"Well, well, poor heart, cheer up!" said the dame, in a tone of sincere condolence:—"remember, that there is One above, who hath said, He will be "a husband to the widow, and a"——but I'll fetch thee and thy pratty bairn a bite o' bread and cheese, and a horn o' mead.—Lord bless me! how white the poor creature is turning! God Almighty save her soul! she's going!"
The kind old woman hastened to support the sinking head of the dying stranger, and the child clung, convulsively, to the cold and helpless hand of his mother,—and uttered his wailing agony. All was soon over,—for the poor wanderer died almost instantaneously in Dame Deborah's arm-chair.
Reader, if thou hast a heart to love thy mother, I need not attempt to describe to thee how deep was the grief and horror felt by the orphan as he gazed upon his dead mother's face. And if thou hast not such a heart, I will not give thee an occasion to slight a feeling so holy as a child's absorbed love for its loving mother.
Suffice it to say, that after three days of almost unmitigated grief, the child, led by Dame Deborah, followed his mother's corpse, sobbing, to the grave; but the aged hand that conducted him to witness the laying of his heart-broken parent in her last resting-place led him back to a comfortable home. The sudden and striking circumstances of his mother's death saddened the orphan's spirits for some time; but he soon recovered the natural gaiety of childhood, notwithstanding his transference from the care of an affectionate and over-indulgent mother, to that of a guardian of advanced age and grave manners.
Deborah Thrumpkinson in vain inquired after the orphan's full name. He only knew that he had been called "Joe." She guessed that he must be about four years old; and, fearful that a ceremony which she conceived to be an indispensable preparative for his eternal salvation might have been neglected, she took him to the font of the parish church, and had him baptized "Joseph—in a Christian way," as she termed it: the good dame, herself, becoming surety for the child's fulfilment of the vows thus taken upon himself by proxy.
Joe's godmother and protectress taught him to read. And no benefit she conferred upon him in after-life was more thankfully remembered by him than this, her humane and patient initiation of his infantile understanding into the mystery of the alphabet, and the formation of syllables. Here her labour ended, for her science extended little further; but a Bible with the Apocrypha, ornamented with plates,—a valued family possession of the Thrumpkinsons,—was within his reach, and, at any hour of Sunday,—and sometimes on other days of the week when he had washed his hands very clean,—he was privileged with the growing pleasure of turning over the pages of the folio of wonders ever new.
The good old Dame was not disposed to mar her act of genuine charity,—the adoption of an orphan,—by imprisoning his young limbs too early in the bonds of labour. She did not place him on the humble stall to bend over the last, till she supposed he had reached the age of fourteen. The ten preceding years of his orphanage passed away in a course of happy quietude. The staid age of his venerated protectress forbade any outbreaks of juvenile buoyancy in her sedate presence; but in Joe's lonely wanderings through the fields and lanes, as well as in his silent readings of the pictured Scriptures, he found pleasures which abundantly repaid the irksomeness of occasional restraint. His simple heart danced with joy at each return of the gladsome Spring, when his beloved acquaintances, the wild flowers, shewed their beautiful faces by brook and hedgerow; and he became familiar with all their localities, and felt a glowing and mysterious rapture in the renewed survey of their glorious tints and delicate pencillings, long before he learnt their names.
The commencement of his apprenticeship was marked by an event of no less importance than his introduction to Toby Lackpenny,—the most learned tailor in the Isle of Axholme,—and a personage of such exalted merit, that we purpose to pluck a sprig of "immortal amaranth," by making the world acquainted with his separate history:—"but let that pass." Toby,—from the rich immensity—for such it seemed to Joe—of his "library,"—furnished the young disciple of St. Crispin with two books which completely fascinated him: they were—the immortal fables of "The Pilgrim's Progress" and "Robinson Crusoe,"—by the immortal toilers, John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe. Joe was assured by his new friend that Crusoe's adventures were no less veritable true than wonderful,—while the "Pilgrim" had a hidden and all-important meaning, which he must endeavour to discover, and apply to his own spiritual state as he went along.
During the season of his intense and enamoured pursuit of these absorbing studies, an incident occurred which produced some uneasiness both to teacher and disciple. Joe was seated, one evening, on a stool at the tailor's door, fervently engaged in his usual recreation,—the tailor meanwhile plying his needle,—when the clergyman of the village passing by, and observing the boy's studious deportment as something unusual, stepped towards him, and desired to know what he was so intent upon. Joe naturally felt some diffidence in returning an answer, and turned towards his friend on the shop-board with a glance that was meant to entreat his kind offices in the formation of a reply. But the tailor, to Joe's utter confusion, hung down his head doggedly, and struck his needle into a nether garment that lay upon his knees, with singular vehemence. In default of this expected help, Joe gave his two precious volumes, silently and resignedly, into the hands of the vicar,—a reverend gentleman held in deserved respect by his humble flock for the rigid purity of his morals, but of small skill in the waywardness of the human mind.
After a very few minutes' examination of the books, the spiritual overseer crimsoned with apparent displeasure, shook his head very expressively at the boy, and returning the volumes into his hands, assured him he was very sorry to see him so ill employed,—"for one of the books," he said, "contained only a foolish tale,—and the other was as whimsical a dream as ever ran through the brains of a fanatic." So saying, the well-intentioned, but ill-informed, teacher turned away,—leaving the boy to his own reflections, and the hot criticism of the tailor on what they had just heard from the village parson. These by no means led Joe into a coincidence with the vicar's way of thinking; and, whenever opportunity served, he was sure, as before, to be wandering, ideally, with the romantic and intrepid adventurer on the desert island, or to be found absorbed in the effort to penetrate the spiritual mysteries he had been directed to discover in the remaining volume whose enchanting imagery had captivated his young understanding. "A foolish tale,"—he could not conceive the narrative of the shipwrecked and eremite mariner to be: it was too full of sober earnestness, he thought, to be fantastic: it created before him a verisimilitude in which he himself lived all the wild yet truthful adventures of the cast-a-way seaman over again. And if he had not been told that the story of the Pilgrim was a parable, his simple and eager phantasy would have, primarily, set it down for a literal truth,—however after-reflection might have qualified his first conclusion.