Page:Way to wealth, or, Poor Richard's maxims improved, &c..pdf/23

Rh perceived that I was interested, and proposed to inform me of the unhappy occasion that had consigned the healthful and industrious John Anderson to a premature grave. His narrative was long and rambling;— but the following is the substance of the unhappy story:—

The miller had been married about six months, when a sea-faring stranger came to lodge at the village. He was a man above the ordinary appearance of sailors; and spoke as one used to command. He was of very strong passions, which he occasionally excited by intoxication;— but he mixed little with the villagers, and appeared to have a great contempt for their habits and understandings. John Anderson alone pleased him. He would frequently walk to his mill, where he would pass long winter evenings in conversation with the youthful pair, filling them with admiration of his courage, and the perils he had sustained. The stranger frequently declared, that it was a shame so fine a youth as Anderson should be pent up for life in a crazy mill;— that he could show him the way to honour and riches;— and that his couragocourage [sic] and address would win for him the proudest distinctions. It was thus that the once-contented young man gradually acquired a dislike of his occupation; and, as a natural consequence, he was less industrious. А change in the markets about the same time deprived him of a considerable portion of his little savings; he did not attempt to redeem his loss by increased exertion, but was frequently from home, and sometimes left his wife alone to hear the hollow wind whistle through their solitary and exposed cottage.

It was late on an evening in thothe [sic] dreariest season of the year, that Anderson and the Captain (for so the villagers called the stranger) came in a hurried