ed long years in dungeons, as some languish
in them even now. How many have borne years of bodily infirmity. How
many have died just as they seemed about to realize the fruit of years
of preparation and exertion. These reflections tend to make us contented
with a comparatively humble lot, as all great trials tend to lessen our
undue attachment to life.

Finally, it occurs to me that very few men have lost fortunes, without
spending too much time in unavailing regrets that they should have lost
them just in the manner they did. If they had only avoided this or that
particular investment, all would have been well. This is nonsense.
Undoubtedly, a great deal of money is lost very foolishly, but though no
fatalist, I do not believe that all the care and prudence in the world
will materially alter the great Scriptural law, that the riches of this
world will often take wings to themselves and flee away. There is far
too much recklessness, far too much of what is called in business
circles 'expansion;' but the time will never come, in our country, when
generation after generation, in one family, will keep on in the path of
success. Great fortunes will still melt away, and the shrewdest maxims
of those who built them up will fail sometimes. Nothing can be
considered certain in regard to worldly goods, beyond the fact that
industry, good principles, and average capacity will always, in the long
run, secure a competence; but wealth will still be the prize that only a
few need expect to draw.

I have endeavored to call up a few of the reflections that may console a
man under adversity, remembering that drooping fortunes may revive, that
many of the noblest men have suffered the same privations, and
remembering how much lighter this form of affliction generally is than
some others that Providence often sees fit to lay upon us. Trite as it
is, I can not help echoing the remark, how vastly the sum of human
happiness would be increased, if men could only learn to prize more
highly the blessings they have. Those of us who are in moderate
circumstances find it so much easier to envy our rich neighbors than to
think with gratitude of our happy lot, contrasted with the many thousand
of our needier brethren. We enjoy so many blessings, that we become
unmindful of them. We rarely think at all about our health, until a few
days' sickness reminds us of the boon we have been enjoying so
unconsciously. In the darkest days of the great crisis,