My pen would fain linger over the portrait of this sainted man, which is
the fairest and most benign in the whole gallery of my youth, but I must
turn to another subject,--to the cloud which began to shadow my life at
my tenth year, and which still shadows it to-day. For the first six or
seven years of their married life my father and mother were, I believe,
wholly and unaffectedly happy. When I think of them now, I think of them
only as they were during that time, and wonder how many of the married
people about me could say as much. Their means were small, and they lived
a quiet life, which had few luxuries. But as time went on, my father
began to chafe at the petty economies which the smallness of their income
rendered necessary. He had been bred amid the luxuries of a great estate,
where the house was open to every passer-by, and it vexed him that he
could not now show the same wide hospitality. I think he yet had hopes of
succeeding to his father's estate, out of which, indeed, there was no law
in Virginia to keep him should he choose to claim it. Whatever his
thoughts may have been, he grew gradually to live beyond his means, and
as the years passed, he had recourse to the cards and dice in the hope,
no doubt, of recouping his vanishing fortune. It was true then, as it is
true now and always will be true, that the man who gambles because he
needs the money is sure to lose, and affairs went from bad to worse until
the final disaster came.

It was just after my tenth birthday. My mother and I were sitting
together on the broad porch which overlooked the river. She had been
reading to me from the Bible,--the parable of the talents,--in which and
in the kind advice of Parson Fontaine she found her only comfort in the
anxious days which had gone before, and which I knew nothing of. But the
lengthening shadows finally fell across the page, and she closed the book
and held it on her knee, while she talked to me about my lessons and a
ramble we had planned for the morrow. The red of the sunset still