joining in some useful work
for the good of others; and when you return home, treat your injured,
long-suffering, and admirable wife as a human being, a lady, a
companion, a friend, an equal, and not, as you have hitherto done, like
a slave or a brute beast."

There was no reply, and the commissioner hastened to the shore. He was
about to step into the boat that was to convey him to the steamer, when
a young man of dandified appearance and affected manner requested to
know whether he could have one moment's private interview with the
commissioner before his departure.

"Well, sir," said the other, somewhat impatiently, "you must be brief,
for I am anxious to lose no time, as business matters at home are
pressing."

"Sir," said the young man, dropping, at the same time, his affected
drawl, "my case is a hard one, and I would ask if you could not grant me
a passage home in the vessel by which you are returning."

"On what grounds?" asked the commissioner.

"Why, sir, I have an old mother and a sister, both in infirm health, who
can hardly get on without me; and it is only just that I should be
allowed to return, as my mother, who is a widow, has no other son."

"Do you know this young man?" inquired the commissioner, turning to his
secretary.

"Far too well, your excellency; he is the clog of his home, the
laughing-stock of his companions behind his back, and is despised by all
wise and sensible people. He has had situation after situation offered
him, in which he could have earned an honest and respectable livelihood,
but he has declined one after another as not to his taste. He is far
too much of a gentleman, in his own estimation, to enter upon any work
that will involve any steady exertion; but he does not scruple to sponge
upon his poor mother, to whose support he contributes nothing, and who
has barely enough to meet her own needs, while he borrows--that is,
appropriates--the savings of his delicate sister, who, though in feeble
health, has undertaken tuition, because this brother of hers is too fine
a gentleman to live in anything but idleness, and spends those hard-
earned savings of hers as pocket-money on his own elegant pleasures and
follies."

"Contemptible wretch!" exclaimed the commissioner with flashing eyes;
"stay where you are, and learn, if it is possible, by the end of these
six months, to see that you have a duty to others as well as to your own
despicable self."

Amazed at this exposure