When in the summer Sunday afternoon, he rambled on the pleasant surface of the earth, in the fresh open air, with his brother and sister, and felt the warm sunshine, and saw the golden corn, and the lazy cattle, and the trout leaping in the pool; and heard little fidgety birds with very big voices, singing with all their might to tell how happy they were; he felt that He who is great is also good.--that He who has all power has boundless mercy too. But ignorance and evil companions very often led poor William astray; and when temptations pulled one way and his good instincts another, it sometimes ended that he would poach, and drink, and fight as much as any of them, and prove very sore and penitent the next morning. John Short was what is called “a good kind of man,” with few of the faults or virtues of his brother-in-law. He was quiet, industrious, and a good husband, but of a weakly constitution, and not much character or peculiarity one way or the other. Ever since their first quarrel these two had continued in hearty favour and good-will one towards the other. And this friendship helped them through many a pinch, and cheered many a rough day. It would be needless to follow the miners all through their voyage,--to tell at length how they wondered that the sea could be so wide and the world so large,--how the sun, as they went westward, seemed to travel so much faster--and that, in spite of all they could do, their great fat watches could not keep up with him;--and how a great storm arose, and blew for three whole days and nights in their teeth, and raised up monstrous waves to drive the vessel back;--then how the calm came, and the sails, wet with the heavy dews, hung idly on the spars, like Polly’s washing on the lines in the back-yard at home. After many weeks they touched at Rio Janeiro, when they went ashore for a little while to stretch their limbs. They were astonished at all they saw--the vast fleet of ships, the busy quays, the crowds of strange-looking brown people, who were dressed like the man they had seen in the play long ago at Penzance fair, and the queer way they all talked, so that our friends could not understand a word they said; and the priests with loose robes and comical hats, who made them wonder if there were a parliament at Rio, for it would be surely blown up; mules larger than horses, with coats as smooth as satin; and above all, they were astonished at seeing a crowd of very ugly black people chained hand to hand in one of the squares, tethered for all the world like sheep on the market-green at home. They were fairly bewildered; and when they got on board again they agreed that they could not attend to digging, even for gold itself, if Peru were half so foreign a looking place as that.