"Go and work, and make money, I say. I tell you I must get money; right or wrong, I must get it; there's no living longer, and enduring what I've endured. I dream of being rich; I waken every morning from visions where my hands are filled with money; that wakening turns my head, when I know and see there is not a halfpenny in the house, and when I see you, my son, sitting there, working like a fool with pen and brain, but without the power to earn a penny for me. Go out and work with your hands, I say again, and let me get money--do any thing, if it brings money. There is the old woman over the way, who has a working son; his mother may bless God that he is a shoemaker and not a poet; she is the happy woman, so cozily covered with warm flannel and stuff this weary weather, and her mutton, and her tea, and her money jingling in her pocket forever; that's what a working son can do--a shoemaker can do that." At this some noise in the kitchen called Mrs. Carson away, to the great relief of Andrew. He rose, and closed the door gently after her. He seated himself again, and took up his pen, but his head fell listlessly on his hand; he felt as if his mother's words were yet echoing in his ears. From his earliest infancy he had regarded her with fear and wonder, more than love. Mrs. Carson was the daughter of a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman, who was suspected by his brethren in the ministry of entertaining peculiar views of religion on some points, and also of being at intervals rather unsound in his mind. He bestowed, however, a superior education on his only daughter, and instructed her carefully himself until his death, which occurred when she was not more than fourteen. As her father left her little if any support, she was under the necessity of going to reside with relations in Ireland, who moved in a rather humble rank. Of her subsequent history little was known to Andrew; she always maintained silence regarding his father, and seemed angry when he ventured to question her. Andrew was born in Ireland, and resided there until about his eighth year, when his mother returned to Scotland.