excerpt from book--
" The heart benevolent and kind The most resembles God."— Burns.
"I WILL go this morning, if you think it best, and hear what Mr. Crawford will say to me," said Mary to her grandmother, as she stood washing the cups and saucers after breakfast.
"I don't know what to say to it, my dear," replied Mrs. Burnam: " for though this is your birth-day, and I have all along promised you, that when you were eigh-
teen you should have my consent to try to earn something; yet, when the time comes, my heart misgives me. It will, indeed it will, be a sad day to me when you go into the factory; for I shall be thinking, all the time, what your poor father would say, were he alive, to have you get your bread in such a manner: not but what he would love you the better for being industrious, and so dutiful to your grandmother; for I know it is not to get fine clothes for yourself, but comforts for me, that makes you so desirous to go out to work. But I don't think he would consent:
0 no, I am sure he would not consent to your being with people who were not good and serious. I never shall forget what he said to me on his dying-bed.— f My dear mother/ said he, ' with all my hardjabour,
1 sha'n't be able to leave you, and my poor little girl, very well in the world ; for though you own this little snug house, and the clever bit of land about it, and have got along in times past, and been as good a liver as most of the neighbours of our standing; yet, when I am gone you will find a difference. It makes me grieve when I think of it, till it comes to my mind that God has said, "Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me." That kind promise comforts me, dear mother/ Here, Mary, your poor dear father stopped, took both my hands, and, as he squeezed them in his, gave as sweet a smile as ever he did when he was well: and there was such a bright pleasant look in his eyes as I never saw before: though he always had an easy contented way of looking; and I am sure a cheerful good child he was to me from his birth.
"Whjjn he had squeezed my hands a great while, he began again, and said, 'Though you will have to work hard, mother, to get along, I know you will contrive to spare time to teach Mary, as you did me, to read the Bible, and to talk to her about what it contains. Tell her, when she is old enough to understand you, that there was nothing her father took such delight in as the book that lies on the little round table: no, not even in her when she was a playing, laughing baby; even though she was a great joy to my poor heart, after her dear mother left me, whom now I trust I am going to live with for ever/ And here again he gave such a heavenly sort of look as I never can forget.
