p. 69Dark Shadows from the Ruin; and Light from the Hearth

Old Ballad.

Old Play.

While the bright vision of a home,—marked, indeed, with the cross, like all true Christian homes,—is still floating before our mind’s eye, and before the sound of love’s divinest harmonies, from around the domestic altar, has died away amid the noise of the street, let us withdraw a moment, as to some shady spot far enough from the dust and the roadside, and listen to one or two brief tales,—the one glancing at a life wasted and a home ruined, the other at a life of early helplessness, poverty, and heroic struggle directed toward building up a home.

The crowd of ill-clad and half-starved laborers, of pale, emaciated, and overworked boys and girls, are hurrying past us to their daily toil. Who knows but more than one of these discouraged husbands and parents, on listening to what we here say, may take heart to make their home brighter and their poverty richer by patience and content? Who knows, too, if the noble example of a child more helpless than any of the young folk we see from here, may not spur many a one among them to heroic labor, self-respect, self-reliance, trust in God, and success beyond their fondest dreams?

So be it! And so, this repose between two long stages of our journey, may cheer you, dear reader, to pursue the mighty theme which grows on us.

The Homeless Wanderer

We can never forget the sad extremity of one aged sufferer found by the police at the steamboat landing on a bitter morning in early February. He had been given a free passage on a steamer from the interior, had found shelter during the night in the engine-room, where the stokers, some of whom were Irishmen, recognized beneath the soiled garments a countryman and a gentleman, and in the terrible cough which racked the poor invalid’s chest, the sure sign of a speedy end to his sufferings. So, the kind-hearted fellows shared with him their own scanty fare and the warmth of the coal-room;—and when they had arrived at the term of their journey, their guest left them with many thanks and blessings, to knock at the door of an old acquaintance, on whom, in better days, he had conferred more than one obligation. His, however, had been a downward course for many a long year; he had dissipated his large patrimony, thrown away splendid natural gifts improved by the most careful cultivation, and had again and again wrecked the home which he had won back by his fitful industry,—wearying the generosity and patience of his friends, till he became an outcast, utterly broken in health, in heart, and in temper.

He was almost a dying man, however, when on that bitter Sunday morning in February, he stood shivering at the door where he had so often been welcome, and gasping forth to the heartless menial who opened it his name and his pitiful prayer for help and shelter. The door was closed brutally in his face, till the master’s will was ascertained; and the master’s answer was a peremptory order to give the poor wretch nothing,—no, not even a kind word!...

Stung with indignation and rage, the latter turned away, and blundered blindly through the storm back the way he had come, till on the wharf he fell exhausted and fainting. At the police station the letters found on him disclosed his profession, as well as the names of several prominent citizens, and to the house of one of the latter the wretched wanderer was taken.

Not in vain did they knock for admission at the door of that hospitable home. Its master was under no obligation to the sufferer; but that he suffered and was apparently near his end, moved himself and his family to the most brotherly compassion. A physician was sent for in all haste, and meanwhile the sick man was given a most comfortable room and bed, together with such restoratives as were deemed most needful.

These, with the remedies prescribed by the doctor, seemed to revive the sinking flame of life in a body wasted by long excesses and recent privation. At evening and through the night, the sudden change from the deck of a steamer, the inclemency of the open streets in winter, and the horrors of a police station-house,—to the elegant room in which he lay and the gentle attentions of his hosts, so roused the spirit of the patient, that he was able to sit up and converse.

With this momentary return of vitality, all his old recklessness came back; and he told several of his late adventures and mishaps with zest, mixing his account of himself with bitter and merciless scorn of his own family and of the friends who had cast him off. A better and more hopeful spirit had, however, seemed to rule his utterances when the kind host and his wife were lavishing their first charitable care on him. As he gazed round the room, he would exclaim, as if waking out of a dreadful dream, “Oh, the bliss of having a home! the bliss of having a home!” To this first soft mood, however, soon succeeded one of fierce antagonism to all mankind, and violent denunciation of those who had wronged him. His anger seemed to consume the last remnants of his physical strength, flaming forth more fiercely and luridly in the intervals of his broken rest. When the physician returned early the next morning, he found his patient very much worse, but most anxious to live,—“that he might,”—so he expressed it,—“triumph over all his enemies, and recover his lost property and home.”

