d let me get money--do any thing, if it brings
money. There is the old woman over the way, who has a working son; his
mother may bless God that he is a shoemaker and not a poet; she is the
happy woman, so cozily covered with warm flannel and stuff this weary
weather, and her mutton, and her tea, and her money jingling in her
pocket forever; that's what a working son can do--a shoemaker can do
that."

At this some noise in the kitchen called Mrs. Carson away, to the great
relief of Andrew. He rose, and closed the door gently after her. He
seated himself again, and took up his pen, but his head fell listlessly
on his hand; he felt as if his mother's words were yet echoing in his
ears. From his earliest infancy he had regarded her with fear and
wonder, more than love.

Mrs. Carson was the daughter of a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman, who
was suspected by his brethren in the ministry of entertaining peculiar
views of religion on some points, and also of being at intervals rather
unsound in his mind. He bestowed, however, a superior education on his
only daughter, and instructed her carefully himself until his death,
which occurred when she was not more than fourteen. As her father left
her little if any support, she was under the necessity of going to
reside with relations in Ireland, who moved in a rather humble rank. Of
her subsequent history little was known to Andrew; she always maintained
silence regarding his father, and seemed angry when he ventured to
question her. Andrew was born in Ireland, and resided there until about
his eighth year, when his mother returned to Scotland.

It was from his mother Andrew had gained all the little education that
had been bestowed on him. That education was most capriciously imparted,
and in its extent only went the length of teaching him to read
partially; for whatever further advances he had made he was indebted to
his own self-culture. At times his mother would make some efforts to
impress on him the advantages of education: she would talk of poetry,
and repeat specimens of the poets which her memory had retained from the
period of her girlhood in her father's house; but oftenest the language
of bitterness, violence, and execration was on her lips. With the
never-ceasing complaints of want--want of position, want of friends,
but, most of all, want of money--sounding in his ears, Andrew grew up a
poet. The unsettled and aimless mind of his mother, shadowed as it was
with perpetu