he
bill. And I was determined that this should be a Christmas gift to him,
that he and his young American benefactors might enjoy it together. So
two days before Christmas, I started from Birmingham on foot to carry
the present to him.

It was a bright, frosty morning, and, after a walk of twelve miles, I
came in sight of the little brick cottage of the nailer by the wayside.
I approached it with mingled emotions of solicitude. Perhaps it had been
vacated by the poor man and his family, and some other nailer had taken
his place. Perhaps the hand that spares neither rich nor poor had been
there, and I should miss the boy at the anvil. I stopped once or twice
to listen. The windows were open, but all was still. There was no
clicking of hammers, nor blowing of bellows, to indicate that the nailer
family were still its occupants. I began to fear that they were gone,
and my imagination ran rapidly over a hundred casualties and changes
which might have come upon them. The same gate was open that invited me
to enter last summer; and as I passed through it, I met a woman who said
the nailer was at dinner in the family apartment of the building. She
went in before me, and the next moment I was in the midst of the circle
of my old acquaintance, who had just risen from the table and were
sitting around the fire. My sudden appearance in their midst seemed to
cause as much pleasure as surprise. The father arose and welcomed me
with the heartfelt expressions of good-will. Little Josiah, the hero of
my story, came forward timidly with a sunny token of recognition
brightening up his black, sharp eyes. The mother, a tidy, interesting
looking woman in a clean, white cap, added her welcome; and I sat down
with them, with Josiah standing between my knees, and told them my
story--how some children in America had interested themselves in their
boy--how they had thought of him on their way to school, and talked of
him on their way home, and in the parlor, and the kitchen and the
cottage;--how they had contributed their pennies, which they had saved
or earned, to send Josiah to school to learn to read the Testament; and
how I had come to bring them, and to ask if the boy could be spared from
the anvil. I glanced around upon the group of children, whose eager eyes
indicated that they partially comprehended my errand, and then at a
couple of sides of bacon suspended over my head. The nailer's eyes
followed my own, and as they reciprocally rested