lipped away from
him when he lost Levi, rather than the kindness and Christian charity
of the young man in presenting them.

It was not so with Mrs. Fairfield, though the savage flings and unkind
allusions of her husband to his nephew were not without their influence
upon her. She could not help feeling a great regard for the donor of
the newspapers, and the substantials which gave the table such an
unwonted attractiveness. As far as her dull nature would permit, she
appreciated the kindness and good will of Levi. It is true that on
several occasions uncle Nathan had sold the turkeys, chickens, and
roasting-pieces his late ward had given him; yet it had never been
without a protest on the part of aunt Susan. It was an awful waste for
him to eat these luxuries; but selling the gifts of Levi was monstrous
to her, and her protest was so energetic that she carried her point,
and the miser was compelled to eat food which was so costly that it
almost choked him.

Uncle Nathan did not get fat on the bounty of his liberal nephew. He
had too many corroding cares, too many financial terrors, too many
fears that the banks would break, his creditors fail, his stocks
depreciate, to eat and sleep like a Christian. Misers never grow
liberal as they grow old, and he was no exception to the rule. A
financial panic had just swept over the land, and though he had lost
nothing by it, it caused him more anguish than thousands who had lost
their all. He was afraid of banks, afraid of men, afraid even of good
mortgages on productive real estate. He dreaded some calamity he could
not define, which would wrest from him every dollar he had in the
world.

To guard against this horrible event, he had actually converted some of
the less reliable of his securities into gold, and concealed it in his
house, preferring to sacrifice the interest to the safety of the
principal, bitter as the necessity seemed to be.

For two months uncle Nathan had kept four thousand dollars in gold in
the house, groaning at the loss of sixty-six and two thirds cents a day
in interest; but a bank somewhere in the state had failed, and he dared
not trust the money out of his own possession. It had been hidden in
the cellar, hidden in the parlor, hidden in the kitchen, and hidden in
his chamber; but no place seemed to be safe, and the miser trembled
when awake, and trembled when asleep, in his dreams, lest the
figurative description of riches should be realized, and hi