he best face on matters."

"No, if it were to do over again, I never would push a struggling man to
the wall when he was making a desperate fight for his wife and little
ones."

"Well! Paul, we are both young men just commencing life, and my motto is
to look out for Number 1, and you--"

"Oh! I believe in lending a helping hand."

"So do I, when I can make every corner out to my advantage. I believe in
every man looking out for himself."

You will see by the dialogue, that the characters I here introduce are
the antipodes of each other. They had both been pupils in the same
school, and in after life, being engaged as grocers, they frequently met
and renewed their acquaintance. They were both established in business,
having passed the threshold of that important event, "Setting out in
life." As far as their outward life was concerned, they were
acquaintances; but to each other's inner life they were strangers. John
Anderson has a fine robust constitution, good intellectual abilities,
and superior business faculties. He is eager, keen and alert, and if
there is one article of faith that moulds and colors all his life more
than anything else, it is a firm and unfaltering belief in the "main
chance." He has made up his mind to be rich, and his highest ideal of
existence may be expressed in four words--_getting on in life_. To this
object, he is ready to sacrifice time, talent, energy and every faculty,
which he possesses. Nay, he will go farther; he will spend honor,
conscience and manhood, in an eager search for gold. He will change his
heart into a ledger on which he will write _tare_ and _tret_, loss and
gain, exchange and barter, and he will succeed, as worldly men count
success. He will add house to house; he will encompass the means of
luxury; his purse will be plethoric but, oh, how poverty stricken his
soul will be. Costly viands will please his taste, but unappeased hunger
will gnaw at his soul. Amid the blasts of winter he will have the warmth
of Calcutta in his home; and the health of the ocean and the breezes of
the mountains shall fan his brow, amid the heats of summer, but there
will be a coolness in his soul that no breath of summer can ever dispel;
a fever in his spirit that no frozen confection can ever allay; he shall
be rich in lands and houses, but fear of loss and a sense of poverty
will poison the fountains of his life; and unless he repent, he shall go
out into the eternities a pauper and a bankr