having had so much sickness in the family that he thought he would
try to do something to help along. The avowal of this meritorious
ambition inflicted another wound upon Sewell's guilty consciousness;
but what made his blood run cold was Barker's proposal to come down
to Boston, if Sewell advised, and find a publisher with Sewell's
assistance.

This would never do, and the minister went to his desk with the
intention of despatching a note of prompt and total discouragement.
But in crossing the room from the chair into which he had sunk, with
a cheerful curiosity, to read the letter, he could not help some
natural rebellion against the punishment visited upon him. He could
not deny that he deserved punishment, but he thought that this, to
say the least, was very ill-timed. He had often warned other sinners
who came to him in like resentment that it was this very quality of
inopportuneness that was perhaps the most sanative and divine
property of retribution; the eternal justice fell upon us, he said,
at the very moment when we were least able to bear it, or thought
ourselves so; but now in his own case the clear-sighted prophet
cried out and revolted in his heart. It was Saturday morning, when
every minute was precious to him for his sermon, and it would take
him fully an hour to write that letter; it must be done with the
greatest sympathy; he had seen that this poor foolish boy was very
sensitive, and yet it must be done with such thoroughness as to cut
off all hope of anything like literary achievement for him.

At the moment Sewell reached his desk, with a spirit disciplined to
the sacrifice required of it, he heard his wife's step outside his
study door, and he had just time to pull open a drawer, throw the
letter into it, and shut it again before she entered. He did not