Christian life -- Juvenile fiction; Family -- Juvenile fiction
"From England he went abroad, and visited the prisons on the Continent,
devoting his time and fortune to the great work of discovering, and, as
far as might be, remedying, the abuses he found in these sad places of
misery and often cruelty; and though he was introduced to the noble and
the great wherever he went, he paid no visits of mere ceremony, but
spoke out most fearlessly, even to the most exalted in rank, about the
abuses he found in the prisons under their control. He had set himself
one great work to do, and he did it. Suffering, toil, hardship were
endured without a murmur. Ah! was not this true heroism?
"And now I come to a point which I want you, dear Walter, specially to
notice. Howard might have spent a portion at least of his time when
abroad in visiting the beautiful picture-galleries and other works of
art in the towns to which his great work led him, but he never suffered
himself to do so. He would not even read a newspaper, lest it should
divert his thoughts from the one great purpose he had in view. I am not
saying for a moment that he would have been wrong to indulge himself
with relaxation in the shape of sight-seeing and reading the news; but
surely when he made everything bend to his one grand self-imposed duty,
we are constrained to admire and not to blame, far less to ridicule, his
magnificent heroism. Yes; he never swerved, he never drew back; and,
best of all, he did his work as a humble and earnest Christian, carrying
it on by that strength and wisdom which he sought and obtained by
prayer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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