“TO MY SON HENRY—­I have at last come to the resolution of quitting your house, which I can no longer call mine, in even the least degree.  For weeks—­for months—­ever since you married—­ever since your wife took upon herself what she calls the management of your house and purse, I have felt bound down under the weight of an oppressive bondage.  I could not go and take a pound or a shilling from our common stock, as I used to do before you married, when you and I lived in one mind, and when I believed that the very spirit of your departed, your angel mother, dwelt in you, as you had, and have still, her very face and form.  No, no, we had no common stock when you married.  She put me on an allowance—­ay, an allowance.  You lived, and saw me receiving an allowance; you whom I loved with an idolatry which God has now punished; you to whom I freely gave up my business—­my money-making business.  I gave it you—­I gave all to you—­I would have given my very life and soul to you, because I thought that with your mother’s own face you had her noble and generous nature.  You were kind before you married; but that marriage has proved your weakness and want of natural affection.  Yes, you stood at my side yesterday; you looked on my face—­I, the father who loved you beyond all bounds of fatherly love—­you stood and heard me beg for a few shillings; you heard me supplicate earnestly and humbly, and you would not give because your wife was not willing.  Henry, I could force you to give me a share of the profits of your business; but keep it—­keep it all.  You would not voluntarily give me some shillings, and I shall not demand what right and justice would give me.  Keep all, every farthing.

“It was for charity I asked the few shillings; you know it.  You know from whom I imbibed whatever I possess of the blessed spirit of charity.  I was as hard and unpitying as even your wife before your mother taught me to feel and relieve the demands of poverty.  Yes, and she taught you; you cannot forget it.  She taught you to give food to the starving, in your earliest days.  She strove to impress your infant mind with the very soul of charity; and yesterday she looked down from the heaven of the holy departed, and saw you refusing me, your father, a few shillings to bestow on charity.

“Henry, I can live with you and your wife no more.  I should grow avaricious in my old age, were I to remain with you.  I should long for money to call my own.  Those doled out shillings which I received wakened within me feelings of a dark nature—­covetousness, and envy, and discontent—­which must have shadowed the happiness of your mother in heaven to look down upon.  I must go and seek out an independent living for myself, even yet, though I am fifty-two.  Though my energies for struggling with the world died, I thought, when your mother died, and, leaving my active business to you, I retired to live in the country, I must go forth again, as if I were young, to seek for the means of existence, for I feel I was not made to be a beggar—­a creature hanging on the bounty of others; no, no, the merciful God will give me strength yet to provide for myself, though I am old, and broken down in mind and body.  Farewell; you who were once my beloved son, may God soften and amend your heart.”