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far from land, and he was left alone, to win or lose in the game of life. After remaining eight weeks in New York city, he started with the family for Western New York. During his stay at this place, he became the subject of serious religious impressions, and joined the Methodist Episcopal church. Not thinking that he was doing well enough here, however, in two years, with the permission of his father, he left for New York. Here he apprenticed himself to learn the book-binding business, for two and onequarter dollars per week, boarding himself. While here he was under very good influences, and united with the church in Allen-street. Circumstances afterward occurred, under which, he decided to leave that place for another, in which he was more exposed to temptation. Being still successful in saving a little, he sent for his friends to join him, from England, and after a time he was informed of the arrival of his mother and sister, whom he found, and together they engaged rooms and went to house-keeping. In the following winter they were reduced to the lowest degree of poverty, so as to suffer for the necessaries of life. He mentions with much gratitude the circumstances that some kind stranger gave him a threepenny loaf of bread, when in great want, and says that he went to the neighboring country to pick up fuel for their use, notwithstanding which they suf fered severely from the cold.

In the spring of 1831, following, work improved, and their circumstances were relieved; still they occupied but one room, close beneath a hot roof, and their condition was deplorable. In the succeeding hot season he lost his mother, and he gives the history of that event in the following touching language:

"And now comes one of the most terrible events of my life, an event which almost bowed me to the dust. The summer of 1834 was exceedingly hot; and as our room was immediately under the roof, and had but one small window in it, the heat was almost intolerable, and my mother suffered much from this cause. On the 8th of July, a day more than unusually warm, she complained of debility, but as she had before suffered from weakness, I was not apprehensive of danger, and saying I would go and bathe, asked her to provide me some rice and milk against seven or eight o'clock, when I should return. That day my spirits were unusually exuberant. I laughed and sung with my young companions, as if not a cloud was to be seen in all my sky, when one was then gathering which was shortly to burst in fatal thunder over my head. About eight o'clock I returned home, and was going up the steps, whistling as I went, when my sister met me at the threshold, and seizing me by the hand, exclaimed, 'John, mother's dead!' What I did, what I said, I cannot remember; but they told me afterward, I grasped my sister's arm, laughed frantically in her face, and then for some minutes seemed stunned by the dreadful intelligence. As soon as they permitted me, I visited our garret, now a chamber of death, and

there, on the floor, lay all that remained of her whom I had loved so well, and who had been a friend when all others had forsaken me. There she lay, with her face tied up with a handkerchief:

'By foreign hands her aged eyes were closed;

By foreign hands her decent limbs composed."

"Oh, how vividly came then to my mind, as I took her cold hand in mine and gazed earnestly in her quiet face, all her meek, enduring love, her uncomplaining spirit, her devotedness to her husband and children. All was now over; and yet, as through the livelong night I sat at her side, a solitary watcher by the dead, I felt somewhat resigned at the dispensation of Providence, that she was taken from the 'evil to come.'

The burial, too, he thus eloquently describes:

"There was no 'pomp and circumstance' about that humble funeral; but never went a mortal to the grave who had been more truly loved, and was then more sincerely lamented, than the silent traveler toward Potter's Field, the place of her interment. Only two lacerated and bleeding hearts mourned for her; but as the almost unnoticed procession passed through the streets, tears of more genuine sorrow were shed than frequently fall, when

'Some proud child of earth returns to dust.

"We soon reached the burying-ground. In the same cart with my mother was another mortal whose spirit had put on immortality. A little child's coffin lay beside that of her who had been a sorrowful pilgrim for many years, and both now

were about to lie side by side in the narrow house. When the infant's coffin was taken from the cart, my sister burst into tears, and the driver, a rough-looking fellow, with a kindness of manner that touched us, remarked to her, 'Poor thing, 'tis better off where 'tis.' I undeceived him in his idea as to this supposed relationship of the child, and informed him that it was not the child, but our mother for whom we mourned. My mother's coffin was then taken out and placed in a trench, and a little dirt was thinly sprinkled on it. So was she buried."

Nature had given to Mr. Gough a good musical voice, and considerable mimicking powers, which his companions now began to discover. Indeed, we may say, that from this time onward, his course was steadily down, down to the lowest depth of degradation in drunkenness. Habits of dissipation were steadily growing upon him, and though he received good wages, yet he squandered them in low company amid scenes of bacchanalian revelry. He now commenced performing the lower parts in comedies, at the Franklin theater, and singing comic songs, for which his talents fitted him admirably. About this time his employer was burnt out in New York, and Gough lost most of his clothes and movables. His employer proposed moving to Rhode Island, and invited Gough to go with him, which invitation he accepted. Soon after the removal he became acquainted with a company of actors from Providence, by whose request he became one of their number.

In this business his ventriloquial powers were called into action, and for a while he gave himself up to the stage almost entirely. His anticipations were soon after again doomed to disappointment through a failure in his remuneration.

After wandering about some time in a wretched condition, he obtained a situation as a comedian for a theater in Boston. This occupation he followed until the theater closed in 1837, when, as he says, he "was thrown, like a foot-ball, upon the world's great highway." Through the assistance of a kind woman he obtained decent board, and again was furnished employment at his old trade. All this he continued till he was a little more than twenty years of age, when his appearance became so shabby that his employer turned him out of work. Hearing, however, of a situation in Newburyport, he pushed for it with all haste, and for a time tried successfully to abstain from liquor; but the evil demon still followed him, and forming acquaintances with the members of an engine company, his old habits were resumed, and he became worse than ever. His case now seemed utterly hopeless, and work failing, he started on a coasting excursion in a fishing smack, when in a storm he nearly lost his life. Preserved by a change of weather almost miraculous, he narrowly escaped drowning a second time, by the hoisting of a small boat on board of the vessel, in the bottom of which

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