Heaven forgive me the
supposition, if it be an uncharitable one, but I do firmly and in
my soul believe, that the man systematically tried for many years
to break her heart; but she bore it all for her child's sake, and,
however strange it may seem to many, for his father's too; for
brute as he was, and cruelly as he had treated her, she had loved
him once; and the recollection of what he had been to her,
awakened feelings of forbearance and meekness under suffering
in her bosom, to which all God's creatures, but women, are strangers.
'They were poor--they could not be otherwise when the man
pursued such courses; but the woman's unceasing and
unwearied exertions, early and late, morning, noon, and night, kept
them above actual want. These exertions were but ill repaid.
People who passed the spot in the evening--sometimes at a late
hour of the night--reported that they had heard the moans and
sobs of a woman in distress, and the sound of blows; and more
than once, when it was past midnight, the boy knocked softly at
the door of a neighbour's house, whither he had been sent, to
escape the drunken fury of his unnatural father.
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