I cannot be very grateful to such men for their
excellence, and wisdom, and prudence. I find myself facing as
stoutly as I can a hard, combative existence, full of doubt,
difficulties, defeats, disappointments, and dangers, quite a hard
enough life without their dark countenances at my elbow, so that what
I want is a happy-minded Smethurst placed here and there at ugly
corners of my life's wayside, preaching his gospel of quiet and
contentment.
ANOTHER
I was shortly to meet with an evangelist of another stamp. After I
had forced my way through a gentleman's grounds, I came out on the
high road, and sat down to rest myself on a heap of stones at the top
of a long hill, with Cockermouth lying snugly at the bottom. An
Irish beggar-woman, with a beautiful little girl by her side, came up
to ask for alms, and gradually fell to telling me the little tragedy
of her life. Her own sister, she told me, had seduced her husband
from her after many years of married life, and the pair had fled,
leaving her destitute, with the little girl upon her hands. She
seemed quite hopeful and cheery, and, though she was unaffectedly
sorry for the loss of her husband's earnings, she made no pretence of
despair at the loss of his affection; some day she would meet the
fugitives, and the law would see her duly righted, and in the
meantime the smallest contribution was gratefully received.
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