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| 1 | 133 | 265 | 398 | 530 |
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aside from the wide thoroughfares and great houses, and strive to
improve the wretched dwellings in bye-ways where only Poverty may
walk - many low roofs would point more truly to the sky, than the
loftiest steeple that now rears proudly up from the midst of guilt, and
crime, and horrible disease, to mock them by its contrast. In hollow
voices from Workhouse, Hospital, and jail, this truth is preached from
day to day, and has been proclaimed for years. It is no light matter -
no outcry from the working vulgar - no mere question of the people's
health and comforts that may be whistled down on Wednesday nights.
In love of home, the love of country has its rise; and who are the truer
patriots or the better in time of need - those who venerate the land,
owning its wood, and stream, and earth, and all that they produce? or
those who love their country, boasting not a foot of ground in all its
wide domain!
Kit knew nothing about such questions, but he knew that his old
home was a very poor place, and that his new one was very unlike it,
and yet he was constantly looking back with grateful satisfaction and
affectionate anxiety, and often indited square- folded letters to his
mother, enclosing a shilling or eighteenpence or such other small
remittance, which Mr Abel's liberality enabled him to make.
Sometimes being in the neighbourhood, he had leisure to call upon
her, and then great was the joy and pride of Kit's mother, and
extremely noisy the satisfaction of little Jacob and the baby, and
cordial the congratulations of the whole court, who listened with
admiring ears to the accounts of Abel Cottage, and could never be told
too much of its wonders and magnificence.
Although Kit was in the very highest favour with the old lady and
gentleman, and Mr Abel, and Barbara, it is certain that no member of
the family evinced such a remarkable partiality for him as the self-
willed pony, who, from being the most obstinate and opinionated pony
on the face of the earth, was, in his hands, the meekest and most
tractable of animals. It is true that in exact proportion as he became
manageable by Kit he became utterly ungovernable by anybody else
(
as if he had determined to keep him in the family at all risks and
hazards), and that, even under the guidance of his favourite, he would
sometimes perform a great variety of strange freaks and capers, to the
extreme discomposure of the old lady's nerves; but as Kit always
represented that this was only his fun, or a way he had of showing his
attachment to his employers, Mrs Garland gradually suffered herself
to be persuaded into the belief, in which she at last became so
strongly confirmed, that if, in one of these ebullitions, he had
overturned the chaise, she would have been quite satisfied that he did
it with the very best intentions.
Besides becoming in a short time a perfect marvel in all stable
matters, Kit soon made himself a very tolerable gardener, a handy
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