at he gets
along so badly. He is an industrious man and regular in his habits. It
is strange. But some men seem born to ill-luck."

So said some of his pitying friends. Others understood the matter
better.

Ten years have passed, and Jacob is still a clerk, but not in a store.
Hopeless of getting into business, he applied for a vacancy that
occurred in an insurance company, and received the appointment, which
he still holds at a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year. After
being sold out three times by the sheriff, and having the deep
mortification of seeing her husband brought down to the humiliating
necessity of applying as often for the benefit of the insolvent law,
Mrs. Jones took affairs, by consent of her husband, into her own hands,
and managed them with such prudence and economy, that, notwithstanding
they have five children, the expenses, all told, are not over eight
hundred dollars a year, and half of the surplus, four hundred dollars,
is appropriated to the liquidation of debts contracted since their
marriage, and the other half deposited in the Savings Bank, as a fund
for the education of their children in the higher branches, when they
reach a more advanced age.

To this day it is a matter of wonder to Jacob Jones why he could never
get along in the world like some people; and he has come to the settled
conviction that it is his "luck."

STARTING A NEWSPAPER.

AN EXPERIENCE OF MR. JOHN JONES.

IT happened sometime within the last ten or fifteen years, that, in my
way through this troublesome world, I became captivated with the idea
of starting a newspaper. That I had some talent for scribbling, I was
vain enough to believe, and my estimate of the ability I possessed was
sufficiently high to induce me to think that I could give a peculiar
interest to the columns of a weekly paper, were such a publication
entirely under my control.

I talked about the matter to a number of my literary and other friends,
who, much to my satisfaction, saw all in a favourable light, and
promised, if I would go on in the proposed enterprise, to use all their
interest in my favour.

"I," said one, "will guaranty you fifty subscribers among my own circle
of acquaintances."

"And I," said another, "am good for double that number."

"Put me down for a hundred more," said a third, and so the promises of
support came like music to my willing ear.

One or two old veterans of the "press gang," to whom I spoke of