My Master’s Story. 157

 

the means and the power for better things, but not
the will. Left early his own master, he spent a gay
and idle youth, and found himself at thirty penni-
less, broken in health, and without occupation or
means of support. My mother, although utterly
unlike him in every respect, was my father’s cousin.
He had won her love in former days, and cast it
from him as a thing of little worth. She lived with
their grandfather, from whom my father had ex-
pectations ; but he, disgusted with the manner in
which my father’s own inheritance had been wasted,
died, leaving all he possessed to my mother. Then
she came forward and insisted on sharing with my
father the legacy to which, she said, he had fully as
much right as she; and my father only accepted
her help when he had obtained her promise to join
her lot with his. When all the debts were paid,
there remained not cnough to support them in the
comfort which my father deemed essential—which,
indeed, was almost a necessary to one of his ease-
loving nature. He cast about for some employ-
ment ; but it is hard to begin to earn one’s bread
at that age, and one attempt after another, though
each began with sanguine expectations of success,
ended in failure and disappointment. Meantime,
their expenses were increased by the birth of two
children, my sister and myself; and my father,