my pocket."

"I do not want to talk with you of the past, John," said Charles; "our
ideas are more likely to agree now than they were ten or twelve years
ago; I will speak of the future and present. You are now out of debt,
in the very prime of life, and in the receipt of a splendid income;
but do not, let me entreat you, spend it as it comes; lay by something
for those children; provide for them either by insurance, or some of
the many means that are open to us all. Do not, my dear brother, be
betrayed by health, or the temptation for display, to live up to an
income the nature of which is so essentially precarious."

"Really," murmured Mrs. Adams, "you put one into very low spirits."

Charles remained silent, waiting his brother's reply.

"My dear Charles," he said at last, "there is a great deal of truth in
what you say--certainly a great deal; but I cannot change my style of
living, strange as it may seem. If I did, I should lose my practice.
And then I must educate my children; _that_ is an imperative duty, is
it not?"

"Certainly it is; it is a _part_ of the provision I have spoken of,
but not the whole--a portion only. If you have the means to do both,
it is your duty to do both; and you _have_ the means. Nay, my dear
sister, do not seem angry or annoyed with me; it is for the sake of
your children I speak; it is to prevent their ever knowing practically
what we do know theoretically--that the world is a hard world;
hard and unfeeling to those who need its aid. It is to prevent the
possibility of their feeling _a reverse_."

Mrs. Adams burst into tears, and walked out of the room. Charles was
convinced that _she_ would not uphold his opinion.

"Certainly," said John, "I intend to provide for my children; but
_there is no hurry_, and"--

"There should be no hesitation in the case," interrupted Charles;
"every man _intends_ to provide for his children. God forbid that I
should imagine any man to be sufficiently wicked to say--I have been
the means of bringing this child into existence--I have brought it up
in the indulgence of all the luxuries with which I indulged myself;
and now I intend to withdraw them all from it, and leave it to fight
its own way through the world. No man could look on the face of the
innocent child nestling in your bosom and say _that_; but if you do
not appropriate a portion of the means you possess to save that child
from the 'hereafter,' you act as if you had resolved so to cast