iting! that's the good news 'ill
never come; never, you good-for-nothing scribbler!"

She screamed forth the last words in a voice of frenzy. Her tone was a
mixture of Scotch and Irish accents. She had resided for some years of
her earlier life in Ireland.

As the young writer looked at her and listened to her, the pen shook in
his hand.

"Go out, and work, and make money. Ay, the working people can live on
the best, while you, with that pen in your fingers, are starving
yourself and me."

"Mother, I am not strong enough for labor, and my tastes are strongly,
very strongly, for literature."

"Not strong enough! you're twenty past. It's twenty long years since the
cursed night I brought you into the world." The young writer gazed
keenly on his mother, for he was afraid she was under the influence of
intoxication, as was too often the case; but he did not know how she
could have obtained money, as he knew there was not a farthing in the
house. The woman seemed to divine the meaning of his looks--

"I'm not drunk, don't think it," she cried; "it's the hunger and the
sorrow that's in my head."

"Well, mother, perhaps this evening's post may have some good
intelligence."

"What did the morning's post bring? There, there--don't I see it--them's
the bonnie hopes of yours."

She pointed to the table, where lay a couple of returned manuscripts.
Andrew glanced toward the parcel, and made a strong effort to suppress
the deep sigh which heaved his breast.

"Ay, there it is--there's a bundle of that stuff ye spend your nights
and days writing; taking the flesh off your bones, and making that face
of yours so black and yellow; it's your father's face, too--ay--well
it's like him now, indeed--the ruffian. I wish I had never seen him, nor
you, nor this world."

"My father," said Andrew, and a feeling of interest overspread his
bloodless face. "You have told me little of him. Why do you speak of him
so harshly?"

"Go and work, and make money, I say. I tell you I must get money; right
or wrong, I must get it; there's no living longer, and enduring what
I've endured. I dream of being rich; I waken every morning from visions
where my hands are filled with money; that wakening turns my head, when
I know and see there is not a halfpenny in the house, and when I see
you, my son, sitting there, working like a fool with pen and brain, but
without the power to earn a penny for me. Go out and work with your
hands, I say again, an