“Oh I am not afraid to trust to Laura,” replied Charles with animation, “she is young, good-tempered, and, I believe, loves me; so I have every security for the future. When there’s a will there’s always a way.”
“True, true, Charles, and I only hope your wife may have the will to find the right way; what is her fortune?”
“Reports vary respecting the amount—some say eighty, others, one hundred thousand dollars.”
“Don’t you know any thing about it?”
“I know that her fortune is very considerable, especially for a poor devil like me, who can barely clear two thousand a year by business,” answered Charles, with some irritation.
“When your father married, Charles, he was master of only three hundred dollars in the world.”
“That may be, and the consequence was that my father’s son has been obliged to work like a dog all his life.”
“The very best thing that could have happened to you, my dear boy.”
“How do you make that out? For my part, I see nothing very desirable in poverty.”
“Nor do I, Charles; poverty is certainly an evil, but it is an evil to which you have never been exposed; competence was the reward of your father’s industry and he was thus enabled to bestow a good education and good habits upon his son. The limited range of your own experience will convince you of the danger of great riches. Who are the persons in our great city most notorious for vice and folly? Who are the horse-jockies, the gamblers, the rowdies, and the fools of high life? Why, they are the sons of our rich men, and how can we expect better things from those who from their very childhood are pampered in idleness and luxury. I know you will tell me there are exceptions to this sweeping censure, and this I am willing to allow, for there are some minds which even the influence of wealth cannot injure; but how few are they, compared with the number of those who are ruined in their very infancy by the possession of riches. Depend upon it, Charles, that learning, industry, and virtue form the best inheritance which any man can derive from his ancestors.”