Then there would be the government stamp duty on the policy to pay for, which would be five shillings at first starting, but that wouldn't have to be paid a second time. But then, as the company was on the mutual principle, and every member had a full share of the profits, the payments would most likely, in a few years, be brought down by degrees, perhaps to eight or ten shillings a quarter, instead of twelve and sixpence.

"Well then, suppose you let me have the policy, as you call it. I should like it done at once, now I am at it,' said James.

But even a life insurance is not to be effected in a day; Mannering found that a paper containing a long list of questions to be answered had to be filled up by himself that a medical examination had to be passed through-and that the testimony of two intimate friends of himself, to the correctness of his own statements was indispensable. Some of the questions Mannering had to answer, he thought queer enough, and some were puzzling to answer. However, it is quite right, thought he;-it is better to be too particular than not particular enough; and, at length, —that is, in the course of a week or two, -all preliminaries adjusted, he received from the agent the policy which assured to his representatives the sum of one hundred pounds at the time of his death-conditionally, of course, with the punctual payment of the premiums as they became due.

Spring came, and summer; and before summer was gone, our town was visited with the cholera of 1849. It was fearfully fatal; for the lanes and courts and back streets were unventilated, undrained, and uncleansed. The town authorities had been talking about it ever since 1831, and had been meaning, of course, to have these matters seen to. But talking is not doing; and so, when the second edition of

cholera came, it had its full run-up one street, down another, and into every bye-lane and corner.

The factory folks were among the first sufferers, for they inhabited the worst parts of the town, and too many of them were pre-disposed, by habits of self-indulgence and intemperance, for the disease. Day after day, the workmen dropped off: some struggled through, and after a few weeks, returned; but many more sank rapidly under the first attack.

Mannering kept up bravely-he was strong and healthy, and his mind was composed. His cottage, too, was in a more healthy part of the town than that of some of his fellow workmen. He neither drank beer, as some did, to keep up his spirits, nor smoked tobacco to keep off the epidemic. He had done with both beer and tobacco, and had no wish to renew acquaintance with them. He was, moreover, very useful to many of the sufferers and their families, and when others, whose more especial duty it seemed to be to visit the sick and dying, were frightened away, and on one pretext or other, slunk out of the doomed town, Mannering braved the danger they feared, and was to be seen, night after night, by the bedsides of the afflicted ones, praying with them (for Mannering was a Christian) and reading to them the Words of Life. And to the everlasting credit of Martha, and in proof of her disinterested kindness and moral heroism, she did not, by word, look, or sign, do otherwise than encourage James in his work of faith and labour of love.'

At length, when the virulence of the disease seemed to have exhausted itself, and there were hopes that it was leaving the town for good,-all at once it broke out afresh, and attacked, not the weak and dissipated, and the dwellers in filthy lanes and dirty close houses, but the strong, and sober, and cleanly. Among these was Mannering. In the short space of twenty-four hours, he had passed through each successive stage of the disease, from apparent health to sickness, and thence, from bad to worse, until all hope was nearly

gone. Livid, ghastly, and helpless, he lay ; and seated by him was his weeping, agitated wife. On his bed lay his bible-from that fountain he had taken, he believed, his last draught. 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for THOU art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me:' were the last words Martha had read to him.

"Thank you, dearest,' said Mannering; 'leave off there they are blessed words and true. Now there is one thing more :-in my writing desk yonder is the life policy and a will. I bless God for putting it into my mind to do it :-you wont be quite destitute when I am gone.'

Mannering did not die. 'It is a marvel to me,' said the doctor to him, a month afterwards, 'how you got over it. You must have had wonderful powers of endurance to carry you through. As it was, the slightest anxiety of mind would have turned the scale, and you would have been a dead man. do you account for it ?'

How

'Just one way, sir,' said Mannering; 'I had, as you say, no anxiety at all. There is a verse in that old-fashioned book '-and he pointed to the bible on his shelf that will tell you how I felt. This is it: -Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee' this was one thing. Another thing, sir, was the thought that I wasn't leaving my family destitute. If I had died, they wouldn't have been left without means of support. And if it was as you say, sir; why then, the bible on one hand, and my life insurance on the other, have kept me, for this time, out of the grave,'

41

SURETISHIP.

There are some people in the world who, however long they may live, will pass out of it at last without having deserved the gratitude of any fellow mortal. Thoroughly selfish in every motive and action of their lives, their first and last thought, and secret response to every benevolent proposal for the benefit of others, is, 'What good will it do me-ME ?' Of such it has been said with equal truth and point,

"That wretch may breathe, but never lives,
Who all receives, and nothing gives,
Whom none can love, whom none can thank,
-Creation's blot,-Creation's blank."

To these persons it is not at all necessary to address the warning, 'Be just before you are generous: they are neither generous nor just; their whole and sole object is to take care of themselves; their motto is like that of an old baronial family,

'Thou shalt want ere I want;'

and if tolerably confident in their own resources, they sigh, in their inmost hearts, for

That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.'

So much, then, for the utterly selfish,

But there are others who seem to have been cast in a more amiable mould, and whose 'failings lean to virtue's side.' A kindly disposition, on one hand, and a dread of being thought selfish on the other, leads them on to important actions which, performed in haste, have too often to be repented of in leisure. It is hard, certainly, to blame any person for being too ready to advance the interests of another, but, nevertheless, there is such a thing, even in this self-seeking world, as an over-readiness to obey the impulses of benevolence, and a careless disregard of the cautions of right judgment. There are those, in fact, who sometimes permit their kindly feelings to over-ride every other consideration, and thus bring upon themselves the reproach of being generous before they are just.

There is nothing, perhaps, in which this amiable weakness is oftener manifested then in SURETISHIP. The instances are innumerable in which men have plunged themselves and their families into great distress, and sometimes into absolute ruin,-and in addition to this, have, directly or indirectly, injured many others-by one act of imprudence in this particular. This is not altogether strange and unaccountable. There is no present inconvenience attached to this mode of benevolence. It requires no immediate outlay, nor very much thought or trouble. It is easy to sign one's name to a bond,-physically easy, at least to those who have learned to write. Moreover, there is something gratifying to the vanity of some persons in finding themselves of so much importance in the social scale as to be accepted, or thought of, as sureties for others. It indicates respectability: none but the respectable can stand in such a position. It pleases those who may not be worth fifty pounds in the world that, by weight of character and station in society, their names will stand good, perhaps for hundreds. Then, it gratifies them to be placed, at apparently small expense and only a little risk, as they imagine, in the position of benefactors. It is much