THE FAITHFUL HELPMATE. England was torn by the great Civil War, and it was only natural that a vigorous, impulsive lad, such as he was, would be impelled to join in so momen- tous a strife. He entered the Parliamentary army ; and during his brief military career, an incident occurred, the effect of which tinged his feelings ever after. Being ordered on a post of danger, it happened that a comrade took his place. This man was shot through the head, as he stood on guard as sentry, at the siege of Leicester ; and considering himself as having been saved from death by a special interposition of Providence, Bunyan never forgot this event in his life. Upon his return from serving in the army, in 1647, when he was about nineteen, he had been recommended by some of his friends to marry. He was then a profane, careless young man, looked on, perhaps, as an irreclaimable scapegrace by the severe Puritans of his vicinity. He liked dancing and bell-ringing on Sundays, played at the boyish game of tip-cat, on the green, after divine service, used language so bad that it shocked the most hardened, and he would not conform to any of the observances of religious life. An undefined notion would, it is true, sometimes haunt him that his conduct was none of the best ; and from the age of ten, he had been disturbed by fits of remorse and terror, and dreadful nightly visions of fiends trying to fly away with him had been of frequent recurrence, but he would shake off the unpleasant sensations ax 7
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