man unconnected with
us by blood, young in his profession, though rising, and still probably
earning not very much more than his wife's and his own daily bread from
day to day, and owing us nothing but a debt of gratitude for another's
kindnesses, which another man in his place would probably have said that
"he paid as he went."

In plain English, the tie between us arose simply from the fact that he
boarded with my mother, when he was a poor and unformed medical student.
He always said that she was the best friend he had in his solitary
youth, and that no one could tell how different all his after-life might
have been but for her. She was naturally generous; yet she was a just
woman; and I know that, while we were unprovided for, she could not have
given, as the world appraises giving, much to him. Still "she did what
she could." He paid her his board; but she gave him a home. After she
found that his lodgings were unwarmed, she invited him to share her
fireside of a winter evening; and, though she would not deprive us of
our chat with one another and with her, she taught us to speak in low
tones, and never to him, when we saw him at his studies. When they were
over, and he was tired and in want of some amusement, she afforded him
one at once cheap, innocent, and inexhaustible, and sang to him as she
still toiled on at her unresting needle, night after night, ballad after
ballad, in her wild, sweet, rich voice. He was very fond of music,
though, as he said, he "could only whistle for it." It was the custom
then among our neighbors to keep Saturday evening strictly as a part of
"the Sabbath." It was her half-holiday, however, for works of charity
and mercy; and she would often bid him bring her any failing articles of
his scanty wardrobe then, and say that she would mend them for him if he
would read to her. Her taste was naturally fine, and trained by regular
and well-chosen Sunday reading; and she had the tact to select for these
occasions books that won the mind of the intellectual though
uncultivated youth by their eloquence, until they won his heart by their
holiness. Moreover, she had been gently bred, and could give good
advice, in manners as well as morals, when it was asked for, and
withhold it when it was not.

The upshot of it all was, that he loved her like a mother; and now the
sentiment was deepened by a shade of filial remorse, which I could never
quite dispel, though, as often as he gave me any chance,