110 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



ployment as a writer for Chambers' s Edinburgh Journal. 

 The month in which he was married had not yet 

 come to an end when he learned that John Swanson had 

 lost his mother. To comfort his friends in their distress 

 was always a sacred duty with Hugh, and he at once 

 wrote the following letter. 



' Cromarty, January 31, 1837. 



' You have lost a very dear relative, and I condole 

 with you. What a world of tender retrospection and 

 fond regret is associated with that one word, mother ! 

 How many tender recollections that bear date from the 

 first dawn of memory to the moment of the last farewell ! 

 How untiring her solicitude ! how innumerable her acts of 

 kindness ! How certain our assurance that these rose 

 out of a love which, perhaps the least selfish of all human 

 affections, sought only the welfare of its object ! And 

 then to think that she who loved us so much and did 

 so much for us has left us for ever ! You will now find 

 yourself much more alone in the world than you ever 

 did before. You have passed, as it were, into a new 

 state of life. For several years you have been the head 

 of your family ; but yet, so long as your mother was 

 with you, you must have felt that you were merely 

 residing in her house. It was the same person who sat 

 at the head of the table beside you, that had done so 

 when you were a little boy. You had your mother to 

 come between you and the world, as it were ; there were 

 some remains of the feeling of confidence in her protec- 

 tion with which, when you were a child, you have laid 

 hold of her gown. But now she is gone, and you will 

 deem yourself stripped of your shelter. There is no 

 longer a breakwater between you and the casualties of 

 life. Even the grave itself seems immensely nearer ; 



