good visiting acquaintance, were seen at most
places of amusement, and brought up their children with certain ideas of
social position and respectability; but death has stricken them down,
and what is the situation of their families? Has the father provided for
their future? From twenty to twenty-five pounds a year, paid into an
Assurance Society, would have secured their widows and orphans against
absolute want. Have they performed this duty? No--they have done nothing
of the kind; it turns out that the family have been living up to their
means, if not beyond them, and the issue is, that they are thrown
suddenly bankrupt upon the world.

Conduct such as this is not only thoughtless and improvident, but
heartless and cruel in the last degree. To bring a family into the
world, give them refined tastes, and accustom them to comforts, the loss
of which is misery, and then to leave the family to the workhouse, the
prison, or the street--to the alms of relatives, or to the charity of
the public,--is nothing short of a crime done against society, as well
as against the unfortunate individuals who are the immediate sufferers.

It will be admitted, that the number of men who can lay by a sufficient
store of capital for the benefit of their families, is, in these times
of intense competition, comparatively small. Perhaps the claims of an
increasing family absorb nearly all their gains, and they find that the
sum which they can put away in the bank is so small, that it is not put
away at all. They become reckless of ever attaining so apparently
hopeless an object as that of an accumulation of savings, for the
benefit of their families at death.

Take the case of a married man with a family. He has begun business, and
thinks that if his life were spared, he might in course of years be able
to lay by sufficient savings to provide for his wife and family at his
death. But life is most uncertain, and he knows that at any moment he
may be taken away,--leaving those he holds most dear comparatively
destitute. At thirty he determines to join a sound life office. He
insures for five hundred pounds, payable to his survivors at his death,
and pays from twelve to thirteen pounds yearly. From the moment on which
he pays that amount, the five hundred pounds are secured for his family,
although he died the very next day.

Now, if he had deposited this twelve or thirteen pounds yearly in a
bank, or employed it at interest, it would have tak