THE

OLD COTTAGER.

A TALE FROM REAL LIFE.

IN the most beautiful part of a romantic village, which has been admired by many a passing traveller, stood an old cottage, which seemed, like its possessors, hastening to decay. You entered by a wicket through a small garden, which, as it received a very little cultivation from its inhabitants, was merely a receptacle for the dirt, broken pans, or any other rubbish from the cottage. Within, all was wretchedness; and had it not been for the light that was admitted by the door, you would have been almost in darkness. A window no doubt there was; but it was broken in several places, and the shattered panes were supplied by old rags, which excluded, with the air, the light also.

The inhabitants of this miserable abode consisted of a man and his wife. They had two daughters; but they were grown up, and had left their desolate home. Nothing could exhibit in a stronger light the effects of the want of religious instruction, than the character the old man displayed. On Sunday, indeed, he heard the bells, and saw many a clean and happy cottager passing on with cheerful looks to the village church; but he never joined the group, though he generally sat at his door with a lowering countenance and dark matted locks, whilst his whole appearance was rendered disgusting from want of cleanliness.

When he was young there were no Sunday Schools established for the instruction of the labouring poor; and though his parents took care that he should be taught to read, and seemed pleased with the progress he made in his learning, this instruction was not followed up by setting him a good example, and making him constantly attend with them the service of the church. They seldom went themselves; and the Sabbath generally was spent by their boy, in running about the fields, with two or three vicious companions, busied in any mischievous idleness that presented itself. Sometimes his mother would chide him, and his father shake his stick with a threatening look; but this was generally all the reproof he received, and of course every evil habit was strengthened. When he became a man, he followed the trade of a woolsorter. It is true, he worked with industry; but not from a wish to make himself respectable and independent, for his earnings were almost all spent at the alehouse, and he was constantly remarked for being dressed in the most mean and slovenly manner, and for the contempt he seemed to have for all orderly society.

One would suppose it almost impossible that a character of this description should find any creditable woman to marry him; but happening to go into a distant county, he there met with a young girl, of respectable connections, who was deaf to the intreaties of her friends, and united her fate to his, and soon after their marriage followed him to his native village. It could not be expected that, with his habits of riot and disorder, he should make a good husband; and the poor young woman quickly found that she had exchanged a comfortable and respectable home for a miserable cottage, a drunken husband, and poverty of the most abject sort. She soon had two little helpless children to share her wants; and as she pressed them to her bosom she would often weep to think how different her fate might have been, had she listened to the tender and excellent counsel of her

parents, who repeatedly told her, that a husband with such habits must bring her and a helpless family to poverty and misery. Too soon, alas! was this warning verified, and self-accusation sharpened all her Her father and mother were many miles distant from her. She heard and saw nothing of them; and shame kept her from writing, and acknowledging the misery they had foreseen, which had now, indeed, befallen her in its fullest extent.

pangs.

Years passed away, still poverty and wretchedness were the inhabitants of the cottage; ill-health was now added to the poor woman's other misfortunes, and made her feel more bitterly her unfortunate lot. The unhappy pair, though living under the same roof, hardly ever spoke to each other, without contemptuous taunts on one side, and bitter reproaches on the other. He allowed his wife hardly any thing to support her; and she often wanted bread, while he was spending his earnings in sottish indolence at the alehouse. The poor woman at length, rendered callous by such repeated hard usage, quite estranged herself from him. Necessity, indeed, obliged her to live under the same roof; but they had different beds, and ate their solitary crusts apart from each other. She was now become old and feeble; grown almost double with the weight of sorrow and sickness. He, also, was descended into the vale of years. Had he been provident, he might have been living in comfort, reaping the fruits of his youthful industry; but now his chief dependence for support was upon the casual relief of the parish. Still he remained hardened in sin, and thought nothing of a world to come. At last he was roused to a deep sense of his errors, by an awful event that took place in his cottage. His wife had been long in an infirm state of health, and one of her daughters had for some time been living with her mother; but as she was obliged to earn her subsistence by working in the fields, she was not always at hand to assist her feeble parent, in fetching water from

B

the neighbouring brook, which ran at no great distance from the cottage. One evening the poor old woman felt herself giddy and unwell; but this did not deter her from tottering out to fill her pitcher. She succeeded in getting some water from the running stream, and had just strength to reach home, and place her jug upon the table, when she uttered a piercing cry, and fell! Her daughter at that instant entered the house, and rushed towards her dying parent to raise her in her arms. She spake not, she moved not; but after the lapse of a few moments, gave a convulsive sigh, and ceased to breathe!

It was a dark autumnal evening, the wind murmured with a hollow blast through this dismal abode of poverty and death; and the fast-falling leaves, which were blown with a melancholy rustling sound towards the cottage, seemed a fit emblem of the decay and misery within. The corpse lay extended upon a mattress of straw, the daughter stood in speechless agony by the side, and two or three of the neighbours were also gathered round the bed of death. At this moment, unconscious of what had happened, the old cottager entered; he saw his weeping daughter, and hurried towards her; but how great was his agony and despair in hearing her exclaim, O my dear mother, she is dead! The cottage was almost in darkness, so that he could only indistinctly see the corpse, as it lay extended on its miserable bed; but this very indistinctness added peculiar horror to the scene. All his unkindness rushed upon his memory: he could not weep, he could not speak; his eyes were fixed with a vacant stare upon the corpse, which, as the women hurried round the bed with a light, soon became perfectly visible to his view; he turned away in anguish indescribable; rushed up stairs, and threw himself upon his flock bed: tears then came to his relief, and they fell in large drops down his aged cheeks. At last nature, wearied by such a conflict, hushed his cares to sleep; but this repose did not continue long

tranquil. The awful event of the day gave rise to the most distressing dreams, from which he would start with terror, and for a moment lose the recollection of the past, from the confusion the visions of the night. had left upon his mind; but when he was quite awake, the whole truth of his afflicting loss rushed with tenfold horror upon his memory. He could sleep no more; but striking a light, crept from his unquiet bed, and with trembling steps proceeded to look once more upon the corpse. An awful silence, unbroken by any sound but the midnight wind, reigned around. He trembled excessively, and doubted whether he should have courage to gaze upon those features, which only a few hours before had been animated with the spark of life; that spark, indeed, had been long faint and lingering, but he never thought of the possibility of its being so suddenly extinguished. He was soon by the bed of death; and placing the candle in a little low chair, at last he took courage to raise his eyes, and they rested upon the inanimate form before him. What would the miserable old man have given at this moment to have felt his "conscience void of offence" towards GOD, and towards man. He groaned aloud; and kneeling down by the side of the corpse, for the first time almost in his life prayed fervently to God to forgive him all his past offences. He felt deeply at this awful moment how dreadful his conduct had been: a life of more than sixty years had been spent, without one action on which he could look back with a calm conscience. He had early despised the first and great duties of life; he had been a most unkind husband, a negligent father, and had lived without GOD in the world. He looked again and again at the inanimate form before him, and touched her hand and forehead; but shrunk with terror from the icy feel of death. At this affecting moment the thoughts of another world rushed most forcibly upon his mind, and seemed to him, as if the Being, whose eyes are over all, had heard his groans and fervent prayers, and shed