by the court, who in about two months took the business in his hands;
and my mother was left to struggle along with her little ones, and face
an uncertain future. These were dark days but we managed to live through
them. I have often heard her say that she lived by faith and not sight,
that poverty had its compensations, that there was something very sweet
in a life of simple trust, to her, God was not some far off and
unapproachable force in the universe, the unconscious Creator of all
consciousness, the unperceiving author of all perception, but a Friend
and a Father coming near to her in sorrows, taking cognizance of her
grief, and gently smoothing her path in life. But it was not only by
precept that she taught us; her life was a living epistle. One morning
as the winter was advancing I heard her say she hoped she would be able
to get a nice woolen shawl, as hers was getting worse for wear. Shortly
after I went out into the street and found a roll of money lying at my
feet. Oh I remember it as well as if it had just occurred. How my heart
bounded with joy. 'Here,' I said to myself, 'is money enough to buy
mother a shawl and bonnet. Oh I am so glad,' and hurrying home I laid it
in her lap and said with boyish glee, 'Hurrah for your new shawl; look
what I found in the street.'"

"What is it my son?" she said.

"Why here is money enough to buy you a new shawl and bonnet too." It
seems as if I see her now, as she looked, when she laid it aside, and
said----

"But James, it is not ours?"

"Not ours, mother, why I found it in the street!"