It is hard to serve two masters.  The mind of man is so constituted, and the influences bearing upon it are so peculiar in their orderly arrangements, that the more it is concentered upon one object and pursuit, the more perfection and certainty attend its action.  But if it be divided between two objects and pursuits, and especially if both of these require much thought, its action will be imperfect to a certain degree in both, or one will suffer while the other absorbs the most attention.

Thus it happened with Lawrence.  While ardently engaged in financiering, his business received less attention.  Instead of using to the best possible advantage the money already obtained in his financiering operations, he strove eagerly after more.  In fact, too reckless an investment, in many instances, of borrowed capital, from which no return could be obtained perhaps for years, made his wants still as great as before, and kept in constant activity all the resources of his mind in order to meet his accommodations and steadily to increase them.

Ten years from the time when Sidney Lawrence started in business have passed.  He is living in handsome style and keeps his carriage.  Five or six years previously, he was married to a beautiful and lovely-minded woman, connected with some of the best families of the city.  He has three children.

“Are you not well, dear?” asked his wife, one day about this period.  They were sitting at the dinner-table, and Mr. Lawrence was hardly tasting his food.

“I haven’t much appetite,” he replied indifferently.

“You eat scarcely any thing; hardly enough to keep you alive.  I am afraid you give yourself too much up to business.”

Mr. Lawrence did not reply.  He had evidently not heard more than half of his wife’s last remark.  In a little while he left the table, saying, as he rose, that he had some business requiring his immediate attention.  Mrs. Lawrence glanced toward the door that closed after her husband with a troubled look, and sighed.

From his dwelling Mr. Lawrence hurried to his store, and spent an hour there in examining his account books, and in making calculations.  At five o’clock he met the directors of the insurance company, of which he was still president, at an extra meeting.  All had grave faces.  There was a statement of the affairs of the company upon the table around which they were gathered.  It showed that in the next two weeks post-notes, amounting in all to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, would fall due; while not over fifty thousand dollars in bills receivable, maturing within that time, were on hand, and the available cash resources of the company were not over five thousand dollars.  The time was, when by an extra effort the sum needed could have been easily raised.  But extra efforts had been put forth so often of late, that the company had exhausted nearly all its resources.

“I do not understand,” remarked one of the directors, looking up from the statement he had been carefully examining, “how there can be a hundred and fifty thousand dollars of post-notes due so soon, and only fifty thousand dollars in bills receivable maturing in the same time.  If I am not mistaken, the post-notes were never issued except against bills having a few days shorter time to run.  How is this, Mr. Lawrence?”