remarkable for my perpendic"--

The word was cut off by a sudden movement; the children in their playful
struggles had, in fact, thrown him down. In a moment more they were on
his back and he trotting round the room with the grace of an elephant.

"Come, children," said the father, "that was a rough joke. Get off, now,
and go for your bread and milk."

Rather reluctantly they obeyed, casting wishful glances backward to the
grown-up boy with whom they had hoped to have a frolic.

"Glad to see you," said Mr. Holworthy. "You have been unsocial, lately."

"Yes; all the effect of the panic. I am such a butterfly that I seem out
of place in a work-a-day community. I am constantly advised, like the
volatile person in the fable, to learn wisdom from my aunt; but I can't,
for the soul of me."

"You ought to visit the more, to cheer the wretched and downcast."

"Oh, but it's a fearful waste of magnetism. Five minutes' talk with a
man who has notes to pay draws all the virtue out of me. It lowers my
vital tone like standing in an ice-house. You feel such a man from afar
like a coming iceberg. _You_ don't have notes to pay? I thought not. I
should go at once."

"No, my little shop pays its way. I buy for cash. I pay my hands when
they bring in their work, and I have customers enough who ask me for no
credit."

"Happy man! most fortunate of tailors!--I have been thinking,
Holworthy, among your many benevolent projects, why you never devised
some means of relieving people who are supposed to be in good
circumstances,--a society for ameliorating the condition of the rich."

"Bless me! the poor are quite numerous enough, and are in unusual
straits just now."

"I know, and for that reason they are better off than usual. People say,
'How the poor must suffer in these pinching times!' So they double their
charities."

"Poverty is an ocean without bottom, my friend. All that is given is
like emptying stones into the sea; the waves swallow them and sweep over
as before."

"True, you can't satisfy the beggars till you drown 'em. Wouldn't
a gentle asphyxia by water, now, be the best thing for some of the
Broad-Street cellarers?"

"Very likely; but they would probably object to the remedy."

"But to return to my project. I see some forms of distress that seem to
me far more painful than utter poverty. I won't expatiate, but state a
case. I know a man of good sense and culture, able and willing to do
his part in the world. H