Читать книгу Bruno - Abbott Jacob - Страница 7

Emigrant going alone.

Sometimes, when a man is intending to emigrate to America, he goes first himself alone, in order to see the country, and choose a place to live in, and buy a farm, intending afterward to come back for his family. He does not take them with him at first, for he does not know what he should do with his wife and all his young children while he is traveling from place to place to view the land.

When the emigrant goes first alone in this way, leaving his family at home, the parting is very sorrowful. His poor wife is almost broken-hearted. She gathers her little children around her, and clasps them in her arms, fearing that some mischief may befall their father when he is far away, and that they may never see him again. The man attempts to comfort her by saying that it will not be long before he comes back, and that then they shall never more be separated. His oldest boy stands holding his father’s staff, and almost wishing that he was going to accompany him. He turns away his face to hide his tears. As for the dog, he sees that his master is going away, and he is very earnestly desirous to go too. In fact, they know he

would go if he were left at liberty, and so they chain him to a post to keep him at home.

A sorrowful parting.

It is a hard thing for a wife and a mother that her husband should thus go away and leave her, to make so long a voyage, and to encounter so many difficulties and dangers, knowing, as she does, that it is uncertain whether he will ever live to return. She bears the pain of this parting out of love to her children. She thinks that their father will find some better and happier home for them in the New World, where they can live in greater plenty, and where, when they grow up, and become men and women, they will be better provided for than they were in their native land.

The ship. The emigrants.

In the distance, in the engraving, we see the ship in which this man is going to sail. We see a company of emigrants, too, down the road, going to embark. There is one child walking alone behind her father and mother, who seems too young to set out on such a voyage.