Page:Blind Allan (2).pdf/14

14 months were over, Allan Bruce and his wife were said to be getting rich, and a warm blessing broke from every heart upon them, and their virtuous and unrepining industry.

Allan had always been fond of music, and his voice was the finest tenor in all the kirk. So he began in the evenings of winter to teach a school for sacred music--and thus every heur was turned to account. Allan repined not now--nay at times he felt as if his blindness were a blessing--for it forced him to trust to his own soul--to turn for comfort to the best and purest human affections- and to see God always.

Whatever misgivings of mind Allan Bruce might have experienced-whatever faintings and sickenings end deadly swoons of despair might have overcome his heart, --it was not long before he was a freed man from all his slavery. He was not immured, like many as worthy as he, in an Asylum; he was not an encumbrance upon a poor father, sitting idle, and in the way of others, be- side an ill-fed fire, and a scanty board; he was not forced to pace step by step along the lamp- lighted streets and squares of a city, forcing out beautiful music to gain a few pieces of coin from passers by entranced for a moment by sweet sounds, plaintive or jocund he was not a boy-