Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/212

 Nor did material hardships constitute his sorest trials. As he grew older, and entered on his "teens," he was promoted to drive a team in harvest-time, and felt himself every inch a man. His employer, thoughtlessly taking advantage of his youthful elation of spirits, plied him with excessive quantities of liquor; and, but for the peremptory steps taken by Mrs. Arch to keep her boy in the strait path of sobriety, the apostolate of the agricultural laborers might have been rendered forever impossible in the person of Joseph Arch. In his sixteenth year this kind, judicious mother was no more; but her admonitions were indelibly impressed on her son's mind. To his mother Arch ascribes whatever good he has been able to achieve. At twenty years of age Arch's character was no longer to form. He was a local preacher, and earning the highest wages to be made as an agricultural laborer; viz., eleven shillings a week. Several eligible opportunities occurred for bettering his condition; but he resolved, instead, to "stand by the old man."

Shortly after, he married the daughter of a local artisan,—a woman of great natural endowments both of head and heart. Though uneducated, technically speaking, she is perhaps superior to her husband as a speculative politician. At every step she has stimulated his zeal by steady devotion to great principles,—greater, perhaps, than it would naturally occur to him to advocate. In due course two children were born to them, and Arch's wages unhappily fell to nine shillings a week. Four persons to maintain at the rate of say fourpence per head per diem! The thing, Mrs. Arch declared, could not be done; and so she took a bold step. She partially returned to her ante-nuptial employment, while