Chamberss Miscellany Of Instructive Entertaining Tracts Vol 8

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ISBN 13 : 9781331198635
Total Pages : 520 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (986 download)

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Download or read book Chambers's Miscellany of Instructive Entertaining Tracts, Vol. 8 written by and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-11 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Chambers's Miscellany of Instructive Entertaining Tracts, Vol. 8: New and Revised Edition While mourning his penniless condition, and the sufferings of his wife and family, he would vow to shun in future the intoxicating draught; and even go the length of inscribing his resolution in his pocket-book in the following words: 'O Lord, by thy assistance I will not enter into a public-house on this side of Easter.' Alas for all such resolutions! they vanished at the first temptation; and were all forgotten precisely at the time they ought to have been remembered. Repeated failures in his desire to do well, seem to have at last robbed him of all self-respect. He became a habitual sot, and the fate of his wife and children was such as is always endured where a drunkard is the head of a family. With a wailing infant on her knee, in a house without fire or any other comfort, sat the broken-hearted woman, endeavouring to amuse away the hunger of the children who hung about her. And when a morsel of food was procured, she suffered them, with a tear, to take her share amongst them. In the midst of such scenes - rags, misery, and almost famine - the subject of our memoir passed the first eight years of his existence. Although numbering the third in the family, he was somewhat larger and stronger in person than his seniors, but much less interesting in general appearance. Possessing no personal qualities to recommend him to the special affection of his parents, they gladly allowed him to visit and remain for some time with a couple of maiden aunts at Swithland, where, if he was not treated with marked consideration, he had at least the satisfaction of receiving what he prized more highly - a sufficiency of food. From these aunts he endured almost daily insults, being cuffed, kicked, and buffeted, besides being told of his ugliness; but all this only schooled him to a life of patient endurance, and invoked that spirit of self-dependence of which he afterwards gave so brilliant an example. Returning to the parental home, he underwent the old usage, which was a variety of suffering on what he had lately experienced. While leading this worse than dog-life, however, he had the good fortune - rare for the child of a habitual dram - drinker to be sent to school, where he learned to read, though at the expense of a vast amount of distress; for his teacher was a severe disciplinarian, and scrupled not to beat his head against the wall, to tear his hair, and commit other atrocities customary among schoolmasters in those and much later times. The result of his chastisements was an intense hatred of learning, which fortunately he outlived. Not so much because he was doing little good at school, but because his powers of labour came into demand to help the general earnings, be was recalled, and put to a regular employment. This was a step which had for some time engaged the serious attention of both father and mother. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.