Stories for the Young; Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. — John Shaqi
Stories for the Young; Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI.More, Hannah
Religion
Stories for the Young; Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI.
More, Hannah
Christian life -- Juvenile fiction; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction
Giles' dying groans confirmed the sad account Weston had just given.
The poor wretch could neither pray himself, nor attend to the
minister. He could only cry out, "Oh, sir, what will become of me? I
don't know how to repent. O my poor wicked children! Sir, I have bred
them all up in sin and ignorance. Have mercy on them, sir; let me not
meet them in the place of torment to which I am going. Lord, grant
them that time for repentance which I have thrown away!" He languished
a few days, and died in great misery--a fresh and sad instance, that
people who abuse the grace of God, and resist his Spirit, find it
difficult to repent when they will.
Except the minister and Jack Western, no one came to see poor Giles,
besides Tommy Price, who had been so sadly wronged by him. Tom often
brought him his own rice and milk or apple-dumpling; and Giles,
ignorant and depraved as he was, often cried out that "he thought now
there must be some truth in religion, since it taught even a boy to
_deny himself_, and _to forgive an injury_." Mr. Wilson, the next
Sunday, made a moving discourse on the danger of what are called
"petty offences." This, together with the awful death of Giles,
produced such an effect, that no poacher has been able to show his
head in that parish ever since.
PART III.
TAWNEY RACHEL;
OR, THE FORTUNE-TELLER. WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF DREAMS, OMENS,
AND CONJURERS
BY HANNAH MORE.
Tawney Rachel was the wife of poaching Giles. There seemed to be a
conspiracy in Giles' whole family to maintain themselves by tricks and
pilfering. Regular labor and honest industry did not suit their idle
habits. They had a sort of genius at finding out every unlawful means
to support a vagabond life. Rachel travelled the country with a basket
on her arm. She pretended to get her bread by selling laces,
cabbage-nets, ballads, and history-books, and used to buy old rags and
rabbit skins. Many honest people trade in these things, and I am sure
I do not mean to say a word against honest people, let them trade in
what they will. But Rachel only made this traffic a pretence for
getting admittance into farmers' kitchens, in order to tell fortunes.
She was continually practising on the credulity of silly girls; and
took advantage of their ignorance to cheat and deceive them. Many an
innocent servant has she caused to be suspected of a robbery, while
she herself, perhaps, was in league with the thief. Many a harmless
maid has she brought to ruin by contriving plots and events herself,
and then pretending to foretell them. She had not, to be sure, the
power of really foretelling things, because she had no power of seeing
into futurity; but she had the art sometimes to bring them about
according as she had foretold them. So she got that credit for her
wisdom which really belonged to her wickedness.
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