subject that was so disagreeable to his family.
But while they talked of style and fashion, he sat silent, and to my
mind oppressed with no very pleasant thoughts. After the ladies had
retired, he said, with considerable feeling--

"All this looks and sounds very well, perhaps; but there are two
aspects to almost everything. My wife and daughters get one view of
life, and I another. They see the romance, I the hard reality. It is
impossible for me to get money as fast as they wish to spend it. It
was my fault in the beginning, I suppose. Ah! how difficult it is to
correct an error when once made. I tell them that I am a poor man,
but they smile in my face, and ask me for a hundred dollars to shop
with in the next breath. I remonstrate, but it avails not, for they
don't credit what I say. AND I AM POOR--poorer, I sometimes think,
than the humblest of my clerks, who manages, out of his salary of
four hundred a year, to lay up fifty dollars. He is never in want of
a dollar, while I go searching about, anxious and troubled, for my
thousands daily. He and his patient, cheerful, industrious little
wife find peace and contentment in the single room their limited
means enables them to procure, while my family turn dissatisfied
from the costly adornments of our spacious home, and sigh for richer
furniture, and a larger and more showy mansion. If I were a
millionaire, their ambition might be satisfied. Now, their ample
wishes may not be filled. I must deny them, or meet inevitable ruin.
As it is, I am living far beyond a prudent limit--not half so far,
however, as many around me, whose fatal example is ever tempting the
weak ambition of their neighbors."

This and much more of similar import, was said by Payson. When I
returned from his elegant home, there was no envy in my heart. He
was called a rich and prosperous man by all whom I heard speak of
him, but in my eyes, he was very poor.

A day or two afterwards, I saw Wightman in the street. He was so
changed in appearance that I should hardly have known him, had he
not first spoken. He looked in my eyes, twenty years older than when
we last met. His clothes were poor, though scrupulously clean; and,
on observing him more closely, I perceived an air of neatness and
order, that indicates nothing of that disregard about external
appearance which so often accompanies poverty.

He grasped my hand cordially, and inquired, with a genuine interest,
after my health and welfare. I a