" [Mr. Gales has since died.] Happy at home, the young
mother could as delightedly look without. The business of her husband
throve apace; nor less the general regard and esteem in which he was
personally held. He grew continually in the confidence and affection
of his fellow-citizens; endearing himself especially, by his sober
counsels and his quiet charities, to all that industrious class who
knew him as one of their own, and could look up without reluctance to
a superiority which was only the unpretending one of goodness and
sense. Over them, without seeking it, he gradually obtained an
extraordinary ascendancy, of which the following is a single instance.
Upon some occasion of wages or want among the working-people of
Sheffield, a great popular commotion had burst out, attended by a huge
mob and riot, which the magistracy strove in vain to appease or quell.
When all else had failed, Mr. Gales bethought him of trying what he
could do. Driven into the thick of the crowd, in an open carriage, he
suddenly appeared amongst the rioters, and, by a few plain words of
remonstrance, convinced them that they could only hurt themselves by
overturning the laws, that they should seek other modes of redress,
and meantime had all better go home. They agreed to do so,--but with
the condition annexed, that they should first see him home. Whereupon,
loosening the horses from the carriage, they drew him, with loud
acclamations, back to his house.
Such were his prospects and position for some seven years after his
marriage, when, of a sudden, without any fault of his own, he was made
answerable for a fact that rendered it necessary for him to flee
beyond the realm of Great Britain.
Pages:
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227