ABSTRACT
Twas a cold bitter evening in the dreary month of November and slow drizzling rain had been pattering against the windows all day, and the winter winds had been roaring in loud and terrific blasts through the naked branches of the tall elm trees that environed the neat and beautiful cottage of Albert Freeland. Albert was an honest man and a Christian; and he was now occupied in reading aloud, to his attentive and interesting family, a portion of those weather-beaten pages, which have withstood all the cavils and bickerings of the subtle infidelity for a long course of ages, when the cries of a fellow creature in distress struck upon his ear. Instantly, the Sacred Volume was closed with the utmost care, and laid aside with the most profound veneration; for Albert was not without some peculiarities, which fashionable persons, in such an enlightened and adamantine age as this, would style nothing but vulgar absurdities. He had, from his earliest childhood, entertained a holy love for his blessed Bible. It had been his refuge in trouble, and his solace in adversity; and in his days of prosperity, it was his joy, delight, and glory. In it he always found something new, some comfortable and consoling passage, most admirably adapted to present circumstances, whether that they tended to gloom or brightness. It was his friend, director, physician, and guide, and had he had no other company, he would not have considered himself solitary. Yet there were times when Albert Freeland's feeling heart bled over the wrongs of his distressed country. He daily saw around him some hundreds of starving labourers and mechanics, honest, worthy, and respectable men, blasted in prospects and broken in spirits, - fathers of families, toiling hard for a pittance that would barely suffice to lengthen out expiring nature for a few months longer, - and, in the honest indignation of his soul, he would imploringly exclaim, "Oh, Lord, how long wilt though withhold thy vengeance, and sweep with the besom of destruction every proud oppressor from his groaning land, for they cause the naked to lodge without clothing, who have no covering in the cold! They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock for want of a shelter. They pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge from the poor. They cause him to go naked, without clothes, and they take away the sheaf from the hungry, which make oil within their walls, and tread their wine-presses, and suffer thirst." These exclamations were made by Albert, as he, together with his eldest son, hastened to the spot from whence the calls of distress proceeded. There they found an old man, drenched with rain and benumbed with cold, totally unable to pursue his journey further, whom they kindly bore to their
hospitable dwelling, giving him such refreshments as his destitute situation needed, and which, in a great measure, restored his almost suspended faculties.
