My friend Mr.---- has three daughters and two sons. The girls are
between eighteen and twenty-eight, one son is thirty-five perhaps,
the other is about fourteen.
The father keeps a trimmings store. The oldest son is somewhere in
the West, the youngest son has already left school to assist his
father in the store.
The three girls do nothing whatever but dress, play a little, make
calls, receive calls, and go a shopping, and, I should add, that
during the summer they visit the country, for their health.
Twice the father has compromised with his creditors, and he told me
a week ago, that sleep, appetite, and hope had all left him, that he
had just borrowed two hundred dollars to enable his girls to go up
into New Hampshire, that he saw nothing but ruin before him, that he
was completely exhausted, that he had recently felt symptoms of
paralysis, and that I must tell him, as a friend, what he could do
to save himself from insanity.
These ejaculations culminated in his covering his face with his
hands, and bursting into a flood of tears.
"Why, sir," said he, "I owe everybody. Even that faithful creature
in my kitchen hasn't had twenty dollars in a year."