"I hear that John Andrews has given up his saloon; and a foolish thing
it was. He was doing a splendid business. What could have induced him?"
"They say that his wife was bitterly opposed to the business. I don't
know, but I think it quite likely. She has never seemed happy since John
has kept saloon."
"Well, I would never let any woman lead me by the nose. I would let her
know that as the living comes by me, the way of getting it is my affair,
not hers, as long as she is well provided for."
"All men are not alike, and I confess that I value the peace and
happiness of my home more than anything else; and I would not like to
engage in any business which I knew was a source of constant pain to my
wife."
"But, what right has a woman to complain, if she has every thing she
wants. I would let her know pretty soon who holds the reins, if I had
such an unreasonable creature to deal with. I think as much of my wife
as any man, but I want her to know her place, and I know mine."
"What do you call her place?"
"I call her place staying at home and attending to her own affairs. Were
I a laboring man I would never want my wife to take in work. When a
woman has too much on hand, something has to be neglected. Now I always
furnish my wife with sufficient help and supply every want but how I get
the living, and where I go, and what company I keep, is my own business,
and I would not allow the best woman in the world to interfere. I have
often heard women say that they did not care what their husbands did, so
that they provided for them; and I think such conclusions are very
sensible."
"Well, John, I do not think so. I think a woman must be very selfish, if
all she cares for her husband is, to have a good provider. I think her
husband's honor and welfare should be as dear to her as her own; and no
true woman and wife can be indifferent to the moral welfare of her
husband. Neither man nor woman can live by bread alone in the highest
and best sense of the term."
"Now Paul, don't go to preaching. You have always got some moon struck
theories, some wild, visionary and impracticable ideas, which would work
first rate, if men were angels and earth a paradise. Now don't be so
serious, old fellow; but you know on this religion business, you and I
always part company. You are always up in the clouds, while I am trying
to invest in a few acres, or town lots of solid _terra firma_."
"And would your hold on earthly possessions, be less firm because you
looked beyond the seen to the unseen?"
"I think it would, if I let conscience interfere constantly, with every
business transaction I undertook. Now last week you lost $500 fair and
square, because you would not foreclose that mortgage on Smith's
property. I told you that 'business is business,' and that while I
pitied the poor man, I would not have risked my money that way, but you
said that conscience would not let you; that while other creditors were
gathering like hungry vultures around the poor man, you would not join
with them, and that you did not believe in striking a man when he is
down. Now Paul, as a business man, if you want to succeed, you have got
to look at business in a practical, common sense way. Smith is dead, and
where is your money now?"
"Apparently lost; but the time may come when I shall feel that it was
one of the best investments I ever made. Stranger things than that have
happened. I confess that I felt the loss and it has somewhat cramped my
business. Yet if it was to do over again, I don't think that I would act
differently, and when I believe that Smith's death was hurried on by
anxiety and business troubles, while I regret the loss of my money, I am
thankful that I did not press my claim."
"Sour grapes, but you are right to put the best face on matters."
"No, if it were to do over again, I never would push a struggling man to
the wall when he was making a desperate fight for his wife and little
ones."
"Well! Paul, we are both young men just commencing life, and my motto is
to look out for Number 1, and you--"
"Oh! I believe in lending a helping hand."
"So do I, when I can make every corner out to my advantage. I believe in
every man looking out for himself."
You will see by the dialogue, that the characters I here introduce are
the antipodes of each other. They had both been pupils in the same
school, and in after life, being engaged as grocers, they frequently met
and renewed their acquaintance. They were both established in business,
having passed the threshold of that important event, "Setting out in
life." As far as their outward life was concerned, they were
acquaintances; but to each other's inner life they were strangers. John
Anderson has a fine robust constitution, good intellectual abilities,
and superior business faculties. He is eager, keen and alert, and if
there is one article of faith that moulds and colors all his life more
than anything else, it is a firm and unfaltering belief in the "main
chance." He has made up his mind to be rich, and his highest ideal of
existence may be expressed in four words--_getting on in life_. To this
object, he is ready to sacrifice time, talent, energy and every faculty,
which he possesses. Nay, he will go farther; he will spend honor,
conscience and manhood, in an eager search for gold. He will change his
heart into a ledger on which he will write _tare_ and _tret_, loss and
gain, exchange and barter, and he will succeed, as worldly men count
success. He will add house to house; he will encompass the means of
luxury; his purse will be plethoric but, oh, how poverty stricken his
soul will be. Costly viands will please his taste, but unappeased hunger
will gnaw at his soul. Amid the blasts of winter he will have the warmth
of Calcutta in his home; and the health of the ocean and the breezes of
the mountains shall fan his brow, amid the heats of summer, but there
will be a coolness in his soul that no breath of summer can ever dispel;
a fever in his spirit that no frozen confection can ever allay; he shall
be rich in lands and houses, but fear of loss and a sense of poverty
will poison the fountains of his life; and unless he repent, he shall go
out into the eternities a pauper and a bankrupt.
Paul Clifford, whom we have also introduced to you, was the only son of
a widow, whose young life had been overshadowed by the curse of
intemperance. Her husband, a man of splendid abilities and magnificent
culture, had fallen a victim to the wine cup. With true womanly devotion
she had clung to him in the darkest hours, until death had broken his
hold in life, and he was laid away the wreck of his former self in a
drunkard's grave. Gathering up the remains of what had been an ample
fortune, she installed herself in an humble and unpretending home in the
suburbs of the city of B., and there with loving solicitude she had
watched over and superintended the education of her only son. He was a
promising boy, full [of?] life and vivacity, having inherited much of
the careless joyousness of his father's temperament; and although he
was the light and joy of his home, yet his mother sometimes felt as if
her heart was contracting with a spasm of agony, when she remembered
that it was through that same geniality of disposition and wonderful
fascination of manner, the tempter had woven his meshes for her husband,
and that the qualities that made him so desirable at home, made him
equally so to his jovial, careless, inexperienced companions. Fearful
that the appetite for strong drink might have been transmitted to her
child as a fatal legacy of sin, she sedulously endeavored to develop
within him self control, feeling that the lack of it is a prolific cause
of misery and crime, and she spared no pains to create within his mind a
horror of intemperance, and when he was old enough to understand the
nature of a vow, she knelt with him in earnest prayer, and pledging him
to eternal enmity against everything that would intoxicate, whether
fermented or distilled. In the morning she sowed the seed which she
hoped would blossom in time, and bear fruit throughout eternity.