Stephen was a weakly child, and his mother, a quiet timid woman, would fain have kept him at home, and herself attended to his education until he should be old enough to be sent to some school down in the country; but his father would not hear of it, and in his own house his will was law. Accordingly, at the earliest possible age, he was sent to St. Paul’s School, a timid, shrinking child, and among the rough spirits there he fared but badly. Cowed and kept down at home, bullied and laughed at at school, Stephen Walker grew up a nervous delicate boy. When he was fifteen his father said that he knew enough now, or if he did not he ought to, and that so he was to come into the shop. Into the shop he accordingly came, and when there his life was a burden to him. His mother, who would have softened things for him as far as she could, and would at all events have been kind to him, and have commiserated with and cheered him, had been dead some three years, and his life became one long blank of misery. He hated the shop, he hated business, he almost hated his father. Heartily did he envy his associates in the shop, who at least, when the day’s work was over, could take their departure and be their own masters until the shutters were taken down in the morning. His drudgery never ceased, for when the shop was closed, his father, a great part of whose daytime was occupied by City business, would sit down with him at his desk and go into the whole accounts of the day’s sales until half-past nine. Then upstairs, where the servants would be summoned, and his father take his place at the head of the table with a large Bible before him, which he would read and expound in a stern harsh manner, eminently calculated to make the Scriptures altogether hateful to those who heard him. This with prayer lasted for an hour. Then to bed; to begin over again in the morning. Such was Stephen Walker’s life for six years; and then, when he was twenty-one, his father died suddenly. It was just in time to save his son’s life; in another year it might have been too late, for his health was breaking fast; as it was, it was too late for him ever to become other than he was, a nervous timid man.