Scotland (in former days), where food and shelter were readily afforded
to humble friends and dependents. The laird's predecessors had been
imprudent, he himself was passive and unfortunate. Death swept away his
sons, whose success in life might have balanced his own bad luck and
incapacity. Debts increased and funds diminished, until ruin came. The
estate was sold; and the old man was about to remove from the house of
his fathers, to go he knew not whither, when, like an old piece of
furniture, which, left alone in its wonted corner, may hold together for
a long while, but breaks to pieces on an attempt to move it, he fell
down on his own threshold under a paralytic affection. The tutor
awakened as from a dream. He saw his patron dead, and that his patron's
only remaining child, an elderly woman, now neither graceful nor
beautiful, if she had ever been either the one or the other, had by this
calamity become a homeless and penniless orphan. He addressed her nearly
in the words which Dominie Sampson uses to Miss Bertram, and professed
his determination not to leave her. Accordingly, roused to the exercise
of talents which had long slumbered, he opened a little school, and
supported his patron's child for the rest of her life, treating her with
the same humble observance and devoted attention which he had used
towards her in the days of her prosperity."

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NOTES OF A READER

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JOHN KEMBLE AND MISS OWENSON.