SKETCHES OF MARRIED LIFE.

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"It is but right," said Amy," that I should have my share of the suffering that belongs to this duty."

She immediately went to her father's apartment. It had been a great pleasure to her and her husband to devote their most beautiful room to her father's particular use, and it gave her a pang as she entered it, to think that they probably would have to change their place of abode, and that he would then be deprived of this, one of his very few sources of gratification.

Amy sat awhile in her father's room talking with him upon indifferent subjects, before she could gather sufficient courage to speak of the one on her mind, when Mr. Weston introduced a subject which naturally led to it. "I have done with this book, Amy; I took it up from the breakfast table a day or two since, but I see from what little I have read of it that I should not relish it."

"What do you object to in it, father?" "What he says upon the subject of a bankrupt's paying his debts after he has settled with his creditors, is in some respects arrant nonsense."

"That happens to be the very subject, father, I came to talk about with you."

"My mind has been always made up upon this subject. A man ought to pay all he has, and then if his creditors consent, he is free entirely afterwards."

"If, father, he grows rich again, and is able to pay, it seems to me he ought to pay them."

"Many men of the first standing in society think very differently, and act otherwise, not only in their own case, but in relation to others."

"Edward and I cannot agree with them; and he thinks now that he is able to pay his creditors all that he owes them, that he ought to do it."

"I trust that he will not be so absurd, so unjust to his own family; he has no right to treat you so."

I have urged him to this step, father; and he really means to take it."

"What!" said her father, stamping on the floor, "he will not dare to reduce himself and his wife, and all of us, to comparative poverty, for the sake of gratifying a romantic whim of his and yours."

"The truth is, father, he does not dare to do otherwise; the property is not ours, it belongs to others."

"I did hope," said Mr. Weston, "now that

I am an old man, I might be allowed to pass the remainder of my days in peace. I suppose you call this goodness, this sickly sensibility, this childish romance; you have no regard for me or my opinions; I am weary of life. I wish, that respect for your old father was among your virtues, but that is an oldfashioned duty."

"We are very sorry, father, if you disapprove of our conduct; but we cannot keep this money and be contented. We shall have enough left to make us very comfortable, and it will be our first object to make you happy in every way we can. You need make no change in your mode of life, except perhaps going with us to a smaller house."

"I had better go to a boarding-house, or a mad-house, or the grave-yard. I did hope now that Edward was prosperous, and the world smiled upon us, I had done with changes."

"I am very sorry, father, that you should suffer."

"Have not," continued Mr. Weston, "have not the wisest and best in the land been placed exactly in Edward's situation; and have not they considered it perfectly right, to abide by the decision of their creditors

releasing them from all further obligation to pay?"

"There is no decision, father, that can supersede that of one's own conscience; the consciences of the wisest and best men in the world cannot protect ours from pain. We must do what we think right ourselves."

"The opinion which I hold has been an acknowledged principle from time immemorial. There can be no such thing as trade without it; these new-fangled notions are spoiling everything. Does Edward suppose that he is so much wiser, or that he need be so much better than all the rest of the world?"

"He does not wish to judge others; but when he saw a poor man the other day suffering for the want of money which he remembered he owed him, his conscience told him he ought to pay it; and if he ought to pay one creditor, he ought to pay all.”

Amy then told her father of the boy who was obliged to give up going to college.

"One of the good effects of the system," said Mr. Weston, "it would prevent many boobies going to college if there were fewer men able to send their sons.

is accumulated in the hands

When property

of a few well

educated upright men, it is far better for the country. It increases their influence and enables them to do good. They can always assist and patronize real merit; these things settle themselves."

"But is it not better for a man, as well as more agreeable, to receive justice than charity, father? We consider this simple justice."

"All of these notions," said Mr. Weston, ፡፡ come of the romantic ideas of perfectibility, which you so early acquired, Amy, and which have at last been our ruin; for among other innovations of modern times, women govern their husbands instead of submitting to them according to the directions of St. Paul; and I believe that this is your notion, and your doings. A man would have had more common sense."

Amy denied this charge, and told her father the truth, that it was Edward's own proposal. "Then, Amy, it was your duty as a wife to have urged your husband to abide by the opinion of the world."

Amy forbore to remind her father of the objections he had just made to women influencing their husbands; but simply remarked that she had always thought that no law and no opinion could absolve a man to his own