“Old Farmer Low—and a tough customer he is, too; it’s a word and a blow with him. The old lady has had a hard time of it, good as she is, to put up with all his kinks and quirks. She bore it very well till the lad went away; and then she began to droop like a willow in a storm, and lose all heart, like. Doctor’s stuff did n’t do any good, as long as she got no news of the boy. She’s to be buried this afternoon, sir.”
Poor Will stayed to hear no more, but tottered in the direction of the cottage. He asked no leave to enter, but passed over the threshold into the little “best parlour,” and found himself alone with the dead. It was too true! Dumb were the lips that should have welcomed him; and the arms that should have enfolded him were crossed peacefully over the heart that beat true to him to the last.
Conscience did its office. Long years of mad folly passed in swift review before him; and over that insensible form a vow was made, and registered in Heaven.
“Your mother should have lived to see this day, Will,” said a gray-haired old man, as he leaned on the arm of the clergyman, and passed into the village church.
“Bless God, my dear father, there is ‘joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth;’ and of all the angel band, there is one seraph hand that sweeps more rapturously its harp to-day, ‘for the lost that is found.’”
MR. PUNCH MISTAKEN.
“A man will own that he is in the wrong—a woman never; she is only mistaken.”—Punch.
Mr. Punch, did you ever see an enraged American female? She is the expressed essence of wild cats. Perhaps you didn’t know it, when you penned that incendiary paragraph; or, perhaps, you thought that in crossing the “big pond,” salt water might neutralize it; or, perhaps, you flattered yourself we should not see it over here; but here it is, in my clutches, in good strong English: I am not even “mistaken!”
Now, if you will bring me a live specimen of the genus homo who was ever known “to own that he was in the wrong,” I will draw in my horns and claws, and sneak ingloriously back into my American shell. But you can’t do it, Mr. Punch! You never saw that curiosity, either in John Bull’s skin, or Brother Jonathan’s. ’Tis an animal which has never yet been discovered, much less captured.