So the work began. So earnest, so humble; yet, like other earnest, humble efforts, with a blessing of prosperity upon it. In this way, during the last fourteen years, by this one man, working in the leisure of a twelve hours' daily toil, hundreds have been restored to peace. He has sent husbands repentant to their wives; he has restored fathers to the fatherless. Without incurring debt, supporting a large family on little gains, he has contrived to spare out of his little; contenting himself with a bare existence, that he might have clothes to give and bits of money, where they were required to reinstate an outcast in society.
Mr. Wright is a dissenter—free, of course, from bigotry; for bigotry can never co-exist with charity so genuine. Although a dissenter working spiritually in the prison, he never comes into jarring contact with the chaplain. He makes a point of kindling in his outcast friends a religious feeling; but that is not sectarian; he speaks only the largest sentiments of Christianity, and asks only that they attend, once every week, a place of worship, leaving them to choose what church or chapel it may be. And, in the chapel he himself attends, wherever his eye turns, he can see decent families who stand by his means there; men whom he has rescued from the vilest courses, kneeling modestly beside their children and their wives. Are not these families substantial prayers?
Very humbly all this has been done. In behalf of each outcast in turn, Mr. Wright has pleaded with his own employer, or with others, in a plain, manly way. Many now work under himself, in his own place of occupation; his word and guarantees having been sufficient recommendation. Elsewhere, he has, when rebuffed, persevered from place to place, offering and laying down his own earnings as guarantee; clothing and assisting the repentant unemployed convict out of his own means, as far as possible; speaking words, or writing letters, with a patient zeal, to reconcile to him his honest relatives, or to restore lost friends. Bare sustenance for his own body by day, that he might screw out of himself little funds in aid of his good deeds—and four hours' sleep at night, after his hard work, that he might screw out of his bed more time for his devoted labor—these tell their tale upon the body of the man, who still works daily twelve hours for his family, and six or eight hours for his race. He is now sixty-three years old, and working forward on his course worn, but unwearied.
No plaudits have been in his ear, and he has sought none. Of his labor, the success was the reward. Some ladies joined; and working quietly, as he does, in an under-current of society, after a while, he had from them the aid of a small charitable fund, to draw upon occasionally in the interest of the poor friends for whom he struggled. Prison Inspectors found him out, and praised him in reports. At first there were a few words, and a note told of "this benevolent individual. His simple, unostentatious, but earnest and successful labors on behalf of discharged prisoners are above all praise." After a few years, the reports grew in their enthusiasm, and strung together illustrations of the work that has been done so quietly. Let us quote from this source one or two examples:
"Five years ago I was," owns a certain G.J., "in the New Bailey, convicted of felony, and sentenced to four months' imprisonment. When I was discharged from prison, I could get no employment. I went to my old employer, to ask him to take me again. He said, I need not apply to him, for if he could get me transported he would; so I could get no work until I met with Mr. Wright, who got me employed in a place, where I remained some time, and have been in employment ever since. I am now engaged as a screw-cutter—a business I was obliged to learn—and am earning nineteen shillings and twopence a week. I have a wife and four children, and but for Mr. Wright, I should have been a lost man."
Others tell how they were saved by the timely supplies of Mr. Wright's money, which "kept their heads above water" till they obtained the trust of an employer. Another, after telling his career, adds: "I am now, consequently, in very comfortable circumstances; I am more comfortable now than ever I was in my life; I wish every poor man was as comfortable as I am. I am free from tippling, and cursing, and swearing; have peace of mind, and no quarreling at home as there used to be. I dare say I was as wicked a man as any in Manchester. I thought if I could once get settled under such a gentleman as Mr. Wright, I would not abuse my opportunity, and all I expected I have received. I have got Bibles, hymn-book, prayer-book, and tracts; and those things I never had in my house since I have been married before. My wife is delighted. My boy goes to school, and my girl also."
Were the spirit of Mr. Wright diffused more generally through society, the number of fallen men—who, being restored with all due prudence to a generous confidence, "would not abuse their opportunity"—would tell decidedly on the statistics of our criminal courts and prisons. To labor as Mr. Wright has done, must be the prerogative of few, though all the indolent may note, by way of spur, how much a man, even like Thomas Wright, poor, humble, scantily instructed, may beget of good out of an earnest will.
THE NIGHT TRAIN.
The curate and his daughter sat before the fire. Both had been for some time silent, for the father had fallen into that listless dreaminess to which nothing is so conducive as gazing on the glowing caverns in the coals, and pretty little Faith cared not to disturb a rest that he was not likely to be long suffered to enjoy unmolested. And so the flamelets rose and sank, lighting their thoughtful faces, and glittering on the gold-embossed backs of the treasured volumes on the shelves—the curate's most constant friends. Twilight saddened into night. Up from behind the gray church tower came the moon. But still not a word broke the silence in the parsonage parlor. The gaunt arms of the trees waved drearily without. A streak of white moonshine crept across the carpet like a silver snake. Still he gazed fixedly on the bright pagoda 'mid the flame: it totters, but before it falls we will track his wandering musings for a moment. All men, he thinks, have as children gazed on the burning coals, and fashioned castles, figures, mountains in them, but though the elements are all the same, no two men ever have presented to them exactly the same position or difficulty in life, and so only general rules of conduct can be laid down; but yet—the minaret crumbles to nothing, and changes to a strange fantastic face, then into something like a funeral plume; his dreams are all dispersed; the pensive damsel looks up hurriedly, for high above the muttering wind, fierce as the summons at the gates of Cawdor, he hears a knocking loud and long.