es. I am a great expense! Oh!" with a
long-drawn sigh of wretchedness, "isn't it _awful_ to be poor?"

The poverty-stricken father was at this time managing to dress
himself, wife and baby on an income of four thousand dollars per
annum. In her desire to make her child take proper care of his
clothes, the mother had struck terror to the little fellow's heart.
Such childish terror is genuine, and yet hard to express. The
self-control of childhood is far greater than the average father or
mother appreciates. Some children seem to have an actual dread of
communicating their fears and fancies to other people.

A friend tells me that when she was but six years old she heard her
father say impatiently, as his wife handed him a bill:

"I can't pay this! At the rate at which bills come in nowadays, I soon
will not have a cent left in the world. It is enough to bankrupt a
man!"

At bedtime that night the little daughter asked her mother, with the
indifferent air children so soon learn to assume:

"Mamma, what becomes of people when all their money is gone, and they
can't pay their bills?"

"Sometimes, dear," answered the unsuspicious mother, "their houses and
belongings are sold to pay their bills."

"And when people have no house, and no money, and nothing left, where
do they go? Do they starve to death?"

"They generally go to the poorhouse, my daughter."

"Oh, mamma!" quavered the little voice, "don't you think that is
dreadful?"

"Very dreadful, darling! Now go to sleep."

To sleep! How could she, with the grim doors of the home for the
county paupers yawning blackly to receive her? All through the night
was the horror upon her, and to this day she remembers the sickening
thrill that swept over her while playing with a little friend, when
the thought occurred:

"If this girl's mother knew that we were going to the poorhouse, she
would not let her play with me."

Little by little the impression wore off, aided in the dissipation by
the sight of numerous rolls of bills which papa occasionally drew from
his pocket. But not once in all that time did the child relax the
strict guard set upon her lips, and sob out her fear to her mother.
She does not now know why she did not do it, except that she could
not.

An otherwise judicious father talks over all his business difficulties
with his seven-year-old son. The grown man does not know what a strain
the anxiety and uncertainty of his father's ventures are to the