The physician felt himself bound to tell him that he must entertain no hopes of recovery. “Not recover, doctor!” broke forth the miserable man; “not recover! Why, I am not fifty years old, and I am still hale and hearty. I only want three years of life to redeem the past and put my slanderers to shame.” The physician bade him put away these false hopes, and open his soul to sentiments more befitting one who must very soon appear before the great God in whose hand were life and death. “Very soon!” gasped the other; “why, you don’t mean to say I am dying?” “You most assuredly are,” was the firm, though gentle answer. “Dying!” screamed the poor wretch, as he almost started from the bed. “Oh, no! do not tell me so. I cannot afford to die at present. Let me only live a year, and you shall see what I can do. I have broken my wife’s heart, beggared and disgraced my children. Help me to live one year, and I shall merit their forgiveness.”

And thus pitifully, frantically he went on pleading with the physician, “for a month, for a single hour!” “Can you not give me a single hour, curse you!” he cried. “What is your skill worth, if you cannot give me one hour of life?”... And so the fearful passion and despair of that death-bed went on increasing in gloom and horror, while this guilty life was fast ebbing away. “Oh, I cannot die,—I will not, will not!” the hapless creature would continue to repeat, as spirit and body writhed under the united terrors of the wasted, misspent past and the dark, eternal future. “God is bound to give me life,” he went on, as the foam gathered on his lips. “Yes! you cannot refuse,” he would say, lifting himself from his pillow, and wildly extending his arms upward, half in supplication, half in blasphemous menace. “I mean to reform now,—I mean now to do better;”... and his strength would utterly give way beneath the icy hand of the dread Avenger.

It was in vain to speak words of comfort, to recall the infinite mercy of God’s fatherly heart, who would take the will for the deed. “No! no!” he would repeat; “I must repair, I must live!” To look upon that despair was more harrowing, more appalling than tongue or pen can describe.

Scarcely had that guilty soul departed, when a most fearful change took place in the dead man’s features. Their expression became so ghastly, so unspeakably terrible, that the ladies present fled wildly from the room, making vain efforts to banish from their imagination that terrible face in which was depicted all the agony of everlasting despair.

While the undertakers were sent for, a veil was thrown over the head of the corpse; it was forthwith placed in a strong double coffin, firmly screwed and nailed down, and never afterward opened, even to satisfy the dead man’s relatives.

Let this one example suffice as a warning to men who, deriving from their parents independence, wealth, and position,—feel no incentive to labor or honorable exertion, squander in idleness and vicious enjoyment the fruits of their parents’ industry, have no sense of their accountability for all these inherited advantages, or for the ill use of talents and education, and the waste of fruitful years,—and make of their existence upon earth a curse to others as well as to themselves. Alas,—there are many such; and would that the lesson of this wasted life, like a light placed on high near a much-frequented coast, famed for appalling shipwrecks,—could teach our young men to avoid the reefs on which so many lives have been lost, and to steer far away from the fatal currents that have borne so many thousands to ruin!

On the other hand, we have such noble instances of heroic endurance and perseverance in laboring to create a home,—and that, too, among men born in every class of society, and contending with the most adverse and, seemingly, discouraging circumstances.

How a Son repaired his Father’s Ruinous Extravagance

One man’s bright life now comes up before our mind’s eye, like the summit of some mighty mountain towering aloft above the whole earth for hundreds of miles around, which, left behind by the traveler at early morn, is seen, at the close of day, when the landscape is shrouded in gloom, glistening far up in the heavens with the last glories of sunlight. His father had, by a life of reckless extravagance, lost every acre of the broad lands possessed for generations by his family, and left his only son nothing but debts, which the latter vowed he should pay to the last farthing by his own industry. He was an officer in the army; and as a military career promised no opportunities of fulfilling what he considered a sacred obligation, he threw up his commission, and betook himself to farming in a new and richly endowed country. Being unmarried, he felt himself at liberty to choose the pursuit which seemed most adapted to his own abilities, and best calculated to bring him speedy and lawful wealth. He, therefore, betook him to sheep-farming,—attached to him by his kindness of heart and his gentleness, much more than by the ascendency of his superior intelligence and culture, several rude men, who had been rather a terror to the settlers till then, made them sober and steady workers like himself, taught them the value of truthfulness and honesty, shared most generously with them the profits of their joint labors;—and, increasing rapidly both his flocks and his profits, became at the end of six years the wealthiest proprietor in his district. Having settled his companions on farms of their own, which he helped them to stock and taught them to manage, he sold out his own interest for a large sum, sufficient to pay off his father’s debts and to secure himself a modest independence for life, and returned to his birthplace.

