"After much difficulty, I obtained employment from a man in whom I accidentally recognized an old and valued friend of my father. He had been in Rio several years, and was actively engaged in trade, and willingly employed me as a clerk, occasionally despatching me from home to transact business at a distance. My duties being regular and profitable, we were soon raised above want, and I was enabled to place my young wife in a situation of comfort.
"The sweetness of her disposition, the cheerfulness with which she endured privation, the earnestness with which she strove to make me happy, were not without effect. I perseveringly rallied from my gloom; I succeeded in banishing the frown from my brow; and the premature wrinkles, which her hand would softly sweep away, finally ceased to return. The few months that I passed with your mother, Gertrude, form a sweet episode in the memory of my stormy life. I came to love her much—not as I loved Emily;—that could not be expected—but, as the solitary flower that bloomed on the grave of all my early hopes, she cast a fragrance round my path; and her child is not more dear to me, because a part of myself, than as the memento of the cherished blossom snatched hastily from my hand and rudely crushed.
"About two months after your birth, my child, and before your eyes had ever learned to brighten at the sight of your father, who was necessarily much from home, the business in which I was engaged called me in the capacity of an agent to a station some distance from Rio. I had been absent nearly a month, and had written regularly to Lucy, informing her of all my movements (though I suspect the letters never reached her), when the neighbourhood in which I was stationed became infected with a fatal malaria. For the sake of my family I took every measure to ward off contagion, but failed. I was seized with fever, and lay for weeks near death. I was cruelly neglected during my illness; for I had no friends near me, and my slender purse held out little inducement for mercenary service; but my sufferings and forebodings on account of Lucy and yourself were far greater than any which I endured from my bodily torments, although the latter were great. I had all sorts of imaginary fears; but nothing, alas! which could compare with the reality that awaited me when, after my dreadful illness, I made my way, destitute, ragged, and emaciated, back to Rio. I sought my former home. It was deserted, and I was warned to flee from its vicinity, as the fearful disease of fever had nearly depopulated that and the neighbouring streets. I made every inquiry, but could obtain no intelligence of my wife and child. I hastened to the charnel-house where, during the raging of the pestilence, the unrecognized dead were exposed; but among the disfigured remains it was impossible to distinguish friends from strangers. I lingered about the city for weeks in hopes to gain some information concerning Lucy; but could find no one who had ever heard of her. All day I wandered about the streets and on the wharves—the latter being places which Ben Grant (in whose faithful charge I had left your mother and yourself) was in the habit of frequenting—but not a syllable could I learn of any persons that answered my description.
"My first thought had been that they would naturally seek my employer, to learn, if possible, the cause of my prolonged absence; and on finding my home empty I had hastened in search of him. But he too had, within a recent period, fallen a victim to the prevailing distemper. His place of business was closed and the establishment broken up. I continued my inquiries until hope died within me. I was told that scarce an inmate of the fatal neighbourhood where I had left my family had escaped; and convinced, finally, that my fate was still pursuing me with an unmitigated wrath, of which this last blow was but a single expression, that I might have foreseen and expected, I madly agreed to work my passage in the first vessel which promised me an escape from scenes so fraught with harrowing recollections.
"And now commenced a course of wretched wandering. With varied ends in view, following strongly contrasted employments, and with fluctuating fortune, I have travelled over the world. My feet have trodden almost every land. I have sailed on every sea and breathed the air of every clime. I am familiar with the city and the wilderness, the civilized man and the savage. I have learned the sad lesson that peace is nowhere, and friendship, for the most part, but a name.
"Once during my wanderings I visited the home of my boyhood. Unseen and unknown I trod a familiar ground and gazed on familiar, though time-worn faces. I stood at the window of Mr. Graham's library; saw the contented, happy countenance of Emily—happy in her blindness and her forgetfulness of the past. A young girl sat near the fire endeavouring to read by its flickering light. I knew not then what gave such a charm to her thoughtful features, nor why my eyes dwelt upon them with a rare pleasure; for there was no voice to proclaim to the father's heart that he looked on the face of his child. I am not sure that the strong impulse which prompted me then to enter, acknowledge my identity, and beg Emily to speak to me a word of forgiveness, might not have prevailed over the dread of her displeasure; but Mr. Graham at the moment appeared, cold and implacable as ever; I gazed an instant, then fled from the house.
"Although in the various labours which I was compelled to undertake to earn a decent maintenance, I had more than once met with such success as to give me temporary independence, and to enable me to indulge in expensive travelling, I had never amassed a fortune; indeed, I had not cared to do so, since I had no use for money, except to employ it in the gratification of my immediate wants. Accident, however, at last thrust upon me a wealth which I could scarcely be said to have sought.
"After a year spent in the wilderness of the west, amid adventures the relation of which now would seem to you almost incredible, I gradually continued my retreat across the country, and after encountering innumerable hardships, which had no other object than the indulgence of my vagrant habits, I found myself in that land which has recently been termed the land of promise, but which has proved to many a greedy emigrant a land of deceit. For me, however, who sought it not, it showered gold. I was among the earliest discoverers of its treasure-vaults—one of the most successful, though the least laborious, of the seekers after gain. Nor was it merely, or indeed chiefly, at the mines that fortune favoured me. With the first results of my labours I purchased an immense tract of land, little dreaming at the time that those desert acres were destined to become the streets and squares of a great and prosperous city. So that without effort, almost without my own knowledge, I achieved the greatness which springs from untold wealth. But this was not all. The blessed accident which led me to this golden land was the means of disclosing a pearl of price—a treasure in comparison with which California and all its mines shrink, to my mind, into insignificance. You know how the war-cry went forth to all lands, and men of every name and nation brought their arms to the field of fortune. Famine came next, with disease and death in its train; and many a man, hurrying on to reap the golden harvest, fell by the wayside, without once seeing the waving of the yellow grain.
"Half scorning the greedy rabble, I could not refuse in this, my time of prosperity, to minister to the wants of such as fell in the way; and now for once my humanity found its own reward. A miserable, ragged, half-starved, and apparently dying man crept to the door of my tent and asked in a feeble voice for charity. I did not refuse to admit him into my narrow domicile and to relieve his sufferings. He was the victim of want rather than disease, and, his hunger appeased, the savage brutality of his coarse nature soon manifested itself in the dogged indifference with which he received a stranger's bounty and the gross ingratitude with which he abused my hospitality. A few days served to restore him to his strength; and then, anxious to dismiss my visitor, whose conduct had already excited suspicions of his good faith, I gave him warning that he must depart; at the same time placing in his hand a sufficient amount of gold to insure his support until he could reach the mines which were his professed destination.
"He appeared dissatisfied, and begged permission to remain until the next morning, as the night was near, and he had no shelter provided. To this I made no objection, little imagining how base a serpent I was harbouring. At midnight I was awakened from my light and easily-disturbed sleep to find my lodger busily engaged in rifling my property and preparing to take an unceremonious leave of my dwelling. Nor did his villainy end here. Upon my seizing and charging him with the theft, he snatched a weapon and attempted the life of his benefactor. But I was prepared to ward off the stroke, and succeeded in a few moments in subduing my desperate antagonist. He now crouched at my feet in such abject submission as might be expected from so vile a knave. Well might he tremble with fear; for the Lynch-law was then in full force for criminals like him. I should probably have handed the traitor over to his fate; but, ere I had time to do so, he held out to my cupidity a bribe so tempting that I forgot the deservings of my knavish guest in the eagerness with which I bartered his freedom as the price of its possession.