slight trial: surely that is sufficient to prove I have not wanted
patience or fortitude. To be a good husband and a provident father,
and to protect those that depend on me from injury and want, are
qualities which I believe the whole world will allow me, you alone
excepted. _You_ upbraid me with faults; _you_ accuse me of crimes;
_you_ proclaim me a tyrant. When I am gone, when your passions have
subsided, and when you feel the want of me, you will be more just. You
will then lament that nothing, short of this desperate proof, could
convince you of the criminality of your conduct.

'Where I shall seek, where find, or where endure existence, or to what
hospitable or inhospitable shore I shall wander, I know not yet: I
only know that in England it cannot, shall not be. We have lived long
enough in misery; which, everlastingly to avoid, seas or death shall
everlastingly divide us.

W. ELFORD.'

This letter, although it contained many marks of that impatience which
had increased his family misfortunes, could only have been written by
a man of virtue, whose very austerity had in it a preponderance of
benevolent intention. Such was my uncle; whose memory, though but a
child, I often had occasion to regret.

By various plausible pretexts, with the hope of forwarding a fortune
that was to descend to me, Mr. Elford had been prevailed on to lend
my father several sums of money, to the amount of seven hundred
pounds. My uncle too had found other occasions for the exercise of
his humanity. His property had been hastily sold, and therefore
disadvantageously, so that the sum with which he went to seek his