a number of blessings.  Her “man” came in while I was there, and hoped in a gruff voice that God would reward me, and that the old gentleman’d let ’em alone.  I did not like the look of the man.  It seemed to me that in the dark lane behind the house of a winter’s night he would not be a pleasant person to find in one’s way.  Nor was this all:  when I went out into the little street which it appeared was all, or almost all, my father’s property, a number of groups formed in my way, and at least half-a-dozen applicants sidled up.  “I’ve more claims nor Mary Jordan any day,” said one; “I’ve lived on Squire Canning’s property, one place and another, this twenty year.”  “And what do you say to me?” said another; “I’ve six children to her two, bless you, sir, and ne’er a father to do for them.”  I believed in my father’s rule before I got out of the street, and approved his wisdom in keeping himself free from personal contact with his tenants.  Yet when I looked back upon the swarming thoroughfare, the mean little houses, the women at their doors all so open-mouthed and eager to contend for my favor, my heart sank within me at the thought that out of their misery some portion of our wealth came, I don’t care how small a portion; that I, young and strong, should be kept idle and in luxury, in some part through the money screwed out of their necessities, obtained sometimes by the sacrifice of everything they prized!  Of course I know all the ordinary commonplaces of life as well as any one,—­that if you build a house with your hand or your money, and let it, the rent of it is your just due; and must be paid.  But yet—­

“Don’t you think, sir,” I said that evening at dinner, the subject being reintroduced by my father himself, “that we have some duty towards them when we draw so much from them?”

“Certainly,” he said; “I take as much trouble about their drains as I do about my own.”

“That is always something, I suppose.”

“Something! it is a great deal; it is more than they get anywhere else.  I keep them clean, as far as that’s possible.  I give them at least the means of keeping clean, and thus check disease, and prolong life, which is more, I assure you, than they’ve any right to expect.”

I was not prepared with arguments as I ought to have been.  That is all in the Gospel according to Adam Smith, which my father had been brought up in, but of which the tenets had begun to be less binding in my day.  I wanted something more, or else something less; but my views were not so clear, nor my system so logical and well-built, as that upon which my father rested his conscience, and drew his percentage with a light heart.