e who will keep no outlook into the future time at
all. A bee, you know, cannot see more than a single inch before it; and
there are many men, and perhaps more women, who appear, as regards their
domestic concerns, to be very much of bees: not bees in the respect of
being busy; but bees in the respect of being blind. You see this in all
ranks of life. You see it in the artisan, earning good wages, yet with
every prospect of being weeks out of work next summer or winter, who yet
will not be persuaded to lay by a little in preparation for a rainy day.
You see it in the country gentleman, who, having five thousand a year;
spends ten thousand a year; resolutely shutting his eyes to the certain
and not very remote consequences. You see it in the man who walks into a
shop and buys a lot of things which he has not the money to pay for,
in the vague hope that something will turn up. It is a comparatively
thoughtful and anxious class of men who systematically overcloud the
present by anticipations of the future. The more usual thing is to
sacrifice the future to the present; to grasp at what in the way of
present gratification or gain can be got, with very little thought of
the consequences. You see silly women, the wives of men whose families
are mainly dependent on their lives, constantly urging on their husbands
to extravagances which eat up the little provision which might have been
made for themselves and their children when he is gone who earned their
bread. There is no sadder sight, I think, than that which is not a very
uncommon sight, the careworn, anxious husband, laboring beyond his
strength, often sorrowfully calculating how he may make the ends to
meet, denying himself in every way; and the extravagant idiot of a wife,
bedizened with jewelry and arrayed in velvet and lace, who tosses away
his hard earnings in reckless extravagance; in entertainments which
he cannot afford, given to people who do not care a rush for him; in
preposterous dress; in absurd furniture; in needless men-servants; in
green-grocers above measure; in resolute aping of the way of living of
people with twice or three times the means. It is sad to see all the
forethought, prudence, and moderation of the wedded pair confined to one
of them. You would say that it will not be any solid consolation to the
widow, when the husband is fairly worried into his grave at last,--when
his daughters have to go out as governesses, and she has to let
lodgings,--to