affectionately than before to the remaining
members of the circle. This is not so in the case of a reverse such as I
have imagined, and many of us have seen. Where, as in the failure of
some great bank or 'Life and Trust Company,' reckoned perfectly
impregnable, the fortune of delicate ladies, always accustomed to
luxury, has been swept away; where there are no relatives able or
willing to render much assistance, and daughters have to seek employment
that will give themselves and an aged mother a bare competence, with all
my disposition to bear things bravely and philosophically, I contend
that human nature can hardly be visited with a heavier trial. For men,
it is comparatively easy; but there are instances, in every large city,
of ladies, once wealthy, now reduced to a sort of genteel beggary, that
a man would shrink from, but that women can not very well avoid. Fancy
the bitterness of such a life; the constant memory of happier days
contrasted with the present condition, which has no prospect of
improvement; the keenness of present sorrow rendered more acute by
education and refinement; the necessity not merely of economy, for most
of us can bear a large portion of this pretty cheerfully; but the
difficulty, with close economy, of supplying the decent comforts of
life, and tell me, as some who have never been visited by any trial of
this kind would tell me, if it is selfish and sordid to compare this
lasting sorrow with that great ordinance of death and separation which
all must share alike? Alas! these are objects not generally reached by
charitable societies; but not less deserving, and subjected to trials no
less hard than those whose lot has always been one of poverty.

Having admitted that, under some circumstances, the loss of property may
occasion grief so deep and lasting as to make it worthy of comparison
even with loss of dear friends, I would say, on the other hand, that
instances often occur where no comparison can be made between the two
evils. We hear sometimes of dreadful calamities at sea, where entire
families are swept away; where, as on the 'Austria,' the only
alternative is the _mode_ of death, whether it shall be on the burning
ship or beneath the cold, dark billow. What experience can be more
awful, in the life of any man, than that which compelled this father to
throw child after child into the sea, not with any hope of rescue, but
merely to prolong for a few moments a life that could no longer