Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/88

 hear the events of your life, my good Mrs. Rawson; for you keep in view the Hand that rules, both under the cloud, and in the sun-shine. I wish you would relate to my brother, what you have told me, respecting your husband.

"He was a man," she answered, "of better education, than people in his station always enjoy. I married him, when I was sixteen, and my whole endeavour was to please him. I did not consider that it is our duty to seek "first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness." My husband was an ambitious man; and at last became master of a vessel. He was always looking for great things, but seemed to be unfortunate. While he was gone whole years, I would live upon as little as would keep life in me, so as not to be a burden to him; and sometimes when I was sick, and would have been thankful for six-pence, to buy medicine, a letter would come from him, full of nothing but poetry. Yet I was rejoiced to see only a line, written by his hand, "because of the love I bore him." Once, when my babes and I were really in want of food, there came from him a present to me of a gold ring, and his picture as big as life. The children were frightened to death, at the sight of such a great face, that did not talk; and they cried and screamed so, that I had to carry it up garret, and turn it the backside out. I sold the gold ring, and bought Indian meal, and some wool to spin stockings for our bare feet. I would have sold the picture, but nobody would buy it. I thought it was not becoming in me to keep such a costly thing. I wrote to