"I know how badly you feel about it, William; but your heart is honest, and should not that reflection bear you up?"
"What is an honest heart without an honest hand, Alice?" replied the tailor, bending still to his work.
"The honest heart is the main thing, William; God looks at that. Man judges only of the action, but God sees the heart and its purposes."
"But what is the purpose without the act?"
"It is all that is required, where no ability to act is given. William, God does not demand of any one impossibilities."
"Though man often does," said the tailor, bitterly.
There was a pause, broken, at length, by the wife, who said—"And have you really determined to put John and Henry out to trades? They are so young."
"I know they are, Alice; too young to leave home. But"—
The tailor's voice became unsteady; he broke off in the middle of the sentence.
"Necessity requires it to be done," he said, recovering himself; "and it is of no avail to give way to unmanly weakness. But for this old debt, we might have been comfortable enough, and able to keep our children around us until they were of a more fitting age to go from under their parents' roof. Oh, what a curse is debt!"