as in the failure of some great bank or ‘Life and Trust Company,’ reckoned perfectly impregnable, the fortune of delicate ladies, always accustomed to luxury, has been swept away; where there are no relatives able or willing to render much assistance, and daughters have to seek employment that will give themselves and an aged mother a bare competence, with all my disposition to bear things bravely and philosophically, I contend that human nature can hardly be visited with a heavier trial.  For men, it is comparatively easy; but there are instances, in every large city, of ladies, once wealthy, now reduced to a sort of genteel beggary, that a man would shrink from, but that women can not very well avoid.  Fancy the bitterness of such a life; the constant memory of happier days contrasted with the present condition, which has no prospect of improvement; the keenness of present sorrow rendered more acute by education and refinement; the necessity not merely of economy, for most of us can bear a large portion of this pretty cheerfully; but the difficulty, with close economy, of supplying the decent comforts of life, and tell me, as some who have never been visited by any trial of this kind would tell me, if it is selfish and sordid to compare this lasting sorrow with that great ordinance of death and separation which all must share alike?  Alas! these are objects not generally reached by charitable societies; but not less deserving, and subjected to trials no less hard than those whose lot has always been one of poverty.

Having admitted that, under some circumstances, the loss of property may occasion grief so deep and lasting as to make it worthy of comparison even with loss of dear friends, I would say, on the other hand, that instances often occur where no comparison can be made between the two evils.  We hear sometimes of dreadful calamities at sea, where entire families are swept away; where, as on the ‘Austria,’ the only alternative is the mode of death, whether it shall be on the burning ship or beneath the cold, dark billow.  What experience can be more awful, in the life of any man, than that which compelled this father to throw child after child into the sea, not with any hope of rescue, but merely to prolong for a few moments a life that could no longer be endured on the burning deck?  Different, but scarcely less painful, the burial of hope in a father’s breast, as in the death of the sons of Hallam.  Industry may repair the wrecks of fortune; but the hopes and affections that have centered here must be laid aside forever.

Are there many of us, after all, who would care for a career of unbroken prosperity?  Men of talent and worth have been crushed and hurried to their graves by the iron hand of poverty; but for one such, there have probably been ten who have passed through life with energies and talents never fully called forth; because easy circumstances have never demanded any great exertion from them.  This leaves out a class