“As you please,” said he, smiling, “it will at least do no harm there; nor, I believe, would it do any, if you were to put it into practice! But to go on with my long story. My mother,—sir, I do not know how I shall get on now. I feel a rising in my throat at the recollection of her very name; and though she has been dead and gone many a long year, yet every thing that she said, and every thing that she did—her quiet smile—her linsey-woolsey petticoat—her silver shoe-buckles—her smooth gray hair turned back in a roll over her calm forehead—her soft voice, making the broad Cumberland dialect sweeter, even to the ear of a stranger, than the richest music—her patience in pain—her unchanging kindness to me in all my wayward moods and fits of passion—her regularity in all her devotions, public and private, come at this moment as fresh into my mind, as if she were sitting now in the corner of my little dwelling in Salford, instead of sleeping as she has done for many a long year, quietly and peaceably, in the south-east corner of Hawkshead church-yard. There is no stone over her grave; but I could find it blind-fold even now, though it is many a day since I have stood beside it—and it concerns no one else to know where it is but myself. I sometimes wish to be buried beside her—but what does it signify? we could not know each other in the grave—we _shall_ know each other, with joy _shall_ meet again hereafter!” There was a passionate earnestness in the old man’s manner as he uttered these last words, which differed strongly from the general quiet tone of his narrative. I kept silence when he paused, out of respect for his feelings, and waited for the return of his wonted calmness, which he was not long in regaining.