Page:History of Duncan Campbell, and his dog Oscar (1).pdf/13

 characters, like those of our early joys, are long ago defaced and extinct.

Often have I heard my mother relate with enthusiasm, the manner in which she and my father first discovered the dawnings of goodness and facility of conceptionDuncan's mind, though, I confess, dearly as I loved him, these circumstance escaped my observation. It was my father's invariable custom to pray with the family every night before they retired to rest, to thank the 'Almighty for his kindness' to them during the bygone day, and to beg' his protection through the dark and silent watches of the night. I need not inform any of my readers, that that amiable duty, consisted in singing a few stanzas of a psalm, in which all the family combined their voices with my father's, so that the double taves of the various ages and sexes swelled to the mple concert. He then read a chapter from the Bible, going straight on from beginning to end of the Scriptures. The prayer eoncluded the devotions of each evening, in which the downfall of Antichrist was always strenuously urged, the ministers of the Gospel remembered, nor was any friend or neighbour an disss forgot.

At one time, the year following, my father in the course of his evening devotions, had reached the th chapter of the book of Judges: 'when he began reading it., Duncan was seated on the other side of the house, but ere it was half done. he had stolen up close to my father's elbow. “Consider of it take ad speak your mind” said my father closed the book. “ if you please Sir” said Duncan— “go on, and let us hear what they said about it. ” My father looked sternly in Duncan's face, but seeing him {{illegible}shed on account of his hasty breach of decency, without uttering a word, he again opened the Bible, and read the 20th chapter throughout notwithstanding its great length. Next day Duncan was walking out with the Bible below his arm, begging of every