Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/274

 "'I see I need not explain to these ladies what felt on this dreadful occasion; they seem too sensible of the miseries that attend human kind, not to imagine it all without my assistance; nor will I shock the tenderness of any of this company with the repetition of my mother's grief; but shall only say great as the softest heart could feel on the loss of a husband whom she had lived with and tenderly loved for thirty years together. Perhaps, as my father had a family, he may be thought blamable for such a conduct; but, for my part, notwithstanding I am the sufferer, I shall always honour his memory the more for it, when I reflect that I have often heard him say, that to the gentleman's father (for whom he at last ruined himself) he owed all that he had in the world. "'I was afraid of revealing to my mother what my father had told me, and delayed it some time, for no other reason but from want of resolution to add to the load of afflictions she was already burdened with: at last necessity forced me to undertake the task, however uneasy it was to me; for the person who had bought the house we were then in of my father was to enter upon it the next week. I really believe the uneasiness the poor man suffered on that account, and chiefly for his wife's sake, hastened his death. When I disclosed to my mother the present situation of our affairs, instead of burdening me with complaints and lamentations, she at first showed a perfect indifference, and said, as she had lost her only comfort in losing my father, she cared very little what became of her; but then looking at me with an air of the greatest tenderness, she sighed, and said, "Why did I bring into the world a creature with your generous sentiments? who, after being educated like a gentleman, must be thrown on the wide world without any means of supporting that station in life!" She saw how much her