I was glad when he died, nor am I ashamed to avow it; and I almost felt contempt for my mother when the poor creature threw herself upon the body in a paroxysm of grief, calling it by those endearing names which indicated a love he had neither requited nor deserved. Had I been so blest as to have met with one to love me as that woman loved my father, I had been a different, and a better, and, perhaps, a good man! "Will you not kiss your poor father, John, and see him for the last time?" said my mother on the morning of the funeral, as she took me by the hand. No; I would not. I was no hypocrite then. It is true I was terrified at the sight of death, but that was not the cause. The manner in which he had repulsed me nearly three years before, had never for a moment departed from my mind. There was not a day on which I did not brood upon it. I have often since recalled it, and with bitterness. I remember it now. My mother had but one relation in the world,--an uncle, possessed of considerable property, who resided near Luton, in Bedfordshire. She applied to him for some small assistance to enable her to pay the funeral expenses of her husband. Mr. Adams--for that was her uncle's name--sent her two guineas, accompanied by a request that she would never apply to, or trouble him again. There was, however, one person who stept forward in this extremity,--Mr. Ward, a tradesman, with whom my mother had formerly lived as a servant, but who had now retired from business. He offered my mother an asylum in his house. She was to be his housekeeper; and he promised to take care of, and one day to provide for, me. It was not long before we were comfortably settled in a small private house in Coppice-row, where, for the first time in my life, I was permitted to ascertain that existence was not altogether made up of sorrow. The old gentleman even conceived a strong liking, it may be called an affection, for me. He had stood godfather to me at my birth; and I believe, had I been his own son, he could not have treated me with more tenderness. He sent me to school, and was delighted at the progress I made, or appeared to make, which he protested was scarcely less than wonderful; a notion which the tutor was, of course, not slow to encourage and confirm. He predicted that I should inevitably make a bright man, and become a worthy member of society; the highest distinction, in the old gentleman's opinion, at which any human being could arrive. Alas! woe to the child of whom favourable predictions are hazarded! There never yet, I think, was an instance in which they were not falsified.