d," and the family themselves are either in a more
modest home in the country, or in a tenement house. You can scarcely
walk twenty blocks on Fifth avenue, without seeing one of these bills,
telling its mournful story of fallen greatness.

The best and safest way to be rich in New York, as elsewhere, is for a
man to confine himself to his legitimate business. Few men acquire
wealth suddenly. Ninety-nine fail where one succeeds. The bane of New
York commercial life, however, is that people have not the patience to
wait for fortune. Every one wants to be rich in a hurry, and as no
regular business will accomplish this, here or elsewhere, speculation is
resorted to. The sharpers and tricksters who infest Wall street know
this weakness of New York merchants. They take the pains to inform
themselves as to the character, means and credulity of merchants, and
then use every art to draw them into speculations, in which the tempter
is enriched and the tempted ruined. In nine cases out of ten a merchant
is utterly ignorant of the nature of the speculation he engages in. He
is not capable of forming a reasonable opinion as to its propriety or
chance of success, because the whole transaction is new to him, and is so
rapid that he has no time to study it. He leaves a business in which he
has acquired valuable knowledge and experience, and trusts himself to the
mercy of a man he knows little or nothing of; and undertakes a
transaction that he does not know how to manage. Dabbling in
speculations unfits men for their regular pursuits. They come to like
the excitement of such ventures, and rush on in their mad course, hoping
to make up their losses by one lucky speculation, and at length utter
ruin rouses them from their dreams.

Not only do men squander their own money in this way, but they risk and
often lose the funds of others committed to their charge. Bank officers,
having the use of the deposits in their institutions, take them for
speculation, intending of course to return them. Sometimes they are
successful, and are able to replace the money in the bank, so that no one
hears of their dishonesty. Again, and most commonly, they fail, and they
are ruined. Guardians thus misappropriate the funds of their wards.
Even the funds of churches are thus used by their trustees. The amount
of speculation engaged in by clergymen with their own money would
astonish a novice. Some prominent divines in the city are well known