"Oh, no; but husband, while he was young we ought to have taken more pains to teach him not to think so much about the ways of the world. There are other things besides getting money and spending money, to do; it seems to me now as if money had only helped my poor boy to his ruin!"
"Your notions are too gloomy, Mrs. Taylor. Such calamities will happen, and we should not let them weigh us down too much."
"If I was to live a hundred years longer, I never could feel as I did before our son's death. Oh, to think what a beautiful, innocent child he was twenty years ago, this time!"
"You shouldn't let your mind run so much on him that's gone. It's unjust to the living."
The poor woman made no answer, but wept bitterly for some time.
"It's my only comfort now," she said, at length, "to think that we have learned wisdom by what's passed. As long as I live, day and night, I shall labour to teach our younger children not to set their hearts upon the world; not to think so much about riches."
"Well, I must say, Hester, if you think all poor people are saints, I calculate you make a mistake."
"I don't say that, husband; but it seems to me that we have never yet thought enough of the temptations of riches, more especially to young people, to young men—above all, when it comes so sudden as it did to our poor boy. What good did money ever do him?—it only brought him into trouble!"
"Because Tallman didn't make the most of his opportunities, that is no reason why another should not. If I had wasted money as he did, before I could afford it, I never should have made a fortune either. The other boys will do better, I reckon; they will look more to business than he did, and turn out rich men themselves."
"It isn't the money!—it isn't the money I am thinking of!" exclaimed the poor mother, almost in despair at her husband's blindness to her feelings.