LITMIR.BIZ

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my hand as before, and blubbering as he devoured.

      "Thy name is Abel Snipe?" said I.

      "Verily and surely, it is Abel Snipe, and no other," said he; "I hope thee don't forget me?"

      "Why, really," said I, "I can't exactly say, friend Abel, seeing that there has a confusion come over my brain. But art thou certain I am no longer Abram Skinner?"

      At this question Abel Snipe's eyes jumped half out of his head, and they regarded me with wo and horror. I saw he thought my wits were unsettled, and I hastened to remove the impression.

      "Don't be alarmed, friend Abel; but, of a verity, I think I was killed and buried."

      "Yea," said Abel; "yea, verily, the vile, ungrateful, malicious John Smith did smite thee over the head with a club, so that the bone was broken, and thee was as one that was dead; but oh! the villain! we have him fast in jail; and oh! the unnatural rascal! we'll hang him!"

      "Verily," said I, feeling uncommon concern at the idea, "we will do no such wicked deed; but we will admonish the poor man of the wickedness of his ways, and, relieving his wants, discharge him from bondage."

      "Yea," said Abel Snipe, with an air of contrition; "so will we do, as becometh the merciful man and Christian. But, verily, the flesh did quarrel with the spirit, and the old Adam cried out to me, 'Blood for blood,' and the thing that is flesh said, 'Vengeance on the wicked man that smote the friend of the afflicted!' But now thy goodness reproves me, and teaches me better things: wherefore I say, be not hard with the miserable man, for such is the wicked, and such is John Smith; who is now mourning over his foolish acts in the county prison. Yea, verily, we will be exceeding lenient," – and so forth, and so forth.

      I do not think it needful to repeat all the wise and humane things said by Abel Snipe: they convinced me he was the most benevolent of beings, and warmed a similar spirit that was now burning in my breast, and which burnt on until it became at last a general conflagration of philanthropy. Yea, the transformation was complete; I found within me, on the sudden, a raging desire to augment the happiness of my fellow-creatures; and wondered that I had ever experienced any other passion. The generous Abel discoursed to me of the thousands I – that is, my prototype, the true Zachariah – had rescued from want and affliction, and of the thousands whom I was yet to relieve. My brain took fire at the thought, and I exulted in a sense of my virtue; I perceived, in imagination, the tear of distress chased away by that of gratitude; I heard the sob of sorrow succeeded by the sigh of happiness, and the prayer of beseeching changed to the prayer of praise and thanksgiving. A gentle warmth flowed from my bosom through the uttermost bounds of my frame, and I felt that I was a happy man; yea, reader, yea, and verily, I was at last happy. My only affliction was, that the battered condition of my body prevented my sallying out at once, and practising the noble art of charity. The tears sprang into my eyes when Abel recounted the numbers of the miserable who had besieged my doors during my two weeks of insensibility, crying for assistance.

      "Why didst thou not relieve them, Abel Snipe?" I exclaimed.

      "Verily," said Abel, turning his eyes to heaven with a look of fervent rapture, "I did relieve the sorrowing and destitute even to the uttermost penny that was in my pocket. Blessed be the deed, for I have not now a cent that I can call my own. As for thine, Zachariah, it became me not to dispense it, without thy spoken authority; the more especially as thy nephew, Jonathan, did hint, and vehemently insist, that thou hadst bestowed too much already for thy good, and his."

      These words filled me with concern and displeasure.

      "Surely," said I, "the young man Jonathan is not averse to deeds of charity?"

