Old Schoolfellows, and What Became of Them (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1871 Excerpt: ... Enjoyed, as a distant relative of the Doctor, a privilege which any one of you would have envied me. I was permitted to bring great comfort into his home, after an ordeal of sharp and bitter suffering which made him prematurely old. As you all know, he was never the man to make any show of trouble; but trouble he had of the keenest and most agitating kind. You saw it, sometimes, in his occasional fits of abstraction when a spasm of pain would shoot athwart his features and break up its noble repose. You saw it when he looked into a bright young face, and said in tones of tenderness, "Let me see those eyes, my boy, twenty years hence as beaming and as free from guile as they are now; with God's help there is no reason why I should not." And then a deep sigh would conclude his first words of encouragement to a new pupil. You saw the same look of sorrow becloud his face when he found a boy in the slightest degree departing from the truth, or giving way to self-indulgence of, apparently, a most harmless character. Laying his hand on the shoulder of such a boy, and looking into his eyes, as only he could look, he would say, " You don't know what this will lead to: I do; these small beginnings will have great endings, and what to-day you think lightly of will, in the course of a few years, form a network of habit from which it will be impossible to effect an escape." I do not think that any of you knew the real secret of the sadness which so constantly oppressed him. It was whispered in the school that he had lost a son and wife about the same time, and that the bereavement had been a life-long sorrow to him. The rumour was true in respect of the wife; but the son, though lost, was not dead, and it was his anxiety to know what had become of him that had ploughed ...