and said softly, with a melancholy shake of the head, that the times
were rather hard with him. It troubled his heart, and many hours of the
night he had been kept awake by the thought of it, that he could not
send his children to school, nor teach them himself to read. They were
good children, he said, with a moist yearning in his eyes; they were all
the wealth he had, and he loved them the more, the harder he had to work
for them. The poorest part of the poverty that was on him, was that he
could not give his children the letters. They were good children, for
all the crock of the shop was on their faces, and their fingers were
bent like eagle's claws with handling nails. He had been a poor man all
his days, and he knew his children would be poor all their days, and
poorer than he, if the nail business should continue to grow worse. If
he could only give them the letters, it would make them the like of
rich; for then they could read the Testament. He could read the
Testament a little, for he had learned the letters by the forge-light.
It was a good book, was the Testament; and he was sure it was made for
nailers and such like. It helped him wonderfully when the loaf was small
on his table, He had but little time to read it when the sun was up, and
it took him loner to read a little, for he learned the letters when he
was old. But he laid it beside his dish at dinner time, and fed his
heart with it, while his children were eating the bread that fell to his
share. And when he had spelt out a line of the shortest words, he read
them aloud, and his eldest boy--the one on the block there--could say
several whole verses he had learned in this way. It was a great comfort
to him, to think that James could take into his heart so many verses of
the Testament which he could not read. He intended to teach all his
children in this way. It was all he could do for them; and this he had
to do at meal-times; for all the other hours he had to be at the anvil.
The nailing business was growing harder, he was growing old, and his
family large. _He had to work from four o'clock in the morning till ten