But it all comes back to me so fresh that I can't help crying sometimes to think I shall never read them again with him." Arthur had never spoken of his home before, and Tom hadn't encouraged him to do so, as his blundering schoolboy reasoning made him think that Arthur would be softened and less manly for thinking of home.

But now he was fairly interested, and forgot all about chisels and bottled beer; while with very little encouragement Arthur launched into his home history, and the prayer-bell put them both out sadly when it rang to call them to the hall.
From this time Arthur constantly spoke of his home, and above all, of his father, who had been dead about a year, and whose memory Tom soon got to love and reverence almost as much as his own son did.
Arthur's father had been the clergyman of a parish in the Midland counties, which had risen into a large town during the war, and upon which the hard years which followed had fallen with fearful weight.

The trade had been half ruined; and then came the old, sad story, of masters reducing their establishments, men turned off and wandering about, hungry and wan in body, and fierce in soul, from the thought of wives and children starving at home, and the last sticks of furniture going to the pawnshop; children taken from school, and lounging about the dirty streets and courts, too listless almost to play, and squalid in rags and misery; and then the fearful struggle between the employers and men--lowerings of wages, strikes, and the long course of oft-repeated crime, ending every now and then with a riot, a fire, and the county yeomanry.

There is no need here to dwell upon such tales: the Englishman into whose soul they have not sunk deep is not worthy the name.

You English boys, for whom this book is meant (God bless your bright faces and kind hearts!), will learn it all soon enough.
Into such a parish and state of society Arthur's father had been thrown at the age of twenty-five--a young married parson, full of faith, hope, and love.