had a right to make the best of the purchase.' Her power over him could not be a secret, but he had pride enough to wish to conceal the uneasiness it gave him.

Mr. Ellison had other vexations, which increased with the age of his little boy: He was equally the darling of both his parents, but they differed much in their opinions as to the proofs of that affection. The child was naturally of a passionate and stubborn temper, which his father saw with concern, and thought it his duty to keep him within reasonable controul; and, if possible, to conquer faults, which, when strengthened by time and habit, must prove incorrigible. Mrs. Ellison, on the contrary, called his passion spirit, and his stubbornness constancy and steadiness, and could not bear he should receive the least contradiction. She was continually puffing him up with the notion of his consequence, representing all the people about him as his slaves, and making them seek to please him by the most abject means. She taught him to look on them in the same light as she herself did, as creatures destitute of all natural rights, of sense and feeling. She was pleased to see him vent his childish passions upon them, and was always ready to gratify his resentments beyond his wish; and so

successful were her endeavours, that, by the time he arrived at the age of five years, he was a little fury, bursting with pride, passion, insolence, and obstinacy. Mr. Ellison saw all this with a very sensible concern; he endeavoured to teach his wife the duty of a parent, and to convince her that her indulgence rendered her the child's most pernicious enemy; but, having never reasoned in her life, the faculty was too feeble to enter into the force of his arguments; she was too perverse to attend, and too weak to be convinced.
He then assumed an air to which she had hitherto been a stranger, and told her, 'though he had sacrificed his own inclinations to her, she must not expect to find the same easy temper in him when the welfare of his son was at stake;' and in the most resolute manner declared, he would not suffer him to be made a brute. Tears were now called to her aid; she wept for his cruelty, and lamented the hatred he bore both to her and her child. But all these arts proved now unavailing; Mr. Ellison's heart was too deeply

engaged in the importance of the cause of their contention, to be moved by any thing