get
the living, and where I go, and what company I keep, is my own business,
and I would not allow the best woman in the world to interfere. I have
often heard women say that they did not care what their husbands did, so
that they provided for them; and I think such conclusions are very
sensible."

"Well, John, I do not think so. I think a woman must be very selfish, if
all she cares for her husband is, to have a good provider. I think her
husband's honor and welfare should be as dear to her as her own; and no
true woman and wife can be indifferent to the moral welfare of her
husband. Neither man nor woman can live by bread alone in the highest
and best sense of the term."

"Now Paul, don't go to preaching. You have always got some moon struck
theories, some wild, visionary and impracticable ideas, which would work
first rate, if men were angels and earth a paradise. Now don't be so
serious, old fellow; but you know on this religion business, you and I
always part company. You are always up in the clouds, while I am trying
to invest in a few acres, or town lots of solid _terra firma_."

"And would your hold on earthly possessions, be less firm because you
looked beyond the seen to the unseen?"

"I think it would, if I let conscience interfere constantly, with every
business transaction I undertook. Now last week you lost $500 fair and
square, because you would not foreclose that mortgage on Smith's
property. I told you that 'business is business,' and that while I
pitied the poor man, I would not have risked my money that way, but you
said that conscience would not let you; that while other creditors were
gathering like hungry vultures around the poor man, you would not join
with them, and that you did not believe in striking a man when he is
down. Now Paul, as a business man, if you want to succeed, you have got
to look at business in a practical, common sense way. Smith is dead, and
where is your money now?"

"Apparently lost; but the time may come when I shall feel that it was
one of the best investments I ever made. Stranger things than that have
happened. I confess that I felt the loss and it has somewhat cramped my
business. Yet if it was to do over again, I don't think that I would act
differently, and when I believe that Smith's death was hurried on by
anxiety and business troubles, while I regret the loss of my money, I am
thankful that I did not press my claim."

"Sour grapes, but you are right to put t