      "Verily," said Abel, clasping his hands, and looking as if he would have wept, "the excellent and beloved youth doth value money more than the good which money may produce; and of that good he esteemeth chiefly the portion that falleth to his own lot. Of a surety, I do fear he hath an eagerness and hankering, a fleshly appetite and an exceeding strong desire, after the things of the world. He delighteth in the vanity of fine clothes, and his discourse is of women and the charms thereof. He hath bought the picture of a French dancing-woman, and hung it in his chamber, swearing (for he hath a contempt for affirmation) that it is a good likeness of the maiden Ellen Wild; and yesterday I did perceive him squeaking at a heathenish wind-instrument, called a flute, and thereupon he did avow an intention to try his hand at that more paganish thing of strings, called a fiddle; and, oh! what grieved me above all, and caused the spirit within me to cry 'avaunt! and get thee away, Jonathan,' he did offer me a ticket, of the cost of one dollar, to procure me admission into the place of sin and vanity, called the theatre, swearing 'by jingo' and 'by gemini' there was 'great fun there,' and offering to lend me a coat, hat, and trousers, so that the wicked should not know me. Yea, verily, the young man is as a young lion that roameth up and down – as a sheep that wandereth from the pinfold into the forbidden meadows – and as for charity, peradventure thee will not believe me, but he averred, 'the only charity he believed in was that which began at home.'"

      These confessions of the faithful Abel in relation to the young man Jonathan, caused my spirit to wax sorrowful within me. But it is fitting, before pursuing such conversations further, that I should inform the reader who the faithful Abel and the young man Jonathan were.

      The latter, as Abel himself informed me, was my – or, if the reader will, my prototype's – nephew, the only, and now orphan, son of a sister, who had married, as the phrase is, "out of meeting," and, dying destitute, left her boy to the charge of the benevolent Zachariah, who, being himself childless, adopted him as his son and heir, and had treated him as such, from his childhood up. The great wish of Zachariah was to make the adopted son a philanthropist, like himself; in which, however, he was destined to disappointment; for Jonathan was of a wild and worldly turn, fond of frolic and amusement, and extremely averse to squander in works of charity the possessions he designed applying in future years to his own benefit. Nevertheless, he was greatly beloved by his uncle; and I, who was imbued with that uncle's spirit, and destined to love and abhor what he had loved and abhorred, whether I would or not, soon began to regard him as one of the two apples of my eyes.

      CHAPTER II.

      SOME ACCOUNT OF THE WORTHY ABEL SNIPE

      The faithful Abel Snipe, it seems (his history was told me by Jonathan), was a man whom Zachariah, some years before, while playing the Howard in a neighbouring sovereignty, had found plunged in deep distress, and making shoes in the penitentiary. To this condition he had been reduced by sheer goodness; for, being an amateur in that virtuous art of which Zachariah was a professor, and having no means of his own to relieve the woes of the wretched, he had borrowed from the hoards of his employers (the president and directors of a certain stock-company, in whose office he had a petty appointment), and thus, perforce, made charitable an institution that was chartered to be uncharitable. He committed the fault, however, of borrowing without the previous ceremony of asking – either because he was of so innocent a temper as to think such a proceeding unnecessary, or because he knew beforehand that the request would not be granted; and the consequence was, that the president and directors, as aforesaid, did very mercilessly hand him over to the prosecuting attorney, the prosecuting attorney to a grand jury, the grand jury to a petit jury, the petit jury to a penitentiary, and the penitentiary to the devil – or such, at least, would have been the ending of the unfortunate amateur, had not the philanthropist, who always ordered his shoes, for charity's sake, at the prison, been struck with the uncommon excellence of a pair constructed by Abel's hands.

      He sought out the faithful maker (for sure a man must be faithful to make a good pair of shoes in a penitentiary), was melted by his tale of wo, even as the wax through which Abel was then drawing a bunch of ends was melted by the breath thereof; and shedding tears to find the poor creature's virtue so shabbily rewarded, ran to the prosecutors with a petition, which he induced them to sign, transmitted it to the governor, with a most eloquent essay on the divine character of mercy, and, in less than a week, walked Abel Snipe out of prison, a pardoned man.

      The charity of the professor did not end with Abel's liberation. Enraptured with the fervour of his gratitude, touched by the artlessness of his character, and moved by the destitution to which a pardon in the winter-time exposed him, he carried him to his own land and house, fed, clothed, and employed

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