From morning to evening he sang his plaintive and aimless ditty; at
night, when his poor mother gathered up her little wares to return home,
so deplorable did his defects appear, that while she carried her table
on her head, her stock of little merchandize in her lap, and her stool
in one hand, she was obliged to lead him by the other. Ever and anon as
any of the schoolboys appeared in view, the harmless thing clung close
to her, and hid his face in her bosom for protection.

A human creature so far below the standard of humanity was no where ever
seen; he had not even the shallow cunning which is often found among
these unfinished beings; and his simplicity could not even be measured
by the standard we would apply to the capacity of a lamb. Yet it had a
feeling rarely manifested even in the affectionate dog, and a knowledge
never shown by any mere animal.

He was sensible of his mother's kindness, and how much he owed to her
care. At night when she spread his humble pallet, though he knew not
prayer, nor could comprehend the solemnities of worship, he prostrated
himself at her feet, and as he kissed them, mumbled a kind of mental
orison, as if in fond and holy devotion. In the morning, before she went
abroad to resume her station in the market-place, he peeped anxiously
out to reconnoitre the street, and as often as he saw any of the
schoolboys in the way, he held her firmly back, and sang his sorrowful
"pal-lal."

One day the poor woman and her idiot boy were missed from the
market-place, and the charity of some of the neighbours induced them to
visit her hovel. They found her dead on her sorry couch, and the boy
sitting beside her, holding her hand, swinging and singing his pitiful