t being willing to do that, you left his service."

"That is the simple story."

"Excuse me, Edward, but I can't help calling you a great fool. Just
see how you have stood in your own light. But for this extra bit of
virtue, for which no one thinks a whit the better of you, you might
this day have been on the road to fortune, instead of Parker."

"I would rather be in my own position than in his," replied Claire
firmly.

"You would!" His companion evinced surprise. "He is in the sure road
to wealth."

"But not, I fear, in the way to happiness."

"How can you say that, Edward?"

"No man, who, in the eager pursuit of money, so far forgets the rights
of others as to trample on them, can be in the way to happiness."

"Then you think he tramples on the rights of others?"

"I know but little, if any thing, about him," replied Claire; "but
this I do know, that unless Leonard Jasper be a different man from
what he was five years ago, fair dealing between man and man is a
virtue in a clerk that would in nowise recommend him to the position
of an associate in business. His partner must be shrewd, sharp,
and unscrupulous--a lover of money above every thing else--a man
determined to rise, no matter who is trampled down or destroyed in the
ascent."

"In business circles such men are by no means scarce."

"I am aware of it."

"And it is unhesitatingly affirmed by many whom I know, that, as the
world now is, no really honest man can trade successfully."

"That is more than I am ready to admit."

"The sharpest and shrewdest get on the best."

"Because it is easier to be sharp and shrewd than to be intelligent,
persevering, industrious, patient, and self-denying. The eagerness to
get rich fast is the bane of trade. I am quite ready to admit that no
man can get rich at railroad speed, and not violate the law of doing
as you would be done by."

"Doing as you would be done by! O dear!" said the friend; "you
certainly don't mean to bring that law down into the actual life of
the world?"

"It would be a happier world for all of us if this law were
universally obeyed."

"That may be. But, where all are selfish, how is it possible to act
from an unselfish principle?"

"Do you approve of stealing?" said Claire, with some abruptness.

"Of course not," was the half-indignant answer.

"I need not have asked the question, for I now remember to have seen
the fact noticed in one of our papers, that an unfaithful domestic i