The parental debts were paid some months before he set out on his homeward journey, and the balance of the money was intrusted to enterprising bankers with whom he had entertained frequent business relations. Indeed, he had more than once been urged to become a partner in the concern. During all these years of unceasing struggle with his own inclinations and habits, much more than with the strange and deep humiliations of the life he had adopted,—he had cherished one purpose above all others, that of creating an honored and happy home for one to whom he had been affianced in early youth, who had never consented to separate her destiny from his, and whose almost daily letters had cheered him amid gloom and depression, and strengthened his soul to undertake and undergo what otherwise he must have deemed impossible.

She became his wife a few weeks after his return, and while the thought was uppermost in his heart of purchasing back from the present owner a portion of his patrimonial estate, building himself a home on it, and devoting the remaining years of his life to the task of recovering the remainder.

He did succeed in persuading the proprietor, sadly in need of money, to part with a portion of the land, and paid him an exorbitant price for it. But, when he came to order plans for a modest dwelling-house to be erected thereon, he was thunderstruck at learning that his bankers were insolvent.

Religion, however, much more than pride of race, had ever been the mainspring of his resolution, and it now saved him from discouragement. He was passing rich in the love of a wife who prized him for his work, not his wealth. Together they sought consolation and counsel where it is ever sure to be found,—at the Mercy Seat; and together they resolved to face the privations and the struggles which had already brought him the means of achieving the independence and comfort so suddenly and sadly compromised. The generous husband would have spared his beloved companion the trials which a brave-hearted man, in spite of his gentle nurture, can always face successfully, but which few delicate women can endure. What man, however, is braver of heart than a true woman? And so, the faithful wife would not hear of further separation from him she had loved with such true single-heartedness.

The country in which he had retrieved his fallen fortunes had undergone many changes: tracts favorable to sheep-farming or other like occupations were no longer to be had for the seeking. To find them, one had to go far into the interior, to incur greater fatigues, greater risk, far greater expense, and with far less prospect of efficient aid from needy emigrants. The gold-fields, on the other hand, opened a new and more tempting prospect of sudden gain; and to the gold-fields our hero and heroine directed their steps.

With an energy that the devotion of his worshiped wife and the sacred purpose on which he had set his heart could alone sustain, he bent himself to the fearful ordeal before him. He had brought with him from home money enough to secure her the privacy and some of the comforts of a home superior to the wretched temporary abodes that sheltered the immense majority of miners. But while he applied himself to his self-imposed task, she became the angel of this wild and lawless community; induced those of her own faith to rear a rude but commodious chapel, where she called them together on Sundays, recited the mass-prayers and rosary with them, read beautiful instructions from her little stock of pious books, catechised the children, gave good advice and needed comfort to all who sought her, and learned where she could find sickness and distress to alleviate. In good time, she also secured occasional visits from the nearest missionary. In all this she seemed only to be her husband’s helper. For his goodness made his fellow-miners find him out long before the fame of his former success and generosity had reached them. Not many months had elapsed in this hard life before he fell sick of a dangerous fever, and while he lay at death’s door, his first child was born to him; the entire motley population forgetting their greed, their religious differences and national animosities, to minister to the comfort of the pair with a delicacy, an assiduity, and a constancy begotten of heartfelt veneration and gratitude. The husband and father recovered slowly at first; but when the delirium allowed him to recognize his wife and to look upon the face of his babe, a mighty wave of healthful energy seemed to pass over his soul, and to lift him above his illness. He was grateful, too, that the dear companion of his trials had been spared from a heavy visitation of sickness; and his heart melted within him at all the marks of respectful and affectionate interest lavished on himself and his dear ones by the men and women around them.

