Ten years have passed, and Jacob is still a clerk, but not in a store. Hopeless of getting into business, he applied for a vacancy that occurred in an insurance company, and received the appointment, which he still holds, at a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year. After being sold out three times by the sheriff, and having the deep mortification of seeing her husband brought down to the humiliating necessity of applying as often for the benefit of the insolvent law, Mrs. Jones took affairs, by consent of her husband, into her own hands, and managed them with such prudence and economy that, notwithstanding they have five children, the expenses, all told, are not over eight hundred dollars a year, and half of the surplus, four hundred dollars, is appropriated to the liquidation of debts contracted since their marriage, and the other half deposited in the savings' bank, as a fund for the education of their children in the higher branches, when they reach a more advanced age.
To this day it is a matter of wonder to Jacob Jones why he could never get along in the world like some people; and he has come to the settled conviction that it is his "luck."
THE DARLING.
BY BLANCHE BENNAIRDE.
When first we saw her face, so dimpled o'er
With smiles of sweetest charm, we said within
Our inmost heart, that ne'er on earth before
Had so much passing beauty ever been:
So full of sweetest grace, so fair to see—
This treasure bright our babe in infancy.
Like blush of roses was the tint of health
O'erspread her lovely cheeks; and they might vie
In beauty with the fairest flower—nor wealth,
Though told in countless millions, e'er could buy
The radiance of this gem, than aught more bright
Which lies in hidden mine, or saw the light.
The dawn of life was fair; so was its morn;
For with each day new beauties met our view,
And well we deemed that she, the dear first-born,
Might early fade, like flowers that earth bestrew
With all their cherished beauty, leaving naught
But faded leaves where once their forms were sought.