The charge that she had left him he faithfully kept--not very cheerfully at first, perhaps, and often feeling it to be a very heavy care; but he persevered, and the reward came. The children grew and prospered; they loved him, and he learned to love them, so much, finally, that he gave them his own name, and suffered them to call him father.
As the country settled, and little towns grew up around him, the tragedy of his earlier life was forgotten by the world, but it was ever present to his own heart; for though love and sorrow mellowed and chastened the stern creed in which he believed with all his soul, he had many an hour of spiritual agony concerning the beloved ones who had died and made no sign. Not till he got almost within the heavenly horizon did he understand that the Divine love and mercy is without limitations; and that He who could say, "Let there be light," could also say, "Thy sins be forgiven thee;" and the pardoned child, or ever he was aware, be come to the holy land: for--
"Down in the valley of death A cross is standing plain; Where strange and awful the shadows sleep, And the ground has a deep red stain. This cross uplifted there Forbids, with voice Divine, Our anguished hearts to break for the dead Who have died and made no sign. As they turned at length from us, Dear eyes that were heavy and dim, May have met his look, who was lifted there, May be sleeping safe in Him."
Let me introduce to our readers seven of the wisest men of the present century--the seven drafters and signers of the first teetotal pledge.
The movement originated in the mind of Joseph Livesey, and a short consideration of the circumstances and surroundings of his useful career will give us the best insight into the necessities and influences which gave it birth. He was born near Preston, in Lancashire, in the year 1795; the beginning of an era in English history which scarcely has a parallel for national suffering. The excitement of the French Revolution still agitated all classes, and, commercial distress and political animosities made still more terrible the universal scarcity of food and the prostration of the manufacturing business.
His father and mother died early, and he was left to the charge of his grandfather, who, unfortunately, abandoned his farm and became a cotton spinner. Lancashire men had not then been whetted by daily attrition with steam to their present keen and shrewd character, and the elder Livesey lost all he possessed. The records of cotton printing and spinning mention with honor the Messrs. Livesey, of Preston, as the first who put into practice Bell's invention of cylindrical printing of calicoes in 1785; but whether the firms are identical or not I have no certain knowledge. It shows, however, that they were a race inclined to improvements and ready to test an advance movement.