Indeed, while he lay on his bed of sickness, the miners had volunteered to work by twos and in succession at the mine which belonged to the invalid, just as their wives watched successively in the sick-rooms to tend both the sufferers. Nor was this charity without its present reward. For rumors went abroad that everything succeeded with the men and women who were thus foremost in their charity and devotion. At any rate, during the illness, the workmen happened upon a vein of gold of extraordinary richness, the produce of which was treasured up most conscientiously for the sick man. He recovered to find himself rich far beyond his most sanguine expectations.

Of this wealth,—as could be surmised,—the owner made a most noble use. The men who had stood by him were assisted, every one of them, to secure themselves independence and a fortune. A noble church took the place of the former rude wooden chapel, and schools and other institutions soon grew up round the church. The estate at home returned to the brave-hearted heir; but he had pledged himself, together with his wife, that, while no debt should encumber the inheritance of his children when it descended to them, he should rear them to labor and industry, and teach them by the example of their parents to bestow on charity and on the self-helping poor the surplus revenues his fathers wasted on self-indulgence.

Happy, most happy, and most blessed was their household, husband and wife vying with each other in practicing piety toward God and charity toward the neighbor. Nor, despite the long and bitter trials of the past, did they murmur or repine, when sickness and death visited their little flock of lovely children. The Christian mother knew that the angel who marked their door-post with the sign of the cross, as he came to bear away their first-born from them, was the messenger of infinite Mercy and Wisdom. Many a blessing, from every lowly home far and wide, was daily uttered on the noble man whose heart and hand were ever open to the needy or the erring, winning the deep love of the poor much more by the eloquence of his unwearied devotion to their interests and his spotless life, than by his enlightened liberality in stimulating the industrious and helping every manly effort made toward honest independence. But who can tell the worshipful feeling of reverence with which his angel wife was regarded? She had seen the laboring poor at their worst, and had discovered how much their virtues excel their vices, how rich a soil their hearts afford in which to sow the seeds of gratitude and of every Godlike quality. And so, does she to this day move among her devoted poor neighbors,—paupers there are none,—the living image of that Goodness which only came down on earth to renew in man the divine likeness.

Noble Devotion of a Swiss Orphan Boy

Most unlike the two men whose story we have just been telling, in its beginnings and progress, was the life which we are about to sketch in its main features. The advantages of high birth, gentle nurture, and careful education, taken together with the power for good which inherited wealth and position bestow,—are a mighty trust in the hands of mortal man, and involve a fearful responsibility toward the Almighty Giver. Where an early fear of Him who is the Judge of the whole earth, is instilled into the mind, and the Christian sense of generosity and accountability is carefully fostered in the children of the well-born and wealthy, the good done by the proper use of riches and position, by the influence which superior culture and superior station command, is incalculable.

Where, however, a man born without any of these social advantages, and left from childhood to struggle against every evil example and tendency, without education and without proper direction or encouragement, the castaway child develops into the self-reliant boy and the man of indomitable energy, industry, and stainless integrity, till he becomes a prince among the benefactors of his race,—there we have a miracle of true manhood. Such is the man whose story we now recall.

We shall call him Johann. He was born near Burglen, the birthplace of Tell, two months after the sudden death of his father. His mother married again a native of the Lower Engadine, whose profession of peddler led him to frequent alternately the Forest Cantons and the beautiful cities and hamlets of Northern Italy. The child was in his fifth year when his step-father, who had been guilty of the double crime of murder and highway robbery, found his way with his wife and family to Genoa. There, the better to conceal his identity, he found employment around the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, till such time as he could secure passage for himself and his wife and their youngest child in a merchant ship bound for Sumatra. The wretched wife and her babe died on the passage, poisoned, it was believed, by the unnatural husband and parent, who was imprisoned on his arrival, but escaped, and, after many adventures, found his way to New Zealand, where he perished miserably.

