trained would spare you the infliction. A certain fortune is
indispensable to those who wish to keep with the party-going world, and
those who have not this competence can not indulge much in this more
expensive mode of life; but that they are forgotten is not because
persons wish to neglect them, but because men naturally forget those
they are not often in the habit of meeting. Might not the aged, even if
wealthy, say they are forgotten, excepting by their immediate
connection? They are forgotten because, in the rush and turmoil of life,
every thing is soon forgotten. The dead, who were beloved and honored
while living, are soon comparatively forgotten beyond their families and
familiar circle. This is not exactly owing to the heartlessness of men,
but rather to the fact that their minds are occupied with the persons
and things they see every day around them, and this is probably as much
the case with the poor as with the rich; but it seems to have become a
sort of custom to speak of the heartlessness of society. It is rather
owing to the imperfection of our constitution. Loss of fortune renders
us more sensitive, and we are apt to fancy slights where none were
intended; but we may be pretty certain that the better men and women of
society do not make money the index of their treatment of others.

Persons sometimes speak lightly and hastily of reverses sustained by
others as mere trifles, compared with loss of friends. I hold that these
persons are wrong, and believe that to many, and those not particularly
selfish and narrow-minded people either, loss of fortune may prove a
greater and more lasting sorrow than loss of dear friends; nay, that a
great reverse, such as a plunge from prosperity into utter poverty, (and
many such instances can be cited,) is perhaps the heaviest trial that
can be imposed on man. Let any one call up the instances he has known of
the tenderest ties being severed, and except in those rare cases we
sometimes meet with of persons pining away and following the beloved
object to the grave, do we not see the overwhelming grief gradually
subsiding into a gentler sorrow, and, as was intended by a merciful
providence, other objects closing in, and though not entirely filling up
the void, still furnishing other sources of happiness? This happens with
the best and tenderest beings on earth. The departed one is not
forgotten, nor have the survivors ceased to mourn him; but their
feelings now cling more