most excellent woman was alone. She was of Quaker origin; sober and
stoical as her husband, she regarded him wistfully as he stood in the
door, for a long time; at last she spoke--

"Well, Peter, thee's been gone a _long time for it_."

The next moment found them locked in each other's arms; overtasked
nature could stand no more, and they both cried like children.

The carpenter has once held offices of public trust, and lives yet, I
believe, an old and highly respected citizen of "Brotherly Love."

A Chapter on Misers.

We all love, worship and adore that everlasting deity--_money_. The poor
feel its want, the rich know its power. Virtue falls before its
corrupting and seductive influence. Honor is tainted by it. Pride, pomp
and power, are but the creatures of money, and which corrupt hearts and
enslaved souls wield to the great annoyance--yea, curse of mankind in
general.

It is well, that, though we are all fond of money, not over one in a
thousand, prove miserable misers, and go on to amass dollar upon dollar,
until the shining heaps of garnered gold and silver become a god, and a
faith, that the rich wretch worships with the tenacious devotion of the
most frenzied fanatic. In the accumulation of a competency, against the
odds and chances of advanced life, a man may be pardoned for a degree of
economical prudence; but for parsimonious meanness, there is certainly
no excuse. I have heard my father speak of an old miserly fellow, who
owned a great many blocks of buildings in Philadelphia, as well as many
excellent farms around there, and who, though rich as a Jew (worth
$200,000), was so despicably and scandalously mean, as to go through the
markets and beg bones of the butchers, to make himself and family soup
for their dinners! He resorted to a score of similar humiliating
"dodges," whereby to prolong his miserable existence, and add dime and
dollar to his already bursting coffers.

At length, Death knocked at his door. The debt was one the poor wretch
would fain have gotten a little more time on, but the Court of Death
brooks no delay--there is no cunning devise of learned counsel, no writs
of error, by which even a miserable miser, or voluptuous millionaire,
can gain a moment's delay when death issues his summons. The miser was
called for, and he knew his time had come. He sent for the undertaker,
he bargained for his burial--

"They say I'm rich! it's a lie, sir--I'm poor, miserably poor. I want