uelty. These
criminals are far seldomer influenced by the love of money than by the
want of it. If instead of being without a dollar, they had had
sufficient for their necessities, would they have run such risks,
incurred such guilt, staked life on one desperate chance, flung it
away in despairing misery?

Of course the word "sufficient" is very elastic. It can be so moderate
and temperate; and again it can grasp at impossibilities. "My wants,"
said the Count Mirabel, "are few: a fine house, fine carriages, fine
horses, a complete wardrobe, the best opera box, the first cook, and
plenty of pocket-money--that is all I require." He thought his desires
very temperate; so also did the Scotchman, who, praying for a modest
competency, added, "and that there be no mistake, let it be seven
hundred pounds a year, paid quarterly in advance." There are indeed
all sorts of difficulties connected with this question, and anybody
can find their way into them. But there must also be a way out; and if
our guides would survey the ground a little, they would earn and have
our thanks. For undoubtedly this want of money is as great a
provocation to sin as the love of it. An empty purse is as full of
wicked thoughts as an evil heart; and the Father who allotted seven
guardian angels to man, and made five of them hover round his
pockets--empty or full--knew well his most vulnerable points.

Mission of Household Furniture

Have wood and paper and upholstery really any moral and emotional
agencies?

Certainly they have. Not very obvious ones perhaps, but all-pervading
and ever-persistent in their character; since there is no day--scarcely
an hour--of our lives in which we are not, either passively or
consciously, subject to their influences. Our cravings after elegance
of form, glimmer and shimmer of light and color, insensibly elevate and
civilize us; and the men and women condemned to the monotony of bare
walls and unpicturesque surroundings--whether they be devotees in
cells, or felons in dungeons--are the less human for the want of these
things. The want, then, is a direct moral evil, and a cause of
imperfection.

The desire for beautiful surroundings is a natural instinct in a pure
mind. How tenaciously people who live in dull streets, and who never
see a sunrise, nor a mountain peak, nor an unbroken horizon, cling to
it is proved on all sides of us by the picturesqueness which many a
mechanic's wife imparts to her little tw