lives go on our Western coast. I remember
my mother now as she went softly about the house contriving and
scheming to make the two ends of our small possessions meet. She was
a woman who always walked softly, and, indeed, talked so, with a low
musical voice such as I shall never hear again, nor can ever hope to.
But I remember her best in church, as she knelt and prayed for her
absent husband, and also in the meeting-house, which she sometimes
attended, more to please Aunt Elizabeth than for any good it did her.
For the religion there was too sombre for her quiet sorrow; and often
I have seen a look of awful terror possess her eyes when the young
minister gave out the hymn and the fervid congregation wailed forth--

"In midst of life we are in death.
Oh! stretch Thine arm to save.
Amid the storm's tumultuous breath
And roaring of the wave."

Which, among a fishing population, was considered a particularly
appropriate hymn; and, truly, to hear the unction with which the word
"tu-mult-u-ous" was rendered, with all strength of lung and rolling
of syllables, was moving enough. But my mother would grow all white
and trembling, and clutch my hand sometimes, as though to save
herself from shipwreck; whilst I too often would be taken with the
passion of the chant, and join lustily in the shouting, only half
comprehending her mortal anguish. It was this, perhaps, and many
another such scene, which drew upon me her gentle reproof for
pointing one day to the text above the pulpit and repeating,
"How dreadful is this place!" But that was after I had learned to
spell.

It had always been my father's wish that I should grow up
"a scholar," which, in those days, meant amongst us one who could
read and write with no more than ordinary difficulty. So one of my
mother's chief cares was to teach me my letters, which I learnt from
big A to "Ampusand" in the old hornbook at Lantrig. I have that
hornbook still:--

"Covered with pellucid horn,
To save from fingers wet the letters fair."

The horn, alas! is no longer pellucid, but dim, as if with the
tears of the many generations that have struggled through the
alphabet and the first ten numerals and reached in due course the
haven of the Lord's Prayer and Doxology. I had passed the Doxology,
and was already deep in the "Pilgrim's Progress" and the "Holy War"
(which latter book, with the rude taste of childhood, I greatly
pre