PAGE 24
The Maiden’s Error
by
In a few days after, Mrs. Warburton found her boy, who, much to her satisfaction, had a good place, with which he was pleased, and was learning a good trade. She was now fairly started again, and as her spirits revived, her health became much improved. Month after month passed away, and brought with it new sources of comfort, new causes for satisfaction. Of her husband, she now thought with no affection. It is true, earlier feelings would sometimes return, but with no force, and after moving the waters of her quiet spirit for a moment, would tremble into rest.
When a man once extinguishes his own self-respect, he is a burden to society. But when a husband and father descends so low, he becomes a curse to his family. After abusing them, and making their condition so wretched that even he cannot share it, he will forsake the wife of his bosom and the children of his early love, and leave them to the tender mercies of strangers. But let the mother gather her little ones around her, and by toiling early and late, make their condition comfortable, and the brutalized wretch will return and consume the food of his children, and abuse them if they complain.
A year had passed away, when early one evening in the fall of the year, a man pushed open the door of the room she occupied, and with a “well Julia,” took a chair, and made himself at home without further ceremony. Though dirty and ragged, with a beard of a week’s growth, and half drunk, Mrs. Warburton could not mistake the form of her wretched husband.
“O, husband! can this be you?”
“Yes, Julia, this is me. I’ve come back at last. I’ve tried hard to make something for you and the children, but it is no use, fate is against me; so here I am again, poor as ever. But give me something to eat, for I’m hungry as a badger.”
Six years had passed away since Warburton had returned, and the wretchedness which had been with him in his absence, he brought as an abiding guest to the dwelling of his wife. During that time, she had endured sickness, hunger, abuse, and been nigh unto death; but through it all she had come with a heart still unsubdued, though almost broken. For her children’s sakes, two more of whom had been added in that time, she had stood up and breasted the storm.
At last, her miserable husband, sunk in the lowest depths of drunkenness and degradation, died, as he had lived. It was the dawn of a brighter day for Mrs. Warburton when the spirit of her husband took its flight to the world of spirits. Her son was nearly free from his trade, and her oldest girl could assist her greatly in the house, as well as by earning something for their support.
Content and health having taken up their abode with her, we will leave her to fill up her allotted space in life unobtrusively and peacefully. The story of Mrs. Warburton has been introduced as another illustration of the ill effects which so often arise from the want of watchfulness on the part of parents, in regard to the characters of the young men who are allowed to visit and play upon the affections of their daughters. It also shows how unconquerable is a mother’s love. Here a weak, foolish girl, by strong trial, becomes a woman with a strength of mind that nothing can subdue, and, as a mother, overcomes difficulties from which most men would shrink in despair.