called upon to ask
a blessing. She rises, and assumes the looks of Jabez Buster--twenty
blessings might be asked and granted in half the time she takes--so
think and look Bob, Alec, and the boatmen; but at length she pauses--the
word is given, and further ceremony is dispensed with. In childhood,
supper is a thing to look forward to, and to _last_ when it arrives; but
not in childhood, any more than in old age, can sublunary joys endure
for ever. The meal is finished. A short half-hour flies, like lightning,
by. The children gather round their father; and in the name of all, upon
his knees, he thanks his God for all the mercies of the day. Thompson is
no orator. His heart is warm; his words are few and simple. The three
attendant graces take charge of their brethren, detach them from their
father's side, and conduct them to their beds. Happy father! happy
children! May Providence be merciful, and keep the grim enemy away from
your fireside! Let him not come now in the blooming beauty and the
freshness of your loves! Let him not darken and embitter for ever the
life that is still bright, beautiful, and glorious in the power of
elevating and sustaining thought that leads beyond it. Let him wait the
matured and not unexpected hour, when the shock comes, not to crush, to
overwhelm, and to annihilate, but to warn, to teach, and to encourage;
not to alarm and stagger the untaught spirit, but to bring to the
subdued and long-tried soul its last lesson on the vanity and
evanescence of its early dreams!

It is half-past nine o'clock. Thompson, his wife, and two eldest boys
are present, and, for the first time, I have an opportunity to make
known the object of my visit.

"And so they have turned you off," said Thompson, when I had finished.
"And who's surprised at that? Not I, for one. Missus," continued he,
turning to his wife, "why haven't you got a curtain yet for that ere
pictur? I can't abear the sight of it."

Mrs Thompson looked plaintively towards the painting, and heaved a sigh.

"Ah, dear good man! He has got his enemies," said she.

"Mrs Thompson!" exclaimed her husband, "I have done with that good man
from this day for'ards; and I do hope, old 'ooman, that you'll go next
Sunday to church with me, as we used to do afore you got that pictur
painted."

"It's no good talking, Thompson," answered the lady, positively and
firmly. "I can't sit under a cold man, and there's an end of it."

"There, that's the way you