THE BEGGAR’S STORY. 53

his children well eduéated: *so he sent my ,
brother Ben to the university. But things ©
went ill with my father; and as the saying
is—-worse always comes behind to kick bad
down hill. Still, Ben was a good scholar,
and my father did not take him from the
college, hoping and striving all the time to
make things improve: so he got in debt to
the college, for Ben’s instruction.

“Well, one day my father had a sheriff's
officer sent after him, and as he could not pay
the debt, he was taken toyprison. Now, I do
not mind being sent to prison myself, for I
am a poor good-for-nothing. I have been
sent there several times, and though I never
knew what it was for, still it is all the same
to Silly Simon. But my father was a sen-
sitive man, and to be shut up in a stone
room, where the air was damp and close, was
a strange thing to him. He was a little
nervous too, I believe, for it affected him
very much. He had been respected by the
world at large, and had spent his life in acts
acknowledged to be beneficial to mankind :
and now, to be confined as if he were guilty
of some crime, and unworthy of breathing

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