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Without being near enough to hear connected sentences, James was satisfied that the Captain was endeavoring to impress on the mind of his listener the great riches of salvation, and to induce him, a poor, lost and guilty being, to make them his.

James would not interrupt the scene. He was about to withdraw, when he was overwhelmed with the sight of those men, whom he had known as hardened in sin, violent in temper, and personally hateful to each other, kneeling down together as if in the attitude of prayer!

Silently withdrawing to the edge of the wood, he there waited ten or fifteen minutes till Captain Bunce came up with his bundle of twigs, when the two passed on to the cottage, James remarking an unusual expression of seriousness and truth resting on the countenance of his old master.

It indeed seemed almost too good to be true, that one whose course of life had been so misdirected and violent as that of Captain Bunce, should be led in his advancing years to honor, by his faith and repentance, the cross of Christ. But is it not of the lost and guilty among men the followers of the Lamb are to be chosen? Was he too guilty to repent and too old in sin to show his faith? Might we not expect of his class larger numbers would be gathered into the fold, and be found the most laborious and serviceable of disciples? Yea, verily, for says the Son of God, "Go ye rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. * * * I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
MRS. E. FLUSH argues for the Sacred Scriptures vs. the righteous poor. It is well to let the Scriptures interpret themselves on some questions; when we interpret them, it is very often to favor our cause. But if you are in want of a good, sagacious interpreter of Holy Writ, send for Emeline Flush.

AMONG the inmates of the poor-house, we have spoken of Joshua Hicks, an aged, bed-ridden pauper. His life had been one of great vicissitude and some suffering. He was a native of Crampton, and of a highly educated and respectable family. When a boy he was regarded as the best mathematician in the schools of the town. At twenty-one he was formally voted as the town surveyor. Nearly all the early surveys of land in that town had been made or re-examined by him during a period of forty years. His disposition inclining him to see foreign parts, he had several times made voyages to sea, as circumstances favored it, and had twice been round the world. He had made large collections of shells and minerals and plants, from the different places and parts of the world visited, the Pacific Islands, the Mediterranean, its Asiatic and African coasts, Capes Horn and Good Hope, India and Japan, the Coasts of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, the distant waters of the Black Sea. Thrice he was shipwrecked. The plague seized him in the East, and he nearly lost his life. He was never long at a time, over three or five years, it is certain, absent from home. He was never married, but when he was thirty years of age, a young lady died to whom he was engaged, and caused him his first and deepest earthly sorrow. Within the next ten years, his father and mother died, and his only brother. Engaging in mercantile pursuits, he was burnt out and lost his property. When sixty years of age he removed to another State and continued there four years, but returned to Crampton, where he followed the business of surveying till he was seventy-five, and was fined during that period sixty-seven dollars for bringing into the town a pauper. (17) Soon after he was seventy-five years of age, he became very ill and lost the use of one of his limbs. His general strength also failed him, and having no relations within the proper legal boundaries to afford him aid, he was partially supported by the town till his eighty-fifth year. (18) After this he became a pauper in re. Slowly but surely the surveying and voyaging of Joshua Hicks brought him round to the narrow limits of life at the poor-house.

(18) Father, mother, grandfather or grandmother, brother or Bister, children or grandchildren.

Sam White, the poor shoemaker -- yes, what of him? He was not a native of Crampton, but acquired a settlement there -- so it was finally decided, a suit at law having arisen on the question whether he belonged to Crampton or to Oakville, his native town, or to Haretown, where he had also lived.

It was proved, however, that he lost his residence in Oakville, never truly had one in Haretown, and just gained it by only one week in Crampton. But for this, he would have become a State pauper. (19)

In Haretown he resided a part of ten years. But he also resided in three other towns a portion of the same ten years, never long enough to acquire a title to the support of either town. Once, it is true, he owned a piece of real estate in Haretown, paid taxes on it and voted. But the amount was not enough to answer the law, as it was proved on trial. (20)