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my parishioners was a man of the name of Edmunds, who leased a
small farm near this spot. He was a morose, savage-hearted, bad man;
idle and dissolute in his habits; cruel and ferocious in his disposition.
Beyond the few lazy and reckless vagabonds with whom he sauntered
away his time in the fields, or sotted in the ale-house, he had not a
single friend or acquaintance; no one cared to speak to the man whom
many feared, and every one detested - and Edmunds was shunned by
all.
'This man had a wife and one son, who, when I first came here, was
about twelve years old. Of the acuteness of that woman's sufferings, of
the gentle and enduring manner in which she bore them, of the agony
of solicitude with which she reared that boy, no one can form an
adequate conception. Heaven forgive me the supposition, if it be an
uncharitable one, but I do firmly and in my soul believe, that the man
systematically tried for many years to break her heart; but she bore it
all for her child's sake, and, however strange it may seem to many, for
his father's too; for brute as he was, and cruelly as he had treated her,
she had loved him once; and the recollection of what he had been to
her, awakened feelings of forbearance and meekness under suffering
in her bosom, to which all God's creatures, but women, are strangers.
'
They were poor - they could not be otherwise when the man pursued
such courses; but the woman's unceasing and unwearied exertions,
early and late, morning, noon, and night, kept them above actual
want. These exertions were but ill repaid. People who passed the spot
in the evening - sometimes at a late hour of the night - reported that
they had heard the moans and sobs of a woman in distress, and the
sound of blows; and more than once, when it was past midnight, the
boy knocked softly at the door of a neighbour's house, whither he had
been sent, to escape the drunken fury of his unnatural father.
'
During the whole of this time, and when the poor creature often bore
about her marks of ill-usage and violence which she could not wholly
conceal, she was a constant attendant at our little church. Regularly
every Sunday, morning and afternoon, she occupied the same seat
with the boy at her side; and though they were both poorly dressed -
much more so than many of their neighbours who were in a lower
station - they were always neat and clean. Every one had a friendly
nod and a kind word for ‘poor Mrs. Edmunds’; and sometimes, when
she stopped to exchange a few words with a neighbour at the
conclusion of the service in the little row of elm-trees which leads to
the church porch, or lingered behind to gaze with a mother's pride
and fondness upon her healthy boy, as he sported before her with
some little companions, her careworn face would lighten up with an
expression of heartfelt gratitude; and she would look, if not cheerful
and happy, at least tranquil and contented.
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