persons are wrong, and believe that to many, and those not particularly
selfish and narrow-minded people either, loss of fortune may prove a
greater and more lasting sorrow than loss of dear friends; nay, that a
great reverse, such as a plunge from prosperity into utter poverty, (and
many such instances can be cited,) is perhaps the heaviest trial that
can be imposed on man. Let any one call up the instances he has known of
the tenderest ties being severed, and except in those rare cases we
sometimes meet with of persons pining away and following the beloved
object to the grave, do we not see the overwhelming grief gradually
subsiding into a gentler sorrow, and, as was intended by a merciful
providence, other objects closing in, and though not entirely filling up
the void, still furnishing other sources of happiness? This happens with
the best and tenderest beings on earth. The departed one is not
forgotten, nor have the survivors ceased to mourn him; but their
feelings now cling more affectionately than before to the remaining
members of the circle. This is not so in the case of a reverse such as I
have imagined, and many of us have seen. Where, as in the failure of
some great bank or 'Life and Trust Company,' reckoned perfectly
impregnable, the fortune of delicate ladies, always accustomed to
luxury, has been swept away; where there are no relatives able or
willing to render much assistance, and daughters have to seek employment
that will give themselves and an aged mother a bare competence, with all
my disposition to bear things bravely and philosophically, I contend
that human nature can hardly be visited with a heavier trial. For men,
it is comparatively easy; but there are instances, in every large city,
of ladies, once wealthy, now reduced to a sort of genteel beggary, that
a man would shrink from, but that women can not very well avoid. Fancy
the bitterness of such a life; the constant memory of happier days
contrasted with the present condition, which has no prospect of
improvement; the keenness of present sorrow rendered more acute by