104 



KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



pursuit ; but he has been dogged and detected ; 

 and on he goes with a heart full of sullen wrath 

 and fearful apprehension. 



Behold another and a happier ! he is marching 

 homeward on his furlough. He has fought bat- 

 tles and seen foreign lands since he left home ; 

 and he now goes thither with an honest vanity 

 to boast of his sights seen and exploits done, 

 and to set on fire a dozen young heads with a 

 luckless ambition. Poor fellow ! happy as he 

 thinks himself, he is horribly weary and wayworn, 

 and longs, with a most earnest longing, for the 

 far-off town. 



A third shall come home some thirty years 

 hence, the old veteran ; the hard, grey-headed, 

 mutilated remnant of a man, with one arm, one 

 leg, a body seamed with scars, a crown never the 

 better for the blows it has borne, and a pension 

 of a few shillings a-week to get drunk upon. He 

 goes home to discover that death has been as 

 busy there as in the battle-field, in the Walcheren 

 morass, or the plague-haunted garrison ; and to 

 find it, even with his pension, but weary work 

 waiting for the grave. 



But alas ! for the poor creatures I am now 

 bound to sketch. Had fortune but been tolerably 

 moderate with them, they would never have gone 

 ten miles from the spot in which they were bcrn; 

 but some sudden distress arouses them from their 

 regular dream of existence, and they start across 

 the country to its farthest extremity with the 

 wildness of comets. 



Look at that middle-aged, old-fashioned fellow! 

 Do you not see the cause of his journey at once ? 

 He is a laborer ; his eldest daughter, a girl of 

 seventeen, is gone to live in the family of some 

 relation of the Squire's, forty miles off. He has 

 just heard news that has alarmed him. His wife 

 and he have sat in speechless grief and con- 

 sternation for a space, till the good woman cried 

 out, "John, you must up and go ! you must see 

 Mary. You must learn the whole truth. She 

 was always a good girl, and we must not have 

 her lost." For a moment, the very idea of the 

 journey, and the encountering of fine folk, and 

 clever folk to boot — as he wisely imagines all fine 

 folk to be, overcomes him with a weakness ; but 

 the thought of his daughter's danger returns with 

 double power ; he gets up with a groan, and 

 prepares for his great journey. Look at his long 

 drab coat, of a most antiquated cut ! See how 

 neatly it has been brushed ! How clean he is 

 shaven, how nicely his white cravat is tied, and 

 with what a formal air he puts his stick to the 

 ground ! There has been a world of preparation 

 to set him out : not even the great trouble which 

 rests upon his rnind can make him forget that he 

 is in his Sunday clothes ; and he walks on his 

 way, a creature of such simplicity, that he seems 

 far likelier to be duped himself than to prevent 

 another being so. 



Observe now this solitary woman. For ten 

 years she has lived in the closest court of the 

 closest alley of a great manufacturing town. Her 

 husband, a clever mechanic, has been earning 

 plenty of money, and plenty of children have grown 

 around them. The good creature, in the abun- 

 dance of her household affairs, has been so happy 

 that she has almost forgotten that there is a 

 world out of her own house. But there has come 



a change. Her husband's employment has failed, 

 and he has gone forth to seek it elsewhere. For 

 a time, she hears good news ; he sends her money 

 and hopes of prosperity, though in a distant place. 

 At length his remittances fail — his letters cease 

 — she is alarmed — she musters all her skill at 

 penmanship and writes, but gets no reply. Her 

 children want bread ; she is reduced to the 

 utmost distress ; but, suddenly summoning all her 

 energies, she seeks and finds employment, and 

 manages to live. But of her husband no tidings ; 

 day and night she lives in fear and sorrow — he 

 must be dead, or he would certainly write. At 

 length, however, comes the intelligence that he 

 has chosen another, and is expending upon her 

 the gains which should tup^ort his family. Stung 

 to the quick, she rises up in grief and indignation. 

 She finds some good neighbor to care for her 

 children for a few days, and she departs — alas ! 

 on a melancholy expedition ! She is utterly 

 strange to the world — no matter ; she has little 

 money — no matter ; in the greatness of her 

 vexation she defies all other troubles and diffi- 

 culties. See with what closeness and self-reser- 

 vation she moves on ! She greets no one — she 

 shuns all greetings by the way, or if she answers 

 them, it is only by a short, sharp nod, and she 

 involuntarily quickens her pace. Rest, food, 

 she seems not to require ; her heart is filled with 

 black and eager jealousies, and she shrinks even 

 from the kindliest eye, lest it look into the secret 

 of her soul. Poor, unhappy woman ! her task is 

 a fruitless one. She may find her faithless hus- 

 band, and may weep, and expostulate, and 

 upbraid ; but the heart that is once led from its 

 home by strange charms, there is faint hope of 

 reclaiming. 



How far more enviable is the woman that 1 

 have now in my eye ! I see her crossing the 

 heath, a little, broad-built woman, in an old grey 

 cloak, beneath which she carries in her arms an 

 infant ; and a troop of others, one scarcely appear- 

 ing older than another, trot after her. She has 

 lost her husband by death, and suddenly finds 

 herself alone, far from friends. She has spirit 

 enough to scorn the assistance of the parish ; she 

 sets out, and trusts to Providence. Grief certainly 

 has made but little impression on her countenance ; 

 and her children know nothing of it. They know 

 not what it means to be orphans ; they know not 

 that they are poor ; they follow their slowly-pro- 

 gressing mother from place to place, like playful 

 kids ; and when she sits down in some solitary 

 nook, they gambol before her. They enjoy the 

 sun and air ; they are plump and ruddy ; and 

 though they ask for nothing, their looks beg for 

 them, and scarcely a carriage passes but money 

 flies for them out of the window. 



Not so with the last being whom I shall notice. 

 This is a widow, old and poor. For years she 

 has lived alone, with not a tie to the world but 

 her anxiety for a prodigal son, whose life has long 

 threatened to prove her death. And now that 

 she has become thin and feeble, and expects no 

 journey except the short one to the neighboring 

 churchyard, conies an epistle from her son, written 

 by a stranger-hand, to say that he is dying in a 

 far-distant place, and implores her pardon and 

 1 lessing. Oh, maternal love ! how strong art 

 thou, even in the very weakness of nature and the 



