One life, the
slender line of blood passing into and passing out of one human heart,
may decide the question, whether wife and children shall grow up
affluent, refined, happy, yes, and _good_, or be reduced to hard
straits, with all the manifold evils which grow of poverty in the case
of those who have been reduced to it after knowing other things. You
often think, I doubt not, in quiet hours, what would become of your
children, if you were gone. You have done, I trust, what you can to care
for them, even from your grave: you think sometimes of a poetical figure
of speech amid the dry technical phrases of English law: you know what
is meant by the law of _Mortmain_; and you like to think that even your
_dead hand_ may be felt to be kindly intermeddling yet in the affairs of
those who were your dearest: that some little sum, slender, perhaps, but
as liberal as you could make it, may come in periodically when it is
wanted, and seem like the gift of a thoughtful heart and a kindly hand
which are far away. Yes, cut down your present income to any extent,
that you may make some provision for your children after you are dead.
You do not wish that they should have the saddest of all reasons for
taking care of you, and trying to lengthen out your life. But even after
you have done everything which your small means permit, you will still
think, with an anxious heart, of the possibilities of Future Years. A
man or woman who has children has very strong reason for wishing to live
as long as may be, and has no right to trifle with health or life.
And sometimes, looking out into days to come, you think of the little
things, hitherto so free from man's heritage of care, as they may some
day be. You see them shabby, and early anxious: can _that_ be the little
boy's rosy face, now so pale and thin? You see them in a poor room, in
which you recognize your study-chairs with the hair coming out of the
cushions, and a carpet which you remember now threadbare and in holes.

It is no wonder at all that people are so anxious about money. Money
means every desirable material thing on earth, and the manifold
immaterial things which come of material possessions. Poverty is the
most comprehensive earthly evil; all conceivable evils, temporal,
spiritual, and eternal, may come of _that_. Of course, great temptations
attend its opposite; and the wise man's prayer will be what it was long
ago,--"Give me neither poverty nor riches." But let us have no