I very well remember, though I was then quite a child, the day my father brought Sewel’s History home with him. I was but a little fellow, yet I was quite a good reader, and my father set me to read the book to him, while he sat upon his bench making shoes; for he was by trade a shoemaker. I recollect distinctly, as though it was but yesterday, how much I was affected in reading some parts of that book; especially where it told of the constancy which so many of those poor people, both young and old, showed under suffering and cruel persecution. I often had to stop reading, for I could not go on for weeping; and my sister Hannah, who was older than I, would take the book and read till I was composed enough to go on again. My childish sympathies were indeed very much stirred up on account of these poor, innocent sufferers of whom we read; and I thought that if there ever were any really good people in the world, these surely were some of them.

- Christopher Healy

Amsterdam, Netherlands