At this juncture he calls his family together and
asks for their mind as to whether they should now furnish the
parlour with their savings or retain them for the help of these
black settlers who require clothes and other equipment as they
start their new life of independence. The blood of the Browns
flows as one stream, and the ready response of all is 'Save the
money, father.'
His favourite books were well known by the children--JOSEPHUS,
Plutarch's LIVES, NAPOLEON AND HIS MARSHALS, LIFE OF OLIVER
CROMWELL, Baxter's SAINTS' REST, Bunyan's PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, and
Henry ON MEEKNESS. What a significant medley of peace and war--
the wolf and the lamb--Napoleon and Henry on Meekness side by
side! But dearest ever was the Book which had been the oracle in
his father's house--itself the Book of battles and yet the gospel
of peace, the sacred charter of man's liberties and yet the holy
statute book for man's government--the Bible. Swift paternal
correction was there for any misquotation from that Book; it was
a Book not to be lightly paraphrased, but LEARNED AND OBEYED. In
his own Bible there are pencillings that reveal at once the
secret springs of his strange, and to outward seeming, erratic
life.
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