uch houses must attract attention only by seeming to mark
out upon the earth they cover the writing at Belshazzar's feast--

THE MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN,

of the nineteenth century. I know of an actual instance of a family
being forced to eat the bread of charity within the walls of a house for
which they had engaged to pay, and had so far paid, the sum of two
thousand dollars a year as rent! What foolish thing a vain human being
will not do is a more difficult problem than what he will do. If we had
no rich people to fire up our self-conceit, we would be happier, though
we rose more slowly; yet are we to be despised for being willing to
throw the blame so freely from our shoulders. "Poverty is," says
Cobbett, "except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a
thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty--the shame of
being thought poor--it is

A GREAT AND FATAL WEAKNESS,

though arising in this country from the fashion of the times
themselves." Let us shake off this fatal weakness. That man is a coward
who, from whatever reason, keeps up the expenditure of a rich man a
moment longer than his income will warrant it.

"POVERTY IS ONLY CONTEMPTIBLE

when it is felt to be so," says Bovee. "That man," says Bishop Paley,
"is to be accounted poor, of whatever rank he be, who suffers the pains
of poverty, whose expenses exceed his resources; and no man, properly
speaking, poor, but he." "The poor are only they who seem poor," says
Emerson, "and poverty consists in feeling poor." Doubtless you are
familiar with the story of the unhappy Sultan to whom the Magi,
traveling from the East to his relief, could give no hope unless he
could get and wear the shirt of a happy man. Proclamation went forth to
all the lands of the empire, offering glittering rewards for a happy
man. At last learned doctors and experts, who had gone out into the
outer regions, brought in a shepherd, who was vowed to be an entirely
happy man. But lo! when he came before the Magi, it was found that

HE HAD NO SHIRT!

The men who have caught this circling planet in the palms of their
hands, as God grasps the inconceivable universes, were born poor and
struggled in adversity; the men who have throttled the fiery lightning,
and chained the fire and the water into willing servitude, were poor
boys; the men who have developed the human imagination into a thing
almost perfect and unapproachable were poor boys; the men who