in humble life, and the poor of every city derive a large part of their support from those but moderately blessed with worldly goods themselves; but many a well-meaning man will unintentionally make a remark that wounds your feelings and makes you uncomfortable for hours afterwards, while a person whose perceptions and sympathies have been more nicely trained would spare you the infliction.  A certain fortune is indispensable to those who wish to keep with the party-going world, and those who have not this competence can not indulge much in this more expensive mode of life; but that they are forgotten is not because persons wish to neglect them, but because men naturally forget those they are not often in the habit of meeting.  Might not the aged, even if wealthy, say they are forgotten, excepting by their immediate connection?  They are forgotten because, in the rush and turmoil of life, every thing is soon forgotten.  The dead, who were beloved and honored while living, are soon comparatively forgotten beyond their families and familiar circle.  This is not exactly owing to the heartlessness of men, but rather to the fact that their minds are occupied with the persons and things they see every day around them, and this is probably as much the case with the poor as with the rich; but it seems to have become a sort of custom to speak of the heartlessness of society.  It is rather owing to the imperfection of our constitution.  Loss of fortune renders us more sensitive, and we are apt to fancy slights where none were intended; but we may be pretty certain that the better men and women of society do not make money the index of their treatment of others.

Persons sometimes speak lightly and hastily of reverses sustained by others as mere trifles, compared with loss of friends.  I hold that these persons are wrong, and believe that to many, and those not particularly selfish and narrow-minded people either, loss of fortune may prove a greater and more lasting sorrow than loss of dear friends; nay, that a great reverse, such as a plunge from prosperity into utter poverty, (and many such instances can be cited,) is perhaps the heaviest trial that can be imposed on man.  Let any one call up the instances he has known of the tenderest ties being severed, and except in those rare cases we sometimes meet with of persons pining away and following the beloved object to the grave, do we not see the overwhelming grief gradually subsiding into a gentler sorrow, and, as was intended by a merciful providence, other objects closing in, and though not entirely filling up the void, still furnishing other sources of happiness?  This happens with the best and tenderest beings on earth.  The departed one is not forgotten, nor have the survivors ceased to mourn him; but their feelings now cling more affectionately than before to the remaining members of the circle.  This is not so in the case of a reverse such as I have imagined, and many of us have seen.  Where,