Johann and his half-sister, some two years younger than himself, had been made over by contract to one of these infamous padroni, or dealers in Italian children shipped to England and America, and held as veritable slaves by their inhuman masters. Taught music or some other art, these innocents were hopelessly condemned to labor for the sole profit of their owners, and made to endure a life of degradation so awful, that unspeakable filth, poverty, and starvation were often the lightest part of the burthen of misery. Johann, on being stolen from his poor heart-broken mother, was allowed to retain nothing of his raiment even, but a rude silver locket, so black and battered that it was deemed worthless; it contained, however, his certificate of baptism. He was called by another name, and forbidden under the most awful threats of punishment ever to mention his mother’s name or his own, or to acknowledge any one as his parent but the wretch who took himself and several other children to London. Fortunately, or unfortunately, for the little creature, he caught the small-pox, almost immediately after his arrival in that city, the disease assuming a most virulent form, accompanied by fever and delirium, which, on his recovery, completely obliterated all memory of the past. His padrone meanwhile sailed for New York, deeming Johann lost, and transferring all claim to his services to another of the tribe remaining in London.

The child, who was not lost sight of by the latter, recovered; but left the hospital very feeble, half blind, and seemingly imbecile. Picked up one morning in January, as he lay famished, half-unconscious, and half-frozen in one of the by-lanes of Southwark, he was taken to the room of a poor shoemaker’s wife, who, childless herself, received the little waif as some great gift of God. And, surely, he was a blessing in disguise, sent by the Father of the orphan, to a soul overflowing with divinest charity,—one of those lowly ones so dear to Christ, so rich in the gifts of the Spirit, so far advanced above the learned and the great ones of this world in the sublime paths of sanctity. Nevertheless, she was the wife of a drunken husband, whom she had mostly to support by her own thrift, and whose insane fits of violence made her life as insecure as it was miserable. Amid all this poverty, sin, and wretchedness, this beautiful soul grew daily in holiness and merit. The atmosphere of goodness and purity that surrounded her filled her vicious companion with reverence while he was sober, and when intoxication transformed him into a wild beast, the very majesty of his wife’s virtue awed him into respect and submission.

On the day when this good, admirable woman, as she returned from early mass at a neighboring church, found Johann and took him to her heart and her home,—the husband happened to be half-crazed by a long course of debauchery. He drove both his wife and her charge back into the street with fearful oaths and threats of violence. A neighboring woman sheltered the two till the drunken man’s fit was over, leaving him plunged in a lethargic sleep. It was the wife’s opportunity. She watched tenderly over the slumberer, caring meanwhile for Johann’s pressing needs; got him clean linen and such warm raiment as she could, made him partake of a hearty meal, and forced him to take rest in a quiet corner of her lodgings,—the very place where she was wont to pray and meditate herself when she most needed the sweet refreshment ever found in communion with God.

The husband, on awaking to the consciousness of his guilt and the sense of racking pain consequent upon his shameful excesses, was all submission to his gentle wife’s will, and welcomed heartily the little stranger. Thenceforward, Eunice,—for such was her name,—had two sick persons to care for and to support. But she was not forgotten in her dire need. One of these noble English ladies, whose high birth is their least merit before men and their least recommendation to the love of God and his angels,—stumbled into the poor apartment, and promised to return. Eunice had never yet asked or accepted relief under any form, and her soul could not brook the idea of obtaining assistance from any one so long as she could work herself. Work she could not now, however;—and the assistance was proffered in so delicate and generous a form, that her self-respect was spared, and the boon gratefully accepted.

The husband soon died; and the slow fever which consumed poor Johann yielded to the tender nursing of his second mother, and the comfort and peace which surrounded him. His convalescence, without bringing back the memory of his childhood, restored him to the full use of his other faculties, and within six months he was a strong, healthy, and beautiful boy of eight. Eunice, during his illness, had opened the locket round his neck, and ascertained his parentage and religion. She now devoted herself to his education. Fearful, nevertheless, lest some one should steal or take away perforce her treasure from her, she accepted a position of trust in a country residence obtained for her by her benefactress. There she had not been more than a few weeks when she sickened and lay at death’s door for months. The boy, whose manly character began to display itself in this extremity, watched over her whom he called his mother with an intelligence that won the admiration of their masters, and tended her and worked for her with such unwearied love, that their sympathies were deeply excited.

