With the exception of a very restricted number of hours for sleep, these were the only portions of Sam's existence that could come within the name of relaxation. Some people gave Sam's master the title of a "money-grub;" but Mr. Jonas Straitlace himself modestly laid claim to the character of one who was "diligent in business, fervent in spirit, and——" the reader knows the rest. In brief, he was one of the too numerous description of folk who cast their sour into the sweets of innocent enjoyment on every occasion within their compass, and strive to throw a universal pall over the world by keeping their fellow-creatures in mind that the next life alone is worth a moment's thought,—and yet, daily and hourly illustrate their own gloomy lesson by grasping at the dirt called money as eagerly as if they believed they could carry it with them over the ford of the grave, and that it would be still more current coin in the next life than in this. Strict rates of charge to his customers in an age of competition prevented Straitlace from extending his business; but the consequence was, that he grew more pinching towards himself, and still more towards his apprentice, in allowing the body its proper amount of sustenance, or the general constitution its necessary share of healthful unbending. Sam was pinched in his measure of food, and watched while he ate it, lest the spoon should travel so slowly to his mouth as to prevent his return to labour after the lapse of an appointed number of minutes; he was "alarumed" up at five in winter, and at four in summer, and kept at the bench till eight; and what went down more hardly with Sam than either scant food and sleep, or unceasingly painful toil, was the fact, that his master's vinegared piety overflowed with such zeal for Sam's spiritual welfare as to compel him to spend the remaining time till ten, every working-day evening, in reading one book. Nay, the lad, in spite of the remembrance that every other apprentice in the village was allowed, at least, an hour's holyday-time, each day, would have felt it to be some amelioration of his captive lot, had he been allowed to derive such amusement from the book as it might afford; but Straitlace's zeal for Sam's happiness in the next life, taught him that he must use even this extreme resort to mortify the lad in the present state of existence, and, therefore, Sam must read nothing but the Prophets, in one division of the book, and the Epistles, in the other! Such was the discipline to which Mr. Jonas Straitlace subjected Sam Simkins from the age of nine, when the parish placed the lad under his care, to fifteen. Straitlace had one invariable answer to all who remonstrated with him on the undue severity, the imprisoning strictness, he exercised towards his apprentice:—"Train up a child in the way he should go," he would say, quoting the whole text, "that's a Bible reason for what I do: it doesn't allow me to parley with flesh and blood: I must obey it."