“My father was quite a different person.  How it was they met and loved, I could not for a long time determine.  But one evening my mother told me all about it, and said he was not the man of her choice, but of her parents’ choice; and that she had never loved him with that deep and earnest love that alone can bind two hearts in one embrace.  But she said she had endeavored to do her duty towards him.  Good woman!  I knew that.  ’T was her very nature to do that.  ’T was a law of her being, and she could not evade it.

“My father was a rough, coarse-minded man.  He held an office under the government, and, from being accustomed to the exercise of some little authority without doors, became habituated to a morose, ill-natured manner of words and behavior within our home.  I remember how I changed my tone of voice, and my mode of action, when at night he came home.  With my mother I talked and laughed, and played merrily in her presence, and rather liked to have her look on my sports; but when my father came I never smiled.  I sat up on my chair in one corner as stiff and upright as the elm-tree, in front of our house.  I never played in his presence.  I seldom heard a kind word from him.  My mother used to call me ‘Berty, my dear,’ when she wished me; but my father always shouted, sternly, ’Egbert, come here, sir!’ and I would tremblingly respond, ‘Sir.’

“Few persons seemed to love him; those who did, did so with an eye to business.  It was policy in them to flatter the man who could favor them pecuniarily, and they hesitated not to do so.  One time, when my father’s vote and influence were worth five thousand pounds to his party, and he exhibited symptoms of withholding them, he had rich presents sent him, and every night some half a dozen or more would call in and sit and talk with him, and tell him how admirably all the schemes he had started for the good of the town had succeeded, and in all manner of ways would flatter the old gentleman, so that he would be quite pleasant all the next day.  At this time handsome carriages came to take him to ride, and gentlemen proposed an afternoon’s shooting or fishing, or sport of some kind, and my father always accepted and was always delighted.  The simple man, he couldn’t see through the gauze bags they were drawing over his head! lie did not notice the nets With which they were entangling his feet.  When election came, he gave his vote, and did not keep back his influence.

“My father was not benevolent to any great degree.  He gave, it is true.  He gave to missionary societies, to education and tract societies, and his name was always found printed in their monthly reports; but he never gave, as my mother did, to the poor around us, unseen, unknown.  Not even he knew of my mother’s charitable acts; but all the town knew of his, and he was looked upon by the great mass of public mind to be the most benevolent.  But it was not so.  Far from it.  One shilling from my mother, given with the heart, with sympathy, given for the sake of doing good, not for the sake of popularity, was a greater gift than a hundred pounds from my father’s hand, given as he always gave it.