Joe awoke early, after a dreamless and refreshing sleep, and again his mind laboured with its difficulties about Deborah's relation of the apparition; but its labour was vain. The more he reasoned the greater were his difficulties. The healthful effect of these baffled and perplexed thinkings upon Joe's intellect was, the deterring of its powers from precipitant and immature conclusions,—the throwing of its energies back upon fresh and deeper inquiry,—and the in-fixing of a humiliating consciousness that, after all his struggles in pursuit of knowledge, he scarcely knew any thing yet as he ought to know it. Thus, his conscious ignorance for the present was really beneficial to him; and when the voice of his affectionate mistress was heard summoning him to breakfast, he stept down the ladder, shaking his head at himself for a conceited puppy, and applying homeward to his own case the significant rebuke—
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Joe,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Labour, the honest dame declared, should not be thought of, in her house, the day that Joe was of age,—according to her reckoning by guess,—and free. And she bustled about, as old as she was, to place her best earthen jugs, filled with mead and ale, in goodly array, on the white and well-scoured table, that every visiter might drink the young freeman's health; and she hasted to prepare a large plumb-pudding, and other homely eates, for dinner,—all the while holding up her head, and striving to look as blythe and merry as if she had been in her teens.
At length, the hour of parting came; and when Joe rose and took up his hat,—and his fellow-apprentices that were,—but a few hours before,—took each a bundle to accompany him a few miles on the way,—Dame Deborah's aged frame shook violently, and the tears streamed, unchecked, down her time-worn face.
"God speed thee, my dear bairn!" she cried,—"and help thee to take heed of thy ways, that no harm may befall thee!"
Joe felt completely unmanned, and mingled his tears with those of his beloved and revered benefactress, while he bent to receive her parting benediction.
The orphan saw his foster-mother no more alive. When, three years afterwards, he again entered that little village of Haxey, it was to attend the interment of Dame Deborah in the same churchyard to which she had conducted him to witness the burial of his mother. And what an altered man was Joe! A residence in the manufacturing districts had unveiled to him a world of misery—contention—competition—avarice—oppression—and suffering—and famine—that he had never supposed to exist! As for his religious opinions they changed, and changed again,—amidst varnished, high-sounding professors of sanctity, on the one hand,—and starving thousands, who in the pangs of despair charged God with the authorship of their wretchedness, on the other. Had Joe been asked, ten years afterwards, what were now his religious sentiments, he would have answered:—"I am wearied with talking about creeds, and I am trying,—by relieving misery as much as I can, and diffusing all the happiness I can,—to show that I believe all men to be my brethren: I think that is the best religion."