ow, Howard, as I
must hurry through dinner, we may as well improve our time. I promised
to aid you in the disposition of your surplus money. As you have a dread
of adventure, and do not like to run any risk, I will take it myself, and
give you compound interest."

Howard expressed his thanks. "You owe me none; it will be a matter of
convenience to me to have the use of this additional money. I only feel
some compunction in deriving that profit from it which you might yourself
reap. However, as I take the risk, and you take none, it is according to
your own plan;--and now I must be off; I have already overrun my time,"
said he, looking at his watch. "If possible, I shall be at home early,
but it is a busy season; two East India cargoes have just arrived, and
several consignments of cotton from the south; all are pressing upon us."

"My brother," said Howard, as he disappeared, "is the same active,
enterprising man he always was. I rejoice to hear, however, that he has
set some limits to his desire for wealth."

"Our desires grow proportionably to our increase of wealth, I believe,"
said Mrs. Draper. "When we began life, your brother said, if he was ever
worth a hundred thousand dollars, he would retire from business; he now
allows himself to be worth much more than that amount, and yet you
perceive our homestead becomes too valuable for our own use, because it
can be converted to money. All this, however, would be nothing, if I did
not see this eager pursuit of gain robbing him of the pleasures of
domestic life, of the recreation every father ought to allow himself to
receive from the innocent conversation and sports of his children. He
cannot spare time for travel--to become acquainted with the beautiful
views of our own country. To you, who knew him, as I did, full of high
and noble perceptions, this is a melancholy change."

Howard was silent; he remembered his brother's early restless desire of
wealth, strikingly contrasted with his own indifference to it. Frances
judged of his character by that period of life when all that is
imaginative or sentimental is called into action;--she judged him by the
season of _first love_. She little supposed that the man who was
contented to ramble with her over hill and dale, who could bathe in
moonbeams, and talk of the dewy breath of evening and morning, as if it
came from "Araby the blest," would one day refuse to quit the bustle of
State Street, or the dark, nois