men living on, and
year by year growing less and less, until we begin to speculate about
the probable time it will require at their rate of diminution for
nothing to remain of them; and the same may be said of the little old
house in which Abe Lockwood was born; it was always little, but as
years have slowly added to its age, it has gradually begun to look
less, and now, as other houses of larger size and more improved style
have sprung up all around the neighbourhood, it has shrunk into the
most diminutive little hut that can well be imagined as a dwelling
house, and it only requires time enough for it to be gone altogether.[1]

Abe's parents were a poor but honest pair, and laboured hard to make
ends meet. William Lockwood, his father, was a cloth-dresser, and
worked on Almondbury common, about a mile from his home, earning but a
scanty living for the family. In those days, when machinery was almost
unknown in the manufacture and finish of cloth, the men had to work
harder and longer and earned much less than now. Those were the times
when hard-working men thought that the introduction of machinery into
cloth mills would take all the work out of their hands, and all the
bread out of their mouths; and this was the very locality where the
greatest hostility was shown by the people to such innovations. Many a
threatened outbreak was heard of about that time, and in two or three
instances the smouldering fire in the men's minds actually burst forth
into riot and rising, when they found that the great masters were
determined to have their own way and introduce machinery into their
mills. Abe himself was led, some years after, to take part in one of
these risings, and narrowly escaped the hands of the law, while several
others were lodged for some time in York jail in recognition of the
part they had taken in the riots.

Abe's father was a quiet, moral-living man, whose chief aim for many
years seemed to be to provide for his own household; but in after times
his thoughts were drawn to things higher as well, and he became a
God-fearing man; yet during Abe's early life, the most that can be said
for his father is that he was an honest, hard-working, and
well-disposed man.

His mother was a good Christian woman, and was for a long time a member
with the Methodists in Huddersfield, and attended the old chapel which
formerly stood on Chapel Hill. There is no doubt that the early
teaching of his kind and pious mother ha