Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Vol. 2 (of 2)

munities, and so relieve the afflicted in a mass; besides a thousand others which were designed to bestow upon the poor and vicious that virtuous knowledge and those virtuous principles, which are better than alms of gold and silver. I instituted some half a dozen charitable societies, to supply fuel, clothing, food, and employment to the suffering poor; as well as others to exhort them to economy, ind

ion in their habits and feelings; and I took uncommon pains to scatter light and sentiments of a civilized characte

y. For myself, verily, if they were not comely in my sight, nor agreeable to my nostrils, I said, "Heaven hath made them so;" and although my nephew Jonathan insisted that Heaven had done the same thing with other animals, and that, upon my principles, men should be as affectionate with pigs and

one his dinner, snaps, for his dessert, at the feeder's heel. It is as the tender flowers, which, in the winter-time, a man taketh from the cold, to warm, by night, in his chamber, and which smother him with foul air before morning. Verily, it was my lot to find, even as my nephew Jonathan had once foolishly contended, that even philanthropy is not secure from the sting of unthankfulness-that benevolence is, in one sense, the great parent of ingratitude-since it b

aunt with me, seeing that misery doth there greatly abound, I fell upon a man whom the magistrate was about to commit to jail, for being d

him back to his rejoicing family. I said to myself-"This very night will I witness the happiness I have created." I went accordingly to the man's house, where I found the wicked fellow raving with drink, and beating his wife as before, his children screaming with terror, and the neighbours crying out for a constable. I did but say a word of reprehension to him, when the brutish ingrate, leavi

made the poor man mad. Therefore lock him u

s to pay over to the clerk the hundred dollars in which t

t I should pay the money; for th

e should have to pay it. But pay it thee must, the man having broken the peace a

good even to the man's poor family, since it exposed them a second time to his fury, costing

nfortunate accident. For, having prospered in his business, and I requiring that he should now repay the money, that I might devote it to the service of others, he very impudently averred that he had never had any thing of me, except advic

by others of a still deeper die, and so num

d bespatter me with mud-balls from head to foot, they fell upon me, and, being very numerous, did actually roll me about in a gutter, where was a deep slough, so that I had nearly perished with suffocation, being sorely bruised into the bargain. To crown all, having expelled from my school the ringleaders in this marvellous outbreaking of precocious ingratitude, I was v

, they would greatly benefit themselves, and the community too, by going, two thirds of them at least, into service, there being ever a great want of domestics in our respectable families. I say, I did but hint this reasonable and undeniable truth, together with a friendly remark upon the exposed state of their morals, when there arose such a storm among them as was never perhaps witnessed by any other human being. "Hear the old hunks!" said one: "he wants to make niggur servants of us! us, that is freeborn American girls!"-"Yes, ladies!" said another, "and he is insinivating we are no better nor we should be!"-"Turn the old ri