Page:A New England Tale.djvu/135

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124
A NEW-ENGLAND TALE.

money. Elvira told me you received a large sum yesterday; and 'tis but one hundred dollars that I ask for."

"And I wonder you can have the heart to ask," replied Mrs. Wilson, sobbing with passion, not grief; "you have no feeling; you never had any for my afflictions. It is but two months, yesterday, since Martha died, and I have no reason to hope for her. She died without repentance."

"Ha!" replied David, "Elvira told me, that she confessed, to her husband, her abuse of his children, her love of the bottle, (which, by the by, every body knew before,) and a parcel of stuff that, for our sakes, I think she might have kept to herself."

"Yes, yes, she did die in a terrible uproar of mind about some things of that kind; but she had no feeling of her lost state by nature."

"Oh, the devil!" grumbled the hopeful son and brother; "if I had nothing to worry my conscience but my state by nature, I might get one good night's sleep, instead of lying from night till morning like a toad under a harrow."

This comment was either unheard or unheeded by the mother, and she went on: "David, your extravagance is more than I can bear. I have been wonderfully supported under my other trials. If my children, though they are my flesh and blood, are not elected, the Lord is justified in their destruction, and I am still. I have done my duty, and I know not 'why tarry His chariot wheels.'"