Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XI.—April, 1851—Vol. II.

by Various

His mother found strength to move her hand now. She stroked his head with a trembling touch, which he seemed to feel as long as he lived. She could not say much more. She told him she had no fear for any of them. They would be taken care of. She advised him not to waken the little ones, who were sound asleep on the other side of her, and begged him to lie down himself till daylight, and try to sleep, when she should be gone.

This was the last thing she said. The candle was very low; but before it went out, she was gone. Joel had always done what his mother wished; but he could not obey her in the last thing she had said. He lighted another candle when the first went out; and sat thinking, till the gray dawn began to show through the window.

When he called the neighbors, they were astonished at his quietness. He had taken up the children, and dressed them, and made the room tidy, and lighted the fire, before he told any body what had happened. And when he opened the door, his little sister was in his arms. She was two years old, and could walk, of course; but she liked being in Joel's arms. Poor Willy was the most confounded. He stood with his pinafore at his mouth, staring at the bed, and wondering that his mother lay so still.

If the neighbors were astonished at Joel that morning, they might be more so at some things they saw afterward; but they were not. Every thing seemed done so naturally; and the boy evidently considered what he had to do so much a matter of course, that less sensation was excited than about many smaller things.

After the funeral was over, Joel tied up all his mother's clothes. He carried the bundle on one arm, and his sister on the other. He would not have liked to take money for what he had seen his mother wear; but he changed them away for new and strong clothes for the child. He did not seem to want any help. He went to the factory the next morning, as usual, after washing and dressing the children, and getting a breakfast of bread and milk with them. There was no fire; and he put every knife, and other dangerous thing on a high shelf, and gave them some trifles to play with, and promised to come and play with them at dinner-time. And he did play. He played heartily with the little one, and as if he enjoyed it, every day at the noon hour. Many a merry laugh the neighbors heard from that room when the three children were together; and the laugh was often Joel's.

How he learned to manage, and especially to cook, nobody knew; and he could himself have told little more than that he wanted to see how people did it, and looked accordingly, at every opportunity. He certainly fed the children well; and himself too. He knew that every thing depended on his strength being kept up. His sister sat on his knee to be fed till she could feed herself. He was sorry to give it up; but he said she must learn to behave. So he smoothed her hair, and washed her face before dinner, and showed her how to fold her hands while he said grace. He took as much pains to train her to good manners at table as if he had been a governess, teaching a little lady. While she remained a "baby," he slept in the middle of the bed, between the two, that she might have room, and not be disturbed; and when she ceased to be a baby, he silently made new arrangements. He denied himself a hat, which he much wanted, in order to buy a considerable quantity of coarse dark calico, which, with his own hands, he made into a curtain, and slung up across a part of the room; thus shutting off about a third of it. Here he contrived to make up a little bed for his sister; and he was not satisfied till she had a basin and jug, and piece of soap of her own. Here nobody but himself was to intrude upon her without leave; and, indeed, he always made her understand that he came only to take care of her. It was not only that Willy was not to see her undressed. A neighbor or two, now and then lifted the latch without knocking. One of these one day, heard something from behind the curtain, which made her call her husband silently to listen; and they always afterward treated Joel as if he were a man, and one whom they looked up to. He was teaching the child her little prayer. The earnest, sweet, devout tones by the boy, and the innocent, cheerful imitation of the little one, were beautiful to hear, the listeners said.

Though so well taken care of, she was not to be pampered; there would have been no kindness in that. Very early, indeed, she was taught, in a merry sort of way, to put things in their places, and to sweep the floor, and to wash up the crockery. She was a handy little thing, well trained and docile. One reward that Joel had for his management was, that she was early fit to go to chapel. This was a great point; as he, choosing to send Willy regularly, could not go till he could take the little girl with him. She was never known to be restless; and Joel was quite proud of her.

Willy was not neglected for the little girl's sake. In those days, children went earlier to the factory, and worked longer than they do now, and, by the time the sister was five years old, Willy became a factory boy; and his pay put the little girl to school. When she, at seven, went to the factory, too, Joel's life was altogether an easier one. He always had maintained them all, from the day of his mother's death. The times must have been good—work constant, and wages steady—or he could not have done it. Now, when all three were earning, he put his sister to a sewing-school for two evenings in the week, and the Saturday afternoons; and he and Willy attended an evening-school, as they found they could afford it. He always escorted the little girl wherever she had to go: into the factory, and home again—to the school door, and home again—and to the Sunday-school; yet he was himself remarkably punctual at work and at worship. He was a humble, earnest, docile pupil himself, at the Sunday-school—quite unconscious that he was more advanced than other boys in the sublime science and practice of duty. He felt that every body was very kind to him; but he was unaware that others felt it an honor to be kind to him.

I linger on these years, when he was a fine growing lad, in a state of high content. I linger, unwilling to proceed. But the end must come; and it is soon told. He was sixteen, I think, when he was asked to become a teacher in the Sunday-school, while not wholly ceasing to be a scholar. He tried, and made a capital teacher, and he won the hearts of the children while trying to open their minds. By this he became more widely known than before.

One day in the next year a tremendous clatter and crash was heard in the factory where Joel worked. A dead silence succeeded, and then several called out that it was only an iron bar that had fallen down. This was true: but the iron bar had fallen on Joel's head, and he was taken up dead!