Ypsilanti sentinel. [volume] (Ypsilanti, Washtenaw Co., Mich.) 1843-1900, 1846-12-09

weaned, on a high, cold stone, barefoot, before |
an anvil; there to harden, scar, and blister its
young hands by heating and hammering ragged
nalrods, for the sustenance her breast can no
longer supply Lord John look at those nails
as they lie kissing on the block. Know you
their meaning, use and language? Please your
lordship, let me tell you'll have made nails be
fore now-they are iron exclamation points,
which this unlettered, dwarfish boy, is uncon-
scloasly arraying against you, against the Brit
ish government, and the misery OF British lite
nature, for cutting him off without a letter of
the English alphabet, when printing is done by
steam for incarcerating him, for no sin On his
or his parents side but poverty into dark, six
by eight prison of hard labor, youstless being
think of it an infant hardened, almost in its
mothers arms, into man; by toll that bows
the sturdiest of the worlds labourers who
come TO manhood through intervening years of
childhood!
The boy S father was at work with his back
towards me when | entered. Atmy first word
OF salutlons to the lad, she turnedround and &C
costed me a little bashfuIly, as if unaccustomed
to the sight of strangers in that place, or reluc-
tant to let them into the scene and secret of his
poverty. | sat down upon one end of his nail
bench, and told him was an American black
smith by trade, and that had come to see how
he got On in the world, whether he was earning
pretty good wages at his business, so that he
could live comfortably, and send his children
to school. As said this, glanced inquiring
ly toward tie boy, who was looking steadily at
me from his stone stool by the anvil. Two or
three little crock-face girls from two to five
years of age, had stolen in timidly, and couple
of young, frightened eyes were peerlng over
the door-sill at me. They all looked as if some
task were daily allotted them in the SCOT and
cinders of their fathers forge, even to the sharp
eyed baby at the door. The poor Engishman
--he was as much an Englishman as the Duke
of Wellington-looked at his bushy-headed,
barefooted children,and said softly, with a mel
ancholy shake of the head, that the times were
| rather hard with him.
| 1t troubled his heart, and many hours of the
night he had been kept awake by the thought
of it that he could not send his children, to school
nor teach them himself to read. They were
| good children, he said, with most yearning
| in his ewes: they were all the wealth he had,
and he loved them the more, the harder he wor-
| ked for them. The poorest part of the poverty
that was on him, was that he could not give his
children the letters. They were good children
| for all the crock of the shop was on their faces
and their fingers were bent like eagles claws
with handling nails. He had been poor man
all his days, and he knew his children would be
poor all their days and poorer than he, if the
nail business should continue to grow worse.
If he could only give them the letters, or the
alphabet as they called it, it would make them
the like of rich; for then they could read the
Testament.
He could read the Testament little, for he
had learned the letters by FIRE light. 1t wa:
good book, was the Testament; never
saw any other book-heard tell of some il
rich peoples houses, but it mattered little with
him.
The Testament, he was sure it was made fol
nailers and such like. 1t helped him wonder
fully when the loaf was small on the table. He
had but little time to read it when the sun was
up, and it took him long TO read little, for he
learned the letters when he was old. But he
laid it beside his dish at dinner time and fed his
heart with it, while his children we're eating
the bread that fell to his share. And when he
had speIt out a line of the shortest words, he
read them aloud, and his eldest boy, the one OF
the block there could say several whole verse:
he had learned in this way.
Il 1t was a great comfort to him to think tina
Jeemes could takes into his heart so many YER
ses of the Testament which he could not read
lie intended to teach all his children in this way
1t was all he could do for them; and this he ha(
to do in tbs way fiat al
The nailng business was gro wing harder, ht
!; was .sfoWiig old, and his family large. He hex
70 sqa II: from four ocLoc. IN The morning til
ten O'Clock at night to earn eighteen pence.
His wages averaged only about ssven shilling;
a aceek: i! and there were five of them to live
on what they could earn. 1t was hard to make
however little could be spared. Jenny was
going on nine years of age, and helpful Lax
he was: aud the poor man looked at him doa
tingly. Jenny could work off thousand nails
day, of the smallest size. The rent of the
little shop, tenement and garden, was five
pounds year, and a few pennies earned BY
the Youngest of them was of great account.
/. But continued the father, speaking cheerily
am not the one to complain. Many is thu
man that has a harder lot of than |, among thu
nailers along these hills ald in the valley. Ny
neighbor in the next door could tell you some
thing about labor you may never have hear,
the like of in your country. He is an older mai
than ], and there are seven ofthem in his fam
lily: and, for all that, he has no boy like Jem
my here to help him. Some of his little girl
are slckly, and their mother Is not over strong
and it all comes on him.
lie is an oldish man, as I was saying, yet HI
not only works eighteen hours every day at hi
forge but every Friday IN the year he works al
night long, and never lays off his clothes til
late on Saturday night. good neighbor il
John Stubbns, and the only man just in ou
neighborhood who can read the newspaper
1t is not often he gets newspaper: for it is no
the like of US that can have newspapers anC
{ bread; too, IN our houses at the same time
But now and then he begs an old, one partly
torn, at the Bakers and reads it to US of Sun
day night. So once in two or three weeks W,
hearsomething that is going on in the world
something about corn laws and the Duke O
Wellington, and Oregon and India, and IRELAND
and other places in England. q. B.
t. MELANcHoLY.-Ten or eleven schooner
manned with seven men each, from Marble
| head, are supposed to have been lost off tn,
Newfoundland during the September gales
Two of this number are known to be wrecked
L.