ss you, sir, and ne'er a
father to do for them." I believed in my father's rule before I got out
of the street, and approved his wisdom in keeping himself free from
personal contact with his tenants. Yet when I looked back upon the
swarming thoroughfare, the mean little houses, the women at their doors
all so open-mouthed and eager to contend for my favor, my heart sank
within me at the thought that out of their misery some portion of our
wealth came, I don't care how small a portion; that I, young and strong,
should be kept idle and in luxury, in some part through the money screwed
out of their necessities, obtained sometimes by the sacrifice of
everything they prized! Of course I know all the ordinary commonplaces of
life as well as any one,--that if you build a house with your hand or
your money, and let it, the rent of it is your just due; and must be
paid. But yet--

"Don't you think, sir," I said that evening at dinner, the subject being
reintroduced by my father himself, "that we have some duty towards them
when we draw so much from them?"

"Certainly," he said; "I take as much trouble about their drains as I do
about my own."

"That is always something, I suppose."

"Something! it is a great deal; it is more than they get anywhere else. I
keep them clean, as far as that's possible. I give them at least the
means of keeping clean, and thus check disease, and prolong life, which
is more, I assure you, than they've any right to expect."

I was not prepared with arguments as I ought to have been. That is all in
the Gospel according to Adam Smith, which my father had been brought up
in, but of which the tenets had begun to be less binding in my day. I
wanted something more, or else something less; but my views were not so
clear, nor my system so logical and well-built, as that upon which my
father rested his conscience, and drew his percentage with a light heart.

Yet I thought there were signs in him of some perturbation. I met him one
morning coming out of the room in which the portrait hung, as if he had
gone to look at it stealthily. He was shaking his head, and saying "No,
no," to himself, not perceiving me, and I stepped aside when I saw him so
absorbed. For myself, I entered that room but little. I went outside, as
I had so often done when I was a child, and looked through the windows
into the still and now sacred place, which had always impressed me with
a certain awe. Looked at so, the slight figure in