Before the boy who was dispatched on this errand returned, a little conversation had ensued; and as the officer rose to go, he smilingly placed his purse, with his card, in the hands of the mechanic. The poor, ragged man received them with all the composure of a physician, and with a sort of dry, grim humor which appeared peculiar to him, and the only relief of his other wise rough and rigid character, made sombre by the constant shadows and troubles of life.
But the moment he read the name on the card all the hard lines in his deeply-marked face underwent a sudden contortion. Thrusting back the purse and card into the officer's hand, he seized him with a fierce grip by one arm—hurried him, wondering, up the dark broken stairs, along the narrow passage—then pushed him out at the door!
"You are the fine gentleman who tempted my daughter away!" said he.
"I—your daughter!" exclaimed the officer.
"Yes, my daughter; Ellen Brentwood!" said the mechanic. "Are there so many men's daughters in the list, that you forget her name?"
"I implore you," said the officer, "to take this purse. Pray, take this purse! If you will not accept it for yourself, I entreat you to send it to her!"
"Go and buy a lathe with it," said the mechanic. "Work, man! and repent of your past life!"
So saying, he closed the door in the officer's face, and descended the stairs to his daily labor.
Ignorance in England.—Taking the whole of northern Europe—including Scotland, and France and Belgium (where education is at a low ebb), we find that to every 2-1/4 of the population, there is one child acquiring the rudiments of knowledge; while in England there is only one such pupil to every fourteen inhabitants. It has been calculated that there are at the present day in England and Wales nearly 8,000,000 persons who can neither read nor write—that is to say, nearly one quarter of the population. Also, that of all the children between five and fourteen, more than one half attend no place of instruction. These statements would be hard to believe, if we had not to encounter in our every-day life degrees of illiteracy which would be startling, if we were not thoroughly used to it. Wherever we turn, ignorance, not always allied to poverty, stares us in the face. If we look in the Gazette, at the list of partnerships dissolved, not a month passes but some unhappy man, rolling, perhaps, in wealth, but wallowing in ignorance, is put to the experimentum crucis of "his mark." The number of petty jurors—in rural districts especially—who can only sign with a cross, is enormous. It is not unusual to see parish documents of great local importance defaced with the same humiliating symbol by persons whose office shows them to be not only "men of mark," but men of substance. A housewife in humble life need only turn to the file of her tradesmen's bills to discover hieroglyphics which render them so many arithmetical puzzles. In short, the practical evidences of the low ebb to which the plainest rudiments of education in this country have fallen, are too common to bear repetition. We can not pass through the streets, we can not enter a place of public assembly, or ramble in the fields, without the gloomy shadow of Ignorance sweeping over us.—Dickens's "Household Words."