rty, though the
Warringtons were, thank Heaven, a long-lived family, except in my own
father's case, whose life had been curtailed by the excesses of a very
ill-regulated youth,--but should I ever succeed to the family estate and
honours, she hoped, she prayed, that my present course of life might be
altered; that I should part from my unworthy associates; that I should
discontinue all connexion with the horrid theatre and its licentious
frequenters; that I should turn to that quarter where only peace was
to be had; and to those sacred duties which she feared--she very much
feared that I had neglected. She filled her exhortation with Scripture
language, which I do not care to imitate. When I took my leave she gave
me a packet of sermons for Mrs. Warrington, and a little book of hymns
by Miss Dora, who has been eminent in that society of which she and
her mother became avowed professors subsequently, and who, after the
dowager's death, at Bath, three years since, married young Mr. Juffles,
a celebrated preacher. The poor lady forgave me then, but she could not
bear the sight of our boy. We lost our second child, and then my aunt
and her daughter came eagerly enough to the poor suffering mother, and
even invited us hither. But my uncle was now almost every day in our
house. He would sit for hours looking at our boy. He brought him endless
toys and sweetmeats. He begged that the child might call him Godpapa.
When we felt our own grief (which at times still, and after the lapse of
five-and-twenty years, strikes me as keenly as on the day when we
first lost our little one)--when I felt my own grief, I knew how to
commiserate his. But my wife could pity him before she knew what it
was to lose a child of her own. The mother's anxious heart had already
divined the pang which was felt by the sorrow-stricken father;
mine, more selfish, has only learned pity from experience, and I was
reconciled to my uncle by my little baby's coffin.

The poor man sent his coach to follow the humble funeral, and afterwards
took out little Miles, who prattled to him unceasingly, and forgot any
grief he might have felt in the delights of his new black clothes, and
the pleasures of the airing. How the innocent talk of the child stabbed
the mother's heart! Would we ever wish that it should heal of that
wound? I know her face so well that, to this day, I can tell when,
sometimes, she is thinking of the loss of that little one. It is not a
grief for a