Henry, at this time, promised to have in him a strange mixture of the dispositions both of his father and mother; or, in other words, of evil and good. The evil certainly did predominate; yet, had a careful hand early separated the seeds, cultivated the good, and cast out the bad, this ill-fated child might have been saved from perdition; or had he, with all his faults, been supplied with that only unerring standard of right, the practical application of sacred truths to moral obligations, even in after-life there might have been hope; but his father, as we have said, had no religion: he daily scoffed at whatever was most sacred, purposely to insult the feelings of his wife, and this before his child. One morning, he found Maria with the Bible before her, and Henry on her knee. He looked at them for a moment; then taking the child by the shoulder, he raised one foot level with the hand in which he held him, and kicked him, in a contemptuous manner, as he swung him to the middle of the floor, saying, that such a mammy's brat ought to have been a girl. Mrs. St. Aubin ran to raise the child from the ground. St. Aubin snatched up the sacred volume, open as it lay, and flung it after her, telling her, in a voice of thunder, that she was a psalm-singing fool, and ordering her not to cram the boy's head with any of her cursed nonsense. Indeed, in his calmest and best disposed moods, "You are a fool, Mrs. St. Aubin!" was his usual remark on any thing his wife ventured to say or do. Mrs. St. Aubin having ascertained that the child was not hurt, took up the book, arranged its ruffled leaves in silence, and laid it with reverence on the table. Her husband viewed her with a malicious grin till her task was completed; then, walking up to the table, he opened the treasury of sacred knowledge, and deliberately tore out every leaf, flinging them, now on one side, now on the other, to each far corner of the apartment; then striding towards the fire-place, he planted himself on the hearth, with his back to the chimney, his legs spread in the attitude of a colossal statue, the tails of his coat turned apart under his arms, and his hands in his side-pockets. "Now," he said, looking at his wife, "pick them up!--pick them up! pick them up!" he continued, till all were collected. Mrs. St. Aubin was about to place the sheets within their vacant cover on the table; but, with a stamp of his foot, which made every article of furniture in the room shake, and brought a picture that hung against the wall, on its face to the floor, he commanded her to put them in the fire. She hesitated; when seizing her arm, he shook it over the flames, till the paper taking fire, she was compelled to loose her hold.