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DAME BARTON was an honest, hard-working woman, who lived with her husband and son in a small hut under Dover cliffs. Her husband was a fisherman, and as industrious as herself; for he laboured night and day at his trade to support his wife and child, till one dreadful day he was drowned in endeavouring to save the crew of a ship that was wrecked in sight of the cottage.

About three months after his death, as little John Barton was sitting one evening mending a net for a neighbour opposite to his mother, he suddenly exclaimed, "O mother! how tired you must be of spinning! you have sat at your wheel ever since four o'clock this morning, and now it is seven o'clock, yet you have hardly stirred from your work."

"It is the only means I have of getting you a bit of bread, Johnny, since your poor father left us."

"Don't cry, mother," said little John, running towards her; "but I do so wish that I could do something myself to earn money enough to keep you from sticking so close to that bur-bur-burring wheel. I mean, something of real

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use to you," continued he, as his mother looked at the net which he had been mending; "I wish I could do something better than mending the meshes of old nets."

"You do enough for your age, dear," said his mother; “and we shall manage to go on quite well while the summer lasts all I dread to think of is the winter."

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"O mother! if you should have your rheumatism come on then, what would you do? I wish I were older, to work for you."

"I cannot bear to think of it," answered his mother, weeping; "if I should have my old complaint come back, I should not be able to work any longer; and then who is to take care of my poor Johnny? I have not a friend in the world that I could send to for help, if I were ill.”

"Don't you recollect, mother, the French gentleman you have often told me about? Perhaps he would help you, if he could know you are so poor."

"But he lives in Paris, and I can't write; so how is he to know the state I am in?" answered his mother; "or else I am sure he would never suffer any one belonging to the deliverer of his child to die of want. Besides, I well remember (for many 's the time I have made my dear husband tell me the tale) when the child fell over the side of the vessel which was just ready to sail, and your dear father, plunging into the waves, brought him back his infant safe and sound, and smiling up in his face; the gentleman, after bending his head for a minute over the dear dripping babe, to hide his streaming eyes (for, let a gentleman be never so manly, it is more than he can do to keep from crying like one of us, when he sees his own flesh and blood saved from death), he

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