Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1851-10-31
THE DAILY SPY.
MILES ATHERTON.

vi INDUSTRIOUS men ScdltHieu l0rOuQ1 the
suburbs of Manchester; and none who have
viewed with consideration their honey
sucked walls and the Aowery gardens in
which they stand, just out of the reach OF
the smoke and stir of the town, will doubt
the good feeling and intelligence Of the
working classes. Manufactures have by no
means that deteriorating influence on the
character which some moraists would draw
in such frightful colors. Industry at the
loom may not be so poetical as industry at
The plough, but surely it is not less intel
lectua. In manufacturing districts, where
multitudes are gathered together, the vice
that exists will force itself painfully on the
observation, while retired virtue often es.
capes notice and in the din issuing at eve
ming from the licensed haunts of the profit
gate the passer by IS apt to forget the
stiffness OF many neighboring freside,
where the operative is sitting happy with
his vile and children, reading perhaps
aloud, for their instruction and his own,
eking out, should wages be low, the weeks
means by an occasional by-hour of skill and
ingenuity.
In one of those dwellings, for which if
beautiful be too strong an epilhet, let US
substitute neat aud comfortable. Miles
Anterior had lived for len years, and in
his own little world of labor had enioged an
equal conference.-the only human felt
city. His wife was from Scotland, the
daughter of a shepherd brought, when
| just womangrown, from her native pastoral
! braes into the midst of new life. But, in
the watchfuness Of affection, she soon
became iamiarized with objects aud oc-
equations very different from everything
about her fathers house, and in a few years
the murmur of the sylvan Jed visited her
ear only in some Sabbath dream The
working days were exclusively filled with
delights and duties, joys griefs, born and
dying within the room where her husband
and her children slept. Her parents had
both died since she left Scotland and
though Mary Atherton and a few distant
relations still mutually lived in each others
memory, yet in time and separation the liv-
ing are almost like the dead, and as they
sometimes rise from oblivion, are but
pleasant phantoms. But seldom rs Mary
Atherton perhaps now thought of Scotland,
her simple and heartfelt voice spoke of her
birth beyond the border and now and then
a wanderer from the North Countrie.n di-
rected by neighbors TO her home, repaid
her charities by telling her that he had
been in her native parish, had seen the
| spife of the kirk, and the plaided shepherd
on the hill.
The evil of poverty is not in the suffering
with which it wrings the heart, but in the
poison which it too often mingles with the
affections. Bread stepped in tears it is diff
cult TO eat in thankiulness and there is no
blessing in The prayer in which there is no
present hope. When earth stops its boun-
ty, we despair of help from Heaven; and
the piety which worshipped God by the
warm hearth faints over the dead embers.
The change on our whole moral nature
may be slow but it is sure. Each success
siye day is darkened and disturbed to the
sullen or angry heart; beloved objects lose
their charm; and things formerly abhor-
rent to our nature, possess a spell over lis
which, loathsome though it be, we cannot
break, and under whose infatuatioh we
hurry on to guilt, despair and death. For
three months Miles Anterior was poor
miserably poor; and in other three just as
winter came with all its seventies, he was
also iigate-miserably prohgate. His
pretty children, boy and girl,were taken
from school; their mothers face had under-'
gone change like that of many years
sickness; and their house, so long the
pride of the suburban village, looked as if
it were uninhabited.
Mary Atherton, before the neighbors,
endeavored TO look cheerful, and an honest
pride sometimes supported her when bet
Ter feelings had worked themselves out
but that strength was of avail only in the
open day light When the door was shut,
she often sat for hours without moving,
in sort OF blind designations; for the lit
tie work she could get, or was able TO do
could procure so small a portion of
the very necessaries of life, that she
took it up only in hurried snatches, and
would lay it down again in despair, when her
! eyes met those OF her piningand sickly chill
| dren. Misery had made her husband
! hard hearted, almost brutal; so that often
| at midnight she lrembed TO unlatch the
| door for him, and dared not, till he slept
approach his couch. Yet the poor creature
| loved him as well, better than ever; and
kisses and tears he knew not of, fell on
his haggard cotnienance, disturbed even his
dreams. The time for advice or reproaches
was gone by,and her last hope was in meek
silence and accomplishing sorrow.
One morning the unhappy man took his
boy by the hand and little Aleck allowed
himself to be led away without ever once
venturing to look into his fathers face.
Fear had not quellcd love in that innocent
heart, but it had sunk its expression in his
downcast eyes; and now he walked slowly
along as if conscious of some crime, and
about TO receive punishment. His father
stopped on bridge over canal, and place
ing the boy beside him on the ledge, looked
on him in gloomy silence. 1t was lonely
place, the water lwown and muddy, and
little Aleck began, he knew not why TO weep.
His father incensed at the wailing sound,
and distracted by all evil conscience, struck
him on the face, and in an instant the hoy
was silent; for it was the first time that he
had felt the hand that used to stroke down