o; Mr.
Jenks must not despair, but surmount his misfortunes with a stout heart
and a clear conscience, and profit, as they had, _by reverses!_

"Profit!" said Jenks, in a bitter tone, "_profit_ by reverses as _they_
have!"

"Why, Powers," he continued to his counsel, "do you know that if I had
been a tithe part as base and conscienceless as they are _now_, Perkins
& Ball would be beggars, if not inmates of this prison! Yes, sir, my
casting vote, of all the rest, would have done it. But no matter; I had
hoped to find, in a community where I had been useful, generous and
just, friends enough for all practical purposes, without carrying my
business difficulties to the fireside of my parents and other relations.
But that I must do now; if, _if they fail me, then---- I cave!_"

Two days after that conference of the lawyer and the merchant, "honest
John" learned, with sorrow, that his father was dead; estate involved,
and his friends at home in no favorable mood in reference to what they
heard of John Jenks and his "bad management" in the city.

John Jenks--heard no more--he "caved!" as he agreed to.

We pass over Jenks' _Smithsonian_ difficulty, which a prudent lawyer and
discerning jury brought out all right.

We come to 1850--some fifteen or eighteen years after John Jenks
"caved." The John Jenks of 183- had been ruined by his good nature, set
adrift moneyless, in a manner, with even a spotted reputation to begin
with; he "profited by his reverses," he was now a man of family--fifty,
fat, and wealthy, and altogether the meanest and most selfish man you
ever saw!

Jenks freely admits his originality is entirely--"_used up!_" The reader
may affix the _moral_ of my sketch--at leisure.

The Greatest Moral Engine.

Say what you will, it's no use talking, poverty is more potent and
powerful, as a moral engine, than all the "sermons and soda water," law,
logic, and prison discipline, ever started. All a man wants, while he
_has_ a chance to be honest, and to get along smoothly, is a good
situation and two dollars a day; give him five dollars a day, and he
gets lazy and careless; while at ten, or a hundred a day, he is sure to
cultivate beastly feeling, eat and sleep to stupefaction, become a
_roue_, or a rotten politician. A poor man, in misery, applies to God
for consolation, while a rich man applies to his banker, and tries on a
"bender," or goes on a tour to Europe, and studies foreign folly and
French licen