believe how rarely comes that sound, healthful, and refreshing
slumber to the poor man's pillow, which at once invigorates the mind and
body, and sends the willing labourer back to his toil refreshed and
recruited by the blessing of a beneficent Creator. To taste of nature's
sweet, refreshing, balmy sleep, sickness, sorrow, poverty, and mental
disquietude must not share the humble pallet.

In contrasting the deep misery of the poor artisan, with whose woes we
are now occupying the reader, with the immense value of the jewelry
confided to him, we are struck by one of those comparisons which afflict
while they elevate the mind. With the distracting spectacle of his
family's want and wretchedness, embracing a wide field from cold and
hunger to drivelling idiocy, constantly before his eyes, this man, in
the pursuance of his daily labour, is compelled to touch and handle and
gaze upon bright and sparkling gems, the smallest of which would be a
mine of wealth to him, and save those dearest to him from sufferings and
privations which wring his very heart; would snatch them from the slow
and lingering death which is consuming them before his eyes. Yet, amid
all these trials and temptations, the artisan remains firmly, truly, and
unflinchingly honest, and would no more appropriate one of the
glittering stones entrusted to him than he would satisfy his hunger at
the expense of his starving babes. Doubtless the man but performed his
duty to his employer,--his simple duty; but because it is enjoined to
all to be honest and faithful in that which is committed to them, does
that render the action itself less noble, magnanimous, or praiseworthy?
Is not this unfortunate artisan, so courageously, so bravely upright and
honest while entrusted with the property of another, the type and model
of an immense class of working people, who, doomed to a life of
continual poverty and privation, see, with calm, patient looks,
thousands of their brethren rolling in splendour and abounding in
riches, yet they toil on, resigned and unenvying, but still
industriously striving for bread their hardest efforts cannot always
procure? And is there not something consolatory, as well as gratifying
to our feelings, to consider that it is neither force nor terror, but
good natural sense and a right mind which alone restrain this formidable
ocean, this heaving mass, whose bounds once broken, a moral inundation
would ensue, in which society itself would be swall