It was while thus lavishing on his adopted parent all the tenderness of his nature, that the boy formed the resolution of supporting her by his industry, and of working till he could get her a home of his own. The kind mistress whom they served purchased the little fellow a basket or pack filled with needles, thread, and some more costly articles in favor with ladies and serving-maids, and encouraged him to try his luck first of all in her own mansion and among her dependants, and then among her lady acquaintances in the near neighborhood. No one could refuse to buy from the bright, beautiful boy, whose high soul shone through every feature,—so that, before two months were over, he had increased tenfold not only his stock in trade, but his custom.

The invalid,—for such she now was,—could, with the aid of her generous friends, venture to rent a small but very neat house in the neighboring town, and set up a little stationery and soft-ware shop, which she attended herself, while her boy extended his excursions to several populous villages of the district, and managed to make himself useful over night in a pottery, whose master took a great liking to the child.

His boyish frame was unequal to this excessive fatigue, and the great strain on the nervous system of one who was growing very rapidly, brought on symptoms of brain fever. He could afford to rest, however, for his heroic devotion had been blessed, and the little shop was patronized by rich and poor alike, who felt drawn to the saintlike widow and her orphan charge.

Up to that moment, Johann had scarcely learned to read. During the fits of delirium that accompanied this last illness, he raved continually about books and learning a trade and going to America to make a fortune for his dear mother, as he ever called Eunice. The physician who attended him was so touched by all that he heard about the pair, that he mentioned the matter to a friend of his, a wealthy ship-owner of the town, who was, besides, largely interested in the lumber trade both of Canada and of the Pacific coast. This gentleman called on Eunice, found Johann much better, and was charmed by the boy’s manly beauty, intelligence, and spirit, as well as by the indescribable magic of Eunice’s conversation and manner.

He became henceforth their declared protector. Johann was placed as an errand-boy in the ship-office, and sent three days in the week to an excellent school. His progress in learning was prodigious. He seemed to know by intuition what his master would teach him, obtained a thorough knowledge of arithmetic and algebra, was filled, at the sight of the designs and plans which covered the walls of his benefactor’s office, with a thirst for acquiring the science of ship-building. The boy, while filling the functions of confidential secretary to the head of the firm, was allowed to qualify as apprentice in the trade of shipwright. His salary, which his employer insisted on paying him, went to make Eunice entirely independent, and much more than the salary went to the same purpose. So that the gentle sufferer could give her noble boy a home supplied with all the restful comforts required by his feverish activity of brain and body, and bestow, besides, large alms on the poor.

Johann was thirteen when he made his first communion. This event produced a wonderful change in one who was already precocious in mind and character. In preparing himself for the reception of the Divine Sacrament, his tenderness of conscience compelled him to open his heart to his employer about several peccadilloes which his boyish temper had led him to commit since he had entered the office. His friend, who was a stanch opponent of the Catholic faith, listened in amazement to this accusation of acts in which not a trace of voluntary guilt could be discovered. At the same time he was deeply touched by the purity, innocence, truthfulness, and high honor revealed by that one glance into a soul so privileged.

Johann was intrusted with the most confidential part of his protector’s correspondence, and sent more than once to London on errands of great secrecy and importance. Everything he undertook succeeded in his hands, because to rare practical judgment and natural tact he joined absolute singleness of purpose. He devoted himself entirely, without a thought of personal vanity, to whatever he was given to do, applying his whole mind to it because it was his duty. Nor did he seem, when the thing was done, and his employer was loud in his praise, that he had done anything uncommon or what anybody else would not have done as well as himself. With all that, the boy was ever ready to oblige every person around him, from the oldest clerk to his master’s little footboy. Thus it happened that his wonderful simplicity and the absence of all pride in his conduct made him a universal favorite.

His rapid advancement, therefore, made him no enemies, and lost him no friends. In the ship-yard to which he was drawn by an irresistible attraction, he seemed to understand everything at a glance. The principles of the science of naval construction, the nature and value of materials, all were grasped by his marvelous intellect with a quickness and sureness that made learning to him an amusement.

