privations, the greater should be our cheerfulness to endure the
latter, and our vigour to contend against the former.

Mary did not lament, but she brooded continually over the
misfortune, and sank into a state of dejection from which no effort
of mine could rouse her. I could not possibly bring her to regard
the matter on its bright side as I did: and indeed I was so
fearful of being charged with childish frivolity, or stupid
insensibility, that I carefully kept most of my bright ideas and
cheering notions to myself; well knowing they could not be
appreciated.

My mother thought only of consoling my father, and paying our debts
and retrenching our expenditure by every available means; but my
father was completely overwhelmed by the calamity: health,
strength, and spirits sank beneath the blow, and he never wholly
recovered them. In vain my mother strove to cheer him, by
appealing to his piety, to his courage, to his affection for
herself and us. That very affection was his greatest torment: it
was for our sakes he had so ardently longed to increase his
fortune--it was our interest that had lent such brightness to his
hopes, and that imparted such bitterness to his present distress.
He now tormented himself with remorse at having neglected my
mother's advice; which would at least have saved him from the
additional burden of debt--he vainly reproached himself for having
brought her from the dignity, the ease, the luxury of her former
station to toil with him through the cares and toils of poverty.
It was gall and wormwood to his soul to see that splendid, highly-
accomplished woman, once so courted and admired, transformed into
an active managing housewife, with hands and head continually