d pursuits, and especially if both of
these require much thought, its action will be imperfect to a certain
degree in both, or one will suffer while the other absorbs the most
attention.

Thus it happened with Lawrence. While ardently engaged in financiering,
his business received less attention. Instead of using to the best
possible advantage the money already obtained in his financiering
operations, he strove eagerly after more. In fact, too reckless an
investment, in many instances, of borrowed capital, from which no
return could be obtained perhaps for years, made his wants still as
great as before, and kept in constant activity all the resources of his
mind in order to meet his accommodations and steadily to increase them.

Ten years from the time when Sidney Lawrence started in business have
passed. He is living in handsome style and keeps his carriage. Five or
six years previously, he was married to a beautiful and lovely-minded
woman, connected with some of the best families of the city. He has
three children.

"Are you not well, dear?" asked his wife, one day about this period.
They were sitting at the dinner-table, and Mr. Lawrence was hardly
tasting his food.

"I haven't much appetite," he replied indifferently.

"You eat scarcely any thing; hardly enough to keep you alive. I am
afraid you give yourself too much up to business."

Mr. Lawrence did not reply. He had evidently not heard more than half
of his wife's last remark. In a little while he left the table, saying,
as he rose, that he had some business requiring his immediate
attention. Mrs. Lawrence glanced toward the door that closed after her
husband with a troubled look, and sighed.

From his dwelling Mr. Lawrence hurried to his store, and spent an hour
there in examining his account books, and in making calculations. At
five o'clock he met the directors of the insurance company, of which he
was still president, at an extra meeting. All had grave faces. There
was a statement of the affairs of the company upon the table around
which they were gathered. It showed that in the next two weeks
post-notes, amounting in all to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
would fall due; while not over fifty thousand dollars in bills
receivable, maturing within that time, were on hand, and the available
cash resources of the company were not over five thousand dollars. The
time was, when by an extra effort the sum needed could have been easily
raised. But