He was particularly
fond
of boys. Ragged street arabs and rough sailor-lads crowded about
him.
They were made free of his house and garden; they visited him in
the
evenings for lessons and advice; he helped them, found them
employment,
corresponded with them when they went out into the world. They
were, he said, his Wangs. It was only by a singular austerity of
living that he was able to afford such a variety of charitable
expenses. The easy luxuries of his class and station were unknown
to him: his clothes verged upon the shabby; and his frugal meals
were eaten at a table with a drawer, into which the loaf and
plate were quickly swept at the approach of his poor visitors.
Special occasions demanded special sacrifices. When, during the
Lancashire famine, a public subscription was opened, finding
that he had no ready money, he remembered his Chinese medal,
and, after effacing the inscription, dispatched it as an
anonymous gift.
Except for his boys and his paupers, he lived alone. In his
solitude, he ruminated upon the mysteries of the universe; and
those religious tendencies, which had already shown themselves,
now became a fixed and dominating factor in his life. His reading
was confined almost entirely to the Bible; but the Bible he read
and re-read with an untiring, unending assiduity.
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