Stories and Poems

THE RESCUED BRAND By Rev. William J. R. Taylor. Early in the spring of 1847, I was called to visit an aged man who was very sick. Some time previous, having heard of his illness, I had offered to visit him, but was advised to wait until his own consent should be procured; for he had declined any conversation relative to his eternal prospects. Two or three weeks elapsed, when at his own desire I went to see him at the house of his son, with whom he resided. Before entering the sick room, a worthy female friend, who was...

THE FOOLS' PENCE by Rev. Charles B. Tayler. HAVE you ever seen a London gin-shop? There is, perhaps, no statelier shop in the magnificent chief city of England. No expense seems to be spared in the building and the furnishing of a gin-shop. Not many years ago a gin-shop was a mean-looking, and by no means a spacious place, with a few small bottles, not bigger than a doctor's largest vials, in the dusty window. But now, however poor many of the working classes may be, it seems to be their pleasure to squander their little remaining money upon a...

Published in Charles Dicken's Household Words, March 19, 1859. THE LUCKY LEG by Hesba Stretton "What unaccountable things people do in the way of marrying!" I said to four or five of the ladies belonging to our chapel, who had met at the minister's house, to form a sort of supplementary Doreas meeting; and, as there were so few of us, we considered it unnecessary to attend to the rule for appointing a reader, and forbidding gossip; a rule which considerably lessened the interest and popularity of our meetings. The only single lady among us looked up upon hearing my...

GIPSY GLIMPSES By Hesba Stretton Published in All The Year Round, May 8, 1869. The writer, going down to spend last Christmas in one of the midland counties, soon heard that a portion of a true gipsy tribe had encamped in the town, on a spare bit of land usually occupied by travelling circuses and similar troups of performers. They received visitors into their ground at the small charge of threepence each, with the hope of extracting larger sums by coaxing, flattery, or fortune-telling. It was Christmas Eve when we went to see them. It had been the weekly market-day,...

ABOARD AN EMIGRANT SHIP by Hesba Stretton Published in All The Year Round, April 12, 1862. Some families are born emigrants; they inherit the propensity to rove as they inherit an ancestral brow, or an hereditary nose. The old proverb, "A rolling stone gathers no moss," has no terrors for them. They see neither use nor beauty in a stone whose surface is moss and mouldiness. If the vagrant tendency be merged for one generation in a few quiet domesticated women wedded to steady stationary irremovable husbands, it bursts forth again in their sons, who can no more settle down to...