LETTER TWELVE.
London,
My Dear Sister,
We received your last parcel on Friday afternoon, and were both very sorry to hear of poor father's misfortune, and sincerely hope he is now recovering, and that you will be able to inform us in your next that he is quite out of danger. We hope that poor mother is also much better, though we know too surely that her allotted portion in this distressful world will be little else than pain and bitterness. This we know, alas! and have not the power to assuage one single sorrow that oppresses her. But her time here is short. We feel it is so, and that we shall never again behold that careworn countenance, which no transient light but that of the love she felt for her children ever softened into a happy look. Poor dear mother! How good a mother she has been to me! How glad when I have been successful in any little undertaking! How desirous to help me when I have been in any little difficulty! Oh! how happy I have been in that little old home in Moseley-street, after my day's work was done at the brickyard, as I have sat by the fire in my clayey clothes, and she took my hand and held it in her's, and told me parts of Robinson Crusoe to while away the dull hours till you came home from Attsop's. Yes, I was happy then, though dear father was lying in a distant debtor's prison.
Beloved father and mother, I feel as if they were already in their graves. A father and mother bowed down with years of affliction, and steeped in poverty and wretchedness. The very thought seems to make me unhappy for ever, when I know that half the circumference of the globe will shortly lie between us. Farewell, my father and mother, my fond affectionate parents. God Almighty bless them, and provide for their few remaining" years better than I can hope they will be provided for. May they be daily surprised with comforts, and may floods of unexpected joy continually descend into their hearts. Another letter, and another, and perhaps another, and then my next letter will be dated on the blue, wide ocean, where I can have no answer—and then more than a long weary year must pass away before I can hear from you again. Yes, my beloved sister, I shall soon leave you, even as you come to me in your affectionate letters. The very name of Birmingham will no longer meet my eye, except when I unconsciously write it on some part of the ship that bears me over the beaming waters, or on some gloomy tree in the wilderness of Australia. I shall hear no more of Birmingham except from my own tongue, or from my weeping wife's, when we think of those dear friends who live there, and of those angel-infants of our own, who sleep there in their little graves. And when I do hear from you again, will it be of death? Alas! my forebodings are very painful. Still, I hope it will be far otherwise. I hope, though I hope with trembling, that I shall hear of your being happier, far happier, than when I leave you.
If we go alone (and they will not take my brother unless he can pay for his son's passage), the thought of you will be all we shall have to relieve us from our loneliness, and that thought will be mingled with the last of our lives, should we meet with a watery grave.
Your affectionate brother,
P.S.—I suppose we shall be certain to go in the Lady Raffles, March 27th, as Mr. Marshall has promised to take us. She is a very fine ship, 1000 tons burden. Give our sincere love to our parents, and to all.