18 THE HISTORY OF

collection of pious parents! The memory of
the just how blessed! (Prov. x. 7.)

But I will leave this part of my story, and go
on to that time when I was taken by my aunt
to her house in a little narrow street in the
town of Ludlow. I was too young to feel very
much the sad change: asad one indeed it was,
for even in the poor-house I had lived in clean-
liness, and had been encouraged to behave
well; but with my poor aunt I lived in dirt and
wretchedness, I was suffered to keep company
with bad children, to tell lies, to take God's
name in vain, and even to steal. My aunt was
old, and made herself very sickly by having
been in the constant habit, from her youth up,
of drinking strong liquor. She had never been
an industrious cleanly woman; and now that
she was advanced in years, she became so dirty
and disagreeable, that no decent person cared
to enter her house.

She had, since the death of her husband,
sold, by little and little, all her furniture, till
there was scarcely any thing left in her house.
The floor of the house was covered with litter
and dirt, the broken windows were filled up
with paper and rags, and we had no other
than straw beds to sleep upon.

But what was worse than all this, was the
wickedness which went on in this house. My
aunt not only herself took God’s name in vain,
and entirely neglected all religious duties, but
she encouraged all sorts of bad people to come
about her. I never loved my aunt; for al-
though she often indulged me to an extreme,