’But the puzzling question had not yet been answered, and again it was put:  “But, master, where’s the money come from?”

“Well, well, I told you a FRIEND had given it to me for you. You know that Friend as well as I do.  There now, you may leave your work for to-day:  go home to your wife, and thank that Friend together for making you an independent man.  But stay, ——­, I had almost forgotten one thing.  I called to see Mr P——­ as I drove through Stoke’s Croft; I told him the errand that had carried me away from home all day, and he gave me a sovereign for you to begin the world with.”

’The poor fellow was too much affected to say anything more.  The next morning, however, he appeared again, but after a most complete failure in a valorous attempt he made to express his thanks, he was obliged to leave the counting-house, stammering out that “both he and his wife felt their hearts to be as light as a feather."’

Mr Budgett was, by family connection, a Wesleyan, and at all periods of his life under a strong sense of religion.  He had even acted as a lay-preacher.  It was his custom to have all the people of his establishment assembled for religious exercises every morning before proceeding to business.  He was active as a Sunday-school teacher, and assisted with his purse and his own active exertions in every effort to Christianise the rude people of Kingswood.  When he became a highly-prosperous man, he had a good country-house and a handsome establishment; but wealth and its refinements never withdrew him from familiar personal intercourse with his people.  Neither did it ever in the least alienate him from his many humble relations.  His conduct, indeed, in all these respects was admirable, and well entitled him to be, what he was, the most revered man of his neighbourhood and kindred.  At his death, the expression of mourning was widely spread, as if the whole population had felt in his loss the loss of a friend.

The volume which supplies us with these particulars and extracts, is a very interesting one; yet we could wish to see it abridged of some portion of the long episodes, in the style of pulpit discourses, with which the author has thought proper to expand it.  If properly condensed, and the details of the life presented given perhaps in somewhat better order, so as to explain more clearly the steps of Mr Budgett’s rise as a merchant, the work might become a vade-mecum for the young man of business, exhibiting to him a model of character and conduct such as could not but exercise a good influence over his future career.

FOOTNOTES: 

[2] The Successful Merchant:  Sketches of the Life of Mr Samuel Budgett, late of Kingswood Hill.  By William Arthur, A.M.  Hamilton, Adams, & Co.  London:  1852.

PET BIRDS OF INDIA.