own face you had her noble and generous nature. You were kind before
you married; but that marriage has proved your weakness and want of
natural affection. Yes, you stood at my side yesterday; you looked
on my face--I, the father who loved you beyond all bounds of fatherly
love--you stood and heard me beg for a few shillings; you heard me
supplicate earnestly and humbly, and you would not give because your
wife was not willing. Henry, I could force you to give me a share of
the profits of your business; but keep it--keep it all. You would not
voluntarily give me some shillings, and I shall not demand what right
and justice would give me. Keep all, every farthing.

"It was for charity I asked the few shillings; you know it. You
know from whom I imbibed whatever I possess of the blessed spirit of
charity. I was as hard and unpitying as even your wife before your
mother taught me to feel and relieve the demands of poverty. Yes, and
she taught you; you cannot forget it. She taught you to give food to
the starving, in your earliest days. She strove to impress your infant
mind with the very soul of charity; and yesterday she looked down from
the heaven of the holy departed, and saw you refusing me, your father,
a few shillings to bestow on charity.

"Henry, I can live with you and your wife no more. I should grow
avaricious in my old age, were I to remain with you. I should long
for money to call my own. Those doled out shillings which I received
wakened within me feelings of a dark nature--covetousness, and envy,
and discontent--which must have shadowed the happiness of your mother
in heaven to look down upon. I must go and seek out an independent
living for myself, even yet, though I am fifty-two. Though my energies
for struggling with the world died, I thought, when your mother died,
and, leaving my active business to you, I retired to live in the