At twenty he had become so useful to his kind protector, so indispensable indeed in the transaction of business requiring secrecy and dispatch, that he was made a junior partner in the concern. This extraordinary good fortune made no change either in Johann’s outward bearing or in his interior sentiments. His soul seemed filled with reverence and gratitude toward his benefactor, and devoted love for his mother; his tender piety to God being the source of his affection for the two beings on earth who had been to him the images and instruments of the divine goodness.

Thenceforward his history was one of continuous and wonderful success. How his fertile invention discovered new methods for improving the strength and velocity of sailing vessels,—for steam was not then known; how he traveled over both hemispheres to discover the richest forests and to establish centers for the vast lumber traffic in which his house was engaged; and how, wherever he went, his winning manners, his generosity toward his subordinates and workmen, the lively interest he seemed to take in every individual, and the mixture of gentleness and firmness with which he dealt with the refractory among them, caused his presence to be hailed with delight, and his departure to be regretted as a personal loss by every man in his employment.

One fixed purpose ruled his conduct toward these,—to encourage every married man to have his own little home, giving them such wages as enabled them to live comfortably and free of debt. With that, he would provide the children with schools in which they were taught the elements of a good common education, while every boy able to be apprenticed was articled to some good master tradesman in the shops attached to his manufactories and ship-yards. Ample provision was also made for religious instruction.

His chief delight, however, was to see the home-life and home-virtues cherished by all those who came beneath his control or influence, or were the recipients of his bounty. In a thousand ways, as his young, bright face passed like a sunbeam through the industrial villages which thrived under the protection of his house, he would show his love for children,—for the parentless and the outcasts particularly. They were somehow drawn to him by a powerful magnetism: he kept a list of all such, and of the families to whom he intrusted them, and from whom he took especial care that they received most kindly treatment.

In these good works every shilling he could spare was spent. His own home, the home of his adopted mother rather, he made most comfortable, without ever adding to it anything that savored of luxury. In this he was guided by the wishes of Eunice as well as by his own inclination. There was in their dwelling a simplicity that was not without its elegance, but nothing more. Or, if there was any other distinctive feature about his and her home, it was in the many visitors of every rank who came to honor in the saintly invalid the woman who had reared such a noble son, and in the constant coming and going of the poor and the distressed whose need was relieved quietly, and each one of whom was bidden to depart noiselessly, with the injunction of the Divine Master, “See thou tell no one.”

Johann was supremely happy in seeing his mother beloved and reverenced. He had obtained the legal authority to bear her maiden name,—not that his upright nature or manly disposition could allow him to blush for his own,—but because he gloried in owing her everything, and in devoting to her the life she had preserved and helped to make so honorable and so useful. He could not bear that any steps should be taken either to punish the padrone from whom he had endured such horrible cruelty, or that the course followed by his step-father should be ascertained; for he feared that the discovery of his guilt might rest like a stain on the memory of his dead parent.

Into the house which he had created for Eunice, nothing could induce Johann to bring a bride. His love for his benefactress, and his ardent and enlightened charity for his laborers, seemed to fill his heart and to leave no place for any other love. He was in his thirtieth year when she was taken from him, and at thirty, hundreds upon hundreds of homes in the Old World and the New blessed him for their comfort and happiness. Her death only served to give a mightier impulse to his indefatigable activity for the good of others, and to the great industries of which he was the soul.

We shall now let the veil drop on that life, which, fruitful as it was in noble labors crowned with success, and in countless deeds of the purest beneficence, would never court praise or publicity. The rain which is a blessing to the earth and crowns the most fervent prayers of the husbandman, is not that which the heavens send down like a cataract amid the flash and terror of the lightning and the loud roar of the thunder-storm. It is that which falls as silently and gently as the dew at midnight, dropping on the parched bosom of the earth, causing the seed to germinate, to grow up, and to ripen,—giving new life to the drooping flower, a more vivid green to forest and field, and filling the land with gladness.

We would wish the voice of these examples to reach thousands of boys, who know that they are born to toil, and many thousands more of young men whose hands are hardened by toil,—so that its eloquence might stir their hearts to industry, endurance, and perseverance in building up a home that God’s angels may delight to visit, good men to honor, and the poor to bless in their prayers.

Should there be among our readers any who have wasted the golden years of their life, created nothing, but destroyed rather,—then let them once more take courage and begin again!