rapture to explore. Encouragement, had he needed any, was his in the approving smile and joyous words of his mother, who ever received delight from the pursuits of her boy. Between the parents there was little sympathy in this respect. Poetry was not the same thing to Edway the elder as it was to his son, and thence became to his wife. To him it was idleness, waste of time, unproductive, useless, and altogether to be contemned by honest hardworking men. Here was experience and discipline the first for our young aspirant. But no opposition could now divert him from these books, or change his love for poetry, for beauty, and for knowledge. There was far too much written on the boy's brain and engraven in his heart for this. A glory he could not fully appreciate was hanging over him. Questions of strange significance arose in his boy's soul which found no answer there. All things became instinct with a new, but unattainable meaning; flowers and trees, and sun and stars, the world and life, had hidden and, to him, inexpressible meanings beyond their outward beauty, which he could not yet more than dimly and vaguely feel. There they were before his young eyes-visible, yet concealed; patent, yet mysterious. Dreams of exquisite loveliness, sleeping and awake, were his, for which no interpreter was present. Unconsciously the deep and solemn mystery of the Universe was seizing his soul, and bearing it away to realms of wonder and awe. All this was working in him, and made him appear strange and unintelligible to all, except to the fond heart of his mother and the more advanced knowledge of his friend Ellwood. This new life his father sought to destroy in the bud; and at once took him from school to the shop. Here at twelve years of age we have our boy at one great epoch of his life. The bright fields of imagination and the stern world of reality at once acting on his susceptible mind. Ideal beauty on the one side; on the other the difficulties and dangers of his daily life, hard toil and long days of work; and in his soul the glorious world of Shakspere and the poets! Here, young struggler, is thy one great problem-how to reconcile the actual with the ideal. This, to some extent, thou must do, or woe is thy portion here. If there is war it will be war to the death. Thou must slay the Sphynx or be thyself slain in the encounter. Accident of birth has made thee a worker; God and nature have filled thy heart with visions of beauty which float before thee like gossamers on a summer day—visible but intangible; high up in the empyrian there, far beyond thy low valley region of life and being. There thou art, poor son of toil, sur rounded by all that may serve to quench the divine spirit within thee; with an opposing father, unsympathising workmen, left to thy strange wild dreams, which thou darest whisper but to thy own heart, thy loving mother, and bounteous friend. Much joy we may augur for thee, and much sorrow we know will be thine in this struggle which awaits thee. The inner and the outer life so estranged, wilt thou make them harmonious and beautiful; or a fearful conflict of irreconcilable forces ending in anarchy and ruin? Courage, young heart! If true, there is God above thee, Heaven around thee, and guardian Angels ever watching over thee. Erkühne dich, weise zu seyn! SUNDAY. We from our hearts are grateful, Lord, There hearts are bowed with deep delight, We love to mingle with our kind, When common wants bend every knee; We feel our childrenship in thee The brotherhood of every mind. But, mostly, for Thy own wide house We owe Thee thanks and give Thee praise: And there record our holy vows. Hang garlanded around thy brow. And here, beneath Thy own blue sky, Our souls shall breathe their hopes divine. Lord, Thou wilt bless and make them Thine Wilt keep them in thy sanctuary! The lark shall bear our hymn to Thee, JOHN ALFRED LANGFORD |