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“God bless the dear boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Peyton, dropping the letter, while the tears gushed from her eyes. The happy mother wept long for joy. With her trembling hand she wrote a reply, and urged him, by the tenderest and most sacred considerations, to keep to his good resolutions.

At the end of a year Peyton examined his affairs, and found himself freed from debt; but there were nearly one hundred dollars for which he could not account. He puzzled over it for one or two evenings, and made out over fifty dollars spent foolishly.

“No doubt the rest of it will have to be passed to that account,” said he, at last, half angry with himself. “I’ll have to watch closer than this. At the end of the next year, I’ll not be in doubt about where a hundred dollars have gone.”

It was but rarely, now, that you would hear the name of Peyton mentioned. Before, everybody said he was a “fine, generous fellow;” everybody praised him. Now he seemed to be forgotten, or esteemed of no consideration. He felt this; but he had started to accomplish a certain end, and he had sufficient strength of mind not to be driven from his course.

“Have you seen Peyton of late?” I asked, some two years after this change in his habits. I spoke to one of his old intimate associates.

“No, not for a month of Sundays,” was his lightly-spoken reply. “What a remarkable change has passed over him! Once, he used to be a fine, generous fellow–his heart was in his hand; but now he is as penurious as a miser, and even more selfish: he will neither give nor take. If you happen to be walking with him, and, after waiting as long as decency will permit to be asked to step in somewhere for refreshments, you propose something, he meets you with–‘No, I thank you, I am not dry,’ or hungry, as the case may be. It’s downright savage, it is!”

“This is a specimen of the way in which the world estimates men,” said I to myself, after separating from the individual who complained thus of Peyton. “The world is wonderfully impartial in its judgment of men’s conduct!”

At the end of five years from the time Peyton reformed his loose habits, he had saved up and placed out at interest the sum of two thousand dollars; and this, after having sent to his mother, regularly, ten dollars every month during the whole period. The fact that he had saved so much was not suspected by any. It was supposed that he had laid up some money, but no one thought he had over four or five hundred dollars.

“I wish you had about three thousand dollars,” said Merwin to him, one day. Merwin’s business had turned out well. In five years, he had cleared over twenty thousand dollars.

“Why?” asked Peyton.

“I know a first-rate chance for you.”

“Indeed. Where?”

“There is a very good business that has been fairly established, and is now languishing for want of a little capital. The man who has made it will take a partner if he can bring in three thousand dollars, which would make the whole concern easy, perfectly safe, and sure of success.”

“It’s more than I have,” returned Peyton, in a voice that was slightly sad.

“So I supposed,” Merwin said.

“Although such needn’t have been the case, if I had acted as wisely as you through life.”

“It’s never too late to mend our ways, you know.”

“True. But a year mis-spent, is a whole year lost. No matter how hard we strive, we can never make it up. To the day of our death, there will be one year deficient in the sum of life’s account.”

“A just remark, no doubt. How much would every man save, if he would take good care not only of his years, but of his weeks and days! The sum of life is made up of small aggregations.”