This lenient treatment completely subdued the last vestige of evil habits acquired in childhood.  He was humble and grateful in the extreme, and always steady and industrious.  He conducted with great propriety ever afterward, and established such a character for honesty, that the neighbors far and wide trusted him to carry their produce to market, receiving a small commission for his trouble.  Eventually, he came to own a small house and farm, where he lived in much comfort and respectability.  He always looked up to Isaac as the friend who had early raised him from a downward and slippery path; and he was never weary of manifesting gratitude by every little attention he could devise.

LEVI BUTLER.

Some one having told Friend Hopper of an apprentice who was cruelly treated, he caused investigation to be made, and took the lad under his own protection.  As he was much bent upon going to sea, he was placed in a respectable boarding-house for sailors, till a fitting opportunity could be found to gratify his inclination.  One day, a man in the employ of this boarding-house brought a bill to be paid for the lad.  He was very ragged, but his manners were those of a gentleman, and his conversation showed that he had been well educated.  His appearance excited interest in Friend Hopper’s mind, and he inquired into his history.  He said his name was Levi Butler; that he was of German extraction, and had been a wealthy merchant in Baltimore, of the firm of Butler and Magruder.  He married a widow, who had considerable property, and several children.  After her death, he failed in business, and gave up all his own property, but took the precaution to secure all her property to her children.  His creditors were angry, and tried various ways to compel him to pay them with his wife’s money.  He was imprisoned a long time.  He petitioned the Legislature for release, and the committee before whom the case was brought made a report in his favor, highly applauding his integrity in not involving his own affairs with the property belonging to his wife’s children, who had been intrusted to his care.  Poverty and persecution had broken down his spirits, and when he was discharged from prison he left Baltimore and tried to obtain a situation as clerk in Philadelphia.  He did not succeed in procuring employment.  His clothes became thread-bare, and he had no money to purchase a new suit.  In this situation, some people to whom he applied for employment treated him as if he were an impostor.  In a state of despair he went one day to drown himself.  But when he had put some heavy stones in his pocket to make him sink rapidly, he seemed to hear a voice calling to him to forbear; and looking up, he saw a man watching him.  He hurried away to avoid questions, and passing by a sailor’s boarding-house, he went in and offered to wait upon the boarders for his food.  They took him upon those terms; and the gentleman who had