Figures are notorious liars; they may arouse emotion if looked at in any light, but they must be looked at in many lights if we would get an emotional effect that is truly worth while.  Some very large figures relating to Savings Banks have lately been published.  The deposits in these banks amount to over four and two-thirds billions of dollars, and the number of separate accounts is about ten and two-thirds millions.  Savings deposits in all banks are about $7,000,000,000, the number of accounts being 17,600,000.  Probably the interest paid on the savings banks deposits is 160 millions of dollars a year.  I confess that these figures give me much pleasure.  I like to think that so many men have taken pains to guard their wives and children against miserable want; that so many women have to some extent made sure of their independence.  It would not be surprising to find that twelve millions of families, possibly half the people of the country, were in this way protected against extreme penury.  Viewed in this light, the growth of wealth does not seem so terrible.  One might paraphrase Burke and say that such wealth as this loses half its evil through losing all its grossness.  Indeed one might go further and say that if there were twice as much of this wealth, and every person in the country had an interest in it, it would lose all of its evil.

To young people, this is all dry enough.  They like to think of spending money, not of saving it.  But it is not at all dry to their elders.  It is what St. Beuve said of literary enjoyment, a “pure delice du gout et du coeur dans la maturite.”  It is a “Pleasure of the Imagination” that can be appreciated only by those like the old Scottish lawyer, who justified his penurious prudence by saying that he had shaken hands with poverty up to the elbow when he was young, and had no intention to renew the acquaintance.  We have not, at least in the Northern part of our country, had the terrible experiences of the people of Europe, who are even now hiding their money in a vague apprehension of danger, inherited from centuries of rapine; but there are few of those who have given hostages to fortune who have not had many hours, and even years, of distressing anxiety concerning the future of their families.  The greater the provision made against this heart-corroding care by a people, the happier should that people be.

It seems so unselfish a luxury to revel in these comfortable statistics, that one is tempted to broaden his vision, and take in the four or five billions of assets heaped up by the six or seven millions of people who have insured their lives, and the one hundred and fifty or two hundred millions of dollars paid out yearly to lighten the distress attending the death of husbands and fathers of families,—­to say nothing of a much greater sum repaid policy-holders.  In many cases, happily, death causes no actual want; but against these cases we may offset the stupendous number of policies insuring against industrial accidents,