Page:The A. B. C. of Colonization.djvu/13

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see that dear face no more—never look at that venerated parent again," now sunk in agony in the darkest corner of his own dreary habitation. This is not a piece of romance, but one of the scenes of real life. Which are most to be felt for, the intending emigrant, or the desolate beings left behind? These heart-burnings of nature are not extinguished here; the same feeling, which a benign Providence, for the wisest of designs, has implanted in the human heart, keeps the flame alive in the distant colonies; the child longs for the parent—the father or the disconsolate mother sighs for the offspring. I cannot tell how often I have been entreated by sons and daughters in New South Wales to do all I could to see their parents sent to them, or the numerous applications I have had made to me by parents to forward to them their children. These appeals follow me to this country. I have lately had a letter handed to me, written by an Englishman out there to his brother, wherein he says, "First try Park Street (Government office), if you cannot get a passage that way stick to the parish, but if you get no good from neither, go to Mrs. Chisholm, for I have written to her and sanctioned her to manage." Another poor widow writes to me, and to whom I sent four of her children in 1848: "They have safely arrived, all well; the eldest girl got well married; two of the boys I have got apprenticed; you have my most heartfelt thanks for your kindness in sending out my children, and you have my prayers night and day." So many and such heart-rending applications I had made to me shortly before leaving the colony, that I ventured to appeal to the local Government in their behalf, and I have since had the comfort of seeing some hundreds of children and young people sent out through the Government Commissioners; but I grieve to say