The Fair Haven | Page 9

short, the lady on satisfying herself that we were
asleep, never said her prayers at all; during the remainder of her visit
whenever she found us awake she always said them, but when she

thought we were asleep, she never prayed. It is needless to add that we
had the matter out with her before she left, and that the consequences
were unpleasant for all parties; they added to the troubles in which we
were already involved as to our prayers, and were indirectly among the
earliest causes which led my brother to look with scepticism upon
religion.
For a while, however, all went on as though nothing had happened. An
effect of distrust, indeed, remained after the cause had been forgotten,
but my brother was still too young to oppose anything that my mother
told him, and to all outward appearance he grew in grace no less
rapidly than in stature.
For years we led a quiet and eventless life, broken only by the one great
sorrow of our father's death. Shortly after this we were sent to a day
school in Bloomsbury. We were neither of us very happy there, but my
brother, who always took kindly to his books, picked up a fair
knowledge of Latin and Greek; he also learned to draw, and to exercise
himself a little in English composition. When I was about fourteen my
mother capitalised a part of her income and started me off to America,
where she had friends who could give me a helping hand; by their
kindness I was enabled, after an absence of twenty years, to return with
a handsome income, but not, alas, before the death of my mother.
Up to the time of my departure my mother continued to read the Bible
with us and explain it. She had become deeply impressed with the
millenarian fervour which laid hold of so many some twenty-five or
thirty years ago. The Apocalypse was perhaps her favourite book in the
Bible, and she was imbued with the fullest conviction that all the
threatened horrors with which it teems were upon the eve of their
accomplishment. The year eighteen hundred and forty-eight was to be
(as indeed it was) a time of general bloodshed and confusion, while in
eighteen hundred and sixty-six, should it please God to spare her, her
eyes would be gladdened by the visible descent of the Son of Man with
a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, with the trump of God; and
the dead in Christ should rise first; then she, as one of them that were
alive, would be caught up with other saints into the air, and would

possibly receive while rising some distinguishing token of confidence
and approbation which should fall with due impressiveness upon the
surrounding multitude; then would come the consummation of all
things, and she would be ever with the Lord. She died peaceably in her
bed before she could know that a commercial panic was the nearest
approach to the fulfilment of prophecy which the year eighteen hundred
and sixty-six brought forth.
These opinions of my mother's were positively disastrous--injuring her
naturally healthy and vigorous mind by leading her to indulge in all
manner of dreamy and fanciful interpretations of Scripture, which any
but the most narrow literalist would feel at once to be untenable. Thus
several times she expressed to us her conviction that my brother and
myself were to be the two witnesses mentioned in the eleventh chapter
of the Book of Revelation, and dilated upon the gratification she should
experience upon finding that we had indeed been reserved for a
position of such distinction. We were as yet mere children, and
naturally took all for granted that our mother told us; we therefore
made a careful examination of the passage which threw light upon our
future; but on finding that the prospect was gloomy and full of
bloodshed we protested against the honours which were intended for us,
more especially when we reflected that the mother of the two witnesses
was not menaced in Scripture with any particular discomfort. If we
were to be martyrs, my mother ought to wish to be a martyr too,
whereas nothing was farther from her intention. Her notion clearly was
that we were to be massacred somewhere in the streets of London, in
consequence of the anti- Christian machinations of the Pope; that after
lying about unburied for three days and a half we were to come to life
again; and, finally, that we should conspicuously ascend to heaven, in
front, perhaps, of the Foundling Hospital.
She was not herself indeed to share either our martyrdom or our
glorification, but was to survive us many years on earth, living in an
odour of great sanctity and reflected splendour, as the