est of one thousand dollars. You are forty-five and I am
forty-seven. How long do we expect to live?"

"Life is uncertain."

"Yet often prolonged to sixty, seventy, or even eighty years. Take
sixty-five as the mean. Not for twenty years, then, will this
institution receive the benefit of your good intention. It costs, I
think, about fifty dollars a year to support each orphan child. Only a
small number can be taken, for want of liberal means. Applicants are
refused admission almost every day. Three hundred dollars, the interest
on five thousand, at six per cent., would pay for six children. Take
five years as the average time each would remain in the institution,
and we have thirty poor, neglected little ones, taken from the street,
and educated for usefulness. Thirty human souls rescued, it may be,
from hell, and saved, finally, in heaven. And all this good might be
accomplished before your eyes. You might, if you chose, see it in
progress, and comprehending its great significance, experience a degree
of pleasure, such as fills the hearts of angels. I have made up my mind
what to do."

"What?"

"Erase the item of one thousand dollars from my will."

"What then?"

"Call it two thousand, and invest it at once for the use of this
charity. No, twenty years shall stand between my purpose and its
execution. I will have the satisfaction of knowing that good is done in
my lifetime. In this case, at least, I will be my own dispenser."

Love of money was a strong element in the heart of Mr. Steel. The
richer he grew, the more absorbing became his desire for riches. It was
comparatively an easy thing to write out charitable bequests in a
will--to give money for good uses when no longer able to hold
possession thereof; but to lessen his valued treasure by taking
anything therefrom for others in the present time, was a thing the very
suggestion of which startled into life a host of opposing reasons. He
did not respond immediately, although his heart moved him to utterance.
The force of his friend's argument was, however, conclusive. He saw the
whole subject in a new light. After a brief but hard struggle with
himself, he answered:

"And I shall follow in your footsteps, my friend. I never thought of
the lost time you mention, of the thirty children unblessed by the good
act I purposed doing. Can I leave them to vice, to suffering, to crime,
and yet be innocent? Will not their souls be required at my hands, now
that God s