“All this looks and sounds very well, perhaps; but there are two aspects to almost everything.  My wife and daughters get one view of life, and I another.  They see the romance, I the hard reality.  It is impossible for me to get money as fast as they wish to spend it.  It was my fault in the beginning, I suppose.  Ah! how difficult it is to correct an error when once made.  I tell them that I am a poor man, but they smile in my face, and ask me for a hundred dollars to shop with in the next breath.  I remonstrate, but it avails not, for they don’t credit what I say.  AND I AM POOR—­poorer, I sometimes think, than the humblest of my clerks, who manages, out of his salary of four hundred a year, to lay up fifty dollars.  He is never in want of a dollar, while I go searching about, anxious and troubled, for my thousands daily.  He and his patient, cheerful, industrious little wife find peace and contentment in the single room their limited means enables them to procure, while my family turn dissatisfied from the costly adornments of our spacious home, and sigh for richer furniture, and a larger and more showy mansion.  If I were a millionaire, their ambition might be satisfied.  Now, their ample wishes may not be filled.  I must deny them, or meet inevitable ruin.  As it is, I am living far beyond a prudent limit—­not half so far, however, as many around me, whose fatal example is ever tempting the weak ambition of their neighbors.”

This and much more of similar import, was said by Payson.  When I returned from his elegant home, there was no envy in my heart.  He was called a rich and prosperous man by all whom I heard speak of him, but in my eyes, he was very poor.

A day or two afterwards, I saw Wightman in the street.  He was so changed in appearance that I should hardly have known him, had he not first spoken.  He looked in my eyes, twenty years older than when we last met.  His clothes were poor, though scrupulously clean; and, on observing him more closely, I perceived an air of neatness and order, that indicates nothing of that disregard about external appearance which so often accompanies poverty.

He grasped my hand cordially, and inquired, with a genuine interest, after my health and welfare.  I answered briefly, and then said: 

“I am sorry to hear that it is not so well with you in worldly matters as when I left the city.”

A slight shadow flitted over his countenance, but it grew quickly cheerful again.

“One of the secrets of happiness in this life,” said he, “is contentment with our lot.  We rarely learn this in prosperity.  It is not one of the lessons taught in that school.”

“And you have learned it?” said I.

“I have been trying to learn it,” he answered, smiling.  “But I find it one of the most difficult of lessons.  I do not hope to acquire it perfectly.”