From time to time, Mr. Williamson was in the habit of taking a quantity
of their chief export, fish, to H----, and obtaining, in lieu of it,
plentiful supplies of food and clothing; and, what his wife and daughter
had prized more than all, in returning from his last voyage, he had
brought with him a few school-books, with some entertaining works, and
several volumes of interesting and evangelical sermons.
Mrs. Williamson, who was the daughter of a small farmer, had, in her
youth, received the elements of a good English education. She could read
with tolerable fluency, and had taught her children this important
branch; but though, when a child, she had learned to write, want of
practice and varied duties connected with her toilsome condition, had
almost erased the power from memory; and it was with deep regret at her
own neglect, that she found her children growing up as ignorant, as
herself, of the power of communicating their thoughts through the medium
of the pen. It was, therefore, with no small delight, that she had
hailed Agnes's welcome offer; and as she sat, evening after evening, in
her corner by the fireside, apparently busily engaged in knitting, but,
in reality, an attentive listener to the instruction Agnes was imparting
to the young people,--or as she mingled her tones with theirs who, on
the Sabbath, warbled, from hearts attuned to devotion, those melodies
that had been familiar to her from childhood,--again and again, would
memory revert to the happy days of her infancy and youth, when with
beloved parents and friends she had gone up to the house of God, and
while a tear of sorrow and penitence would steal down her cheeks, to
think how much of the instructions, then received, had been forgotten,
she blessed the Parental Hand that had placed beneath her roof, one so
fitted to counsel and comfort, to prove to her, as well as to many
others, a ministering angel indeed.
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