At two o’clock to-morrow afternoon go among the places of business or toil.  It will be no difficult thing for you to find men who, by their looks, show you that they are overworked.  They are prematurely old.  They are hastening rapidly toward their decease.  They have gone through crises in business that shattered their nervous system, and pulled on the brain.  They have a shortness of breath, and a pain in the back of the head, and at night an insomnia that alarms them.  Why are they drudging at business early and late?  For fun?  No; it would be difficult to extract any amusement out of that exhaustion.  Because they are avaricious?  In many cases no.  Because their own personal expenses are lavish?  No; a few hundred dollars would meet all their wants.  The simple fact is, the man is enduring all that fatigue and exasperation, and wear and tear, to keep his home prosperous.  There is an invisible line reaching from that store, from that bank, from that shop, from that scaffolding, to a quiet scene a few blocks, a few miles away, and there is the secret of that business endurance.  He is simply the champion of a homestead, for which he wins bread, and wardrobe, and education, and prosperity, and in such battle ten thousand men fall.  Of ten business men whom I bury, nine die of overwork for others.  Some sudden disease finds them with no power of resistance, and they are gone.  Life for life.  Blood for blood.  Substitution!

At one o’clock to-morrow morning, the hour when slumber is most uninterrupted and most profound, walk amid the dwelling-houses of the city.  Here and there you will find a dim light, because it is the household custom to keep a subdued light burning:  but most of the houses from base to top are as dark as though uninhabited.  A merciful God has sent forth the archangel of sleep, and he puts his wings over the city.  But yonder is a clear light burning, and outside on the window casement a glass or pitcher containing food for a sick child; the food is set in the fresh air.  This is the sixth night that mother has sat up with that sufferer.  She has to the last point obeyed the physician’s prescription, not giving a drop too much or too little, or a moment too soon or too late.  She is very anxious, for she has buried three children with the same disease, and she prays and weeps, each prayer and sob ending with a kiss of the pale cheek.  By dint of kindness she gets the little one through the ordeal.  After it is all over, the mother is taken down.  Brain or nervous fever sets in, and one day she leaves the convalescent child with a mother’s blessing, and goes up to join the three in the kingdom of heaven.  Life for life.  Substitution!  The fact is that there are an uncounted number of mothers who, after they have navigated a large family of children through all the diseases of infancy, and got them fairly started up the flowering slope of boyhood and girlhood, have only strength enough left to die.  They fade away.  Some call it consumption; some call it nervous prostration; some call it intermittent or malarial disposition; but I call it martyrdom of the domestic circle.  Life for life.  Blood for blood.  Substitution!