Page:Execution, or, The affecting history of Tom Bragwell.pdf/18

 that although I must caution all of you in future to shun as a companion, if he continues in his evil courses, as you would do a serpent, yet feeling, as I do, for one in his situation, I would wish you to go in a body, before you separate, and while my words are fresh on your memories, and find him out,—and tell him all that you have heard and seen :—That although he may congratulate himself for the present, on making his escape by the use of his legs, and good sea-room, as he termed it, yet a time may come, and that, perhaps, not far distant, when, immured within the dreary walls of a prison, he may be deprived of both, and brought to the pitiful condition (like one of these unhappy young men) of envying the state of a mouse creeping across the floor, and be made to say, in the words of poor, 'Ah! could I as easily escape as that little creature will do.'

"Tell him,—that there is, in reality, some ill in stealing beans on any day, and that the crime is aggravated by being done on a Sunday;—that, even although for a time he may go on prospering in his way, by evading the vigilance of men, yet he must never think to escape the piercing Eye of that august Being, who frightened him with the thunder of his power:—that, he that formed the eye, cannot but always see:—that He sees him every where, at all times, and in all places; and was no less present when he ran oft with the old woman’s cloak in the dark, than when he hastened to the turnip-field at noon-day;—that it is not only in the whirlwind and the storm that the great Creator