Caleb in the Country

Chapter 36: Milner & Sowerby, Printers, Halifax.

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About This Book

A recovering city boy spends the summer with his grandmother in the countryside, and a sequence of episodic chapters traces his practical play, small adventures, and moral instruction. He helps other children with engineering tasks such as building a mole across a brook, takes part in outings and a cart ride, faces household incidents including a fire, and meets instructive local figures whose stories prompt reflection. The narrative mixes everyday detail, hands-on demonstrations, and short didactic tales to teach responsibility, industry, and piety, and closes with moral verse intended to reinforce evangelical principles and cultivate judgment and virtuous habits.

Weep not, my child, weep not for me,
Though heavy is the stroke,
And thou must early learn indeed
To bear affliction's yoke.
Yet weep not, for you all have heard,
Oft from these lips, in health,
How Death will often snatch away
Mothers by mystic stealth.
How often, when within the home
The sun of joy doth glow,
Some deed of his insidious hand
Will fill that home with woe.

But when thy mother far has soared
To regions all divine,
A livelier voice, my precious one,
Shall speak to thee, than mine.
Weep not for me—all tears remove—
I die without a fear;
My God, to whom you are assigned,
Your early prayers shall hear.
When twilight opes the dappled morn,
And clothes the east in grey,
When sunbeams deck the west at eve,
Oh then, beloved one—Pray.

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